I woke up excited on November 1, as we were getting very close to Florida and getting to see the 'unit' from home. I have to say I felt for Emily, as it had been quite a gruelling few weeks and whereas I had the incentive that I was going to see my best friends from home, she would have to wait until New Zealand to see her relatives. She obviously sensed my excitement and suggested that we drive continuously through Mississippi and Alabama in order to get to Florida that day. We decided to head for Pensacola just over the Floridian border, and managed to get there by mid-afternoon. Pensacola itself is an uninspiring place. The trick is to cross the massive toll bridge (which we managed to get over free of charge by pulling the "dimwit foreign birds" card) and to go to Pensacola Beach, which is an altogether nicer place. I can imagine that it'd be a really great place to grow up. The beaches are made up of the whitest sand I have ever seen (whiter even than Fiji!), the ocean is really clear and the property is amazing (with an average value of about 4 million dollars!) We went to a beachside diner and had a 'surfburger' (delicious) and headed down to the beach to watch the sunset (if I loved Emily, it really would've been quite romantic!) before going back to town and the Motel 6. On this day we also hit our 6th 1000 miles.

The following evening we reached Tallahassee, the state capital, which was about as interesting as Sacramento, the Californian state capital (ie, not very.) I spent the evening wrapping Christmas presents!

The following day we drove 275 miles to get to Tampa, not getting there til early evening again. I wasn't particularly worried about not seeing much there though, as Anna Maria Island and my Welsh mates were now within sniffing distance. We stayed in the worst Motel 6 we had encountered (a fact which was not helped by having watched a documentary the previous week about young drug addicts leaving their friends and families and checking into Motel 6 rooms to try and get clean, meaning that we were now aware that perhaps we weren't surrounded by the nicest people in the world!) Our room on this particular night smelt oppressively of dog and had no lock on the door, so I propped my 20kg rucksack up against it and we went to bed, hoping for the best(!) At 3.30am we were woken up by a commotion outside involving a security guard, the motel receptionist and a guest, who was without a doubt either high or very, very, very drunk. He was going on about someone having stolen his child, and they were trying to convince him that in his current state he wasn't going to be able to do much about it (and he was taking quite a lot of convincing!) Anyway, we were very glad when morning came and we could check out! x