New Year Off to Ragged Start
While the year 2020 closed out as a magic carpet of sorts, the month of January provided a ragged start to 2021 from my perspective. Numismatically, the new year unfolded somewhat haltingly. What has transpired personally has been anything but encouraging. In the meantime, however, Sally and I had enjoyed taking our first pandemic break from the home area, a road trip to Panama City Beach.
It was about 7:30 a.m. as dawn was breaking on the fourth Tuesday of December as we hit the road in the Audi, driving 25 miles cross-country to Plainfield, Wis., there picking up the Interstate system. From there it was I-39/74/57 south, pulling off at El Paso, Ill., for an enjoyable lunch at Woody’s, then calling it a day at Mt. Vernon, having driven 483 miles of what would be a 1,180-mile journey to our destination. On Wednesday we logged another 496 miles that carried us by way of I-57/24/65 to Pittsville, north of Montgomery. We called it a day there, our only stop of the day having been at Stan’s outside Columbia, Tenn., for lunch.
Hitting the road at about 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning, a 200-mile Christmas Eve drive by way of US-231/FL-2/79 found us arriving at our destination shortly after 11 a.m. By noon we had checked into our condo accommodation at the Sterling Breeze – newly acquired by our daughter, Sharon, who a few years ago had acquired a similar investment/rental unit at the nearby Tidewater Beach that we have enjoyed on a few occasions – where we spent the five days reconnoitering and performing a deep cleaning on her behalf as well as a couple meals at Salty Sue’s.
The following Wednesday found
