So on the morning of April 1st we departed Riverbend. We had planned on leaving around 10ish but by the time we finished with washing the pad and saying our goodbyes, it was closer to 11ish. It would be close to a 4 hour drive so our GPS showed an arrival time around 3:30 p.m. As we left, I wasn’t looking forward to such a long drive especially along I-75.

Our destination was a one night $18 (Passport America) stay at Grand Lakes RV Resort in Citra, FL (see our review) where we were meeting up with Rob’s aunt and uncle, Linda & Herb who were on their way to an appointment at Lazy Days in Tampa.

Boring? Yes. Long? Yes. In fact it was much longer than expected. It seems that the entire length of I-75 is under construction causing major traffic slow downs. We would drive along at the speed limit, then traffic would come to a standstill with Mrs. Google announcing a 20 minute delay. We would crawl along at 10 mph for several miles, then suddenly the jam would clear and we would be back to the speed limit for several miles, then suddenly it would happen over and over again with delays ranging from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. Jeesh!

Apparently Gizmo didn’t like it much either. Usually he and Sparky spend all of our driving time under the sofa sleeping, but he decided to be a brave kitty, spending much of the time sitting in my lap or lying on the floor. Every now and then a particularly noisy truck would pass by causing him to scurry under the sofa again.

By now our GPS was showing an arrival time after 5:00 p.m. (our original ETA was around 3:30 p.m.). Knowing that the office would most likely close, I called them around 4:00 p.m. and was given our site number and told that our arrival packet would be at the welcome board at the gate. No packet at the board when we arrived at exactly 5:00 p.m. but as we made our way to our site, we were flagged down by a staff member who was on the way to put the late arrival packets on the board.

Finally we made it to our site where we were greeted by Herb and Linda. That evening we all went to the Eagle’s Nest Cafe for supper where Rob and I had burgers. Food was very good but I guess it wasn’t my turn to have a good day. I was about a quarter of the way through my burger – as I was chewing, there was something totally unchewable. It turned out to be a thick piece of plastic packaging about 3/4 inch square in size. Yuk, sure glad I didn’t swallow that! With my next bite, there was another piece. That ended any desire to continue eating it. When told, the waiter deducted both meals from our bill. Since we didn’t feel that it warranted a full refund, Rob ended up giving him back $10 to cover the cost of his meal. After dinner we returned to Herb and Linda’s coach where we visited some more.

The next morning we slow rolled our departure because there was a major storm system heading eastward across the south east bringing severe storms and even tornadoes. Fortunately we only had rain which cleared by the time we left. On this segment we were headed for Crossroads Travel Park in Perry, GA (see our review), driving the entire distance on I-75. Not much to say about our stay that night except that we weren’t real happy with our site, it was barely long enough even for just the rig so we had to unhitch our tow vehicle. In addition the sewer hook up was poorly positioned and required about a 30 foot run of sewer hose. We only carry about 25 feet of “stinky slinky”, so had to borrow an extra length from the campground.

The next morning we were off and running again. This time our destination was an Army Corps of Engineers campground, McKinney Campground in Allatoona, GA (review coming soon) for a two night stay. More about our visit there in the next post.