Thursday 4 July
We set off from Orlando this morning prepared for a day of driving after three days of theme parks.
Morning tea was at Daytona Beach, where we discovered an event was on at the speedway. Ross considered going to it until we saw several street corners full of men holding up signs saying “I need tickets”. We figured we wouldn’t have much chance of getting 8 tickets, so moved on!
We the drove on for hours, stopping only to shop and have lunch at Applebee’s. Abi has been mentioning how small the four walls of the motorhome are feeling the last couple of days, and lost it with some of her brothers this morning, so our shopping trip was mainly about buying her some books to read so she could escape mentally if not physically from everyones’ company! Interestingly, Jarrod is raving about how much fun it is to be all together in this RV, but I guess he manages to escape as we are driving, thanks to technology. His Media teacher told him his only homework while away was to edit home movies and photos. As if he needs any encouragement to do that! So while we are on the road, Jarrod spends a lot of time on his computer with headphones on tuned out to the rest of us. We have enjoyed a couple of “movie nights” for him to show us what he has done so far, and he is putting them on YouTube. His username there is keepingupwithj0neses, and he has so far completed the first ten days of the trip.
Our goal for tonight was Savannah, Georgia. I had researched the town and they had some spectacular plans for 4th of July. We wanted to celebrate with Americans, so I made sure we all wore red, white and blue. As we arrived in Savannah though, our plans quickly changed! We headed to the park where Forrest Gump sat waiting for a bus in the movie, but there was no parking nearby (and I later read the seat Tom Hanks sat on has been removed and put into a museum!). We then headed for the river where the celebrations were to occur, but again parking the RV was impossible and we saw people walking for ages with fold up chairs and supplies. As we are not set up for that, we decided to just move on.
We ended up in a town in South Carolina called Yemassee at a KOA there. We were there in time for the kids to swim, but it was a quiet night with no fireworks and we just had dinner in the motorhome. We had to relive the fireworks from Disney World the night before and call that our marking of the occasion!