A Long Detour, Port St. Lucie And Visiting Family

When we left St. Augustine it was time for a family visit.  So we headed down I-95 southbound to Port St. Lucie and the St. Lucie West Outdoor Resort.

It should have been a straight forward drive. An easy 4 hours. However, the day turned into much more than that.

Brush fires shut down I-95 southbound and northbound. Just one exit though. It should have, in theory, been an easy off detour, then back on. What actually happened was the Florida DOT detouring people through residential back roads and more construction and detours. It was not very well planned out at all.

In all, one exit turned into a THREE HOUR delay! It was so bad that, as you can see from the above picture, David took a video conference call while waiting in traffic. Nope…he was technically not driving. You have to be moving to be considered driving. The conference call turned out to be 45 minutes long and in that time I’d say we moved a total of a quarter mile. So no, we were not “moving”.

Of course with this delay, we didn’t make it to the Outdoor Resort until after they closed at 5pm. We should have arrived at 1:30! Did I mention that I’m not a big fan of Florida and their roads?

The Outdoor Resort was nice. Beautiful sunsets and a well maintained property. My sister lives a short distance away. Even though there’s a closer rv resort to my sister, and we do usually stay there, we decided to treat ourselves to something nicer. More expensive, but nicer. It’s worth it once in a while.

My dad also lives about an hour or so away.  So one day we got in our car and drove down to City Place in West Palm Beach to visit him.

Had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and walked around City Place a little bit.  If you haven’t been to City Place in West Palm Beach, it is an interesting place to visit.  A great shopping area (although expensive) and lunch spot.  Great people watching too.

Worth an afternoon trip while in the area.  There’s a BB King’s Blues Club, The Improv, theaters, dancing and many restaurants.

They even have a “Little Bellagio” complete with fountains.  My dad tells me that on weekends they have various bands and such playing outside in the courtyard there.

Not a bad place to hang out.

While we headed back from City Place to the Outdoor Resort in Port St. Lucie, we passed on I-95, an area they were doing a controlled burn. This brought back all sorts of bad memories of our trip down to the area and the nightmarish detour we had to endure because of the brush fire earlier in the week.

Let me just reiterate how much I dislike (putting it mildly) Florida’s traffic and roads. IMHO there are way too many people crowding the highways as well as the cities. It does not make driving fun.

Now out west, with the open roads, that I can handle.