The Trip North

On January 7th, we leave Route 1 North in Miami and take Florida’s Turnpike through the Everglades. In the 84 miles between Fort Pierce and Three Lakes there is just one exit, at Yeehaw Junction; it’s lonely highway. We are surprised at how much of Florida is wilderness. At sea level and treeless, but wild nonetheless.
We sleep in Lake City in north-central Florida and on January 8th we breakfast with Jim’s cousin, Kristin. Frank is at work, so we can’t thank him personally for the wonderful day we had in Key West with the free tickets he arranged.
In the afternoon we visit my brother, Timothy, in Savannah and he gives us a tour of The Home Depot, where he works. Supper is in Charleston, South Carolina, with Jim’s sister Mary and family; we sleep in their FROG. That’s a Charleston architectural feature: Finished Room Over Garage. Theirs is an oasis of peace and serenity.
January 9th is our big travel day: 550 miles. After a breakfast of steel-cut oats with John, we leave Charleston, drive through North Carolina and southern Virginia, and have supper with my Bryn Mawr College friend, Stacie, and her husband Frank, near Richmond, Virginia. Then I drive through heavy rain on I-95 and I-495 to Bethesda, Maryland, where my brother Steve and his wife Maria host us for two nights. On the way we pull off I-95 in Aquia, Stafford County, Virginia, for gas and find ourselves briefly back on Route 1. En route we take turns driving and reading The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith.
January 10th is our second Sabbath on the road. We attend the Rockville Maryland Ward, adjacent to the Washington, D.C. Temple, then drive around the temple grounds. We made a lot of trips to the temple in the years before the Boston Temple opened in 2000, but one day stands out: June 5, 1979.
Supper is a happy, noisy affair with my niece, Maria, her husband, Karl, and their four energetic young children. They remind us of us twenty-two years ago, when we had kids ages one to eleven. What sweet (sometimes) memories.
January 11th we stop at Peter’s and Xiomara’s for supper; R’el and Mike visit too. At 10:30 p.m. we start on our final 200 miles. At 2:30 a.m. we sink into our own bed. Two weeks on the road.