9. And speaking of places to eat, they love their drive-thrus out here. I can't figure out if it's because they're in a hurry, or just because it's too darn hot in the south to get out of your car and go inside to order. We saw drive-thru versions of Panda Express, Panera, Boston Market, and even Pizza Hut!
8. People from the midwest and east coast travel more than we do. Driving south on Hwy 95 through South Carolina, I noticed that very few of the cars were actually from South Carolina. In fact, I had to try hard to find any at all! In Disney World, we heard someone mention that they had season passes even though they lived in Ohio, and another person commented that it 'only' took them two days driving to get there.
7. Not everyone uses 911. I remember back in Utah and Nevada thinking how silly it was to put signs on the side of the road that tell you to call 911. But many of these states don't use 911 on their highways. Wyoming has a 1-800# you are supposed to call (but how in the world you are supposed to remember it between signs is beyond me), and here in Florida you are supposed to dial *347 (*FHP - Florida Highway Patrol - at least I can remember that one).
6. Even though some things seemed unusual to me a week ago, they are actually turning out to be pretty common. We've hit toll roads in North and South Carolina, and there are plenty here in Florida. We've also seen many more minimum speed limit signs in most of these eastern states with some as high as 50mph. And something I didn't note earlier was that we saw fireworks superstores all along hwy 80. They were huge stores (some as big as a Target!) on the side of the road every so often. We've been seeing them all along the way now, and have seen them here in Florida. I thought about going in one but haven't done it yet.
5. The warmest part of the day is often 5 or 6pm. It dawned on me while I was out here on the east coast that it must be because the sun is just so far away. It gets warm in the US at the exact same time all over the country, it's just 3 hours later out here. I guess it makes sense, but I never really thought about it before.
4. Laws and Signs: Unique signs and noticeably different laws are always present on a road trip. I can't help but notice things like rural Virginia's volunteer Fire Squad or their sign that said Deer Crossing: next .42 miles (who measured that anyway? - I looked twice just to make sure I didn't see it wrong).
3. Strange and unusual food: We try to make our way into grocery and convenience stores to see what food options are like in the towns we visit. We noticed that there are some serious sweet teeth in the Carolinas: most of their cereal options were things like Chocolate Frosted Flakes, Frosted Rice Krispies, Froot Loops & Apple Jacks with marshmallows, and even Cinnabon and Churro flavored cereal. Alongside the instant oatmeal, they have instant grits with flavors like cheddar cheese and bacon. A found Rainbow Sherbet flavored Oreos and I tried some Preacher cookies (which tasted a bit like solidified frosting). Strangely enough, though, we couldn't find any jack cheese in the entire grocery store in South Carolina that wasn't pepperjack. In Virginia, we had seen a Burger King that sold a pork chop and gravy biscuit sandwich. Here's some other foods we found.
2. Unique things about Florida specifically: Because we spent so much time in Florida, we noticed a greater deal of unusual and interesting things in this state, like the fact that Florida apparently has no helmet law for motorcyclists. We saw plenty of people wearing shorts and tank tops with no helmets speeding down the freeway on their bikes. Florida also brought us our weirdest roadkill - an armadillo. I thought I was seeing things until Mike texted me a few minutes later with photos of an armadillo he had seen while he was on his walk around town (waiting for us to get to Orlando). We looked for more armadillos for several days but never saw any more. Another thing I noticed about Florida is that it has so much water! Beginning somewhere in Georgia actually, I noticed that about 50% of the highway was on land and 50% was bridges over the water. Sometimes there were several rivers or bodies of water within a one mile span. If Michigan is the land of 1,000 lakes, Florida must be the land of 100,000. Sometime when you don't have anything else to do, pull up a terrain map of Florida and zoom in really close and look around. There is so much water everywhere!
Florida (the Orlando area) has so many tourist attractions that everything has become an attraction. Many of the parking lots around our hotels had mini-golf courses in the middle of them. I even saw some billboards on the side of the road for Florida hospitals that had their ER wait times listed in LED lights. I remember thinking, "Who in the world is driving down the freeway looking for the shortest ER wait-times?"
Florida has some pretty cool lightning storms and most of the ones we saw came with no water (and surprisingly, we didn't hear thunder either). Probably because of the weather, many of their traffic lights are hanging on a giant cord that runs diagonally down the center of the intersection. They don't have light poles, just the one big line with all the lights for all directions hanging on it.
And of course, like all states, Florida is famous for a lot of things. Driving down the freeways we passed the Waterskiing Hall of Fame, the original Hooter's restaurant that was started in the 1980's, the Shriners International Headquarters, the Museum of Drag Racing, the birthplace of the Special Olympics, and about a million Harley Davidson stores.
1. And the most important observation we've discovered on our trip: You can hold it much longer than you think. :)
(Answer to #10 - after McDonald's the two most common restaurants in the north are Arby's and Applebee's.)
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