is the 'sunshine state' after all.
One particularly nice day found us walking down a lovely white beach
in Biloxi, Mississippi; we were definitely getting towards shorts weather. We
ended up getting a little carried away by this 'balmy' spell and spent most of
our time in Orlando wearing t-shirts and shorts. I was particularly determined
to wear my summer clothes, even though the weather changed again and
brought sunshine and showers. Embarrassingly one of the characters in
Universal Studios pointed out that I was not suitably dressed on one occasion,
a bit of a cheek, considering she was dressed as Olive Oyl - complete with
plastic nose.
When we hit southern Florida the weather became noticeably warmer
again, and in fact was so humid on one day that we could not move without
sweating and started using the van's air conditioning system with increasing
regularity. Inevitably the storm that this humid weather foretold came the next
day and we again found ourselves hiking in a national park on deserted trails
and cocooned in our waterproofs. And loving it.
Some people might have been bothered by the amount of wet weather we
encountered, but on the whole we recognized that this was par for the course
for winter travelling. Besides, we were heartened by the fact that we were
going to spend our last week or so in the Keys - where it would be peak
season and hot and sunny.
So, it rained the first two days after we left the Florida mainland. Not
continuous, but frequently and severely enough to curtail some activities –
and often leaving big enough breaks to fool us into venturing outside. We did