We left the hotel around 10:30 am and went to get gas. Shakey's Pizza Parlor was on our way out of town. We hadn't seen one of those for years. The Shakey's Pizza Parlor in St. Petersburg was the hangout for high school students back in our day.
Our drive today would be a long one, a distance of over 300 miles. We expected to be driving for at least 5 hours. There is no way to get to I-75 except back county roads. We saw lots of corn fields and even some baby Christmas tree fields.
We stopped at Chick-fil-A in Albany, GA. We picked up lunch and ate in the car. We reached I-75 at Tifton, GA around 3:00 pm. Now it was Interstate driving the rest of the way. We kept looking for fresh peach signs in Georgia so we could pick some up and bring them home. However, we did not see one sign. We were really bummed.
We had driven nice, sunny weather the whole day. Then, we crossed the Florida state line around 3:50 pm and it immediately started to pour. We drove heavy rain all the way.
We got to our Courtyard Marriott in Gainesville, FL around 5:45 pm. We had just enough time to check in and freshen up. Robin's brother, Kim, works at The University of Florida for the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). He oversees all of the state 4-H camps. Kim picked us up at the hotel and we went to dinner. His wife, Tammy, was out of town so it was just the 3 of us. We went to one of his favorite restaurants and it was closed. Instead, we went to his favorite barbecue restaurant, David's Real Pit BBQ. It was delicious. We then went to a frozen yogurt shop for dessert. We really enjoyed our time together. Although we don't live that far away, it seems like life interferes with our visits. Hopefully, we can fix that in the future.
Kim brought us back to the hotel and stayed for a little while. Realizing he had to go to work the next day, we finally let him leave. We headed up to our room and got ready for bed. We were in a much better frame of mind tonight. Sleep came quickly. We were close to home.
