This is first of a late posting series detailing the RV adventures with my parents on their retirement RV. The trip was over three days in July. Videos have been taken and will be posted as well.
The parentals arrive with their “Great Escape”, a 37 foot coach that is ready to rip a huge whole in their retirement salaries. Dad leans out the door and grabs the three of us for the inaugural cruise. We decide, in infinite wisdom, to bypass the interstate for the bowels of Citrus county, heading south to Tampa via 41 or some other two digit road with two lanes.
We tour through the repetitive redneck pastures of car repair joints, bars and odd businesses to finally run out of roadway. 75 is its normal parking lot of motion. I go to sleep sometime after the passing of the remnants of the latest wreck to clog up the interstate.
Heading south we jump off at the Fort Myers exit. The family unit spent a few years there when I was a kid. I don’t remember but thanks to the help of Florida’s wonderful development, neither do the parentals. Treeless tracks of ticky-tack homes and odd new roads covered the miserable and unsightly wilderness that once was North Fort Myers. I do believe it is a wonderful improvement over the palmettos, oaks, pines and the past that the leftist, environmental terrorist waste so much time trying to keep around.
After a an hour of wondering the blossoming wonders of Fort Myers and the beach I take resident in my best spot, navigator. Back to sleep.
I woke up in the navigator position just outside of God’s Waiting room, otherwise known as Naples. We turned the beast into the Heart of Italy, an Olive Garden, catering to the rambling elderly, forcing them into sugar comas from high carb tomato sauces and ungodly amounts of fat drenched salad. Ripping into the waiting room, we demand “A table now, we have a baby!” Not willing to mess with those that come from the belly of a Road Beast, they seat us immediately and begin to dish out copious amounts of the aforementioned food items.
Drunk with pasta love, we moved back down the road to our final target, the Everglades. Ready to wreck our RV havoc on the prisitine wilderness of the last outpost to Florida, we drove at break neck speed. The bastards knew we were coming and laid out the most confusing series of false entrances and closed campgrounds. Nearly succumbing to the impending disaster and the sirens call from the GPS of a Wal-Mart freebie lot just a mere 30 miles away, my father unanimously decides to charge on to the original goal.
“Success will be ours!” he screams at us all.
“Shut it and drive you bastard.” My mother bears her teeth as she growls from her perch from the navigators seat. “You got us into this mess, get us out. Or you die”
The stakes are now raised. This is the definition of excitement.
We finally find the real entrance and approached the gate in total stealth mode. With only one entrance open we drive up. This is where their plans fail. The derelict in the booth waves us through. Does she know what we are capable of. Do she know that we are the very type of individuals that this misery of a trap has been laid, that barriers have been raised against, that they do not want us.
Nope. We proceed.
The last thing we notice is some rambling sign about only Lot A. The left hand turn passes by as my father is convinced that this must be the final trap. That it couldn’t be that easy now. The road ends in a gate and my mother re-agitates.
“Dammit, they have us here. We need to go back. That was it. It was reverse psychology. The bastards want us to not trust them. The bushes, some one is in the bushes.
Dad pounds the buttons of the transmission, floors and and whips the beast around in a miracle of a three point turn. Zipping the Road Beast into a spot we find that maintains the best view of the black night we bed down for the night.
Meanwhile, mosquitos, vampiric rats with wings, assemble in flanking positions…
Technorati Tags: everglades, florida, fort myers, naples, road trip, rv, vacation
Hey! I like an occassional Olive Garden trip every now and again!