Since we got here we haven't had much downtime because we've had to focus on boring, trivial things like not being homeless for the entire year.
But we've made the most of any fun time we could grab. RV dealers don't generally open on Sundays, except for the massive ones, so on the first Sunday we headed over to Daytona beach on the east coast of Florida:
It's ridiculously long, over six miles I think. They've basically set up a couple of lanes on the beach itself so you literally drive down the beach and park up in the first spot you find. From then on you're free to chill for the whole day and marvel at the many sights (and I mean that in every conceivable way) that can be seen on the beach.
With a car full of luggage but not a beach towel in sight, we were pretty unprepared to be honest so we didn't stay long. We sat on the boot (or "trunk" to us natives) of the car, enjoyed the sun and watched the other cars cruising for a while, then headed off. Which reminds me, I have to quickly mention these:
Pickup trucks. I reckon I've seen close to 300 of these since we've been here. Guess how many actually had anything loaded in the back? One! What are these people using them for, transporting bodies in the middle of the night?
Last week we went to Edward Menard State Park on the outskirts of Tampa, to break up the day while we negotiated the purchase of our RV down at Camping World.
It's kind of in the middle of nowhere and quite tranquil, and the weather was amazing, so we got a welcome reminder of what we came here for.
A while after we took that picture, having talked about dipping our feet in to cool down, we walked further around the lake and saw that there are a load of huge wild alligators living in there. We decided not to paddle after all.
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Totally know what you mean about the pickup trucks! Every time I've been to the states everyone seems to be driving either these, or massive (and I mean bigger than the UK) 4x4's. But never anything in the back, and I doubt many of them have ever been off road.
ReplyDeleteOnly three things I can think of:
1. They LIKE their gas guzzlers (status)
2. They LIKE being high up in big cars on big roads and secretly have an inferiority complex
3. They're all paranoid about the end of the world / terrorists / 2012 / natural disasters and need it in case they need to stock up three months worth of suppliers in an emergency!