June 2022 Vacation Day 23, Heading Home · · PAGE 57.
June 14, 2022: We
are getting on I-10 going East now toward Tallahassee and then down I-75 to the
Florida Turnpike to our home less than two miles from the turnpike exit for
Kissimmee - Saint Cloud, Florida. This exit at Chipley, Florida should be
our last fuel stop on the way home.
The price of fuel here is $4.759 that will take us all the
way home after we added 12.472 gallons. We departed at 4:36 PM Central
time.
Going East about 60 miles from our fuel stop seen in the
image above is the Apalachicola River with the Eastern Time zone at the middle
of the river. When we passed this way on day ONE of this western vacation,
the westbound bridge had a sign saying "Entering Central Time Zone"
and the Jackson County line. On our LAST day of this trip going home, the
bridge sign indicates the river name, but there is no EASTERN TIME ZONE sign or
county line sign in the Eastbound travel lanes.
Here is the Google Earth view from the Eastbound bridge
showing the sign on the westbound bridge for "Entering Central Time
Zone" at the right side of the photo below. That sign has been turned
since we passed this way so it squarely faces the westbound traffic. It was turned about 30 degrees
toward the north side of the bridge when we passed by on day one of this trip,
May 23, 2022. There is NO SIGN on the middle of the Eastbound
bridge. Only a traffic camera is mounted on a white pole in the middle of
the river on the left side of this image below.
My job from 1990 to 1992 was as a regional engineer with a
major cable television corporation that has grown substantially since
then. The company owned 65 cable systems nation-wide in those days and
they are very much larger today. I would drive from West Palm Beach to
Tallahassee and some surrounding cable systems in this area for tech support and
training as needed. These highways are very familiar to me. This
exit is 199 miles EAST of the Alabama state line on US 27 north of the main part
of the city of Tallahassee, Florida.
This Google Earth image was looking across a flat bed 18-wheeler
approaching Exit 262 about 63 miles East of the image seen above. There
was NOT a truck blocking the view to the sign when we passed by heading East.
As I was finishing processing the photos from this western
trip, I thought I would try getting the image above from the west bound
lane. At least there was no truck blocking the sign.
We pulled in here where the two men are standing in front
of the drive-through order location in this Google Earth image from January
2016. They were not there when we pulled up to place a take-out
order. We asked for chocolate shakes and learned they were out of the
ingredients to make the shakes. We went inside to have our rest stop and
got Chase to relieve himself under an umbrella in a very light rain. We did not
order anything else and got back on the highway headed for home. It was
getting dark and starting to have a light rain.
We had about 208 miles to go to get home on I-10 over to I-75, then down to the Florida Turnpike, and finally down to the exit for Kissimmee, Florida which is 1.5 miles from the house. The entire route after the Arby's location seen above was in darkness. When we got home, we unpacked only what we needed for this night.
The photo below was taken before we emptied Linda's Chevy Equinox
the next morning, June 15, 2022. The digital map program indicated the
total mileage for this vacation was 9,403 miles.
If you have seen all 57 pages, you are really dedicated to see the high points
of our trip in our photos and the Google Earth images where we could not take
our own photos during this 2022 Vacation.
This page was created at home in my office on October 10, 2022. We have
been to the Great Lakes Superior and Huron, the 2019 Oshkosh air show and the US
Air Force museum. We went up to the other great lakes Erie and Ontario in
2020 and back down to NYC, Philadelphia, Delaware, Virginia, and the outer banks of
North Carolina including the Wright brothers national memorial on that 2020 trip
home to Florida.