So, we’re currently in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, on an extended multi-generational road trip to see the ocean. Iowans need to see an ocean every now and then. We need to have a reminder that eventually, it all– and by “it all” we mean the land that surrounds us for miles and miles and miles– it all does end, eventually. It took us two and half days of driving at 70 miles per hour, but eventually, it all did end in the grey and frothy Atlantic.
This is my first time on this trip. My wife’s family has been doing it for several years now. My wife, her mother, her grandmother, and her aunt all slip away to the ocean and spend a week sitting on the beach during the day and playing cards at night. This year, they decided they wanted to bring Whit along, so I got an invite as baby-wrangler and secondary-driver, since my wife didn’t think she could do both.
We tore out of Iowa late Thursday afternoon. We had dinner at the Landmark in Galesburg, and then stopped for the night in Bloomington. Friday, we curved through Indiana, and then stopped for a late lunch at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe in Louisville, Kentucky. That afternoon, we managed to carry on until we reached Powell, Tennessee, just outside of Knoxville. Saturday, we slid through North Carolina and stopped for lunch at Delamater’s in Newberry, South Carolina, where they were kind enough to seat us even though we got there after close for lunch. After lunch, we decided to press on, and trucked through Georgia into Florida and pulled up at our condo late that night.
Today, we woke up to the ocean, the grey, unhappy Atlantic. A tropical storm is making it’s way north off the coast, and so the weather today was somewhat schizophrenic, going from warm and sunny to cold and rainy in a heartbeat. The ladies stubbornly made an attempt at the beach. Whit acclimated to the condo after spending two days strapped in chair in the van. We went out and bought groceries for the week, and are now about to sit down to dinner, listening to the sound of the angry surf as it crashes onto the beach.
