The end of September has really sucked. The whole year, really, but especially the past month. The Kiddo™ is having some financial issues up in Wisconsin. We're having some financial issues down here. The Hubby™ is having health issues. And to top it off, the cool work conference I was supposed to go to was cancelled because of Hurricane Helene! Yes, I know that there are many, many people out there struggling because of that storm (and the... lack of support... after the fact). I'm just talking about how much it sucks on a personal level.
When I told Hubby that the conference was cancelled, he said that we should go somewhere anyway to just forget about all of the bullshit; we kicked the idea around a while, but nothing really grabbed me. I looked around Central Florida (north of Orlando), Ocala, Crystal River, etc... but what was there to DO? I found a few fun things like hiking trails, kayaking, and river tubing. I ended up booking a hotel in Ocala on Friday night, for the weekend. I needed to stay in town for parkrun the following day (we were expecting a large crowd) and then we could drive down to Ocala.
We drove down around lunch time and ate way too much fried food at Long John's, then checked in to our hotel. I gotta commend LJS here... We ordered one meal (plus some extra shrimp) and two beverages, and they were nice enough to give us an extra plate so we didn't have to both eat off of one plate. Anyway, we chilled out for a while at the hotel and then headed over to the Marion County Fall Festival.
Bless his heart, he tried. When we were looking for things to do in the area, Hubby found a few things, like Oktoberfest at the World Equestrian Center, and this fall festival. I'm a huge fan of fall festivals. I can walk around and look at stuff all day long. So I was up for it.
This wasn't it.
Apparently this was a fall festival put on by the municipal Parks & Rec department, mostly for kids. We didn't have to, but we brought some canned goods to donate, and then headed inside. Even at 6pm (the event was 5p to 9p), it was full of kiddos; mostly in street clothes, some in costumes. There were tons of bouncy houses inside one of the pavilions, so I had hopes that this would be a good festival. Outside, before the Trick or Treat Trail, there was a large area full of food trucks, but alas... no elephant ears, fried dough, or funnel cakes to be found. Womp womp.
The Treat Trail was badly designed; each candy stop was also a table for a vendor, and many tables were so overrun with kiddos that I (as an adult) couldn't visit the table to talk to the vendor. Plus, all tables had the same really crappy candy... Even as a kid, I'd be pissed off to get no-name candy, candy bracelets, and generic SweeTarts. We walked all the way to the end of the trail and back, and by the time we got back, the line for the Haunted Stalls (it was held at a livestock pavilion, so cute tie-in there) was probably 100+ people deep, and it didn't start until 7. Part of me wanted to stick around and see how "haunted" they really were, but the line was mostly teenagers, and I have no patience for teenagers who think they're cooler than everyone else. I'll say this, I commend the Parks department for putting on a nice event for kids and providing some affordable fun for everyone. It was a little janky, with some employees in sad Spirit Halloween leftovers, and I wish it was advertised as being more for kids than a true "Fall Festival," but in the end, it was a nice event for the entire community, and I hope they keep it going.
So we headed out and planned to head back to the hotel, but we decided to just go on an adventure instead. Don't know what prompted it, but we got on US-441 and went south, just to see what was down there. We went through a town I'd never heard of called Santos (very interesting read, by the way), and then down to Bellview before I decided to turn around. Oh, but what is that in the distance? I see neon! It says ice cream! Huh... gonna just tuck that nugget of info away for later.
Back at the hotel, we chilled for another hour because we're old, and then headed to see Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice at the Ocala Drive-In Theater - YES you read that right... the Ocala Drive-In Theater. We paid $22 for two tickets and a $10 food voucher - the voucher is mandatory, and the sneaky way they can keep movie tickets at $6 a pop! (But hell, even $11 a pop really isn't that bad either!). We used our voucher (and a little extra) for popcorn, a pretzel with cheese, and an order of nachos.
Now, I haven't been to a drive-in movie in probably 35 years... the last movie I remember seeing was at The Mustang Drive-In, a double-feature of All of Me (Steve Martin & Lily Tomlin) and... something else. Gah, age sucks. But I remember the swing set up near the screen, and the speaker boxes on poles, and running up to the concession stand before and between movies. When life was simpler and easier, and your parents could make out in the car while you sat outside in those folding webbed patio chairs.
Did this drive-in experience live up to my memories? Yeah... kinda. When you're sitting in the dark at 10pm at night with nobody's headlights or brake lights on, it's really dark. So when a latecomer comes in and blasts you with their headlights, it's a little distracting and annoying. I think we dealt with that 4-5 times. These days, the movie's audio is delivered through the radio, which was great, because we could turn it way up for that "bust your eardrums" theater experience. But the windows kept fogging up, I didn't have anywhere useful to put my trash, and I was kind of cramped in my seat. Would I go to another drive-in movie anytime soon? Oh, hell yeah. Maybe an earlier one though... we didn't get into bed until almost 2am!
On Sunday, I awoke to a warm and cuddly husband, and we didn't get out of bed until almost 1pm. It was rainy outside (sprinkles, but not full-on rain). We had a lovely lunch at Harry's Seafood Bar & Grill, then walked next door to pick up some drinks at Grandpa Joe's. As we waddled back the car, bellies full of seafood and chicken, he looked at me and said, wanna go get some ice cream from that neon place? Uh, yeah!
On our way there, hubby (who used to live in the area) got us playing the Where does this road go? game. He said that he had a vague recollection of his mom and/or aunt driving that way when they were little, but had no idea of why they'd go there. We never found anything that looked familiar to him, so we turned around after a twenty minutes or so and came back. Just now, I looked it up on Google Maps, and we were literally 10 minutes away from the ice cream place when we turned around!
 |
| We started at the top, came down to Mercado, went back north, then took 301 south to Ms Steve's |
So after taking the scenic route to Ms. Steve's, we first stopped at Wawa for drinks, and then got treats - he got a Root Beer Milkshake, and I got a small hot caramel sundae with whipped cream. I lost my receipt, but I think both of them together were about $12 or so. We went back over to Wawa's parking lot to enjoy our treats in the car. I didn't get a photo of his milkshake, but the sundae was a glorious sight to behold! Slathered in real whipped cream (not whipped topping) and gooey caramel, so full that it was a single breath away from overflowing onto my hand. It was a real race to eat enough, quickly enough, so that it wouldn't melt all over me. I think Hubby took more pleasure from watching me devour it (yes, I ate the whole thing), than he did drinking his own milkshake!
 |
| This photo doesn't do it justice! |
As we ate, the rain became more and more substantial, so there was no hope of heading to a nice trail, or talking him into kayaking, so we just headed back to the hotel. I treated myself to a hot bath, and then curled up with my tablet to read all about newly formed Hurricane Milton and what his plans were for the state of Florida.
On Monday, we slept in until about 10am (for once, he was awake before me), packed up and checked out. It's still raining, so again, no hope of a trail or kayak trip. I wanted to hit up Tas-T-O Donuts, but they were already sold out and closed by the time we got there at 11. We went over to Silver Springs Diner for brunch, the diner that I took Mom to for a Girl's Day Out a few months ago. It wasn't nearly as good as I remember it being, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt... There was just a hurricane a week or so ago, so maybe they were having problems getting shipments of food. Maybe there were staffing issues. Yelp reviews said that new owners too over this summer, so maybe that was it... I'll probably give them one more chance and see. I got pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and they were just okay. The pancakes were flat, the bacon was too crispy for my liking. Hubby got a Club Sandwich, and it was stuffed with meat, so his meal was definitely better than mine.
We hopped over to Sam's Club to pick up a few things (basically, so I wouldn't have to do it as a separate trip). When we pulled in, we saw that the gas station portion of Sam's was barricaded off, with an employee waving everyone past. I didn't think anything of it and we went in to get soda, chips, and a package of chicken to tide us over until next payday. Afterward, I wanted to pick up a soda at Circle K before we got on the road. Outside, I finally removed my vacation blinders and realized that the gas pumps were stacked 2-3 cars deep at every pump, and State Road 200 was bumper-to-bumper, with the interstate entrance and exit ramps completely clogged. I could see the cars on the overpass, inching forward slowly, and finally - finally - I realized that there was an actual hurricane out there! It wasn't just a hurricane that other people are dealing with on the internet, but a hurricane that may actually affect us at home. It finally clicked that all of this traffic was because of south Florida running away from Milton (duh), and we should probably get on the road ourselves.
We took the super-long way home, along 301, and traffic was almost non-existent. Every time there's a hurricane it amazes me how many people completely forget about State and County Roads! Everyone on social media bitching about how roads were bumper-to-bumper, people couldn't get anywhere, etc... Well, you put yourself in that position! Nobody forces you to take the interstate! People evacuating the Gulf Coast easily could have driven up US-98, US-19, or US-41.
And, to continue on my soap box, there was no need for this massive evacuation at all (in terms of what people did, not what was ordered)... When you evacuate, you need to run from the water, and hide from the wind. People in Tampa or Sarasota or Fort Myers or wherever didn't need to evacuate North to an entirely different state, but instead move inland, move East toward Lake Wales, Lake Placid, or Immokalee.
Another thing that many people forget is that it's rare for an entire county to be called to evacuate - in Florida, we have what are called Evacuation Zones within some counties, which are based on how close you are to the shore, and how you may be affected by Tropical Storms and Hurricanes (most inland counties without large lakes or rivers do not have any Evacuation Zones). When Emergency Management in that county calls for evacuations, they generally will say Zones A, B, C are mandatory evacuation zones. So in the photo below, the entire square shown is Hillsborough County (where Tampa is), with Zones A/B/C being the red, orange and yellow colors... Maybe a third of the county. Only residents of Zones A and B were required to evacuate (plus mobile homes). Honestly, the majority of the people in the affected areas could have gone east to Brandon, Lakeland, and Lake Wales, but instead you have people scared out of their minds because of social media and The Weather Fear Porn Channel, and they think they have to leave the entire state! It's a waste of their time, it's a waste of their money (hotels, food), it's a waste of their gas, it's a waste of gas for everyone else (because you filled up there may not be any gas left for me), and frankly, it's mostly unnecessary.
It's just so damn frustrating as a lifelong Floridian to see the way that social media and weather personalities whip people up into a frenzy... People are bombarded with images of storm surge wiping out houses on the beach and the insinuation that this could happen to the entire state. People lying about climate change and how storms are so much stronger and how Florida is going to sink in to the ocean and all this crazy bullshit, repeated over and over and over again everywhere you look from the minute a storm is detected... it's exhausting.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox...
We were home safe and sound by mid-afternoon. We unpacked, put the groceries away, and just plopped in our respective places for a few hours. I cooked a simple dinner and bagged up the remaining chicken to put in the freezer. We put the big containers of water back in the freezers (we took them out until after Helene), and I went to bed. I binged Hulu for a few hours, but couldn't sleep until around midnight (Hurricane Brain is in full force). I'm at work today (Tuesday), but our office will close on Wednesday and Thursday for the storm, and then I'll probably just telework on Friday.
****
Hi there! We made it through the storm just fine. As I said above, I was at work on Tuesday, trying to shove in as much work as possible to this day, since it was the only day I'd be IN the office for the week. I was off yesterday for vacation, the office closed for two days, and then I am home today (Friday).
I texted my mom on Tuesday night and she said that she was planning on staying (she's not in an Evac Zone). I said that we were planning on staying, as well. We watched the track change a little here and a little there, but because it was always going to be south of us, I felt comfortable with the decision to stay. As with all storms, when the winds began to kick up, so did my stress levels, but it wasn't nearly as bad here as it was during Helene (who passed over us to the north). I was able to sleep peacefully, and honestly, it was a nice two-day vacation. I am, of course, heartbroken to communities to the south, like Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and surrounding areas. I used to live on the Gulf Coast in those areas, and I'm saddened to see the damage, but I know that these communities can rebuild, especially with the amazing leadership and resources provided by our Governor and his administration.
Hopefully, that will be the end of the storms for 2024... It wasn't as bad as 2004, but it was certainly bad enough! No more, please!
No comments:
Post a Comment