The Snowbirds Have Arrived - Day 2

We left our rest area early on Sat (21st) as after all, we'd little else to do after waking up. Personally it wasn't my best night of sleep ever and I was relieved to be upright again and able to move my limbs before rigor mortis set in.

Ohio isn't the most beautiful state in the union by any means but it had something Florida will never have - Fall colours !! If you have a long drive ahead of you, as we did, then it's good to have something pretty rto look at out the windows.

I had the (new) camera with me in the back seat of the truck and would snap pics from time to time as we went along. Taking photos when zooming along at 70mph isn't easy so most of them don't stand close inspection - but they still serve to remind me of the trip and after all, aren't memories what photos are all about ???

I guess if I'm being honest, I was wanting to come upon something 'exciting' like a large accident (with no one injured of course but with a few vehicles piled up) or a gun totting trooper approaching a motorist at the end of a long chase or even some critter crossing the road and coming to a sticky end under the wheels of the vehicle in front of us. I know......I'm one sick puppy.

So I'd sit for hours on end with camera and zoom lens at the ready - all set to get my award winning shot out the truck window. Sadly nothing much happened and the best I got was this shot of a group of police vehicles doing heavens-knows-what.

Probably the cops were stopped for an exchange of Krispy Kremes or Twinkies and hot coffee.

The plan was to drive south through Ohio and get well into West Virginia before finding a motel for the night close enough to our destination in Greensboro to make it a short drive to get there on Sunday. Why get a motel when we had a 5th Wheel ? A good question. Well we needed a night with mains power as we didn't want to sleep as we did last night - me all squished up in the unopened trailer and Deb/Den having to get into a bed with no room down the sides and stuff heaped on top of it. It was just cheaper and simpler to get a motel.

That was the plan - but events conspired against us. First of all in southern West Virginia, just as we started looking for a motel, we discovered there was a huge event taking place called Bridge Day and this brings in over 200,000 visitors every year and so every room within 100 miles of our route was booked. We drove on.

As a little aside, some of the scenery WAS quite pretty and almost spectacular but America has such awesome scenery that you tend to get a bit spoiled by the really 'good stuff'.

Even scenery from the interstates can fall into the 'good stuff' category and I've often wished I wasn't driving so that I could take photos. Now that I'm not the driver on these long trips, I can take photos but on this trip down to Florida, there really isn't that much to get excited about.


I continued to use the trip to get used to my new camera and zoom lens so that when the time came, I'd be ready to take THE photo I've always wanted to take.

Anyway, in Virginia, we found there was some NASCAR event taking place in a town near to our route,so again, every motel was full. We drove on.

It was getting late and we were now faced with entering North Carolina and being only a few miles from Greensboro. If we'd thought we'd have had this problem getting a room, we'd have just driven straight to our campsite in Greensboro and paid for arriving one night early. But we knew it closed it's gates at 8pm and we'd left it too late for THAT option.

We finally found a motel about 15 miles from Greensboro that was charging over $100 for a crappy room as it knew rooms were in short supply. We took it and fell into bed for the second night when we didn't really care how comfortable we'd be as long as we could get some hours of sleep.