Last Day Here

This is our last full day here.  Tomorrow we begin the long trek northward.  So today we just wanted to enjoy the day as much as possible.  It will be a while before we have these kinds of days in Michigan. 

And it was a beautiful day to enjoy.  Perfectly clear, high around 65, calm.  When we walked the beach this morning, the Gulf was nearly smooth as glass, only little ripples lapping at the shore.  The color of the water all along this coast is a beautiful blue-green, with the hues changing to deeper blue farther out at sea.  It is aptly named the Emerald Coast.

We enjoyed watching the dolphins out in the Gulf, most far away, some near - lots of them.  The sun, the warmth, the sound of the surf, just makes you want to lay there and soak it all in. Since this is the last day, that’s what we did, for a while.

Then it was back to move the RV.  We had a different site here at the Fort Pickens Campground so we had to move off the site and hang out somewhere else for a while.  On the hike back, we hiked a small segment of the Florida National Scenic Trail, a 1,299-mile long trail that starts right here in Fort Pickens.  It conveniently goes through the campground.

We hung out at the fort for a while, strolling the grounds and having lunch before returning to the campground and taking off on our bikes.  We rode the 7 miles back towards Pensacola Beach on the main road and then back, stopping on the way back to wade in the Gulf and soak in the beach some more.

And, after dinner, we biked to the Fort to watch the sunset.  This is the last sunset we will see from Florida on this trip, so it deserved a couple of pictures.

Back at the RV, I loaded the bikes on the rack and put the cover on. We’ll get an early start tomorrow morning and put on as many miles as possible.

It’s rather hard to leave as the weather and the activities have been amazing.  The next few days are supposed to be really nice also, but we will be elsewhere.  Duty calls back home.

Slow Travel

Next destination was Fort Pickens Campground in the Gulf Island National Seashore.  Just 67 miles away.  Shouldn’t take very long, right?  Wrong.  We managed to leave on time, getting out of the campground while nearly everyone was still asleep.  Our clocks are still set to Eastern Time so we are doing everything an hour early.  We didn't arrive at Fort Pickens until after 4pm.

One thing we really didn’t think of when we left this morning: since it is so early, everything is closed.  We thought we would hit a couple thrift stores, just to check out what kind of stuff a thrift store in a swanky beach town would have.  The first store we passed opened at 9am.  We were there at 8am.

We stopped in Destin and took a walk on the beach.  We actually found a parking space big enough for the RV right along the public beach.  Another advantage of being early.

Beautiful morning and we had to shed layers of clothing as it was getting rather hot.  The forecast called for an overcast day, but we got a lot of sunshine.  That combined with a huge beach of white sand, emerald water lapping at the beach, and pleasant temperatures made for a pleasant walk.

We stopped at a nearby thrift store.  It was closed for maintenance.  Another one was closed for cleaning.  Looks like that’s not gonna happen on this trip.

We stopped briefly in HarborWalk. Very touristy street along the water that looked like it was getting ready for the crowds of Spring Break.  Right now, however, it was almost deserted except for the workers power washing the sidewalks.

Next stop was Navarre Beach where we went to the Sea Turtle Conservation Center to see Sweet Pea, a green sea turtle which can’t live in the wild because of a missing limb and shell damage.

We also launched the kayaks to see one of the artificial reefs nearby, however the water was getting rather choppy due to the freshening wind so we had to turn back.

Then it was on to Fort Pickens, part of the Gulf Shores National Seashore.  Took us a while as the speed limit outside of the National Seashore is 35 miles per hour and inside is 25.  We do like slow travel, but this kind of slow is not exactly what we’re about.

Fort Pickens is a massive fort built in 1834 to protect the Pensacola area.  It sits way at the end of a very long, skinny barrier island which is why it took so long to get here.   We rode our bikes to the fort from the campground and walked the interpretive tour.  One could easily get lost in this place.

After dinner we walked out to the beach to catch the sunset.  Again, Florida served up a beautiful sunset, and we can say with the Psalmist: 

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
Psalm 19:1-6

Grayton Beach, Take Two

A rarity on this trip: we are spending a second night in the same place: Grayton Beach State Park.  We realized yesterday we had no reservations for tonight.  We checked this campground and there was one site available because of a cancellation.  Problem solved.  We were told by someone we talked to during a beach walk that there were cancellations because of Canadians cancelling their US vacations because of the tariffs.  Not sure whether this is true or not, but, if so, it got us another night here.

Staying another night allowed a whole day of walking the beach, biking the Timpoochee Trail, which follows route 30A through all the beach towns along the Gulf, and kayaking the outlet of Western Lake all the way to the Gulf.  The weather was a carbon copy of yesterday, so, if I could bottle a perfect day, I would now have two bottles to enjoy later.

The shallow twisty channel out of Western Lake, next to the resort town of Grayton Beach

At the confluence of the channel, looking to the east, towards the state park

Also at the confluence, looking west, towards Grayton Beach.  

Spring Break is just starting over there, with cars on the beach, music, and sun-bathers

Wading in the Gulf

Need directions?  Look no further than here.

Awwww!

A fitting end to a great day.

A Perfect Day

Today was one of those days you wish you could store in a bottle and bring out often, taking little sips of a perfect day and making it last as long as possible.  And we made it last as long as possible.  Since we are now in the Central time zone, the day starts early and we are just keeping our Eastern time zone schedule to take full advantage of the daylight.  So when the sun came up at 6:10 this morning, we were already up and about.  The rest of the campground was very quiet. So much so that a few deer were grazing around the campers, looking very unconcerned.

The day dawned clear and mild, a great day to be outside.  We rode our bikes to the beach area and took a long walk on the beach.  I’m sure a couple weeks from now this place will be a madhouse as all the Spring Breakers descend, but right now it is very quiet. The perfect time to be here.

Directly across the St Andrews Pass, the main waterway from the Gulf into St Andrews Bay, is Shell Island.  It’s supposed to be a great place to find shells or just to get away from the crowds.  Not much crowds right now, but we thought it would be fun to kayak to the island.  The only issue was that it can be a very busy shipping channel with container ships and fishing boats coming in and out.  But the traffic seemed light today so we launched from the jetty parking lot and paddled across the channel.  It all went fine except I managed to ship a bunch of water into my lap when I hit a wave.

We walked the beach on Shell Island for a while and managed to find a bunch of small sand dollars and a really nice shark tooth.

The way back across the pass was also uneventful although the wind was pushing us into the bay.  It took a some effort to paddle back to the jetty against the wind.  The picture below shows our path across the water as well as through the campground and on the beach.  We don’t sit around.

We loaded up the bikes and took off towards our next destination, Grayton Beach State Park, another 30 miles to the west along the coast.  Driving through Panama City and Panama City Beach and the other beach towns takes a while but it’s interesting to drive through the concrete canyons created by the high-rises in these towns.  We arrived here at 3:30 and made dinner as we are staying on Eastern time.  Then we biked into Seaside, taking some of the bike trails behind the posh neighborhoods in town.  They are almost all vacation rentals, all large, all tightly packed together, and many, many of them.  We got a little lost on those narrow, winding streets, but eventually found our way back to the main road.  We rode back to Grayton Beach just in time to see the sunset.

A bridge on the bike trail in Seaside, flanked by blown glass artwork.  It appears that this will also light up at night.

Continuing West

It rained for most of the night last night, so there were pools of standing water all over the campground this morning.  It drizzled all through breakfast but tapered off so we were able to take a long walk on the beach.

St. George Island is an interesting place.  A narrow barrier island, 22 miles long, it is packed with vacation homes and miles of beach.  The state park occupies the eastern nine miles of the island, so the vacation homes abruptly disappear as you drive into the state park.  And, since the campground is several miles from the entrance, you get the feeling that you are on an uninhabited island. You and, of course, sixty other campers in the campground.

Nine miles of beach is a lot of beach to walk.  We gave it our best shot, but probably covered not much more than a mile.  We maybe would have done more but the cold wind and the heavy grey skies bade us to move on.  It was another 2.5 hours to our next destination, not because it was so far away but because we had to drive across almost the entire island at 25 miles per hour.  Takes forever.

We’ll have to visit St. George another time when the weather is nicer.  It’s worth some additional exploration.

We stopped in the town of Apalachiola, at the John Gorrie State Museum.  This tiny place honors Dr. John Gorrie who, in his quest to provide cooler, drier air for yellow fever patients, constructed a refrigeration machine in 1844 which could freeze water. The compressor could be powered by a horse, water, or steam power.

Sadly, even though he is known as the father of HVAC, he never benefited from his invention and died penniless.  Ice was a big business and Gorrie was a direct threat to the established ice industry. Its magnates started a public relations smear campaign against Gorrie. A New York editor, for example, quipped that, "Some crank down in Apalachicola, FL, a Doctor John Gorrie, claims he can make ice as good as God Almighty!" 

A replica of his machine sits in this museum.  In a testament to the importance of this invention, the real machine is in the Smithsonian.

Gorrie was granted patent number 8080 for this invention in 1851.  I find it interesting how many patents there are now.  In 2003 I was granted a patent with the number 6,653,831.  And that was over 20 years ago.

This machine and a few wall displays occupied less than a quarter of the space.  The remainder was dedicated to promoting Florida State Parks.  So even though it is dubbed as the Ice Machine Museum, it really is mostly about state parks.

On our way into Panama City, we happened to pass an auto glass place so we dropped in and asked about getting the windshield fixed.  They were not busy at all and we finally got the big star right in the middle of my vision taken care of.  Now we don’t have to worry about it cracking as we head into colder temperatures in the next several days. 

We checked into St Andrews State Park in Panama City at 4pm.  We are now in Central Time Zone but our hunger was still in Eastern Time Zone.  So we turned around and found a Culver’s in Panama City Beach. As usual, Deb ordered the kids’ meal and we asked for the senior discount.

We walked the Panama City Beach for a while until the sun set, hoping to catch one of those spectacular Florida sunsets.  Florida can serve up some amazing sunsets.   Spectacular or not, the clearing skies and the mild temperatures made for a pleasant walk on the beach.

Romans in the Rain

Our next destination was one that was not even on the calendar a few days ago.  Tonight, Sunday night, was the only hole we had in the schedule--we had no reservations anywhere.  Deb had looked at St. George State park when we were setting this all up, but, typical of Florida in the Winter, it was all booked up.  A few days ago, however, she checked again and a site had opened up.  So now the hole was filled and St. George was the next destination, about 2.5 hours farther up the panhandle.

That’s one advantage of having one person driving and one navigating.  All this research and reservation was done while traveling.  I don’t know what people did before mobile Internet was a thing.

The forecast called for rain later today, which changed the priority of what we would be doing.  On Sundays, we typically try to dial into our home church service, mobile Internet permitting, but today we would travel and be outside and watch the recorded service this evening.

About an hour into the drive, Deb spotted a brown sign. As we passed by she read ​St Marks National Wildlife Refuge.​  I give her credit, she didn’t immediately tell me to turn as we hurtled by but got on her iPad and looked it up.  A few miles down the road, she told me to turn around, this one was worth the trip.

St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge is enormous, 86,000 acres.  It took over 11 miles to drive to the lighthouse at the end, where we stopped for a while and explored the area.

It was a delightful hike along the beach by the lighthouse, with white sand and grasses and palm trees lining the beach.  Definitely worth the detour.

It was a bit cold for a swim, but I did stand there with my feet in the Gulf of ... America? Mexico? Americo? Mexica?  Maybe I’ll just call it the Gulf from now on. 

Actually, this is considered the Apalachee Bay, so maybe that is a moot question.

It’s a beautiful area and I’m glad we didn’t drive past it.  But maybe Deb’s real motivation was to flash our newly-minted Golden Age National Park pass.  We felt like celebs, coming up to the gatehouse, showing the pass, and being waved in.  Old celebs, but celebs nonetheless.

On the road again, we stopped in the town of Carrabelle, where we had read about the world’s smallest police station.  Something to add to our World’s Greatest collection.  And here it was, right along the main street, about the size of a small telephone booth.  In fact it WAS a small telephone booth.  That’s me inside it.

The whole story hinges around the single policeman in the town.  In 1953, the phone company installed a phone in a call box bolted to the wall of one of the buildings on the street.  The officer could answer the calls on the phone while walking his beat.  Unfortunately, others started using the phone to make unauthorized long distance calls.

They tried moving the call box to another building.  That didn’t work.  The telephone employee also noticed that the policeman would get drenched in the rain when answering calls so he had the bright idea to solve both problems by putting the police phone in an old phone booth and marking the phone booth as the city police station.  This served the police station of the City of Carrabelle for decades and was featured on several TV shows, including ​Real People​, where they dubbed it as the World’s Smallest Police Station, and the ​Tonight Show​, by Johnny Carson, among others.

We made it to St George State Park around 3:30pm.  Rain was forecast starting at 4pm so we took a walk on the beach and made it back to the RV just as it was starting to rain.

Now that we’re effectively inside for a while, we streamed the church service on Romans 8, talking about our adoption as God’s children, something near to my heart.  The rain drummed steadily on the roof for the entire evening.  Romans in the Rain.

After this was done, we addressed the remaining pile of apples in our stash.  Four of them started to develop bad spots so we peeled them, cut them up, and made applesauce.  Something good to eat as we travel home.

In good weather, walk the beach.  When it rains, make applesauce.

Slow Pokes

Saturdays are usually slower days for us.  Not much on the agenda other than the next destination.  Sleep a little longer.  Pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  Long walk in the woods.

This campground is quite nice.  Large open areas.  I can see why the horse people like it.  There’s lots of trails for riding.  This could definitely be a redo when we are in the area again.

We took a long walk this morning. We walked down one of the dirt roads for a ways until a foot trail branched off, which we followed.  We felt like we were walking through the jungle.  This must have been what Old Florida was like, without the footpath.  We would have needed a machete if it weren’t for the trail.

As we were walking back into the campground, we met a guy who was also out on a walk and struck up a conversation.  Jason was in the RV box-truck two spaces over from us.  We ended up chatting with him and his wife for well over an hour.  That’s one of the cool things about traveling around is meeting lots of interesting people.  Jason, who describes himself as a recovering engineer (​I like that description, I think I’ll use it​) and Karen have traveled the world, been to 100 countries, sailed around the world.  His RV was one-of-a kind, designed and mostly built by him.  It stood out from all others, partly because of the large logo emblazoned on the sides.

They have been all over Chile and Argentina in the RV, as well as Central America, and it will soon be shipped to Europe for more adventures there.  It was a lot of fun trading travel stories with this fascinating couple.

When I grow up, I wanna be like Jason.

Because of the long walk and the long conversation, we didn’t get out of the campground until well after noon.  It was 2.5 hours to our next overnight boondocker spot, so we drove to the little town of Hernado, which is right along the Withlacoochie State Trail.  We rode bikes on the trail for a total of 16 miles.  Eventually, we may cover the entire 47 mile length of the trail in little bits and pieces.

We arrived here at just after 6pm.  “Here” is what appears to be a private five-site campground near ... well, near nothing.  Or so it would seem.  We are near Keaton Beach, where the main part of Florida wraps around towards the panhandle, and the coastline appears to be rather swampy, at least looking at the satellite view on Google Maps.  It’s 12 miles off the main road, so tomorrow we drive 12 miles back out to continue our trek into the panhandle.  But people do come here.  All the sites are full.  And the price is right.

Manatees and Mermaids

It was nippy out when we got up this morning: 37 degrees.  As we travel north, it’s just gonna get worse.  Good thing we are well stocked on propane.

Today’s destination was Weeki Wachee State Park, site of the deepest freshwater cave system in the country.  But, unlike many other springs here in Florida, you can’t get very close to this spring because it is nearly surrounded by the underwater theater where a show by live mermaids is put on a couple times a day.  The mermaids can swim in the spring, but us ordinary landlubbers can only look at it through thick glass from a room eight feet below the water’s surface.

Our interest was more on the spring run, a super-clear river which is a very popular place for kayakers.  We had to make reservations to put our kayaks on the water and, when we did so, many of the time slots were full.  The state allows 70 watercraft to be launched per hour and we couldn’t get in until 11:30.  So we made our 11:30 appointment and ended up arriving just under two hours early.  We could always take in the state park while waiting

When we got there, the parking lot was nearly deserted.  I’m not sure why many of the earlier time slots were sold out.  Maybe they just had a 95% no-show rate.

I asked at the desk about launching before our reserved time.  The gal said that would not be a problem so we ended up getting on the river at just before 10:30.  Beats waiting around for another hour.  We had already spotted a bicycle at Rogers Park, about 5.5 miles downstream, so we were ready to go.

Turns out there were very few people on the river and the cool, sunny morning made for a fantastic trip.  This river gets very deep in spots which made the blue and green colors very vivid in the sunlight.

This river has a decent current so we just drifted along for quite a while, paddling only to maintain direction.  A very delightful paddle with perfect weather.  Couldn’t have asked for anything better.

One of the highlights was a few manatee we floated over.  They were unconcerned with our passing, even when we passed quite close.  One even bumped my kayak as it slowly moved upriver.

It took us about three hours to paddle the 5.5 miles of river.  The last two miles of river were outside the state park, so there were lots of large vacation homes right on the river’s edge.  The water was considerably cloudier here but we still managed to spot a couple more manatees.

We took out at Rogers Park and I biked back to get the RV.  We then debated on what to do next.  We saw that the mermaid show at the state park started in 20 minutes and, since we were already here...

We arrived at the underwater theater just a few minutes before the show started.  The show was a rendition of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.  Despite initially having the feel of kitsch, the show was well done and all done underwater with the actors using breathing tubes.

We strolled around the state park for a bit after the show.  We missed the last boat ride of the day.  The water park was closed.  The animal adventure section was closed.  It looks like this park exists primarily because of the mermaid show.

It took us about an hour to get to our reserved campsite: Potts Preserve.  Another Water Management District campground, this one is primitive, a little hard to find, but free.  When we came in we discovered most of the campground was occupied by large horse trailers and what looked like some equine gathering.  We found a spot a little distance away and parked for the night.

I made a video set to music with some of the footage I took today.  Created for Alex, our grandson, it features manatees.

Roadkeeping

There comes a time on every extended road trip where some housekeeping (or ​Roadkeeping​) is necessary. This is more than just a trip to the grocery store for more food supplies. This is the time when you run out of socks or clean towels and a trip to a laundromat becomes necessary.

Today was such a day.  The socks would have lasted a couple days yet, but the overcast day and spending two nights in the same place made today a good day for roadkeeping.

After a walk in the woods near our camp site, we headed into Wesley Chapel where the closest laundromat was located.  We took the entire wash cycle and half the dry cycle to eat lunch in the parking lot and spent some time remaking the bed and putting the small mountain of clothing away.  I also spent some time looking into auto glass places.

There’s not a lot of those either.  And the ones that do exist are all mobile.  I couldn’t get the first one I tried to call me back, in spite of promises of same day services, and the second one responded asking for an address.  ​*My address is the coin laundry for the next ten minutes, then Walmart for 15 minutes, then Costco for 30 minutes, then the gas station for 10 minutes.*​  I could see this was not going to work out.  We’ll have to have the windshield chip repaired when we get home.

Since we were running errands anyway we stopped at Walmart since we were out of ice cream and Costco just because it was on the way and they usually have lots of samples to try.

We then stopped at a nearby RV park to dump the tanks.  It has been several days and it will be a few more before the next state park with a dump facility.  I left the engine running while I checked in at the office.  I should have shut it off.  The woman in the office tried to ring it up but was getting some error.  She tried on two different computers and enlisted the help of two other office gals.  Then the phone started ringing.  She finally just told me to forget about the payment and go ahead and dump.  This is the second time this has happened on this trip.  Saved us twenty bucks so far.

After filling up with diesel, we drove back to our campsite.

This may not seem like much but this all took several hours.  A lot of this is due to Florida traffic.  At least around here, the entire area is pockets of bedroom communities all feeding into the greater Tampa area and connected by divided boulevards with three lanes in each direction.  And the traffic is heavy and the lights are long.  So it takes forever to get anywhere.

We were happy to get back to this little oasis in the middle of Tampa madness.

Just took a look at our route so far.  It is our typical wandering once we got here, but not all who wander are lost.

Weather Only a Sponge Could Love

It was overcast when we woke up this morning, and the forecast called for rain this afternoon.  After topping off the fresh water tank at our host, we drove to Venice Beach for another walk on the beach.  Nice walk on a cool morning and we even found two more shark teeth.

I was a little surprised at the number of cars here early in the morning, but we walked in on a large crowd of people on the beach doing yoga.  Beach yoga, it apparently is a thing here.

Somehow, I just can’t see myself doing this sort of thing, even when I’m ten or fifteen years older.  For one thing, I think my physical therapist would yell at me.  Sitting cross-legged on the ground would probably undo the effects of all the exercises she assigned for me and do further damage to my lower back.  A recent MRI resulted in a report two pages long of all the things that are wrong with my back.  Lots of medical gobbledegook about stenosis and disc bulge and disc desiccation, among other things.

I think I’ll stick to walking.

We drove back into Venice and found a neighborhood street for parking.  Venice is a beautiful town and they have done up their central shopping district very nicely.

We stopped in a few curio shops, mostly the ones that deal with shark teeth and jewelry and purchased a few gifts.  It’s a lot easier finding shark teeth in a store than it is on the beach, but many of these places will sell you some pretty expensive tools for finding your own on the beach.

We found out there are several grades of shark teeth.  The ones that we found are mostly on the bottom end of the grading scale because they have been worn smooth by the surf or have parts broken off.

So all that work and we found the junk.

Our plan was to drive back to Dunedin and then bike into Tarpon Springs.  At a distance of about five miles, it would have been a nice ride.  But, looking at the weather and impending rain, we drove to Tarpon Springs instead.

It was a wise decision.  We would have been riding in the rain.

We found a parking place in a neighborhood a few blocks away from the  Greek section of town.  Initially I had parked in a pay-lot right downtown and wondered why it was nearly empty.  When I went to pay it rang up at $30, so we drove away, figuring we’d save the thirty bucks and take a few extra steps.  Now I know why it was empty.

Just after we got downtown, it began to rain, and then pour.  We did bring umbrellas which kept our heads sort-of dry, but we didn’t think about the shoes.  Soon there was water running down the streets, sometimes several inches deep, so our shoes got soaking wet.

Tarpon Springs is known as the sponge capital of the world and we were now having weather only a sponge could love.

We stopped at Hella’s Bakery for a mid-afternoon snack.  The chocolate-strawberry-genache layer cake looked amazing so I ordered a piece of that.  Deb had baklava.  The cake was good but wasn’t quite sweet enough for a Dutch palate.  Deb told me that’s why she ordered baklava.  That’s always made with loads of honey.

We stopped in a few other stores but the rain and the water running down the streets made it a little difficult so we sloshed our way back to the RV.

On our drive in to Tarpon Springs, Deb spotted a Greek restaurant along the road.  It advertised a BOGO special on Wednesdays: two Gyros for the price of one.  Leave it to her to spot a deal.  She got online and looked it up.  The reviews pegged it as one of the best Gyro sandwiches in the area, even including the Greek section in Tarpon Springs.  And today is Wednesday.  This doesn’t happen very often, that we are at a place on the exact day when it is open or offers a special.  We usually arrive when it’s closed or not available.  So on our way out of town, we made the detour to this place.  Not much room around here so I double parked the RV and left the engine running while Deb ran out in the rain to fetch a couple of Gyro sandwiches.

We then drove out of town to our campsite here in the Cypress Creek Preserve.  It took over an hour to get here due to the pouring rain and the horrible Florida traffic, but we had those sandwiches once we parked for the night.  And the reviews were spot on.  They were delicious.  And huge.  We got our money’s worth with that meal. 

So if you are in the area, Gyro King just south of Tarpon Springs is a great place for a sandwich.