A drive off into the sunset.

It's good when things work out :). I'm back to the awfully short breaks, and what time I had this break has all but wound down. But it was a fun time! Firstly, we got off the boat when we were supposed to! That's always a good thing :).I was staying an extra day in New Orleans, but I was too busy being lazy, so there was only the cursory look at downtown, on the pretense of picking up our first rental car. And the somewhat long awaited, proper 3D Imax look at Avatar :). Maybe I'll actually go down to the famed French Quarter next time I'm in town.

And thereafter began the long, long-awaited and awesome road trip. Let me tell you, the drive all the way from New Orleans, LA to Jacksonville, FL is long! The pitstop at the boss's place on the way for lunch (and the guns (!!!)) was a welcome break in the nearly 600 mile drive down the mostly picturesque interstates through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and finally Florida.Jacksonville was really just a nightstop and as we made our way down the Florida coast the next day, we stopped over at St. Augustine, the country's oldest town, and later on made a diversion to Cape Canaveral for a look at the Kennedy space Centre (albiet from a bit of a distance :P).When we finally made it into Miami, it was dark and the drive down South Beach and downtown was mostly just bright lights :). Oh but what lights, and what sounds :). And then the next morning we traded in our transit Nissan for the totally awesome 2010 Mustang!!!!
I've got to say, the drive down to Key West from Miami, was absolutely the best part of the trip for me!! The weather was less than awesome for a while. But once you clear the main land and start driving down US 1, hopping from island to island, often enveloped by the spectacular blue-green ocean on either side, and at times blasting down the rather empty road, straight into the sunset, it's pretty close to road-trip heaven :). Well, what can I say, the car's got a lot to do with it, but there's also the company, the view, and the soundtrack....
The three days we spent in Key West were marked mostly by lazyness and chilling out and doing whatever caught our fancy at whatever time we chose to wake up :D. It was awesome!! We had a couple of good weather days, that we used to head out the the Bahia Honda beach and a somewhat fog interrupted stint on a couple of jet-skis.And then we had a day totally owned by the rain. We decided to still have a bit of a drive around, crawling around town, watching the grey clouds roll by over the grey sea from the Fort Zach beach parking lot :).We even headed out for a movie :D. Then there was the very last bit, the drive back up to Miami. I suppose it might be a sad thing that we missed out on the famous Mallory Square sunset thing, but hey, I've seen enough sunsets over the ocean, I think :).If you ask me, it was the best road trip ever. No rush, no 'we've gotto go see this, we've gotto go see that', no waking up early in the morning :D. And a lot of driving down long winding roads. That's what road trips aught to be about, no?! With over 1300 miles in a week, I think that criterion was more than fulfilled :).It was also a bit of a farewell trip, with Yana getting transferred off the Trident. I suppose that means impromptu road-trip partners would now be a lot harder to come by :-<. And now I'm almost done with the really short, nice, lazy, stay-at-home weekend at my aunt's place in a really chilly and frosty Asheville, NC. In the grander scheme of things it's a bit of a full circle I guess. The last time I was here was around the beginning of my half year of long breaks. And this is the end of it. I should really do something about it, shouldn't I?!

Currently: trying to snap out of vacation mode :-<
Listening to: The Temper Trap - Sweet disposition