Woke up early to beautiful sunshine. Was so glad we postponed our tour of Daytona 500 until today. Got up around 9:00 AM, had breakfast and we were out the door by 9:30 AM. We stopped very quickly at 7-11 for Lexi to get her breakfast, then off to Daytona 500.
Our tour guide was named Ron. He has been doing the tour for about ten years. He was great fun and very knowledgeable. You could tell he loved his job and loved racing. We learned so much from him and got to see so much. We even got to go on the track. Was so glad because we were told it was pretty rare to get to do that due to races and other things going on. The tour was over 90 minutes but time went really fast. At the very end of the tour we got to see the race car that won last year (and of course get your picture taken with it). Really enjoyed the tour and now we’re looking forward to seeing the races and knowing where things are.
After the tour we went to lunch at Cracker Barrel. They had a chicken salad special going on that we all three ordered and really enjoyed. We also got a book on tape, “The Perfect Hope,” for the trip to Jacksonville and North to Myrtle Beach on Saturday.
We headed for Jacksonville and got there around 2:00 PM. It was about 85 miles and took about 1-1/2 hours. Was so wonderful to see Kitty and Robin. Kitty is Michael’s cousin (mother’s sister’s child). We hadn’t seen them in awhile. Robin has been having some health issues. Sure hope everything is okay. Such a great family. After awhile their son-in-law, Kelly, came by with food. Really, really good food from a BBQ place nearby. We also got to see Kitty and Robin’s other children (Robbie, Kathy and Chris), another cousin (Kitty’s brother) Rick, a neighbor (Miss Kitty), spouse of Chris (Sandy), and a child of Chris and Sandy (Aaron, his girlfriend Taylor, and their beautiful baby Alice). It had been ten years or so since we had seen most of these people. We left around 9:00 PM as we knew Kitty and Robin had to be exhausted. Always fun to catch up with family.
Lots of laughs, love, and sharing going on today. Was good to hear the stories of days gone by. So glad we had a chance to see them.
On the way home we listened to more of the tape, stopped to get gas in Ormond ($3.45), and got home around 10:30 PM.