I made it back to Covington with no problem. I flew into Miami at 3pm, picked up the car at my grandfather's apartment, and started driving at 5pm. I had originally been planning on staying the night in Miami and setting off in the morning, but I was eager to get back. I figured it was unlikely that I'd manage the full 13-hour drive in one sitting, considering I was starting at 5pm and I had only gotten two hours of sleep the night before, but I decided any progress I could make that day would put me that much closer the next day. I'd just have to find a motel or something to stop at when I got tired.

In fact, the first time I stopped for gas, I also ran over to the local Best Buy to check out their selection of computer-controllable GPSes. I'd been meaning to pick one up for a while, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I had no time to shop around, of course, so I just picked from what they had in stock and made sure I could return it in Covington if I ended up deciding I wanted something different. However, I ended up being very pleasantly surprised — the one I bought (a Garmin GPS 18 USB) includes a software package that is very full-featured. It seems to provide most of the same features as the nice little compact standalone units like TomTom that are getting popular lately, except this only cost $120, whereas the standalone units tend to be in the $400-600 range. The fact that you've got the entire laptop screen available for display makes it a lot easier to read while driving, too.

The software includes maps for all of North America and Puerto Rico, and it includes a feature that I've missed from Google Maps for a long time — the ability to just click on a point on the map and get directions to that point. Of course it also lets you enter an address, but sometimes it's easier to just find where you want to go on the map and tell it to get you there.

Another nice feature is auto-recalculation of routes, for when you take a wrong turn or decide to take a detour somewhere for gas or food. But the feature I was most interested in on this drive is the ability to search for "nearest places" — you give it a category like 'lodging' or 'fast food' or 'fuel', and it finds the nearest facilities, sorted by driving distance, and lets you plot a route to them. That would come in very handy when I decided I wanted to find a motel and stop for the night.

However, I ended up making it all the way back to Covington without needing to stop at all. I finally pulled into my parking spot at 7am, after 13 hours of driving (plus an hour stopped in the Best Buy parking lot installing the GPS software on my laptop). And, thanks to that very same GPS software, I can produce a nice map of the route I took (the yellow part is the portion I drove before I bought the GPS).

Florida is so damn huge! Every time I take long drives, I set little milestones for myself to help me feel like I'm making progress. "OK, two hours until Mobile." This time, when I started driving from Miami, I made the mistake of underestimating the size of Florida, so I decided that my first goal was to get out of Florida. I figured that at that point I could feel like I was safely on my way.

But then Florida never ended. At one point I realized I was now two hours from the end of the drive, on the last tank of gas I'd need to get, and I was STILL IN FLORIDA. For a while I was discouraged, thinking I must have miscalculated my driving time, that I must have four or five hours left ahead of me once I finally managed to make it to the state line, but the GPS software calmly assured me that its estimate was correct and I was two hours from my destination. And, sure enough, once I made it across the Florida state line, Alabama and Mississipi fell by in (comparatively) quick succession. I probably should have picked something else for my first milestone.

The Buick is really well-suited to long highway drives. The cushy bench seats are way more comfortable than the Supra's stiff 24-year-old leather bucket seats. The floaty suspension, overly-helpful power steering, cruise control, and functional air conditioning all lend themselves well to cruising at 80mph for hours on end. I plan to make good use of that fact to go visit a lot of my friends during these next six months.