In spite of the travails of our highway trip south described in the following story you can see from the above we did manage to arrive at our Vero Beach, FL destination where my lady friend Sue Brooks enjoyed a jacket-weather romp in the surf.

A SHORT AND SWEET VACATION--

On short notice Sue wound up with vacation time between Christmas and New Year’s so we decided on a quick sprint south to visit friends in Vero Beach and family in Jacksonville.

We left Ohio the day after Christmas and trundled south compliments of our interstate highway system to an overnight stop in Savannah, GA. That segment went nicely until we were between Columbia and Charleston, SC on I-26--where the traffic came to a grinding halt.

Two lanes of pent-up horsepower—stopped dead.

Then, we would occasionally lurch forward. Sometimes the whopping distance of a couple of car lengths.

As we eventually neared the junction with I-95 we could see those southbound folks also in the lurch-and-stop of an interstate highway suffering traffic convulsions.

It was just the southbound lanes in trouble. The northbound folks were zipping merrily along.

I was hoping we would quickly pass the obstruction—whatever it was—and resume our mid-winter escape from Ohio’s polar attitude.

We snail-paced our way onto southbound I-95 while I imagined myself racing the fellow earthworm beside me. The mind does silly things to escape the sometimes painful reality of interstate highway travel.

Then it dawned on me.

I told Sue, “I think Florida is full.”

Authorities down there won’t let another car across the state line until one leaves the state somewhere else I mused.

I could imagine cars plunging off the end of Duval St., in Key West.

About 50 miles north of Savannah the lurching traffic began to spurt itself. The healing process is slow, however, while the lane-changing maniacs rip off another 30 feet of highway—and collectively bring the improving flow to a stuttering stop once again.

Somewhere along there I listened to the last four chapters of Sue’s Book-on-a-CD, and, sunset turned into darkness.

Eventually we limped off at our Savannah motel’s exit with fuzzy visions of a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

I tried to take comfort from the inn’s display of swaying palm trees festooning their entrance—until I had to retrieve our heavy coats from the trunk.

It appeared Ohio’s Arctic temperatures had passed us somewhere along the way.

Geriatric snow-birds are allowed bursts of giddiness such as my public display of affection for palm trees. This one occurred in Vero Beach as our host friends from Bellville, Ohio, Dick and Jan Shafer, record the event in the background. Please stop by next week for some additional material on our short, southern vacation.