I spent most of last week living in a hotel room in Orlando, Fla., and because not much happens in hotel rooms, my friends and I drove around the area a lot.

We drove down to Universal Studios to have a nice dinner at Emeril’s restaurant the first night we were in town.

We drove to a sports bar to watch some of the college bowl games.

We drove to a friend’s house, where our friend cooked dinner for us.

We drove out to see the Georgia band and cheerleaders at a pep rally.

We drove to downtown Orlando for a New Year’s Eve celebration.

We drove down to the Florida Citrus Bowl stadium to watch Georgia play Nebraska in the CapitalOne Bowl.

And every time we drove somewhere, we somehow ended up on a toll road where we were forced to stop at a toll plaza and pay $1 or $1.25 to be able to continue our trip. Sometimes it seems liked the toll plazas were just a few miles apart.

With tens of thousands of cars going through these plazas each day, Orlando must make a small fortune in tolls.

In fact, the tolls started even before we arrived in Orlando.

Just south of Ocala, we got on the Florida Turnpike. We knew we’d have to pay a toll on this road, and we were prepared for it.

But once we got to Orlando, our GPS took us off the turnpike and onto another road. After just a couple of miles, we rolled up on a toll plaza. And then another. And another.

Then our GPS took us onto a third road. And there were toll plazas there, too.

We think it cost us $7.50 just to get to our hotel. I think our GPS lady was in cahoots with the folks at the toll plazas.

Some of the toll plazas had actual human beings who would take your paper money and, if you needed any, give you change. Others didn’t have human beings and you were expected to have exact change to continue through the plaza.

And by exact change, I mean that if the toll was $1, you needed to have four quarters — or some other variation of coins totaling a dollar. The machines didn’t take paper money.

Who exactly drives around with a pocket full of quarters? I haven’t hoarded quarters since I was in college and needed them for the dorm washing machines.

We had exact change for the first two exact-change plazas. But by the time we approached the third one, we were tapped out on change. After a minute of emptying our pockets, looking in the car ashtray and searching under the seats — all while the drivers behind us were blowing their horns —– my friend drove through the plaza without paying.

He planned on calling the toll authorities when he got back home and throwing himself on the mercy of the toll court. I haven’t talked to him since we got home, but to the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t been incarcerated for failing to pay the necessary buck.

We did learn our lesson, though. Knowing we’d have many more tolls in our future, we stocked up on quarters for the rest of our trip. And coming home, we went in the other direction — going out Interstate 4 to I-95 north — where there were no tolls.

I don’t know what the great state of Florida does with the money it collects from the toll plazas around Orlando. I assume it goes toward road and bridge upkeep, and if that’s true, I’ll be watching my mail for my invitation to the ceremony where they name a bridge after me.

“The Mitch Clarke Bridge” is the least they could do for all the money I left them last week.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays. Read previous columns at gainesvilletimes.com/mitch.