Friday Feb 1st

We "woke up" at 6:30 to get the last of our stuff packed. We had a choice of leaving the ship by self debarkation or Carnival can take our luggage off and we can pick it up in the terminal. To have Carnival do it, the luggage had to be left outside our cabin before 1am last night and they start letting these people off the boat starting at 9am and it could take a few hours. Since we were out late last night at the All-star jam and we wanted to get off the boat ASAP to get to Orlando/Ocala, we chose to self debark. Self debarking starts at 7am. We got everything together and they called our floor to leave. It was pretty quick and after going through customs we were off the boat by 8am. We had a reservation at Hertz downtown to pickup a car at 10am. We waited a little bit for a complimentary Hertz shuttle to the pickup location. We got there around 8:30 and Hertz was packed! We had to wait for a ½ hour to get through the line. They said they had over 150 reservations for the day. It was their 2nd busiest day ever. I guess they were real busy partly because Hertz was a sponsor of the cruise. We finally got our car at 9. It was a 2008 Toyota Camry. Stan really liked it a lot. Before the trip we printed directions to Orlando so we knew we had to start by getting on I-95 north. After getting directions to I-95 from Hertz we were off. We were only on I-95 for little while then we had to get on Florida’s Turnpike. We ended up paying about $20 in tolls for the trip. We made 2 stops, for restroom and food, and we got to Ocala by 2:30 and went straight to Big Daddy Don Garlits' Museum of Drag Racing. There were a few people there, actually more than I thought.

The International Drag Racing Hall Of Fame plaques are out front and there is an A-7 jet out front as well. The museum is set back in 2 buildings. One for the antique car museum and one for the drag racing museum. Since the antique museum closes a little bit earlier the clerk said to head over there first then come back to the drag museum. So we did the antique museum first and there were some pretty cool stuff there including some of Garlits’ personal drivers and well as the featured car, a 1956 Chrysler Imperial that was built for a President Dwight D Eisenhower, that came with a 354 hemi.

After about a half hour we went over to the drag racing museum and it was a million times better that I or anyone could imagine! I can not put it into words how cool and exhilarating this was. Even the smell was amazing! I was taking still pictures of almost everything and Amy was videotaping. I know I had a great time. And I think Amy did too if it was only to see me that excited. To be around all that history…I am at a loss for words. I did notice that on the other side of one of the walls is Big Daddy’s actual race car shop. There were guys in there working on a primered front engine dragster of some kind. I tried to get a better look but they were real fast to close the door. Anyway they closed at 5 and we made a stop at the souvenir shop before they closed. We had an hour drive back to Orlando and we found the hotel easily(Hampton Inn) and then we were looking for a place to eat. We found a nearby TGIFriday’s. After eating we checked in at the hotel around 7. After the long drive and visit to the museum we were beat. We watched some TV and were both sleeping by 8:00 to try to catch up on some of the sleep we missed during the past week.