There was, as there often is in February in the Midwest, frankly some pretty crappy weather the day before we were scheduled to fly down to Miami the day before Cayamo. Crappy weather that led to many flights being cancelled in the Midwest and Northeast (not to mention me working from home that day to avoid the traffic headaches). For those of us who fly standby, cancelled flights the day before you are planning on trying to fill an empty seat is not good news! Any open seats on Thursday would have been filled by the people who's flights were cancelled the day before, so we gave up hope on the quicker/easier/cheaper option...
We ended up renting a car in Indy (a Prius, thankfully - that thing only sipped $90 in gas all the way to Florida!), and leaving Wednesday night, February 5th to drive to Miami. Originally, we planned to stop around Nashville, TN, get a room for a few hours so we could get some rest, then finish the drive on Thursday, bright and early.
By the time we got to Nashville, we had scrapped those plans and just decided to switch off sleeping in the passenger seat. It wouldn't have been worth it to spend money on a room we were only going to sleep in for 3 hours, and we'd probably feel worse if we took that short of a break and tried to get up and do it all over again. So onward it was for us. At one point, we did stop for an hour in a Target parking lot and both napped at once. Sleep won for just a bit...
The roads were still a little iffy in Indy, but really not bad other than that. By the time the sun was rising on Thursday morning, we had officially entered the South - Georgia. It was still, for whatever reason, freezing in Georgia though. We left home with no jackets, expecting the weather to warm as we inched toward Florida, but that wasn't the case. Oh well - it was warm inside the Prius, and we only had to freeze when we got out at the gas stations that are strangely closed, and dark, but with pumps that still work in the middle of the night in GA. At first, we assumed that they really were closed, but as long as you're paying via credit card, they are open. Probably not the safest of places to be - at an eerily silent highway exit, standing beside a gas pump under a dark awning at 4am - but you do what ya gotta do.
We did get to experience a beautiful sunrise just before 7am near Fort Valley, GA. It was truly a gorgeous sight, and one that we rarely get to really enjoy. We do see the sunrise sometimes in the winter in Indy, since it comes up on our way to work, but it's tough to actually marvel at the beauty of it while you're in a hurry and battling rush hour on the same highway you take to work every single day. It is quite another thing to bask in it's glory as you're barreling toward a vacation that includes friends, warm weather, music, sand and surf!
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