The Mouse Trap

We have made it to the “Mouse Trap” as the people here refer to Orlando.  We made it through the Carolinas and Georgia unscathed and uninjured.  I think the US government recruited or placed all their military personnel in this part of the country.  The places we stayed at were rife with uniforms, flags and patriotic sentiment.  Telen told me to keep my mouth shut and we just might survive.  She was right, as usual.  Object lesson to me:  keeping my opinions to myself has survival value. 

The freeway going through Jacksonville was, I think, designed by the roller-coaster imagineers from Disney.  The road dipped, turned and twisted for no apparent reason. It was a three-dimensional maze.  There were cars above you, below you, beside you and I swear I saw some cars just going around and around and around.  They must have had a Bogo on concrete when they build it because there did not seem to be any reason for most of the structure.  At one point I thought we had turned around and headed back northward for a while.

Outside of Jacksonville we ran into rain like we have never seen.  We could see the rainstorm ahead on the road.  It looked like we were approaching a wall.  When we hit the storm it was like driving through a car wash complete with soap, wax and power wash.  With the windshield wipers going full speed we could barely see the road ahead of us.  And this was on the freeway.  It lasted a few minutes and then we were out in the sunshine again.  A few minutes later it happened again.  By the third time it was getting monotonous.

The vegetation seemed to change completely as we crossed the border into Florida.  Palm trees everywhere.  The grass became coarser and thicker and the trees are covered in Kudzu vines.  And hot!  We just came across Canada in the hottest summer in a long while yet down here we feel like we have not adapted to the heat at all. 

Kudzu vines covering everything

We are staying with some great old friends here for a few days here.  They just had a brand new baby so we won’t staying long.  They are the penultimate hosts and are coping so well it is like a nothing happened.  Of course the baby is beautiful.

Today we all went for a stroll around a nearby lake.   We had a close encounter with an alligator.   This is not something you see back home.  The other thing we discovered is that there are numerous poisonous snakes in Florida.  Back home we might see an occasional salamander and a garter snake – here you see alligators and water moccasins.  We also saw a grasshopper that was easily 8 centimeters in length. 

The Alligator encounter.  It was about 6 feet long

The southern accent seemed to disappear when we got into Florida.  As we worked our way down the eastern states the southern American accent seemed to get thicker and more unintelligible.  We were in a grocery store in Georgia and a gentleman was kibitzing with one of the clerks and we could not understand a thing either of them was saying.  Since we crossed into Florida the accent is more like the west coast.  Mind you, “Thank-you” still sounds like “Uh-huh”.

I think there must be money in Florida.  All the houses here are large and well kept.  The roads are wide and in excellent repair.  We saw numerous huge Outlet Malls with the parking lots completely full of late model cars.  If there isn’t lots of money, then there is incredible debt. 

As we were driving today our friend Roy (who is from Canada) was mentioning that since we arrived he has reverted to some of his Canadian ways such as using his signal lights.  He said that using signal lights here is considered a sign of weakness.