Florida at Last--February 6

We get up early—7:30. Pack up, say our goodbyes, and pull out. We decide to take the scenic route along the ocean. We join Hwy 98 and ride it all the way. It’s truly amazing how long it can take to go 350 miles! We leave at 8:30 and get to our destination, Perry, at 5:30. Okay, so we do dawdle. We stop to check out a Penny’s along the way; Norb needs some new briefs and there are few Penny’s in our area. I also splurge on some colored socks. Yahoo! We eat lunch in the parking lot, feasting on leftovers. I truly love this RV!

We find a shop on the ocean where they are offloading a boatload of Apalachicola oysters. We aren’t particularly fond of oysters, but we do love shrimp, so we get a pound of the largest. We also splurge on some horseradish in hopes of pepping up the sauce we bought in Gulf Shores. Norb is all for just putting the horseradish in ketchup and giving up, but I think the sauce we have can be redeemed.

We pull into Perry, which has about a thousand motels (some out of the business but many still open; lots of “American owned” signs, which put me off, not that we are their target market anyway but still…) The guidebook says that the only reason to stop in Perry is because you are tired of driving, which is exactly why we are stopping in Perry. We don’t want to drive all the way to Umatilla. You can’t really understand how big this country is until you start driving it. We have driven 320 miles today and that’s essentially the distance west to east in the Florida panhandle (okay, plus a little bit). It got up to 60 today but is going back down to the upper 20’s tonight, they say. Tomorrow, tomorrow, there is warmth ahead.