By the time our visit came to a close the weather had warmed considerably and much of the snow had melted. This made driving much nicer than it could have been.
We left our family and headed even further north to check on our home. After that we made a surprise visit to our church family at the Fowler Baptist Church in Gouverneur on 12/28 we headed south.
It was during this return trip that we had quite a surprise. We thought that the main “migration” of snowbirds (all those folks who “fly south” for the winter months in search of sunshine and warmth) took place in the late fall but we were wrong. There is a huge number of people who wait until after Christmas to leave for their winter in the southern USA. This became very evident as we travelled south, first on Interstate 81 and then on every other interstate on our route.
We saw a constant flow of RV’s along with lots and lots of cars and vans with license plates from northern states, their back seats filled to the brim with suitcases, hanging clothes, bags and boxes. At every rest stop they were there as well in great numbers. Apparently, from speaking with people in the park where we are staying, this is the usual routine. The largest number of winter residents arrive between Christmas and the New Year.
As we drove through South Carolina traffic seemed to increase. We weren’t quite sure why but it became so congested on the Interstate that traffic slowed to a crawl and even became “stop and go” travel as we continued.
There were, as you might imagine, many tractor trailers on the highway as well. As I listened to them talking on the CB radio I learned of another reason for the traffic jam. There were four college bowl games taking place in Florida the next few days and there were about 300,000 people expected to attend the various games. As we watched the cars race by we could see the signs of college football fans everywhere. There were decals and magnetic stickers on many of the cars we saw. There were tiger paw prints galore and many cars even had stripped tiger tails hanging from their trunks. When we stopped at rest areas we say all kinds of college sweatshirts and T shirts being worn. And on many, many cars we say flags with college emblems flying from short “flagpoles” clipped into the closed car windows allowing them to flutter just above the car’s roof.
So, between the 2nd “migration” of the snow birds, the normal business traffic and all the people returning from their holiday travel it was a busy place to be. We logged over 3500 miles on our trip and, I am please to say, we saw evidence of very few serious accidents. With traffic running over 70 MPH most of the way we felt blessed to avoid such a mishap ourselves. We both found ourselves “shooting” a silent prayer for safety in travel often during the trip. We thank God that we had a safe journey with no real problems. Even our new muffler behaved itself this time around!
Well, as regular visitors to this blog already know, Fran and I travelled to 3 different Habitat builds during the early winter months. We were in Siler City, NC as well as Sebring and Vero Beach in Florida. The second half of the winter we will be staying put in Sebring and work both at the Habitat Home Store here as well as helping on the build sites as well. As a matter of fact we were both working yesterday. Frannie was doing floral design at the store and I “rode shotgun” on one of the store’s two large delivery truck.
We spent the day picking up donated items which we brought back to the store for resale. This is the lifeblood of funding for the local affiliate. During each of the last two years this store has made over $ 600,000. It’s amazing to realize how important these stores are and how much people donate. If you haven’t been in a Habitat Home Store I hope you have the opportunity. Some are very nice and the furniture, etc. which they sell is very nice as well. We will be focusing our attention on this local area in future postings and will share more about the local affiliate as well.
We hope you all had a great Christmas and we want to thank you again for checking us out on this blogsite. God bless you in this New Year and we’ll be seeing you again soon out here “on the road”.
