Yesterday we had a day off from the parks and had two lovely visits from friends who live here. Firstly my almost-nephew Danny and his partner, Heather, drove over from the west coast to visit us which was so nice of them as it’s a long old drive. The highways around Orlando suffer from the same problem as the M25 and other aging but very successful highways in the UK. The I4 motorway is just not big enough anymore for the volume of traffic and it regularly snarls up making a journey take hours longer than it should.
Anyway they both got here ok and after a good catchup chat we set off on a bit of a mystery visit that Danny had planned. He wanted to take us somewhere very typically American but somewhere we hadn’t experienced before. We drove to Daytona which was in the full flower of Bikers’ Week when thousands of bikers descend on the town. But our destination had nothing to do with that. We were going to Buc-ee’s for lunch!
Buc-ee’s Home – Buc-ees is a phenomenon that began in Texas – where else!? It holds the records for the world’s largest convenience store and the world’s largest car wash. How to describe it? Well… imagine a huge huge convenience store selling everything from clothing, to pet products, bbq and camping stuff, a raft of drinks and snacks, a supermarket section, food outlets selling bbq brisket, pulled pork and chicken rolls, sandwiches, salads, cake…… outside a massive gas station with perhaps 50 pumps widely spaced so that two rvs could park between them, a massive car wash. Oh, and one of their claims to fame is that they have the cleanest loos in an American gas station. Well we had to check that out and certainly the loos were exceptionally nice. We had a little shop and then an al fresco lunch outside of all manner of rather naughty treats. It was a lot of fun.
Oh and Buc-ee’s seem to pay their staff very well if their job adverts are anything to go by. I might have to come out of retirement! Check out my photo of the ad in the pix below.
Came back and had a rest and then Stephen and Pamela arrived with a mound of Mexican food for a shared dinner. We supplied Margaritas and a very pleasant evening was had. The food was delicious and the company even better. Stephen is the younger brother of our dear friend Stuart. We had some lovely times all together in Florida when we were here in the winter of 2022. Went to the Highland games, a distillery in St Augustine, skeet shooting….. and we ate Mexican food and drank Margaritas then too. It was lovely to see them and we were so glad they made time to come and visit.
You can read about some of our 2022 adventures on the blog. Here’s a taste Central Florida Highland Games