Normally, heading out to Tampa, is just a forty-five minute trip.
It was a particularly hot day and instead of lounging by our pool, we decided to head out to Clearwater Beach.
Clearwater Beach is just a short ride outside of Tampa. We had out to Clearwater Beach right after we thought the heaviest amount of traffic should be dying down. We were only about half an hour out of our town, when the traffic was beginning to pick up. Ten minutes later, we were in a full-bore traffic jam. We were going to try to go around the traffic jam, but every exit in all directions, was completely shut off. There were traffic police all over and they were telling people to sit tight. They were going to get the traffic straightened out as soon as possible. An hour later, we were in fear of running out of gas. We had now been stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half. They told us there was an accident on the freeway. A fertilizer truck had collided with two other vehicles. What normally took us forty-five minutes ended up being a three hour nightmare. We grabbed a hotel room when we arrived at Clearwater Beach and sat down in the air conditioning and took a deep breath. We turned on the news and found out that no was seriously injured, but everyone had to be transported to the hospital. We were glad no one had been seriously injured and we were now looking forward to a nice weekend. It was a bit too hot for us to be sitting out on the beach for very long, but we spent some time walking in sand at sunset.