Jekyll to Titusville - Part I

As stated in the previous post, I decided it was time to leave the not-so-realistic scenery of Jekyll Island and head south into Florida in search of the MegaScenery I had previously installed stretching from about Daytona Beach almost to Miami. My particular destination will be Titusville, Florida, home of my in-laws. I selected a morning flight from Jekyll and real-world weather, although in hindsight, I should probably find out what the real world weather is first, and decide if I'm qualified to fly in it, before just clicking "start flight" and seeing what happens.

Anyway, I had a nice smooth take-off from Jekyll and enjoyed a nice sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean:

Although I must say, the darkish clouds were a a bit troubling. I flew south as planned, using the Brunswick VOR to keep track of my progress. As I crossed into Florida and flew past Jacksonville I noticed what appeared to be a nuclear power plant off to my right:

A little research revealed that it's actually a coal plant, the JEA Northside Generating Station, but it does have cooling towers similar in design to what you see at a nuclear power plant.

As I got south of Jacksonville, the cloud cover started getting thicker, making it harder to see the ground and determine my location along the coast. Since I was already flying pretty low, I decided to try getting above the clouds. In this image, it doesn't look like that should be too difficult:

In reality, as I began to climb I encountered nothing but grey nothingness, or clouds as thick as pea soup in front of me. I got up to about 6,000 feet and got into some small patches of openings, but from those I could tell that the clouds extended even higher and that even clear of them, I wasn't going to have much of a view of the ground or ocean. Here's what it looked like out my front windshield through about fifteen minutes of the flight:

I decided to head back down, figuring that there would be no mountains to contend with, so that as long as my altitude read greater than zero, I should be fine. Surely somewhere above 1,000 feet I should break clear of this stuff and be able to see where I'm going, right?