Road Trip to Florida

July 9, 2016
We left from Ohio headed to Florida for a quick trip to find a place to winter over. As you know I need some special accommodations with the bathrooms and showers. I looked at a lot of places on Google Maps (Satellite View) and many park web pages but you can't really tell what they are like until you lay eyes on them. I didn't want to be stuck someplace that wasn't accessible.
Along for the trip was my 11 year old nephew Garrett. He was a great joy to have on the trip and he was dying to go along with us for an adventure. When I told him he was welcome to come with us to Florida, the first thing he asked was,  "can I go swimming in the ocean?"  Uhmm...YES!
I opted to take Route 23 south from Columbus all the way to Asheville, NC because I didn't want to drive on the interstate. It added time to the route but it was better than staring at the super slab all day.

 The boys spent a lot of time on their hand held electronics.

 For me there is always something special about leaving Ohio and crossing the river. A feeling of shaking free, being back on the road again. No matter what, it takes us three hours to get out of Ohio unless you go west to Indiana and then it takes like two. It's always nice to leave.

 If we had gone straight through town and not on the truck route we would have crossed this neat bridge.

 Becky tried to take pictures of all the state signs for Garrett but not all of them came out well.

We stopped for the night in Orangeburg, SC. Originally we were going to stay at a Pilot but it was hot and about a thousand diesels were idling in the parking lot. So we tried a Camping World only to find it's gates locked. Then we went to a Cracker Barrel. There was no one else in the lot so we got to sleep about 2:30. I hate these long days on the road but I wanted to get to Florida quickly to maximize our time there.