March 1998 Trip: Day 3

Day 3 was the beginning of our trek accross the wilderness to Miami. Well, maybe not quite wilderness. But close. We aimed the GPS sraight at the hotel in Miami where Ivan has reservations for us. Now, the straight line route from High Point, North Carolina to Miami Beach, Florida is almost exactly due South... with a good deal of the way going straight over the Atlantic Ocean. Now, we fairly quickly determined that we could not drive over open ocean. So this would cause a detour from the straight route. Now, technically to get the shortest land route we would first go to the closest point where we COULD go straight to Miami Beach without going over ocean, and the from there would change course and actually go to Miami Beach. But that seemed too logical. So instead we determined to follow the straight line track until we hit the ocean, then we would parallel the coast until we got to a place where we could once again aim straight at Miami Beach. We would go until sunset, then find a place to stay.   So off we went. In North Carolina none of the US routes went exactly where we wanted, so we ended up on secondary roads. They went from two lane roads to one lane roads to gravel roads to even a few dirt roads. Right about then the rain started. Massive rain. Hard rain. Rain that at times made it hard to see the front of the car. It was great fun. After awhile we finished with the dirt roads and were back on some paved state roads. Still narrow twisty roads though. No cushy highways this time! It never stopped raining completely, although s we approached the shore it slows to a light drizzle for awhile and we saw a bit of sun. Midafternoon we passed over a bridge and saw the ocean. We had arrived on the North side of Charleston, South Carolina almost within sight of Fort Sumter. After a brief bit of fast food we left Charleston, again bemoaning the lack of an amphibious vehicle to just go the straight way, and we began to follow the coastline.   By this time it was starting to get dusky. And the rain was starting up again. And we were hearing on the radio of tornado watches in the area. It looked like we would be arriving in Savannah, Georgia just when sun was setting. So we started to plan to stay there for the night. As we passed through the swamps just north of Savannah we started checking our database to find a hotel. As we were trying to figure out how to get to the chosen hotel, the route we were following suddenly dumped us onto an Interstate. We got off as soon as we could. Unfortunatley it means we were not able to COMPLETELY avoid Interstates. We have been sullied by approximately 2 miles. As we got onto the streets of Savannah the rain became a torrential thunderstorm. We saw a lightning bolt not too far off in front of us. Suddenly everything was dark. The radio station we were listening too went silent. The lights had gone out in Georgia. They came back on just a few seconds later though. Because of the enormous amount of rain and the fact the water was often several inches thick on the road, it took us a while to go the last couple miles to our hotel. But we made it.   Over the course of today as we were winding through hill and dale, mole and mountain, following yonder star, we also spoke via cell phone to Marilyn Dadowski and Kathy Wilson, both living in Altanta, Georgia. They both (seperately) complained that we weren't going to Atlanta to visit them on the way to Miami. Explainations that Atlanta wasn't actually even close to being on the way to Miami from New Jersey didn't seem to help much. Perhaps if there had been more time it could have been arranged. It would be fun. But not this trip. Maybe next time.