Drifus' Travels

Sunday, neither of us were hungry so we hit the road headed towards home. For the most part the drive was uneventful, we hit some rain while in Illinois and had lunch at Burger King. After that were back on the road, when we got to St.Louis it rained hard and the highway had some substantial rain ruts causing rain to cascade in the air. Once we got near St. Charles, Mo things settled down and the ride was smooth again. I wanted to get some antiquing in (look for Snoopy / Peanuts) collectibles. We stopped at one place in Warrenton, Mo and all I found was a Thermos Lucy soup container so I bought it. While there we learned of a small booklet that listed all the antique stores on highway 70. The owner of the store we were at recommended 2 other places on our way and so we stopped, I found nothing at the first and a Peanuts comic strip print (680/2500), so I grabbed that.

Next stop would have to be the Brass Armadillo as I had found plenty of Snoopy items there in the past. Well I hit the mother load again, I found a large “Lucy” Doctor is in bank, a Charlie Brown Thermos like the Lucy one earlier mentioned, a Linus Avon soap decanter and some other things.
This was somewhat of a lucky stop as we left the previous store we did not think there was enough time to get to the Brass Armadillo but they were open later than we thought.

After that we put a few gallons of gas in the car and headed back on the road with about 30 miles to go.As we got closer to home we discussed dinner and ended up at Chilis near our house, had dinner and went home. Once home we unloaded the car and called it a night.

Sanibel 2008 has ended.

Saturday, we woke up and went to Waffle House and had breakfast and then we headed to Stone Mountain. Beth had a picture of this place and always wanted to see this place. Well we got to the park and paid our admission and looked around and took a few pictures. We then saw there was a SkyView cable tram to the top. We bought tickets and stood in line and just as were were being counted to board a car they closed the attraction. Apparently the wind picked up and lightening was coming. We then went to the gift shop and picked up a few things and the SkyView was still closed. Knowing we had a lot of highway to go we got a refund for our tickets and headed out. While in Tennessee besides stopping for gas, we stopped at Krystal’s (like White Castle) and took in a burger and shake. A few hours later we stopped for a geocache which we quickly found and moved on. After another bunch of hours we stopped in Kentucky and did another geocache and had dinner at the The Oasis (like a Texas Roadhouse), the food here was excellent and I recommend it as well. Next to the restaurant there were 2 hotels and it turns out they were both full (we were very close to Kentucky Lake and it’s a 3 day weekend), we left and headed to Paducah and found a Best Western there and pulled in for the night.

Friday, well we left Sanibel Island and stopped at Blu Sushi in Fort Meyers, I highly recommend this place. After that we headed to New Port Richey, that’s the last address I had for my biological father. I thought I would stop and take a look at the place and maybe see if he was home. (it’s a long story so I’ll spare you the details). So we go to the address Beth found on the Internet but she only has the street. We checked the street and most people had their last names on the front of their homes. Well that did not work out. We then went to the “office” which is a laundry mat / community center, we check out the bulletin boards etc and found a Hayes at the address I had. We drove to that address and knocked on the door, a woman about 70ish answered and we asked if Bill was there, she said “just a minute”. Next thing I know a man about 70ish comes to the door and I know immediately that is was not him. We made some small talk but I do not think we were on the same page. Just as we were going to leave a man that came into the “office” after we had been there a while shows up at the house. We said “small world” he just kind of smiled, just as we were just about to leave we confirmed the womans name and he chimed in “none of your business”. Now I understand peoples paranoia these days but he was an asshole about it which made me want to confront him face to face but since these people were of no relation to me I wasn’t going to waste my time.

Well after that fiasco we headed back to the highway and started our journey home. We made it to Cordele, GA and stopped at a Best Western. We asked for a quiet room and ended up in the front of the hotel. Across the street was a “sports bar” that thought it was a night-club dance hall, the music was so loud we could feel the bass as though they had speakers outside. While in our room the AC failed so we asked to be moved to another room. They offered us the room next to ours but we said the noise was ridiculous so they moved us towards the back of the hotel which was better. Well that was that day mostly driving.

Thursday, well our last full day in Sanibel. Today we went to the beach for a few hours in the afternoon to try change our sunburns to tans, I guess we will know later how that turned out. In the morning we set out for some more geocaching and went to the Lazy Flamingo for lunch. If you read our other entries you will know when I saw this place is worth it. Here we had some “dead parrot wings”, beer, conch fritters, conch soup and oysters on the half shell. You have to stop here as well. As for the geocaching part of this day we found 2 more to add to our total.

After the beach visit we went back for showers and a short rest before heading out to GreenFlash restaurant. Well it was another Bubble Room experience. Here we had oysters (which were decent), calamari (was great). For dinner Beth had the lobster tail and filet mignon, I had a grilled swordfish and filet mignon. The lobster tail was over-cooked (dry and rubbery) and my swordfish while cooked just fine had the juice from the fillet absorb killing any taste of the fish. Our fillets were another story, we were not sure exactly what cut of meat it was but it was not choice and for some reason it came in a brown gravy. We each had a couple of drinks and the bill was $150. Now the meals looked like something from back when Woolworth’s’ had there cafeteria and these meals would have easily been $9.99 each. The drinks were excellent. Again go to have a few drinks and enjoy the view then leave and have dinner elsewhere.

Well we came back to the cottage and did some preliminary cleaning so the morning doesn’t wear us out and we have about 1500 miles to go back home.

PS: After lunch we stopped at 2 shell stores and bought some post cards and some small shells that Beth is going to do something with.

Wednesday, we started the day by sleeping in, I think the dehydration from the sunburn did us in. We hung out in the cottage and relaxed. We eventually headed over to Lehigh Acres and took some pictures for a friend of ours and did some geocaching before heading over to Jackie and Jerry’s (Beth’ cousins).

The geocache was one we had seen on eBay for sale, a piece of rebar with the cache welded to the end, we signed the log and returned it. We were going to start another one but time was running short and we had pictures to take. We headed to the addresses we were given and got 2 of the 3 pictures, time ran out and we headed to Jackie and Jerry’s.

We arrived at their place on time and spent several hours there catching up on the past and present. We met their son Tony and his wife Sherri as they came over for dinner as well. Dinner was wonderful, we had prime rib, asparagus, an Italian salad and red potatoes. After dinner we headed back to the living room for more conversation. We left about 10pm and headed back to our cottage, we arrive about 10:30pm.

Beth thought that since we just missed the end of low tide for shelling she would go to the beach and see if her luck had changed as last night was a bust.