Why Our Friends Won't Travel With Us

We're finally heading to Texas. And we're tired.

So tired in fact, we decide to let our GPS find the nearest Walmart for us to park overnight in the lot. (It's called boondocking; and it's free, convenient and safe.)

The one we're heading to now is in Quincy, FL. We turn off the highway and follow our little electronic travel guide faithfully.

Turn right. OK. No problem.

Turn right again.

Really?

Turn here? Down this dark, potholed road with no shoulders? Down into a blackened abyss?

Well, OK. We trust our GPS, a Tom Tom, we call Thomas.

We turn right, right into a Stephen King novel. It's a dark, dark road that fronts a few ramshackle houses, a burned-out doublewide and several weed-draped driveways. And it's getting smaller. Sandier. Rutted.

"Turn around when possible" Thomas blurts without apology.

WHAT? There IS no place to TURN AROUND. We're in a motorhome towing a car, so we're a mini-train. We can't just TURN AROUND or even back up and we sure aren't going to hop out and unhitch things right here where "Pet Sematary" was filmed.

We lock the doors. Bump along. Slowly. Watch for Freddie Kreuger. Finally, we see something. A sign: "The State of Florida. No Trespassing." Egads! Are we stuck?

No, thankfully, the road shoulders appear, ones wide enough for us to use to turn around without losing our caboose.

So we turn around -- barely -- and head back to civilization, where we turn right and find our Walmart a few blocks down.

Diagonal from the Quincy Annex of the Florida Department of Corrections -- the state pen. Which is where, apparently, we just visited. In the dark dark of night. Thank you, Thomas.