While last year’s UK season was going on, plans were announced for UK to play in Miami in November. They would be playing former UK assistant Orlando Antiqua’s South Florida team at American Airline Arena – the home of the Miami Heat. The game would be played the day after Thanksgiving. It sounded like a great opportunity to go somewhere warm and see UK play. I also thought we could spend a week in Fort Lauderdale – which is about 30 minutes north of Miami. I talked with Jonathan and Josh and we were even able to arrange it so they and Cheyenne and Shelby could come too. It’d be our first family vacation in several years. This sounded great to me, so I went ahead and bought the tickets in January and arranged for us to have a suite at Wyndham Royal Vista on the beach.
Jonathan changed jobs in October and I was a little concerned that he’d be able to go. But his company graciously gave him that week off in November as part of their offer. The day finally came to leave. Cheyenne was already in Orlando with her family at the Disney Complex so we’d pick her up on the way. We left on the Wednesday before. We got to Nashville and ate at one our favorite hamburger places – Fat Mo’s. We then went to Lebanon Road church of Christ and enjoyed their Wednesday night service. We drove on to Murfreesboro after that and checked in at the Embassy Suites there. I’d forgotten how nice those hotels are. They also offer a cooked to order breakfast which you might well guess we took full advantage of the next morning.
The next day was of course Thanksgiving. I figured that was the first Thanksgiving of my life I hadn’t had a full Thanksgiving dinner with family somewhere. We had the aim to stop at a Cracker Barrel on the way to have their Thanksgiving dinner. We finally stopped in Macon. The restaurant looked crowded but Jonathan somehow finagled us a table for three when we got inside. The food was excellent and it also kept me from overeating like I usually do. We headed out after that and eventually got to the Florida border. We stopped at the Welcome Center there to go to the restroom, but mainly to get a transponder for use at toll booths in Florida. We then pressed on to Lake City Florida to spend the night. I’d booked at suite at Country Inn and Suites there. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. Getting dinner proved to be difficult since it was of course Thanksgiving. I eventually ended up just getting McDonalds.
We got up the next morning and heading to Orlando. We arranged to meet Cheyenne at a Home Depot and picked her up there. We took the Florida Turnpike most of the way there. It’s very different from your usual Interstate. There are few exits with any restaurants, etc, on them. They have Travel Plazas every 45 miles or so. It’s pretty similar to the Beaver Dam Plaza on the Western KY Parkway. We finally stopped at one and it was a madhouse. They did have an Auntie Ann’s Pretzel place in it, so we got pretzels there. We left out to finish our trip to Mami.
That’s enough for now – I’ll continue in my next post and let you know how the ballgame and Miami in general were.
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