Driving home from Florida

I am now back in Texas after a three week stay in Jacksonville Florida. I drove to Jacksonville on I10 which is pretty much a straight route that crosses Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and the Florida panhandle. The trip is about 14 hours so I break it into two days. I spent the night both ways in Mobile. I stayed at a Marriott Courtyard in Mobile on the way. It was ok, nothing special, just a standard motel room. On the way back I stopped in Daphne which is is one of those contiguous communities and stayed in a Homewood Suites. Wow what a difference! It cost $25 less than the Courtyard and the room was huge and had a kitchenette with a full size refrigerator. The Breakfast room was quite impressive so I took some pictures. I really liked the faux wood beams. It may sound kind of silly to get excited about the hotel decor, but when you travel on business the inside of the hotel where you stay is generally the only thing of any interest that you see. Hotels, airports and a few restaurants is pretty much all the business traveler experiences.


Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana have really nice rest stops about every fifty miles. Texas has one at the border, but it is the last one between Orange and Houston. In fact, in all the driving I have done around the state, from here to Dallas and over to Amarillo I don't recall seeing many rest stops at all. They have what they call "picnic areas" where you can pull off and have a picnic I guess. They have a few trash barrels and tables but no rest rooms.

The drive is quite scenic. In Louisiana there is a long bridge accross the Achafalaya swamp. I always wonder how they were able to build such a long concrete bridge with it's supporting structure in that swamp. I stopped at a couple of rest stops in Florida, which are particularly nice I might add. I was intrigued by a sign posted at all the rest stops. Now I can understand posting a sign to remind people to turn on their lights during rain storms, but I would think turning on the wipers when it is raining would be something that people do without being told/reminded.


"Officer, the reason I ran into the back of that car was because it was raining really hard and I didn't see it. I must have forgotten to turn on my wipers and his tail lights were not on."