After we left the Cape on Wednesday, we meandered through the backroads to Orlando, trying to avoid toll roads.  The Google Maps bicycle route (we were in the car) insisted on taking us through the Cocoa watershed, which, of course, was gated and locked.  So, we angled south through the “lakes” on the GPS, most of which turned out to be sloughs and swamps.

Despite our efforts, after wandering through endless neighborhoods, we found ourselves confronted with a toll booth, which extracted $1.75 from us to use a chunk of freeway for about a mile before we turned off and drove several more miles through neighborhoods to our niece’s house. There didn’t seem to be an alternative.  Our niece in Orlando and her husband both work for The Mouse, on busy schedules, so we more or less got to visit with them separately.

On Thursday morning, we explored a few more neighborhoods, got gas, made an appointment for an oil change (5000 miles since leaving home), and resigned ourselves to the tollroad, reaching the Jeep dealer in Lake City at lunch time.  We ate our brown bag lunch in the waiting area while the car was on the lift, then got on I-10 and headed west toward its terminus in Los Angeles.

We crossed over the Florida-Alabama line at sunset, relieved to be out of Florida after two weeks of unrelenting heat.  This was the Nice Person’s first visit to Alabama.  It was the Curmudgeon’s third visit: the first consisted of a quick drive from the Mobile airport into Mississippi, where he was easily exposed as a Yankee and run out of town.  The second was a quick transit without stopping. We spent the night in Mobile, and will steel ourselves for the short dash across Mississippi in early morning, hoping to make central Texas by day’s end.