This post is coming to you from a McDonald’s just south of Jacksonville. We told our high school friends Joe and Janice McCleary that we’d be there at 6:00 so we’d thought we’d stop and post for the day–and not sit in their driveway for 2 hours. We’ve been squeezing the most out of this trip even as we make our way home. We stopped again at Dianne’s Barbecue in Hawthorne and found out that Dianne is Sonny’s daughter and when Dad sold the franchise, Dianne kept her own restaurant under her own name. Good barbecue definitely runs in the family. Becky texted me that we’d have barbecue sauce running through our veins at this rate and it occurs to me that that’s a worthy goal.

Right where we made a turn onto US Route 17 in Palatka, we came across a great little ballpark with four diamonds. We took some BP and I took some grounders, but we do have an injury report: The ball comes off this Florida sun-baked hard pan with such terrific spin, that Al developed a bad blood blister on his pinkie just catching my tosses in from short. He’ll live.

Tomorrow we start the serious journey home and we have reservations at the Sleep Inn in Huntersville, NC. That town sounded familiar to me and after looking it up, we discovered that Huntersville is the birthplace of Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm. We’ll see if there are any places related to the former knuckleballer and if so, that’s where will play in North Carolina, blood blister or no.

Our next post will be from Huntersville tomorrow night.