A Walk in the Park

Up before dispatch starts loading and eat breakfast at the hotel. I am still stuffed from yesterday so I just have a yogurt.

TX puts semi tractors on early. Then there is one from FL going to Duluth. I grab my phone and by that time BB is looking at it ... Duluth ... GA. :(

Then we see a 3,000 mile trip ... from RI to CA. That one actually stayed on the load board for about an hour.

At 10 AM there is still one from FL to VA, GA to TN, and 10 from NC to NJ. There is also one local FL to FL. IF we had made it to Lakeland last night it might have worked, but now we need to get our rental car at 3 PM and it is not at the airport so some of these locations, if you are not there on time ... they give the car away and if you are there early they don't have one. And the pickup was electric. I'd rather have a few extra hours to do one of them.

At 11 AM we check out and head to De Soto National Monument. Spent an hour walking, saw a couple of dolphins and a marooned boat. We had planned on also stopping at a botanical park about a mile away but the math wasn't working.

Oh yeah ... a few miles before the park, BB is looking on the load board and there are three trucks from NC to IA. I call and get one. BB doesn't want one, it's not an RV :)

So now we need to get back in work mode.

We are supposed to have this car back by 3 PM and still need to eat and then fuel the car before returning. We end up fueling first, then returning the car and grabbing food from Chic-fil-A at the food court in the mall where the rental car is.

Rental car place lets us keep our current car so it is only paperwork. But because we waited until <> 3 PM to do this, we will only get to Ocala today and then Durham tomorrow and pick up the truck on Sunday AM. Once we get to Ocala we get off the freeway and then hotels are few until Jacksonville a couple of hours later.

With a Sunday pickup, we should be able to drop in IA on Tuesday.

Somewhere before Ocala, the on coming traffic is down from three lanes to one lane because a tow truck is getting ready to pull a car out of the swamp and needs to be crossways across the shoulder and first two lanes. That would have slowed us down a little.

Frost warning again tonight, even after a mid-70's day. It was sunning and warm today with only scattered showers.

We ate lunch late so we waited until 6 PM to eat again. Murphy's Oyster Bar. BB loves their Po' Boy Shrimp Sandwich. I had a chicken philly, or half of one. While we were waiting for our food, we were sitting at one of the tables ... the person behind me was ... interesting. Had lots of comments about a lot of people that I'm guessing both people at the table worked with. One comment was ... 'she is a real waste of a human being.' Then when the waiter brought them their food, she said 'We ordered an appetizer.' The waiter must have started to walk away because next, I heard 'Take this food back, we want our appetizer first.' (when we left their table was still empty, no food, no appetizer)

Load board

US - 99

IA -0-

MN - 4

WI - 9

Travel day again tomorrow. PU Sunday AM.