We returned home safely, I finished doing all the laundry (but some had to be done again already, of course!), and I think I've caught up on everything else I wanted to say before starting to tell of our wonderful vacation adventures. I'll apologize ahead of time if this is too detailed for you, but this is our scrapbook, so I want to capture as many memories as possible. If you want, you can just scroll through and look at pictures, but you might miss all the great stories! You decide. =o) So, here we go...
Day 1: Destination... Jacksonville
Matt worked Monday night, so he came home and slept (or tried to sleep) some before we got on the road. We ended up leaving after lunch (around 1:00), hoping James would sleep much of the way in his usual naptime slot. We were making really great time and probably would have made it up to Jacksonville by around 6:00, but suddenly traffic came to a halt. We think it was because of a traffic accident that had just happened, but we made a U-turn and didn't stick around to find out. We made our way back to I-95 by means of some smaller roads and just lost about 20 minutes time. Not too bad, or so we thought.
Several more miles up the road, when we just felt like we were getting back on track again, all traffic was forced to exit off I-95. For some reason, we didn't have our FL map with us and we had forgotten our big map book (probably since we were a little out of practice going on vacations)... lesson #1, bring big map book. We managed to use the TripTik we'd gotten from AAA to take smaller roads again back to I-95. This time, however, we found the entrance blocked by some Florida Highway Patrol cars. Needless to say, we were getting quite frustrated!! (Some of us showed it more than others.) The handle on the driver's side inside the Explorer chose that moment to break, too, which didn't help matters any... Once Matt made it out of the truck, he walked over to the troopers and asked them what was going on. They said that I-95 was closed for 50 miles because of wildfires. Oh perfect! This would have been great to know when we left home and we could have taken the Turnpike instead, or at least jumped onto it at Fort Pierce. So, lesson #2 is we will watch the news or check traffic conditions online before we leave next time.
We went east to US 1 and ended up taking that (traffic lights and all...ugh!) the rest of the 50 miles to just above Titusville. It felt great to get on I-95 again after all that stop-and-go on US 1. We didn't have too long on there before we got off at the first Jacksonville exit, where Jenny Higdon (soon-to-be Bowden) lives. She and her fiance, Wally, were waiting for us and we were all eager to stuff our faces with the yummy takeout food from P.F. Chang's that they had picked up. We didn't end up getting there till around 8pm and it was so great to finally get out of the car!! James had reached his limit about 2 hours before that; neither Matt nor I could blame him. Thankfully, we were able to visit with them a little bit that night, but it was definitely not as long as we thought we were going to have. James had fun running around Jenny's 3rd floor apartment and looking out the windows. We also took him to the playground right there in the complex after dinner to let him get out some of his energy from the long car ride.
It was great to see Jenny and to finally meet the man she'll be marrying this coming weekend. I do wish we could have spent some more time with them but I guess a little time was better than nothing. We didn't even remember to take any pictures there either which stinks... and explains the lack of pictures on this post. Don't worry, the next one will be full of pictures!
No comments:
Post a Comment