Saturday, May 16, 2009

Road Trippin'

I just love road trips. Even though they take a lot longer than flying, I look at them as a way to see what everyone else is missing. The longest road trip I was ever on was 17 days with Guy. We drove from Clearwater to Arlington, NYC, Albany, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and home again. No one thought we would make it without killing each other, but it wasn’t until the last day that we had a riff about (his interpretation – I killed Santa and my interpretation – I set Santa free to return to the North Pole) losing a Santa wall hanging from the back of the truck. It really is a whole other story so I shall stop here.

So far Ronn and I have taken three road trips; one to Myrtle Beach, another to the woods of North Carolina and Saturday’s adventure to Spring Hill and beyond.
We were on our way to see his friend Eddie and decided to take the long way to scope out some of our own Diners, Drive-ins and Dives opportunities. What we found were some great photo ops and they were brightly taken. We did stop at a place called Maw’s Kitchen. Nothing special, but I only got a burger (not like El Cap) and the hushpuppies were scant on flavor. The other meal on this trip was at the Golden Corral (Eddie’s choice) and it wasn’t horrible. I had a salad and a sliced filet which apparently drew a couple of stares since I didn’t have any fried stuff on my plate. My treat was the blueberry pie that still needed something, but all in all it was a fine meal.
The drive would have only taken a couple hours, but instead we drove right past Spring Hill and meandered up to the Withlacoochee Forest. No one else was there and this was fine by me. I got lost in the wonders of Spanish moss dripping from these incredible oaks. The stories they could tell would be numerous as some laid on the ground after giving up the fight in hurricane-force winds, while others stood proud with no leaves and dressed only in charred bark announcing their heroic deaths. Still some stretched out toward the dried-up lake while right next to them were their majestic brothers reaching toward the sky. I was hoping to see more animals in the park, but I guessed that do to the lack of water the deer, raccoons and even mosquitoes had moved to wetter woods.

Our adventure continued as we drove west to Crystal River and their famous power plant. Ronn had been here several years before and thought it would be nice to show me an up-close view of this hot spot (pun intended.) However, times have changed. After 9/11 nuclear power plants were seen as major targets for terrorist attacks and security was amped up. We were stopped about 3 miles from the parking lot, the truck checked and our IDs taken. The guy was nice and knew we weren’t terrorists, just misinformed lookey-loos and let us leave after some small talk. We did get some good shots from an island near by though.

Hunger started to get annoying and we were expected at Eddie’s so we let the GPS do the talking. Unfortunately, she was a bit confused and led us astray so I had to jump in and navigate as well as drive. No biggie. We made it to Spring Hill safe and sound.
I finally bit the bullet and joined Facebook and on day one I found an old friend from high school who also lives in Spring Hill so I may be making another trip or two up that way. There isn’t any other reason to go to SH except to see friends, but that’s just me.

1 comment:

callenstewart said...

Love your pics. Makes me want to go!