Turning North

I guess when you are about as south as you can get in the continental United States, north is the only way you can go, but we started driving north intentionally today.  We’re going to be spending a few days in the Panhandle of Florida, around the Panama City area, and to get there is nearly 11 hours of driving, according to Google Maps.  We planned to bust the drive up into two days so that we’re not spending one long day just driving.  I was looking at the maps this morning at what the best routes should be and figured out that a very familiar place was almost exactly halfway.  That place is Florida Baptist Youth Camp, where we had just spent three weeks.  So this was our destination for the day.

Before we left the Everglades, we stopped at Royal Palms and hiked the Gumbo Limbo trail.  We figured out eventually that Gumbo Limbo is a tree with reddish bark.  The wood is easily carved and was used to make carousel horses before the advent of plastic.  This short trail winds through a dense hammock of mangroves and Gumbo Limbo trees, often completely blotting out the sunshine.

Also along this trail was a small pond, looking very still in the early morning sunlight.  One wonders, however, how many alligators are lurking just out of sight.  We just enjoyed this from the trail.

Nearby is a Nike Missile Base, a relic of the Cold War, hastily constructed during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  All of our missile defense systems pointed at Russia over the North Pole, however, a real threat was the Russians use of Cuba as a possible launch location.  So we pointed missiles in that direction also, and the missile base was built for this purpose.

They couldn’t put the missiles in underground silos, like everything in North Dakota, as they would immediately fill up with water.  Rather, the missiles were stored in barns and outside on their launch pads.  None of these missiles were ever fired, and the place was decommissioned and turned over to the National Park Service in 1979.  One of those barns was preserved, along with artifacts and an inert missile.  Interesting to see.

Kind of hard to head north, knowing that snow and cold awaits, but turn northward we must, so the rest of the day was travel.  And it was a hot travel day, with temperatures around 85 degrees for most of the day.  And now we are parked on the same campsite we were on for three weeks.  Just like old times.