Our time in the United States was limited to 90 days, and that was drawing to a close as we basked in the sunshine of the Florida Keys.
We had to drive back to the Orlando area and put Gregory, our motor home, in storage. The GPS chose a route that initially avoided the interstate highway, but in the Miami area we joined the I95 freeway. This is a complex road, with many junctions as other traffic flows join or split off from I95. At one stage there were at least 8 northbound lanes, and our GPS does not provide guidance on which lane(s) we should be in to follow its selected route.
To add to the difficulty, there are the Miami drivers. In one hour on the Miami freeway we saw more maniac driving than in the previous 6 months and 37,000 km. Bill was so scared he was almost in tears. We wish that were a joke, but it is the literal truth.
We later learned that others have had similar experiences. A wife described her husband driving on the same stretch of road, “I never heard Floyd cuss like that before” and Floyd was a retired truck driver and should have been inured to all highway driving.
Fortunately Miami was left behind with no physical damage to vehicle or passengers and we arrived in Kissimmee, adjacent to Orlando, with only shredded nerves.
We confirmed our storage space, and spent our last night in a horribly expensive campground. However, we had all the facilities we needed to discard rubbish, empty the water tanks, pack our bags and otherwise prepare for 3 months in England.
The storage space was for a vehicle up to 30 feet long and Gregory is 28 feet. However, he slipped into the marked rectangle as though it had been painted around him. The storage manager was very helpful with tips on what to do for a vehicle to sit unattended for a long time, such as disconnecting the battery and using some patent bag of chemical to keep the interior dry and mould-free.
On 18 December we locked all the doors, summoned an Uber and presented ourselves at Orlando International Airport where Icelandair whisked us off to London, Heathrow (change planes at Reykjavik).
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