Monday, April 11, 2022- To Orlando via Fernandina Beach
We left our hotel in Florence South Carolina a little after 9:00, figuring that we had about a six-hour drive in front of us in order to get to Orlando. We were expecting to take our time though.
We crossed into Georgia and added a new state to Abby’s life-list. Julie saw signs to Peach World, and wanted to
stop there. It was like a little country
store but specializing in peach products.
She and Abby sampled a frozen peach slushie and peach fudge. She ended up buying a peach vinaigrette salad
dressing and two types of peach candy.
Our next big stop was the Florida Welcome Center, which is almost a
destination in itself. We got our
samples of Florida orange juice and got to stretch our legs. The staff there was very helpful and cheerful
too.
At the welcome center, we asked for directions to a quiet family beach
and got the name of one that we could stop at- Fernandina Beach on Amelia
Island. It is in the north-eastern
corner of the state, and apparently the island was a buffer between Spanish
Florida and English Georgia, and was the site of several pseudo-military
actions just before both the War of
1812 and the Civil War. We found Main
Beach on the northern end of the island, and it was pretty much what we
wanted. There were a fair number of
people there, but it was not overcrowded like some of the bigger name beaches
must be this week. Abby was excited to
get to a beach and we happened to have a few beach toys in the car for her to
dig with. She did put her feet in the
ocean with dad, but she got clunked by a boogie board that another small child
had, and she didn’t want to go back to the water after that. Dad
says the water was cold. Abby was content to play in the sand with mom. Black headed seagulls sounded like they were
laughing at us when we arrived. A few
pelicans flew by and we even saw a Chinook helicopter fly over. We were only at the for less than an hour and
Abby was getting tired. She had taken a
short nap in the car, but not as long as her usual ones, so we were ready to
leave there and started making our way towards Orlando, which was still three
hours away.
We had been taking our time, but we were not expecting the slow down
that we had at dinner. We made our way
through Jacksonville around rush hour and once we were south of the city we
started looking for a place to eat. We
went to a Hardee’s because Julie thought of it as a “Southern” place to
eat. She had forgotten how slow they
used to be. This one was even slower and
oddly empty at what the clock said was dinner time. They were training new staff and doing each
one of our items one at a time as they read the instructions off of cards.
We arrived at our hotel in Orlando a bit later than we had planned this morning. It's a bit of a dive, but it's cheap and clean enough to flop in, and that's what we wanted. We're on International Drive, so we're not far from the action.