August 1 Roadie Trip To PCB

Great idea, pass up June and July and wait til August for the great migration south, to the land of surf and sand, can't wait for a margarita in my hand!  This trip ' s destination would be the Wyndham at Panama City Beach.  Lots of families are done, now getting ready for back to school activities.  Trip will be a breeze.  What the hell was I thinking???

The signs of what was to come began showing themselves only a few miles outa town.  We usually take hwy 18 from Brandon, to Puckett, then hwy 13 to Mendenhall to get onto Hwy 49, the pathway south.  We miss all the stop and go through Richland and Florence.  The road is two lane, but fairly straight, and hardly any traffic.

As we are entering hwy 18, we are now behind one truck pulling a tiny house and another pulling a septic tank, guessing they are headed to the same destination.   No biggie, I'll  just pass them up the road a bit.  Dang is this Saturday isn't  the biggest traffic day of the summer!  Lots of on coming cars, with no chance to pass.  Finally, an open strip!

I look, and there is on coming in the far distance.  No biggie, plenty of time.  Before I can merge left, I see this car from about 5 lengths back jump out to pass!  That's  5 behind me, and there are two in front of me!  The dude had a motor, and is gone in a flash.   Then, he takes the time to honk loudly at the truck  pulling the tiny house as he takes the lead, with only about 4 car lengths to spare.  As he left us behind, his cruising speed had to have been 70+ on a roadway meant for 55.  I began praying for MHP to be just around the corner, ready with a welcome wagon speed trap.  No luck. :-(

Hwy 49 is usually a busy highway, but you would think it would be less traveled on A Saturday.  Like hell!  We planned for our first stop to be in Magee for a morning bite, a McD's breakfast sammich!  The traffic at the first red light in this small town was over 40 car lengths, WTH???  I quickly exited onto the frontage road, and passed all of those vehicles lined up at the light.  Even with.all the stop signs, I was way ahead of that line.  McD's here we come!

We get into the order line, finally, the order screen.  "Sorry sir, we stopped breakfast items five minutes ago, 10:30.  Ok, chicken wrap it will be.  Pay window fine.  Pickup window "sorry sir, we're still prepping, please pull over into pickup spot #2.  Really???

Meanwhile, back to traffic!  Once we are past Hattiesburg on hwy 98, we prefer to take hwy 63 down to Moss Point to get on I-10.  The traffic.flow approaching Mobile gets heavy, and on this day we opted to go the back Bay Bridge route.  Glad we did.

Once we were over the bridge and thru the dells, the I-10 bridges were just a couple of miles ahead.  As we approached, all you could we was bumper to bumper cars in both directions, creep, creeping along.  We stayed on hwy 98 till we reached Daphne,  then we re-entered the intersate.  This sucker was packed all the way to the Loxley exit to Gulf Shores.

Being the foodie that I am, it was hard to pass  up the Steak & Shake on I-65.  The service has been bad the last few stops.  We opted for the Pensacola location near the Cordova Mall, less than five miles off the interstate.   Place was packed, and the service was excellent.  I found out from the manager that they also owned the Mobile locations.  Told him my experiences, "Frisco Melt with no special sauce" and other stuff.  He didn't appear to be surprised  by my comments.   Said, yeah, we just put a new staff of managers.  AWESOME!

The rest of the trip was uneventfull, til.we reached the Destin Bay Bridge, at 4:30 in the afternoon!  Thankfully we had our SUNPASS decal on the windshield!  I'll  bet we passed over 100 cars waiting to pay the $3 toll!

Don't  think that Panama City Beach traffic was any better.  "Go home" traffic was at a crawl.   Finally made it to our destination, whew!    Looks like the last week of August or later will be in our future for next year and beyond!

More to come!