Today we nearly died in a cloud of dust. One moment we were living life on a happy trail, and the next thing we knew we were inches away from meeting Jesus.
When we stay in Florida we like to visit the area towns because we would like to move to Florida someday. It is difficult to really know much about an area by reading real estate ads. So, we find houses in towns we would be interested in and could afford and we drive through the neighborhoods. We also attend whatever open houses we can find.
Today's trip was to Davenport which borders the West Gate area. We programmed our GPS and headed out. At first the GPS headed us down a four lane road. As we took more and more turns, the roads became increasingly narrow. We snaked around curves and the road became darker and overgrown. Eventually the road ended and turned into a dirt road named Happy Trail. And then the dirt road narrowed.
Where was this GPS taking us? We knew Davenport was more rural but this was ridiculous - we were deep in woods on a narrow dirt road. Our impression of Davenport was deteriorating quickly.
And then it happened. A white pickup truck came speeding around the bend in front of us and on our side of the road! I yanked the van as far to the right as possible. The pickup's driver saw us and yanked the steering wheel to his right. This caused the truck to slide sideways in the sandy dirt of the road, kicking up a huge cloud of dirt. I closed my eyes expecting the truck to nail us square in the front. Instead, he fishtailed past, spraying the van with sand and stone.
That was our "Welcome to Davenport".
After our near miss we allowed our heart rates to return to normal and then continued on our way. Eventually the dirt road turned back into solid pavement and we knew we had returned to civilization when we found a Publix grocery store.
We discovered Davenport was basically three things: golf courses, trailer parks, and condos in various stages of construction. There is a mall, some stores, and various neighborhoods, but those three things dominate what we saw. The houses are very similar to the villas in the West Gate area of Kissimmee, except they tend to be 20% cheaper. Is it worth adding 20 minutes to the Disney world commute to save 20%? We drove through neighborhoods around Rt27 for several hours. The area isn't terrible, but we didn't see anything to fall in live with. Grateful that our introduction to the white pickup truck ended well, we turned back to our villa in West Gate.
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