The McCabe Family Key West Road Trip 2018

Here are some additional photographs that ended up on the cutting room floor during the writing of the daily posts covering the third leg of the road trip, from the Everglades National Park to Philadelphia.

Here are some additional photographs that ended up on the cutting room floor during the writing of the daily posts covering the second leg of the road trip, from Florida City to Key West (and back).

Here are some additional photographs that ended up on the cutting room floor during the writing of the daily posts covering the first leg of the road trip, from Philadelphia to Florida City.

Our Key West family road trip came to a bittersweet ending when we arrived home on Tuesday, August 21, close to 8:00 pm, after a long drive of almost 480 miles from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In comparison with the miles logged, this trip was not as impressive as our Grand Canyon or Yellowstone road trips. But the Key West road trip was nevertheless a smashing success and enjoyed by all of us. We traveled a total of 3,378.3 miles, through a total of eight states - Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was the first time that Clare and Conor had visited South Carolina and Georgia. Our longest driving day was the second from Ellicott City, Maryland, to Columbia, South Carolina, and our shortest driving day was from Islamorada, Florida, to Key West, Florida. We visited two U.S. National Parks - Congaree National Park (27,000 acres) in South Carolina and Everglades National Park (1.5 mil...

Today was a long driving day, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to home in Philadelphia. We left our hotel at about 9:00 am and arrived home, tired but happy to be home, at 7:50 pm. We traveled a total of 479.2 miles without any road trip museum stops, though I was severely tempted in Smithfield, North Carolina, which happens to be the home of the Ava Gardner Museum , a classic road trip museum if there ever was one. It also turns out that Gardner was a close friend of Ernest Hemingway, so a visit would have been a nice bookend to our visit to the Hemingway House in Key West. But Clare and Conor each strongly vetoed any idea of paying even a short visit to the museum, and I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Gardner (though I recognized the name of course), so, after getting appropriately fueled at  Starbucks, we got back in the car and made a beeline for home, stopping only for lunch and gas at a Wawa in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and for periodic bathroom breaks. On the Balti...

After arriving in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and getting settled in at the Sleep Inn, we were just a little bit hungry (lunch at Hominy Grill was very filling). So I asked Conor to search for a barbecue joint for a light dinner of some brisket and ribs. He found Mission BBQ which we all thought was a local joint but which is actually a chain of almost 70 locations in 15 states (thereby violating my rule of no chain restaurants on our road trips), with even a location in Northeast Philadelphia. Even so, the food was very good and we all enjoyed bottles of classic sodas (I had the Nehi grape).

After the bus tour, we walked almost a mile to Hominy Grill for a late lunch/early dinner before hitting the road to our final hotel stay in Fayetteville, North Carolina. For those not in the know, Hominy Grill is an award-winning restaurant which has been serving down home, simple clean fare since 1996. It's listed as a starred restaurant in Road Food , my bible for finding good eats on the road. In fact, one of the primary reasons for our visit to Charleston was my interest in having a meal at Hominy Grill. Needless to say, the food was great and the desserts were even greater. For starters, we had fried green tomatoes (with ranch dressing) and jalapeño hush puppies (with sorghum butter), and Conor and I had classic southern sweet tea. For entrees, Conor had the sesame fried catfish po-boy, Clare had the southern fried chicken thighs, and I had the shrimp and grits. For sides, we had collard greens and macaroni and cheese. For dessert, Clare had the pecan pie, Conor had the but...

On this second-to-last day of the road trip, we woke up earlier than usual for a side trip to Charleston ,  South Carolina, the oldest and largest city in the state. Charleston is home of The Citadel and the College of Charleston, and its historic sections have been marvelously preserved. We got there a little after 11 in the morning and hopped a Gray Line bus for an informative and air-conditioned 90-minute tour of the Charleston Old and Historic District , a National Historic Landmark District. Susan, our tour guide, talked a mile a minute and didn't come up for air until we got back to the visitor center, but she entertained us for the entire tour with history and stories. We had one stop at The Battery where we were able to take some photos outside the bus. The rest were shot from inside the bus. The tour was a nice introduction to Charleston and preferable to walking in the 90 degree heat.

Finally, some southern-style barbecue for dinner at Southern Soul Barbecue on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The photos are worth a thousand words so I'll let them speak for themselves.

Our second stop of the day was the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing located off Interstate 75 in Ocala, Florida. If there was ever a quintessential road trip attraction, this is it - a place full of cars! Don Garlits, known to his fans as "Big Daddy," is synonymous with drag racing and is the National Hot Rod Association's #1 drag racer of all time. I didn't know who he was when I got there, but I sure as heck had a better idea of who he was when I left. The museum was filled to the gills with drag racers of all shapes and sizes, and lots of other memorabilia and artifacts of the drag racing world. Next door to the drag racing museum was the Museum of Classic Cars which was loaded with old, classic and rare cars, most of them restored to their original, mint condition, including a 1956 Chrysler Imperial owned by President Eisenhower. Clare and Conor both enjoyed the visit, as did I, and it brought back memories of my watching drag racing on TV in the 1970s. However...