Return Trip, Part The First
I usually make the drive to and from Florida in a one-day, 15 hour drivefest. It's a long day but not as agonizing as one might think inasmuch as I have a very comfortable seat in the Outback and an iPod interface that lets me play BlogDog Radio all the way home. But this trip was different both ways. The trip down was broken by the Mike Cross show at the Randy Wood Guitar Shop and concert space. I'll get into that later. And yeah - it was great.
The trip up was broken at the same place (Pooler, GA) for a variety of reasons. The Holiday Inn Express in which Lycurgus and I stayed after the show was a great hotel - new, clean, comfortable. It could be less expensive but that is true of any number of things from phone service to Maserati Quattroportes. Since my departure from the Lycurgus compound was complicated by a difficult load out, we decided it made more sense to leave later and break the trip. So I didn't hit the road until 10am versus the, say, 6am I'd leave for the one-day drive. And it was a lovely day to drive.
With the exception of the farging love bugs. By the time I refilled the tank, I thought the sun was setting early. Turns out it was just a haze of bug guts on the windshield. My sole consolation is that while they were annoying me, I was killing them.
And where was I when I was filling up? Brunswick, GA of course. "Of course" because stopping for barbecue at the GA Pig (exit 29 east of I-95) is a necessary thing. I blogged it before. Just killer chopped boston butt pork barbecue. Killer. Also, there are several gas-em-ups at the same stop which have very attractive rates. I filled up with gas at $2.17. Well, $2.17.9 I suppose since they always play that little game. But still - least I'd paid for gas in quite a while.
Then, an easy cruise up the interstate to the Savannah area and into the hotel by 5pm. Easy peasy. And my first day was done.