Road Trip!

My friend, Marion, decided she was moving back to California. Afton was headed to outdoor school for a week, so I volunteered to fly to Florida and drive back with her. I flew in on Tuesday and we went out to a great dinner at her favorite Greek restaurant before heading back to a hotel on the beach in Miami Beach.

Wednesday morning we walked across the street to finalize arrangements on her rental moving truck and the car towing trailer. All was well until we saw the size of the truck and trailer. Panic! We would be driving that?! We left the truck and trailer at the lot until later in the afternoon (in hopes we'd be able to find street parking near her building) and then Marion headed into the office while I did a little neighborhood exploring and had a relaxing afternoon at the beach. Then I headed back to drive the rental truck over to her apartment building (it was literally across the street from the rental agency.) Once I got it parked and set up, I decided to start hauling some of the boxes down and putting them on the truck. While doing this I noticed that a street parking spot opened up, so I quickly moved the truck out to the spot. I jumped out to check my parking and instantly realized I had foolishly locked the keys in the truck....duh! I ran across to the rental agency to ask for a spare key - didn't exist. So, $65 later I had a locksmith break into the truck so we could recover the keys.

That evening quite a few of Marion's church friends came by to help load the truck and it was all done in about an hour and a half. After a community dinner of Domino's Pizza and ice cream we locked up and headed back over to the hotel to turn in for the night. Thursday morning we ran several errands before driving the truck back to the rental agency to pick up the car trailer and load up the car. I was sure nervous about how long the rig was (about 40 feet from my estimation) but the truck handles well and the mirrors are great. So at 11:00 a.m. off we went on our grand adventure!