22 November 2014

With rain scheduled for the next three days we decided to rent a car and go on tour. My son lives in Jacksonville, and Susan has family in Beaufort, SC.

Thanks to the boats next to us we were both up before first light. They were shouting at each other as they tried to get off the dock. /sigh

The Apalachicola Airport is a small regional airport but they have cars via Hertz. We were soon buzzing along in a no frills Toyota Corolla. Back in 1994 I had a Geo Prizm which was a Corolla with a Geo Badge. So I’ve always liked them. Well, it turns out they have been re-engineered across the years, and most of it hasn’t been for the good. But we will only be doing about 3 hours a day of driving, so I’ll cope.

The drive from Apalachicola was pretty much along the coast and very pretty. We then entered the pine forests, with acres and acres and acres of pulp pine tree farms. We did one 30 minute stretch without seeing a house.

When we were driving in Alabama I noticed the drivers there use most of the highway, weaving in and out, in and out between cars over and over again. Turns out Florida drivers do the same thing. An added thrill bonus was on the three / four lane wide section just outside Jacksonville. Most of us were doing the speed limit (70) but a few cars were doing the minimum (50). So driving turns into the automobile version of Frogger, weaving around the slow cars trying to not get run over. Susan just flicked into “Super Mario Cart” mode and did a great job.

Lunch was at Willards BBQ Junction. We had eaten there in our last trip here 5 years ago. We had BBQ sandwiches minus the bread. Still very good.

Around the corner is Chamblin’s Bookmine. It’s a huge set of connected buildings with a rabbit warren of shelves that are crammed full of books. We spent 45 minutes there and purchased two bags of books.

We then met up with Mike and he took us over to “Cool Stuff Games” One of the things that Susan and I have been trying to do is play games some evenings. We play “Ticket to Ride” and Mike thought if we liked that, we would like “King of Tokyo”. Its a dice game that ou play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens – all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo. “Cool Stuff Games” had a demo copy that people can try. We played for over two hours, it’s a lot of fun. Lots of interesting stratagems, and I can see with 4 or more people how the game would change. Putting this on my Christmas list.

For dinner Mike took us to “Ragtime” just of the ocean front in Jacksonville. A great food menu and a pretty decent beer selection. They have a number of beers that are brewed for them. I had the Dark Ale, the Red Ale and the Indian Pale Ale. Mike had the “Dolphins Breath” lager.

We started off splitting an order of pot roast sliders. For dinner Mike had the orange infused salmon, Susan went with the Southern Classic “Shrimp and Grits” while I had the Lobster and Shrimp tacos, with a side of red beans and rice. Everyone loved their dinners.

For dessert we split an order of beignets. They came with a strawberry and chocolate dipping sauce. Not as good as Cafe DuMond, but very good.

We headed back to our hotel, where they had TV and I was able to watch two episodes of Big Bang Theory. We had talked about TV shows and how much have missed by not watching TV. So it was nice to get some TV time in.

Thanks Mike for a great day in Jacksonville!