Landlocked to Oceans!

Last year I planned a trip. It was a very special trip to me, because it meant that I would be getting to meet my birth mother. See, I had been adopted all of my life without a clue how to find any blood kin; that is until Facebook came along. During my weekly vacation from work (the first I'd had since beginning my job there 3 years beforehand) I planned a trip with a friend to Florida to meet my birth mother, half-sister, niece, and my birth mothers' husband.

At the beginning my room mate and I had planned on going to New Orleans to visit it for the first time while taking in the sights and sounds. This was the part of the trip that we looked back on laughing, but at the time had a huge impact on us negatively. First off the room we were supposedly getting suddenly became unavailable, locking us inside of New Orleans at around 4 in the morning. Secondly we both only had debit cards and if anyone has driven to New Orleans lately there is but one way out - a $1 toll.

We finally made it out, it took us two gas tanks, a broken ATM, a hotel with double security doors, and an unhelpful police officer later. Around 5 in the morning we began our trip to Florida. The sleep deprivation began to catch up as we drove, and soon we found ourselves parked outside of a motel sleeping in the car just outside of New Orleans.

After waking up we passed through the beautiful scenery of Mississippi, Alabama, and as we drove through the "Welcome to the Sunshine State" border marker, the sky's brightened and the clouds parted - almost as if we were home.

We took a short break at a little town named Holt, Florida. We felt like the right thing to do was play a little hacky sack in the parking lot and load up on energy drinks before we stopped at our next destination- Panama City Beach.

Now as we arrived at the beach looking for a place to stay, we found a Days Inn. Let me tell you a little bit more about the Days Inn in New Orleans before we get back to the beach. In Louisiana as we walked inside of the roach infested hotel, they attempted to charge us $100 a night. We kindly declined as 4 hookers passed us walking out the door in freezing temperatures.

Back to the hotel at hand, a beach view for one night was costing us $40. We decided to settle down, taking in the precious Yueng Ling that's not sold in the Midwest, and enjoying my first view of what was considered the ocean.

After that night we trucked on down to Orange Park, FL. where I finally got to meet my blood relatives. Everyone was much better than I had imagined (perhaps expecting the worst and getting better in return.) We spent three wonderful days there, being fed home cooked meals, drinking our precious limited supply of Yueng Ling, and playing pool in the game room as we all got to know each other.

Afterward, it was time for us to begin our trip home. This time we decided to skip the trip through Louisiana and took a more scenic view through Georgia, Tennessee, and slightly missing a snow storm that had completely dried up by the time we made it back to Oklahoma.

Now maybe we got to bring a little bit of that sunshine back with us, but in all of that time the one thing that bothered me was this:

Why didn't I try a Florida orange?