The Sunshine State

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

DAYTONA BEACH, FA – We’re in Florida! Yay! And what a warm welcome we have received. Not only did the temperature soar to an amazing 26 degrees Celsius, but at the Florida Welcome Center at the state line, there were ladies serving free cups of Florida orange and grapefruit juice – a wonderful tangy treat for two Canadians unaccustomed as yet to summer temperatures.
Tonight, for the first night since leaving Ottawa, we are settled at an RV park in our own motorhome with fresh sheets on the bed and nice, wholesome food in our little refrigerator. We chuckled at ourselves a bit as we tried to remember how things work in this brand new rig. Which port has the water connection? Where’s the light switch for the bedroom?
Our travel day was short enough today, and the weather obviously temperate enough, to ditch our original plan of staying in a hotel tonight and opt for a KOA (Kampground Of America) RV park. Since the RV was still winterized, and we hadn’t brought any food that wouldn’t keep or freeze, it meant we would have to flush out the antifreeze from the system and do a grocery order. But we are fairly confident that we won’t risk freezing temperatures again till we head back north, and we had enough time after our arrival to hit the food store, so we decided to take the plunge. As we sit in the comfort of our little home on wheels, we are glad we made that choice!
The trip here from Savannah was just about a straight line south. The Interstate 95 was pretty busy and we spotted several Quebec and Ontario licence plates on the way. I also saw half a dozen large white cranes wading in some roadside ponds, plus a large eagle atop a dead tree, stretching its wings in the bright sun. The further south we got, the more palm trees we saw in the bush by the highway, as well as trees festooned with Spanish moss. I learned that this plant is neither Spanish, nor moss! It survives on the moisture in the air, and lives a parasitic existence on the branches of other plants.
Our tour guide Diva, yesterday in Savannah, said that the Spanish moss hosted tiny bugs called chiggers, which the early settlers discovered to their chagrin when they used the material to stuff their mattresses!
Shortly after we crossed into Florida and enjoyed our free juice cups, we got to Jacksonville, a major ocean-side city with skyscrapers and great loops of concrete freeways through which we had to navigate to get to the other side and on toward Daytona Beach. We caught a few glimpses of the ocean, but the highway was a bit more inland after the city, even though it looks like it’s right on the water the whole way.
The Daytona Beach KOA was just off the I-95, and it took us no time to hook up the RV and unhook the car. Then we were off for a food order. On the way to the store we passed a movie complex, so after tucking the cold stuff in our cooler bag, we decided to take in a show! We saw “Descendants” with George Clooney – an interesting family story set in Hawaii, with lots of beautiful scenes of the islands and a sound track of lovely Hawaiian songs. It was fun to get a foretaste of another travel destination which is definitely on our list of must-see places!