Stuart, Florida…Trucker Camper Buddies

January 29, 2014
Foggy start to the travel day. Temperature was around 67 degrees, but did go down to 61 degrees later in the day. Forecast was for showers off and on all day. We were headed across the state to the Atlantic side to meet up with friends that we sort of helped decide to buy a truck camper back in New Hampshire.
The ride over through the rural part of Florida at first was uneventful (mostly due to the fog). Later, around ten am, it lifted and vast farm fields were in view. The produce was sugar cane. We saw large machines harvesting, loading and moving the cane to the factories for processing. Lake Okeechobee was to our left, but you would never know it because of a huge earthen dike some 25 feet high. This berm was the length of the southern portion of the lake. I am estimating it is about thirty miles long. It is always neat to see “America’s Heartland”.
Helen called Cathy and Bob Fournier in Stuart. They were home and soon we were reunited at their winter get-away. Cathy just happened to be cooking a turkey and invited us. We said that we would eat before going to their house, but she insisted we join them and we gave in. Her mother and aunt were there visiting from the north, which made for a group of six. Bob and Cathy are planning to go to Alaska next summer in their truck camper. We gave them a few tips that we learned from our trip. Soon it was time to hit the road again on our southern destination. We have one more visit tomorrow before bee lining it to the Keys. Cliff and JoBeth Carr live  in Miami. We met them last fall at the Gettysburg Truck Camping Jamboree. They were in New Hampshire a couple of weeks later and stopped in Berlin to see us. We took them up to the auto road to the summit of Mt Washington. We just called them tonight and will meet them tomorrow after they bring their son and daughter-in-law to the airport. They were scheduled to leave today, but everybody knows how bad the weather has been north of Florida. Here, in West Palm Beach ,tonight it is 65 degrees and raining steady. Tomorrow 75’ and sunny.
Tonight, we are again at another Cracker Barrel Campground Restaurant at Exit 74 on I-95. It is now 7 pm and since 4:45 pm, I’ve been watching the stopped traffic on the interstate. When we pulled into the parking lot, the fire trucks and rescue equipment responded to an accident just south of us on I-95. We were planning on staying here anyway for the night.

That is what we did and saw