This picture is from the my 2008 Christmas on the Alafia road trip which was my third “Christmas Escape Run”. The Alafia is a river just south of Tampa, Florida, where my great-grandparents spent Christmas Eve in 1920. By sticking to expressways, I managed to get there on Christmas Eve 2008. I didn’t get to hang out on the river bank as they did but I did get to hang out with some of the wintering circus folk at the Showtown Bar in Gibsonton. I then drove the Tamiami Trail and a lot of Dixie Highway before reaching home on January 3. I slipped into Key West on the 27th but didn’t even spend the night. The END 1 sign was just about the last thing I saw before I started driving north looking for a vacant motel room I could afford. That didn’t happen until I reached Florida City back on the mainland.

Trip Pic Peek #9 — Trip #66 — 2008 Route 66 Festival

Trip Pic Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the trip journal it is from.