Waffle House staff at Florence, South Carolina. Eileen Goldfinger photo. Breakfast 12/9/20 ©

LIZ Paul Goldfinger photo. 12/9/20 ©.

Eileen and Paul Goldfinger, Blogfinger editors.

We have one tradition on the way to Fla-fla-land.   It requires that we stop at least twice at a Waffle House on Rt. 95 for breakfast.  We have posted a number of articles about these phenomenal 24 hour per day restaurants.   Just search under Waffle House.   One of them is about how the WH chain is a bellwether for government assessment of natural disasters.

This morning the staff was cheerful despite that in-house customers were few–compromising their tips income.  They do a marvelous job with bacon, eggs, hash browns, and raisin cinnamon toast.   They managed distancing, but the mask thing was more challenging.  In the South, there appears to be widespread skepticism about masks.

Tonight we walked into a Florida Cracker Barrel restaurant and found the place full and with no distancing.   The hostess said that they were “100% capacity.”   So there was no attempt to distance, and plenty of customers wore no masks.  We did take-out and rode out of town as quick as we could.

Along the way we can report that there were no road blocks looking for Jersey plates in any of the 6 states we rode through.  The traffic was way down, and we saw few Jersey plates and a couple of New York plates.

He looks a lot like Tom Hanks.   Georgia Welcome Center.  Savannah in the background.   12/9/2020.  Eileen’s photo.

In Georgia, the welcoming facility was beautiful:  immaculate cleanliness and sanitizing.  In the lobby we met a guy who was sitting on a bench.  He said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’ll get.”