Alligators, tornadoes and torrents

Richmond Hill, GA – Did that get your attention? Read on; it’s all part of Day One of our return journey! Somehow, we got all our amassed belongings into the car and still managed to get the doors shut, so that was a good start. It was also an early one; we were pulling out of Dunedin RV Park just after 8 am, headed north on Alternate 19 under an overcast sky and temperatures in the 70s, even at that hour.

On a Sunday morning, traffic was very light, so that was also a plus. The early part of the drive was very familiar territory, through Tarpon Springs and on up the west coast of Florida to Bayonet Point, where we turned eastward along Highway 52. Once we left the civilized sections behind us, we enjoyed the more natural surroundings, with grazing cattle, splashes of wildflowers and, further along, the Ocala National Forest, now all green and jungly as spring takes hold. A family of sand cranes caught my eye on the shoulder – mother and father were about four feet tall, and dad had a bright red crest on his head, and beside them were a pair of fuzzy babies standing half that height, trotting alongside the parents on a pleasant Sunday stroll!

Strolls for some other wildlife were not so pleasant, however: we saw two full-sized deer that met their demise by the highway, and when we got closer to the Georgia state line, a healthy-sized alligator had bit the dust! It was the first alligator of our entire stay, although I’m convinced there was one in the marsh behind our little cottage. Often as I drifted off to sleep at night I could clearly hear something chirping and it didn’t sound bird-like or frog-like.

When we left the 52 and turned north onto Interstate 95, the traffic had become a little busier and the sky a little darker. Fortunately, we stopped for lunch and got back on the road before the rain began. Actually, we got beyond St. Augustine, past Jacksonville’s ring road and over the St John River with a clear windshield, but shortly after passing into Georgia, great drops began to splash down, and before long we were wrapped in shrouds of wet mist from the passing cars and trucks.

Suddenly, my cellphone sent out great shrieks of alarm from the depths of my purse, and I pulled it out, expecting to see an Amber Alert about a missing child in the area. Instead it read “Tornado Warning for the next 30 minutes. Seek shelter immediately.” Yikes! Quickly, I scanned the skies from my side of the car, looking for a tell-tale funnel cloud or a green sky or some debris flying through the air. Nothing. I craned my neck over the great heaps of stuff in the back seat to try and catch a glimpse of the other side of the car, but if those harbingers were right up on our tail, I wouldn’t have seen a thing. Lucky for us, no tornado materialized, though I kept my eye glued to the clock till it passed the 30-minute mark. Guess we dodged that bullet.

Our first stop is just outside of Savannah, and the rain continues. The lady at the hotel’s front desk recommended the Southern Image Family Restaurant just down the way, where a buffet offered a great array of grits, succotash, fried chicken, lima beans, macaroni and cheese and other down home fare. I managed to resist the sumptuous dessert table of chocolate fudge cake with peanut butter icing, pineapple upside down cake and apple pie – though I just had to taste the homemade chocolate chip cookie.