4-Wheel-Drive, Saint Augustine

Our trips to Florida at this stage of our lives were based around the one-week (9 days including the two weekends) school March break that governed the freedom of our youngest daughter. Because we could not afford the air fares for us and the two daughters who were still at home with us, these trips involved a massive drive from hell to get us from the Atlantic coast of Canada to Florida in the least possible amount of time!

On this occasion, I decided to save wear and tear on our car and give ourselves more room to sprawl by hiring a rental van from just across the border in Bangor, Maine. We ended up leaving home at 3:30 PM in a wet spring blizzard, cutting traffic on Interstate I-95 to a one-lane crawl. Four hours later, in the darkness we rammed our car through a snow bank in the rental car parking lot, where we picked up our All-Wheel-Drive Ford Aerostar van. I was glad to have that extra feature as we pulled out of the unplowed area and hit the highway again for the long haul south.

We got clear of the blizzard in western Massachusetts and by 8:30 AM, I had driven all night and we were passing Philidelphia. Noon found us outside Fredricksburg, Virginia at a highway rest stop for a quick meal. Then it was on the road again, approaching North Carolina by 2 PM and finally stopping in Savannah, Georgia by 5 PM for an overnight stay. The next morning, we were up and away by 8:30 AM and rolled into Saint Augustine at 12:30 PM, covering the 1626 miles (2600-km) in just under 2 days. I found it amusing to need the AWD capability of the van for the beach sand so soon after I had needed it for a blizzard! After 7 nights in Florida, the return trip was the same thing in reverse, but I remember it rained the whole way back!

in the backwoods, along the banks of the inner-coastal, rednecks like to drive around on 4 wheelers, tell tall tales about giant gators, and then do unspeakable things to there relatives.