We recently planned a trip to the sunny state of Florida where we own a park home. Booked our tickets to take a plane as I decided that none of the Grandchildren would be joining us we should just fly this time. Nothing better than trading a 24 hour drive (with all the stops) and possible stop overnight, for a 3 hour flight and an uber to the house.

Upon arriving at the airport and going through customs we discovered a weird hiccup in the system that prevented the border agents from letting my husband enter the US. In the summer we had travelled by our own vehicle to Florida stopping in Tennessee to hit up some whiskey distilleries and also hit the wild Nashville for some bar hopping. After leaving Tennessee we decided to drive through Alabama, as neither of us had been in Alabama before, depositing us at the top end of Florida.

We were close to getting to our place when we were pulled over in the County of Levy. You see, we had a clear cover on our licence plate and Florida had just established a law making any form of altering your vehicle tag unlawful.

We didn’t know about this law and offered to remove the cover right then and there. The officer said no, we were to remain in our vehicle. He then gave us a traffic citation, in my husband’s name, as he was driving. When we got to our destination we removed the cover and waited to hear about the ticket. Nothing was sent to us to our home address in Ontario.

Well, this was the problem when we were crossing. Apparently, they were supposed to send my husband an appear in court order. We didn’t receive anything so he obviously missed this court date and they put a warrant out for him. Yes, the amount of border agents who got a chuckle out of this was unbelievable. Of course we had to wait until Monday when the county clerk opened and within a couple of hours all was settled and they apologized and sent us a form saying all charges were dropped in this case allowing us to then enter the United States. The county clerk told us that when this law first came into effect they didn’t have clear directives. I’m taking that as an apology that we should never had been pulled over in the first place. The officer who pulled us over just kept saying to us more than once that we should have known Florida law as he wouldn’t try to come to Canada with a fire arm. I honestly don’t see the comparison but he was convinced in his comparison.

Needless to say, all got cleared up and we went on our way to Florida 48 hours later than we had planned. So, my original question is, was there possibly a reason that something so ridiculous stopped us from travelling at the time we had originally planned? The thing about it is we will never truly know if the universe planned all the delays for a purpose but I like to think that could have been the reason.

Do you believe things happen for a reason?

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