Driving to Florida

   September 3, 2013-We loaded the last few things in the car this morning and probably exceeded the weight limit of the van!  The rack for our bikes on the van was nearly touching the ground because of the weight.  We only had a clearance of a few inches!
It was certainly very different to have the family divided between two cars on a road trip, but at least we planned to drive down all in one day.  Mom and I got in the van and Kate, Benjamin, Noah and Lydia rode in Kate’s car.  Lydia was nice enough to let Benjamin sit in the front seat with her.
  Mom hadn’t had a good night’s sleep the night before, or the night before, or the night before that, therefore, by mid-morning she was having a hard time staying awake while driving-despite my efforts to keep her awake through the powers of music.  We pulled off the highway to do a “Chinese fire drill” and let me drive.  I continued driving until we stopped for gas and ate lunch.

Making sandwiches (and getting our water kefir :-D)  when stopped for gas

  I continued to drive after lunch and my Mom and I listened to Doug Phillips’ message on “The Roaring Twenties” from the recent History of America Mega Conference.  It’s a very fun message and helps to capture this very important and transitory time in American history.  We also listened to the newly-released Jonathan Park album: “The Whispering Sphinx.”
  We ate dinner in Alabama and were back on the road before sunset.  The rolling hills in Alabama were very beautiful, but alas, I was driving and couldn’t take photos simultaneously!

Lydia after dinner

During the last 4-5 hours of the trip I finally switched cars and was able to take some [blurry] photos.


  At this point I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we arrived at our house in FLORIDA!

Packing Up

    September 2, 2013-This fall we are taking a trip down to Panama City Beach, FL!  We’re staying at the same beach house from our last visit back in 2010.  We’ll be bringing down a lot of stuff including my computer and Kate’s computer since we’ll still need to do some work.  Therefore, we thought we’d pull the trailer with our van like we did last time.  However, the van is having transmission problems, so instead, we’re bringing the van and Kate’s car.
We tried to get everything packed and loaded into the van...“everything packed” is a good way of describing what we’re bringing on the trip!

Lydia’s “lamb-y” stuffed animal was placed in the clothes washer.  While it was being cleaned, she stared at the washer and kept on “asking” us to get it for her.  Then the washer switched to the spin cycle and the noise scared her away!

Computers, hard drives, monitors, etc.

Boxes of food, files for work, sewing machine, kefir bottles, Noah’s bike...

skim board, cooler of meat...

Back at Home

We had spent the night at a hotel in Centerville, TN. After going to church we started the 5 hour drive back home. There wasn’t any other incident and we arrived home safely at 9pm.

We’ve been in the middle of renovating the house since late September and the house was under going some changes while we had been gone.

Our friend and professional painter, Ronda, was painting while we were gone so the house looked way different when we got home.

My grandma and her husband had also worked hard while we were gone. They had ripped up all of the vinyl flooring and the underlayment in the kitchen. They’d also moved out the cabinets, disconnected the hallway washroom’s sink, patched a crack in the ceiling, finished drywalling the door downstairs and had also blown off and burned the leaves in the front yard. Knowing that all of this work wasn’t waiting for us made it a lot easier to leave the ocean .

The living room is absolutely full of bookcases, furniture and boxes-and it’s all in the middle of the room so Ronda can get to the walls.

The kitchen has a lot of stuff in it as well-the kitchen table is completely covered and the floor has been stripped down to the plywood.

The hallway bath was stripped of everything on the walls and the vinyl’s been pulled out. The toilet is still hooked up, but the sink doesn’t work.

The bathroom in Benjamin’s room was gutted by Ben and Noah before we left. So, we’re all sharing the shower and sink downstairs and we’ll have to rip out the toilet in the hallway bathroom as well.

It seems a little bit overwhelming to come home to, but it is good to see things getting accomplished.

Heading Home

Well today our faces will be headed North as we begin our first day of the drive to home.

Before noon we had the van and trailer loaded and had made sure none of our things had been left behind. Ben and Noah fed the seagulls our old bread:

I was holding Lydia while I was taking pictures and a seagull ran right into her!

Noah made friends with a neighbor just a few doors down…Miss Peggy.

On our way out of town we stopped by what we call, “The US’s smallest Post Office.”

Kate read from “Of Plymouth Plantation” in preparation for Thanksgiving. The road noise was pretty loud so I rigged up a headset that plugged into the van’s sound system.

The sun went down and we were driving on an Alabama highway at 70mph when the car behind of us started flashing their bright headlights. The trailer’s gate was on the ground! Mom pulled over unto the shoulder. We figured that the boxes on the back of the trailer had fallen out the back and our stuff was scattered all along the highway. However, when we checked everything was still there-the bungee cords were just a little bit old and had stretched out from the force of the wind on the gate. We secured the gate and slowly drove a few miles to an exit with a gas station where we could buy some fresh cords. Interestingly enough the town was called Good Hope.

We ate dinner in Columbia, Tennessee and then slept at a hotel in Centerville.

Our Last Day

Well, today is our last day in Florida and we will be leaving to go back home tomorrow. We did a family photo shoot while we watched the last Florida sunset we’ll see in a while.

 

My Mom and I played around in Photoshop with one of the skim boarding photos.

We drove to Pier Park to eat dinner and to do some shopping.

Before we left Florida Noah and Benjamin rode on a Ferris wheel for the first time.

We packed a few things up in preparation for the long drive we’ll have tomorrow.

Mexico Beach & St. Andrew’s

We heard from a neighbor that she 3 years ago she found some large shells at an isolated beach nearby. She gave us directions on where to go, so we packed up a picnic and headed for Mexico Beach (it’s still in Florida-not Mexico!) It was about an hour’s drive away.

On the way to the beach we drove through through Tyndall Air Force Base. We heard that the military flies their most advanced planes from Tyndall’s runways.

We found the road that our neighbor told us about, but it ended up that Air Force Base was using the land now and the road wasn’t open to the public anymore. We found a beach access a few miles down and setup our stuff on the beach.

We couldn’t find any large shells, but there were PILES of medium shells all along the beach.

After packing up some of the more unusual shells we drove back to Panama City Beach and went to St. Andrew’s state park and ate our picnic lunch.

There is a levee at the park that forms a bay-it’s a popular place for both SCUBA divers and fishermen. So, Benjamin tried both at the same time. He grabbed his goggles, snorkel and fishing rod and swam out all of the way out to the middle of the bay. Then he snorkeled and fished at the same time (that way he could “decide” which fish he wanted to catch .) He did catch one fish before we left the park.

The area was very scenic and I had a fun time getting photos. A US Coast Guard ship came into the bay from the ocean before we left.