Sunday October 16th 2022

The day started cool in the mid sixties, but warmed up quickly. I started my packing in a sweatshirt and ended dripping sweat in a short sleeve shirt. I pulled out of the Sun Outdoors St. Augustine RV park at 10:50AM ten minutes before checkout time. My travel day was relatively short. It was only about 125 miles south along Interstate 95 to Port Canaveral.

My first stop was only an exit away from my starting location. An adventure in filling the gas tank began. There is a Flying J complete with dedicated RV lanes. When I arrived one lane had two RVs in line backward from the normal path. The other lane had a FedX delivery truck that looked like it had finished fueling and was about to depart. I pulled in behind the delivery truck. After about five minutes had passed one of the drivers from the other lane told me that the driver had been there for at least fifteen minutes and was just talking on his phone. The other driver had been waiting behind him where I was before moving to the other lane from the opposite direction. He had asked the guy to move on, but had been ignored. I really can’t back up to change plans without disconnecting my towed car, so I was stuck. When I asked the driver if he was broken down, I was informed “I can park where ever I want”. He was still on his phone. A Flying J worker was aware of the issue, but wasn’t willing to intervene. It took another ten minutes before the FedX driver moved to another part of the parking area. Clearly he was just being an “ass”.

Once I pulled up to the pump, turned off the engine and prepared to pump some fuel, the saga at the pumps wasn’t over. The card reader wasn’t working. I had to go inside to prepay. That meant I had to estimate how much I was going to spend. I had about a quarter of a tank by the gauge, so I decided on $150 as my prepay amount. That was a very conservative guess. I didn’t want to over pay, since it would probably be lost money. The alternative would be to leave my Credit Card unattended with the cashier inside. That wasn’t going to happen. The bottom line is I didn’t fully fill the tank, but I got close.

The rest of the trip down Interstate 95 was uneventful. I arrived at Jetty park shortly before 2PM after killing some time at a rest area. Setting up in the heat was no fun. It seemed to bother me more today than normal. Later in the day I took my first walk over to the inlet to the port. I was rewarded for my exercise with the view of a departing cruise ship.