See you in April

All done. Time to go back to where we live. For now.

All good things must come to an end and we had to go home to work our day jobs. A few final thoughts.

Next time I plan on walking around through this area.

I took a couple of quick pictures on the way out;

On the way home, the Waze app on my phone really paid off multiple times. I will NOT leave home without it now. Thank you WAZE!

     

Here's a picture of the inside of Luigi's Pizza in downtown Nashville where we watched the Predators kick Blue Jacket ass. It's kind of a bummer because we were in a great mood and really hungry, but we both ended up getting food poisoning (Jord worse than me). A word to the wise, avoid the Pasta Fagioli.

So now, we're back in single digit temps until the next trip. I'm going to try like heck to make my next home base a heck of a lot warmer and a place I want to come home to.

A walk in the woods

Most of our time was spent just enjoying the quiet yard and the lazy water...

...but we did take some time to walk in the woods. And no bugs!

What we came for.

Very little.
That's what we came for. Just to sit back, relax and enjoy the air. And that's what we got.

Jord was feeling lots better, everything was sorted out with the car and the place we ended up in was fantastic. It was nice to be back where I prefer to be, which is out next to some quiet water watching the fish jump.

Jordanna had me stop at the grocery store on the way in so we had all the comforts of home in the well equipped kitchen. We did have to get some charcoal and lighter fluid but other than that it was pure sit-on-your-butt relaxation.

Thanksgiving was celebrated out at The Freezer, a Homosassa tradition for us that Jord found on one of her trips down. As my good friend Terry says;

Good friends,



Good food



and cold beer

...it can't get better.
But hey, we had wifi too :)

The post where everything is better. Lots better.

Last time I posted I was steeling myself in preparation for finishing our drive down to Florida in this;

I suppose a lot of people have them and enjoy them, but I'm not one of them. Sure they're slow, uncomfortable and cheap, but they also have a terrible dash layout and an awful sound system. 

Enough complaining though, in the end we had made it to Savannah and into our hotel, which was pretty nice. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn which was nice, but evidently some Irish wedding party stayed there earlier in the week and drank the place dry. In the end I was able to get a little beer with dinner, the bed was nice and I slept like I was innocent or something. 

 As I said in the last post, rain had been following us forever and Savannah was no exception.  We walked in the rain to B. Matthews Eatery (I recommend the Bay Street Scramble with the home made biscuit) and in spite of, or maybe even because of the rain I think I may come back to Savannah to check it out. It's got that old Southern Gothic groove that you'll also see in some New Orleans neighborhoods.

A funny thing happened on the way our next stop though; the dealership called about the GTI. I was all set to hear that the timing belt broke or that I was in the soup for thousands for some other repair. Wrong! Fuel injector #2 had failed and was replaced under an extended VW warranty. Huh? 75k miles and I still have warranties in place? I'll take it. They also replaced the fuse block under a recall and changed my oil so I was out for a minimal amount of coin. Now, they did find out that clowns that did the previous oil change stripped out my drain plug, but that's a fight for another day. The good news is that were (with only moderate inconvenience) able to return the rental car and be back on our way. Many thanks to Lulu and the other folks at Butler Volkswagen in Macon, Ga. for their kind attention.

Doubling back to Macon and then south we stopped for the night in Gainesville, FL (after a pitstop in Valdosta, GA). This was pretty close to our final destination in Homosassa, FL so the rest of the way was easy, two-lane-blacktop through rural Florida. It was good to be back.

Our check-in time at our rental was later in the day so we had a little lunch at Leon Neon's. Awesome cornbread.

When we did catch up with the owner of the rental, he offered us the option of another location down the road which he thought we might like, and we did.

So we're here and relaxing. I'll post a little more about the Thanksgiving holiday later, but here's a hint about what it was like;

Sing it, Elmore. Sing it.

You know, this song was written as a metaphor but (by account) was inspired by actual weather. What it has to do with this trip back to Florida is just about the same.



It has rained virtually every day on this drive. I won't necessarily die from a lack of sunshine, but I have to say that sitting in this hotel lobby in Savannah, Georgia (listening to the rain) I've started to wonder if it's following us.

Poor Jord did something to her hip Sunday and is limping like a senior citizen and after 1100 miles of driving and rolling into Macon, Georgia, something spaced out in the GTI. Dash lights, rough running and a refusal to restart.

We're now at the mercy of a local VW shop and to add insult to injury, we're now flogging a Toyota drone-mobile the rest of the way to Florida. We'll get the full damage report from the shop this morning but we're moving on. 

Now that the bad news is out of the way, here's the good news;

• Jord thinks her hip is starting to feel a little better.
• The car didn't lobotomize itself in BFE Illinois (fundamentalist farmer country), or in eastern Tennessee coming out of the mountains in the rain, surrounded by meth-stoked truckers and ridge-running locals.
• We were (just) able to to get into a rental car before Macon rolled up the streets for the night and made it to our reservation in Savannah.
• In about 20 minutes I'll be staring down the barrel of a custom-made omelette
• We should be over the last state border and lounging in Florida tonight.

I reckon this will be the first track on the playlist when we head out;

Closure, and GTFO

Looking back, I realize what a total crap job I do as a blogger. Never mind that I never provided closure on this trip to Costa Rica two years ago, I've gone on other domestic trips that would have been fun to describe here.

I've been to Florida and New Orleans a couple times,

 


I've driven to Nevada to pick up an old BMW,,,

Not that I expect massive amounts of readers here but, the Google machine seems to show that folks from all over the world have hit this page.

Anyhow, after I left Jaco, I did make it to San Jose. I stayed at the Balmoral for one night and the Del Rey for another. Yes, Jordanna knows. It's made for a lot of funny stories and the girls working there were a lot of fun to hang out with. Hey, it was a great hotel and the bars/restaurants were really good. I needed that pampering after all those days in the jungle, right? Cough, cough...

So, as part of the whole closure thing, here's the route I took in Costa Rica.

I would do this again in a heartbeat. Outside of a nasty, bitter Chinese guy working at a restaurant in Cartago I found everyone there very cool and friendly.

The End.

Well, almost. Today I leave for Florida for a few days of... well, probably some cooler than normal weather for those folks. Jord has decided on a stop at a spa north of Chicago and a stop in Savannah. The tough thing about not traveling alone is that you end up stopping at extra places. The good thing about not traveling alone is that you get to stop at extra places.

Here's the route we're planning for the trip down;

So hopefully minimal adventures. See you in Illinois.