Leaving the ship in Miami

We say goodbye to the Schillims and give them our alcohol to take

home in the car so that it doesn’t interfere with the alcohol we’ll be buying in Georgia and bringing home on the plane.  We get up the next morning and get dressed, and walk right off the boat.  As horrible and tedious as the embarkation day was, the walk off is super easy and the cruise director who I’m sure I have never seen on the boat asks Oscar where doggie is.  Which shocks the hell out of me.  This cruise is 

full of kids and how on earth does one kid’s dog make an impact?  Probably because he had to take it to kid’s club, and everywhere else on the boat.  Oscar’s good about understanding that doggie guards the cabin though and can’t leave the boat because we can’t lose him in port.  We head out to the taxi stand with Oscar pulling his suitcase the whole way

through the customs line and out of the port.  We grab a taxi to Miami airport to get our rental car, but I’m frustrated by the inability to log in to my southwest app to find the car company and inability to find any emails regarding the reservation.  Once I find out it’s Alamo, we head in to the terminal and go through the slickest car rental I’ve ever encountered.  We get our paperwork, head out to the garage, pick the car we want from the line up, go get

 a carseat at the kiosk, and head out.  We were up at 7:30am and driving through Miami by 9am in our rental car.  So fast that we got to catch the tail end of Miami traffic.  Or maybe I-95 from Miami to Jupiter is always that slow, but we finally get up to Jupiter and meet up with a neighbor in Canadian Lakes who is a snowbird.  We get to see her place in Florida which sits on a river with great views and docks outside for your boat.  Rosmarye has picked a delicious barbeque place and 

we have probably the best meal of the trip after getting off the boat.  We get to catch up and head north to south Georgia to visit with family.  This is a nice little trip in our little Chevy Sonic until we hit Jacksonville and suddenly a cold front descends on us.  It goes from 80 degrees in Miami to 20 degrees north of Jacksonville and by dinner, we Michiganders are wondering what the hell happened to our tropical vacation.  And while south Georgia has a way of receding into the distance the further you go, we do eventually make it to Aunt Nett’s house in Glenwood.  And that’s with John getting cocky and turning off the navigation before he really knew his way…Of course, we had to stop at a Walmart to get some heavier clothes because we didn’t expect this cold front which is to dog us for the rest of the trip.