My Road Trip from FL to NY (originally posted Dec 12)

Images from along the way...






From left to right, top to bottom:
Bridge; Brutus with Mom in the back seat;
South of the Border in North Carolina; Mona - our GPS guide;
the Moon visible during the day; my father while driving.


My parents, myself, and my dog Brutus left Jacksonville, FL for West Monroe, New York at 10am on Monday, December 8. We drove about 400 miles each day. The first day we drove through Georgia and South Carolina to North Carolina. We decided to sedate Brutus since he had never traveled in the car more than 15 minutes before. He was one calm pup and slept most of the trip (even without medication on the second and third days).

My mother and I joined Brutus cat-napping continually throughout the day while my father drove hour after hour. We stopped to eat our lunch at a rest stop in SC. We enjoyed our meal outside, enjoying the last of the nice weather. That evening, my father and I enjoyed a steak dinner while my mom stayed with Brutus and she dined on McDonald’s as a special treat.

The next day, we all got up early and enjoyed breakfast in our room. We were on the road by 8am. We traversed North Carolina and bits of West Virginia and Maryland. Virginia seemed like a long drive because we avoided Richmond and Washington, D.C. Virginia was covered with horse and cow farms and the mile-long fences directed us from one magnificent homestead to another. Once in Pennsylvania, the weather and the landscape changed dramatically. The rolling hills and well-manicured farms were replaced with rocky and wooded hillsides.

When we reached the New York border, the temperature was 46 degrees. Within approximately 20 minutes, the temperature dropped to 32 degrees and driving became difficult for the first time during our journey. Before we knew it, we had passed through Binghamton where I had visited my friend Karen many times, Cortland where I had lived and worked before moving to Florida, and finally Syracuse where I went to graduate school. The entire trip was about 1120 miles, 21 hours of driving, and took almost 4 tanks of gas. It snowed as soon as we got home.