Forty-four years. Forty-four years ago, when Wendy and I were traveling around the country, without an agenda, with nothing to do but to enjoy each other and this country, staying in national and state parks as we traveled eastward, we promised each other, “We’ll do this again someday.” And here we are. It looks like this will be the year when we see national parks spanning the country from the Everglades to Glacier. And not only are we embarking at long last on fulfilling a decades-old promise, we are doing so in the centennial year of the National Parks system.
Everglades National Park is a fitting beginning, different from anything we’ve ever done before. While most national parks were established to preserve some dramatic panorama for future generations of visitors (imagine Teddy Roosevelt seeing Yellowstone for the first time), Everglades was established solely to protect an ecosystem. Over 1.5 million acres of what is essentially a slow-moving river (only 1/4-mile per day), a “river of grass,” as is said, 60 miles wide and only a few inches deep, flowing from Lake Okeechobee southward towards Florida Bay.
After a quick stop at the visitor center at the entrance, we drove the 38 miles to the Flamingo campground, visitor center, and marina.
Set up at Flamingo Campground. (And yes, I did set up my ham radio station, although I only had time to operate for a few minutes.)
And once here, we wasted no time in doing what we like best about such places: visiting the educational displays, attending the ranger talks, and generally exploring what makes each national park worthy of its stature.
But here, because the Everglades does not exist to preserve things worth seeing, experiencing the Everglades is different than the western parks we’ll visit this summer. Here, the experience is quieter and subtler. It is not less spiritual, but spiritual in a difference sense, not so much standing in awe of the grandeur of creation but more marveling at the intricacy and complexity of the created order in its hidden spaces. As one of the rangers said, the Everglades “whispers” its message.
The “river of grass” at the Snake River slough, “only” 6 miles wide.At Snake River slough, a barred owl hooting away back in a thicket.
One day we tour a boat tour through the mangroves lining the Buttonwood Canal, through Coot Bay, and into Whitewater Bay.
Baby American Crocodile, and no one even noticed his big brother behind him!
The deadly Manchineel tree: “Standing beneath the tree during rain will cause blistering of the skin from mere contact with this liquid (even a small drop of rain with the milky substance in it will cause the skin to blister). … ingestion [of the sweet, apple-like fruit] may produce severe gastroenteritis with bleeding, shock, bacterial superinfection, and the potential for airway compromise due to edema. … Juan Ponce de León was struck by an arrow that had been poisoned with Manchineel sap during battle with the Calusa in Florida, dying shortly thereafter.”And we even did a ranger-guided canoe trip on a five-mile canoe trail out and back from Nine-Mile Lake. The trip provided a bit of comic relief since, firstly, we are old, feeble geezers who don’t know how to paddle a canoe, and secondly, the wind was howling at 15 miles per hour, gusting to 25, which meant the canoe frequently got caught by the wind and headed sideways into the swamp. Still, it was a great morning.
We also “experienced” the Everglades in one of its less appealing aspects: mosquitos. We’re told that this is an “unusual” winter. It may be. This winter has been wetter than usual (normal rainfall in January is 2.5 inches, but this year it was 12.5 inches), and one can imagine that the surplus of standing water has given the little suckers a windfall of breeding sites. Either way, we ventured out only when slathered with DEET and the first few moments inside the camper were always spent trying to clap in mid-air fast enough to squish the little beasts between our palms.
We took advantage of one surprising opportunity for a side trip to the old Nike missile base, now a historical site within the Park.
For people of my era, the cold war, and in particular the Cuban missile crisis, is not only part of our history, it is part of our being. It’s easy to joke about the backyard bomb shelters and the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, but I remember, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, going with my mom to the grocery store, and everything was gone. Everything. I stood there seeing nothing but empty shelves. No milk, no produce, no bread, no canned goods. Nothing. And even as a twelve-year old, I was convinced that war was upon us. Fireballs were going to light up the sky, and for those not immolated by blasts, it was going to be a nasty battle for survival. Memories like that formed us all, and they are part of us even today.
The crisis started in October 1962 when U2 spy planes overflying Cuba saw that the Soviet Union had installed short- and medium-range missile bases in Cuba. A missile launched from Cuba could hit Washington D.C. in 13 minutes. The nuclear warheads for those missiles were on Soviet ships headed for Cuba, and Kennedy imposed a “quarantine” (that is, a blockade) around Cuba and threatened to destroy any Soviet ship that tried to run the blockade. The Soviets said they viewed the blockade as an act of war (it is), that they had every intention of running the blockade, and would use any means necessary, including nuclear weapons, to protect their freedom to navigate the seas. Kennedy then issued his famous threat that any use of nuclear weapons against anywhere in the western hemisphere would be met with an unlimited retaliatory counterstrike on the Soviet Union. The situation was escalating to the point that the very end of civilization was seemingly inevitable.
During this time, south Florida was the scene of a military buildup not seen since World War II. Hundreds of military trucks driving down the streets, military bombers landing at every airport available, and trucks and trains carrying missiles arriving every day. Even as the crisis subsided, we all realized that the threat to our very existence could come from as close as sixty miles south. In 1965, the National Park Service gave permission to the Defense Department to build a Nike missile base inside the Park to guard against that threat. That base survives today as a historical site: Nike Missile Base HM-69.
Surprisingly, even though one can hardly imagine an experience less Everglades-ish than immersing oneself in the details of mutually assured nuclear destruction, both of us agree that the tour of the missile base was a highlight of the trip.
So, once again, we find ourselves leaving too soon. Too much to do and not enough time. In a sense, that’s the inevitable consequence of racing around Florida, spending only a few days in numerous places, as we scout out possible locations to escape Atlanta winters. But in other places giving short shrift to the locale was tolerable. Here, I wish I had made the Everglades a break in the place-to-place dash and booked a stop of at least a week. It deserves it. If we can make it back someday (I hope we can), we’ll definitely spend more time here, just listening to Everglades whispers.
A friend suggested that, since I was heading off to Florida, I should read at least one of the books by Carl Hiaasen. I’d never heard of Hiaasen, so I read the reviews and picked Stormy Weather. As I learned, Hiaasen is an op-ed columnist for the Miami Herald with a political philosophy that does not, shall we say, align on very many points with my own. Which means that ordinarily I’d be reading his works only to the extent of my practice of being aware of how the enemy thinks. Except for two things. First, he is a gifted writer and the book Stormy Weather is hilarious. Second, the principal theme that runs throughout his books is particularly relevant to this trip: through the irresistible influence of developers, tourists, and corrupt politicians, Florida has been destroyed by some weird combination of vulgarity, venality, greed, and lunacy.
As I mentioned, we didn’t see any such thing in Cedar Key. We got a hint of the Hiaasen Complaint in Sarasota, mainly because of mile after mile of seemingly aimless traffic. But now, in Naples, we are confronted by the Hiaasen Complaint fully substantiated. It’s hard to describe this subculture. In the outskirts of Naples, it’s mile after mile of roads, sometimes seven lanes wide in each direction (that’s right–seven!), lined on both sides with mall after mall, all of them overflowing with shoppers! Stopping at a COSTCO to reprovision a few staples, we found the store so overflowing that the checkout lines, no kidding, extended so far into the store that there were “merge lanes” in the product aisles! Any break to the malls? Yes, but only where they were interrupted by garish, gated communities with signs proclaiming, “Homes to $2 Million Plus.”
Old town Naples, particularly the Fifth Avenue area, once one fights the traffic to get there, is chock-full of trendy restaurants and up-scale boutiques, neither of which is our style.
But then, there’s “real Naples.” “Real” in the sense of “unreal.” As of June 2015, Naples has the highest per capita income of any city in America. Two-thirds of all American billionaires (“billionaires,” with a “b”) live in Naples. In the Port Royal area, homes go for $20 to $75 million, except that at the lower end of that range they’re basically tear-downs. Really. Some bargains can be had across the river, such as at Aqualane, where the homes are in the $10 to $20 million range, although that area is removed from the beach and one has to drive (not that!) to get to a beach. No wonder the homes are so devalued. Location, location, location. And this isn’t just a couple homes … we’re talking about dozens of homes spread across multiple areas. And, even weirder, 80% of the owners in these areas spend less than 4 weeks per year in their homes.
Home of Dick Portillo, who sold his chain of Chicago hot dog restaurants to Berkshire-Hathaway, with his 112-foot Westport “Top Dog.”
So, what of the Hiaasen Complaint? One can certainly wag his finger at the populace here, full of disdain for those who don’t share one’s keen judgment and moral sensibility. I have to be somewhat careful about such moral superiority since I’m basically in the set being wagged at (as I expect Hiaasen is as well). But putting aside all of that, the principal “appeal” of Naples just doesn’t hold much appeal for us. The climate is wonderful, the surrounding natural areas are great, and the people have been uniformly friendly and outgoing. But Naples qua Naples is basically uninteresting and can be easily skipped.
Speaking of the surrounding areas, we did have a chance to visit the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary (due to the recommendation of a friend, the same friend actually). Wow. Easily in the same class as the Lower Suwanee NWR, and a wonderful side-trip in the Naples area. Unfortunately, it has been an unusually wet January in this area, so the swamp, which is normally drying out this time of year, is pretty much flooded, which has made the area not as conducive to wildlife and bird viewing as normal. But still, it took us hours to walk along the 2-1/4 mile boardwalk, and we enjoyed every minute of it. We’ll be back.
And, of course, numerous Bald Cyprus:
For all of its appeal, though, I cannot avoid commenting that the Audubon Society does manifest a tendency to the very philosophical defect that plagues most environmentalist thinking, namely the elevation of “nature” over people. For example, one series of displays shows the increasing number of people and the decreasing number of wading birds in south Florida, exponentially trending in opposing directions. Implied in the display is, “Look! This is terrible! People are going up and birds are going down!” So what? I thought. I wanted to collar some hapless Audubon volunteer with a confrontation, “OK … birds like south Florida and people like south Florida. What’s the right balance? People have to eat, which means we need farmland. We need homes and paper products, both of which mean harvesting trees. How much and where? People enjoy a warm, temperate climate in the winter. What’s your plan to meet that simple aspect of human welfare?” I didn’t. I actually think of the Audubon Society as being on the more reasonable end of the environmentalist spectrum, but I found the content of their message long on doctrine and short on sensible, balanced messaging. Still, it’s a great place to visit.
Otherwise, it’s been a relaxing week. We’ve spent some time here enjoying this wonderful RV resort, which is about the nicest RV resort we’ve ever been to, certainly in the category of the RV resorts in Cashiers and Hilton Head, although our little ACE looks a little out of place.
To their credit, no one really seems to mind that we’re definitely the trailer trash of the neighborhood. There was a huge gathering for the Superbowl. There are community breakfasts every morning. One night we got together with a bunch of the residents for a “spirited” (read: “highly competitive”) game of trivia. And one night a local guide came by and gave a fascinating talk on fishing in the Chokoloskee Island/Thousand Islands area of Florida. This resort is probably a little out of our budget for long-term stays, but this is definitely one of the better watering holes around and a great place to camp out while seeking warmer climes.
Wednesday (Feb 3). So, we’re here at the Sun-n-Fun RV Resort in Sarasota. What can one say about this place? It’s H-U-G-E. 600 sites (although many of them are park models), jammed together, all full hook-ups with cable TV, and it goes on for miles. It’s got two pools, a three-story water slide, hot tubs, an exercise facility (with over 130 exercise programs), a steam room and sauna, an on-site restaurant and bar, and live entertainment almost every night. Plus, it has facilities for billiards, volleyball, Frisbee golf, mini-golf, pickleball, tennis, shuffleboard, horseshoes, bocce ball, lawn bowling, something called petanque, and something else called ga-ga ball, which seems to involve throwing a ball into an octagon with a mass of old geezers and letting them grapple for possession. It even has a track for racing radio-controlled model cars. It boasts over 150 activities, including biking; jogging; fishing in a private lake; poker; bingo; woodworking, lapidary, and stained glass shops; music ensembles; and numerous educational classes, including music lessons and computer operations; as well as a huge variety of special interest clubs (like quilting, music, and every other hobby one can think of). It even has its own ham radio club and club station, W4SNF. And, there are about a gazillion golf courses in the area. And, the resort is only a few minutes from downtown Sarasota, Siesta Key and other islands, and countless, beautiful beaches. As one of the reviewers said, “If you’re bored here, it’s your own fault.”
Our next-door neighbors, here from Kansas and partway through a six-month stint, and who have already booked next year’s six-month stay, raved about the breadth of things to do. They also say that people here are the friendliest they’ve ever met. And this is no low-class trailer park. The rigs here are all high-end, very expensive RVs, with accessory vehicles to match. The whole place impresses me as something akin to a seniors’ development, like Sun City or The Villages, but structured around high-end RVs.
Still, though, we’re not sure this is our kind of place. This is our first experience with this kind of environment, and maybe this is what senior living in Florida is all about. So far, we like Cedar Key better. But still … For now, we’re going to reserve judgment and see if this kind of an experience grows on us.
Thursday (Feb 4): I love circuses (circi?). I love the modern variety (like Cirque de Soliel), but I also love the old-fashioned kind, like the old Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey variety I remember as a kid. I think the latter variety is pretty much passe, victims of PETA-induced silliness, OSHA-induced worker safety mandates, and for all I know, EPA-induced elephant poop regulations. Too bad. I guess circuses still exist, but the current “Legends” manifestation of the old circus show just seems to be missing something.
But today we went to The Ringling, where one finds the summer home of John & Mable Ringling, a circus museum, and an art museum, all now operated by Florida State University. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from the Ringling mansion, Ca’d’Zan (which is Venetian for “House of John”). I’ve been to rich people’s mansions before (like the Biltmore), and there’s a limit to how many gold-plated toilet seats I can ogle before the wretched excess of it all makes me, well, wretch. But somehow this place was different.
Why was Ca’d’Zan different? Odd as it may seem for a home built by someone who was a successor to P.T. Barnum, it actually seemed less obscene than places like the Biltmore. There’s a way in which the ostentatious display of other mansions is, ironically, vulgar and showy. Ca’d’Zan feels like a place built not to show it to others, but because John and Mable actually liked the stuff they had and enjoyed being around it. I did find some confirmation of the concept (actually both Wendy and I noticed the same thing) in the appearance of the clientele on the tour: none of them wore jeans or T-shirts. They were all nicely dressed as if they were going to someone’s home, not as if they were unemployed ranch hands who got an unexpected chance to gawk at the richies.
But the highlight was definitely the circus museum. And the highlight of the highlight was the Howard Brothers Circus Model, 44,000 pieces of hand-made animals, people, trains, and tents, showing exactly what happens when the circus comes to town. It took nearly 20 years to first construct the model and it’s been growing and improving for 30 years since then. The process depicted in the model defies belief: over a hundred train cars, hundreds of draught horses to pull the wagons and provide the force to raise the tents, at least five venues including the Big Top that could seat 15,000 people, operations to deal with hundreds of show animals, additional facilities and operations to accommodate the crew and performers. It was in essence a small entertainment city that would show up, be constructed, operate, and then be taken down, all in a day. Amazing. And the model depicts it all, all in 3/4″ scale.
Friday (Feb 5): Off to the beach. We’d heard that the beaches at the Sarasota/Bradenton area are worth seeing. They are. Beautiful white sand, wide beaches, and free from crowds, even at the peak of the February snowbird season. We took the afternoon off and drove over to Longboat Key, north up to Bradenton, and then back. This is definitely a place for quality beach time.
Coquina Beach
Bottom Line: So, after three days here in Sarasota, what’s the verdict? Sarasota is a great place, with lots to do and definitely worth another visit. Would we come back to Sun-n-Fun? That’s a harder question. We both agree we weren’t here long enough to fully explore the option. So, we’re going to check out other places in south Florida and return to that question at the end of the trip.
Ah, the joys of a “learning experience.” The trip from LaGrange was completely uneventful until we decided to make a last-minute deviation from the dictates of the GPS-who-must-be-obeyed. Heading down I-75 to Exit 384 for Florida Highway 24, we saw a sign that announced “Exit 390: Truck Route to FL-26 and FL-24.” Truck route? That’s us. So, off we went. Well, I’m sure there were truck-suitable roads somewhere, but they were never beneath our wheels, especially not as we got routed onto a narrow (like 10-feet wide) horse farm path, crowded on both sides with huge oaks, with air-conditioner-eating branches looming merely inches above us. After we emerged 15 minutes later, Wendy and I tried to figure out the “lesson learned” from that little jaunt, and the best we could come up with is, “If the route looks wrong, STOP!” Seems kinda self-evident in hindsight, doesn’t it? Oh well, other than the terror factor, it was actually a pretty, and memorable, detour.
So we set up at Site #3 at Cedar Key RV Resort, relaxed for the afternoon, and readied ourselves for the stay.
Sunday (Jan 31): Off to Cedar Key proper, and an insight as to why traveling around, without an agenda or preconceived expectations, is so rewarding. The town of Cedar Key is hard to describe: a rural town that used to be a blue collar fishing village, trying to pull itself up by appealing to the tourist and artiste trades, with some success. In places. Mostly.
And then, in the midst our ambivalence, three (count ’em, three!) experiences that made the trip not only worth it, but recommended!
First, doing nothing but hang around the boat ramp, we watched a guy launch the strangest looking boat: open transom, with an outboard that dropped down through the center of the hull just aft of the helm. He and his buddy were donning wet suits, and we learned they were going out to “seed” clam beds, which caused us to research the activity. And here’s the story. In the 1990s, the government banned fishing with gill nets, supposedly out of concern for the welfare of dolphins, or turtles, or something, which wiped out the local fishing industry, thereby lowering the welfare of humans. (That trade-off is a topic for another day.) However, in a rare display of compassion for the human toll of such dictates, the government funded the start-up and retraining of fisherman to pursue “bivalve aquaculture” (i.e., clam and oyster farming). There are three phases to such farming. In the hatchery, fertilized eggs and free-swimming larval clams are reared under controlled conditions in large tanks filled with filtered, sterilized seawater, until they are about 1 mm long. Then, it’s off to a nursery, which can be either in tanks or raceways built on land, or in nets out in the bay, where the clams grow to 4 to 6 mm in size. Finally, the clams are placed in nets and taken to “grow-out” areas for 12 to 14 months where they grow to marketable size and are harvested. Each of the former, displaced fisherman was given the opportunity to lease two 2-1/2 acre plots out in the bay for rearing clams. The program has since expanded, allowing the fishermen an additional five acres. An excellent explanation of the process occurs on the Southern Cross Seafoods website. Southern Cross Seafoods also offers tours of their farms, although it looks like we won’t be able to make it. An item for the next trip.
Our research indicated that the aquaculture industry is, well, a hard way to make a living. Competition from large commercial operations, predation in the clam beds, the vagaries of weather and sea conditions, and fickle markets, all bear down on those trying to hang on. An article a few years ago from the Gainesville Sun explains the difficulties. Is clam farming a harder life than fishing? Who knows. But still, our encounter with this aspect of American life, fascinating in its complexity and implications, would never have occurred but for a side trip to a small town and a chance conversation with a local fisherman in an improbable boat.
A clam fisherman off to seed the clam beds.
Second, we stopped for lunch at Tony’s Seafood Restaurant for a bowl of clam chowder. Which wouldn’t warrant mention except that it’s the best clam chowder in the world. Really. In 2009, Chef Eric Jungklaus, owner of the restaurant, entered his clam chowder in the clam chowder world competition in Newport, Rhode Island. And he won. At ground zero of the blue-blooded, hoity-toity, clam chowder aristocrats, some guy from a small restaurant in a bitsy Florida town gave ’em all a good old Southern what-for! Then he entered again in 2010, and won again! And then he entered again in 2011, and won again! At this point, faced with wins three years in a row, the organizers “retired” the recipe and politely “excused” Chef Eric from further competition. And the chowder plainly deserves every accolade it gets; it’s not only rich and creamy (which is to be expected since it’s made from half-and-half and whipping cream), it has a spicy kick that lingers on the back of the tongue for a few seconds after every mouthful. It really is the best chowder in the world, and it can be ordered online. See the link above for more information. But the point is, how can this be? How can the best chowder in the world be found in a small restaurant, in an old building, in a barely hanging on small town? Because that’s the nature of this country, and such is why we travel.
Tony’s Seafood Restaurant, home of the best clam chowder in the world.
Finally, Wendy and I enjoy learning about nature as we tour around. On our way back from Cedar Key, we spied a sign: “Florida Nature Coast Conservancy – Railroad Trestle Nature Trail.” So, off we went. The Florida Nature Coast Conservancy, as it turns out, is a small organization housed in Cedar Key with only five projects to its credit. But sometimes only the locals can focus on preservation opportunities too small for others to notice. Such as an old railroad trestle. A railroad line once ran from Fernandina, across Florida, to Cedar Key. The first train arrived in Cedar Key on March 1, 1861. Daily passenger and freight services from Fernandina Beach continued until the early 1880s when the railroad bypassed Cedar Key for the larger port of Tampa. Service to the island gradually declined until the last train departed from Cedar Key on July 7, 1932. But in the 80+ years since the railroad ceased operations, the course of the railroad line grew back to its natural condition. And now one can stroll along the former lines where the Conservancy has placed dozens of small signs, each carefully explaining what the plant is, where it grows, and what it can be used for. Think of the effort and care that went into that little project. Wonderful.
The trestle end of the nature trail.
Monday (Feb 1): Many years ago, Wendy and I met a couple who did their RV travels along the lines of one theme for each trip: the best state parks for one circumnavigation, but also less obvious things like minor league baseball parks, presidential libraries or birthplaces, or civil war battlefield monuments. But one of their themes struck a chord: small, local museums. As they explained it to us, they discovered that there are hundreds of top-notch museums, mostly dedicated to local history or specialized themes. I recall their mentioning the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, and the Boy Scout Museum in Dallas, Texas, both of which are on our lists. So, we added to our travel ambitions the idea that we would seek out local museums wherever we happen to be.
So, this morning we headed off on our bikes and, after a brief stop at the Cedar Key Cemetery and park, made our way to the Cedar Key Museum State Park.
En route to the Cedar Key Museum State Park.
The museum itself is very nice. Small, but with a full history of the Cedar Key area and a wonderful collection of shells from all over the world. Two things made the museum worth the $2 admission fee. First, the significance of places, like people, often derives from both where they’ve come from and where they’re going. We understood better now the Cedar Key psyche knowing that Cedar Key once operated as one of the principal ports for trade with Mexico, Central, and South America. But second, like the clam farming encounter, travel forces one to realize how much he doesn’t know, how much goes on in the world every day that he just never thought about. An example: pencils. In the 1800s, Cedar Key supported a thriving operation supplying cedar for the A.W. Faber (later Eberhard Faber) pencil factory in New Jersey. And the other part of the pencil, the graphite core, came from graphite mines in, believe it or not, Siberia (!), where Faber had managed to lock in a lucrative (!) graphite supply contract. The graphite went from the Siberian mine, 300 miles by train, to Irkutsk, and then by ship to New Jersey. All of that for a pencil? So now we found ourselves back to online research, once again captivated by the complexity and, in a sense, the beauty of the networks that operate under our very noses.
Tuesday (Feb 2): The Lower Suwanee National Wildlife Refuge, 53,000 acres of estuaries, swamps, pine lands, and hardwood, is different than many wildlife preserves in that it’s managed for user friendliness. Even to the point of having a nine-mile, meandering road through the NWR that allows visitors to see the full range of habitats present in this area. So, we packed a picnic lunch and headed off, taking our time to explore the area.
But first, a digression: the NWR exists without going too far in two of the ways in which I sometimes diverge from my environmentalist friends. First, environmentalists often take humans out of the equation, as if there’s “nature” and there’s “mankind.” One sees it in expressions that human activities are “unnatural.” Environmentalists go too far, probably for the same reason, in supposing that the way to respect nature is to make it inaccessible to humans. Although there were a few areas in the NWR that were off limits, the ranger we spoke to encouraged us to drive the roads, hop the fences, walk the back country. In short, the refuge seems to say, “You are part of this. Come see it, and experience it, and in the process you will learn about yourself.” Second, environmentalists often take the easy road to preservation and conservation: passing restrictions on human activity without having to pay the full costs of what they extract from others. That seems to be less so at the Lower Suwanee NWR: much of the land was purchased, fair and square, by the Nature Conservancy and then donated to the Fish and Wildlife Service for the NWR. On both counts, this is a place that welcomes humans and we were glad to be there.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming … Along “Cabin Road,” one of the roads that branches off from the Lower Suwanee Nature Drive:
Out to the McCormick Creek estuary, a huge expanse of sawgrass (I think) that seems so out of place that one wonders if it were dropped from outer space.
Further up the nature road, one of dozens of ponds:
And eventually up to the visitor center and NWR headquarters, where, after having lunch at the rangers’ picnic table, we headed out on the River Trail:
To the Suwanee River itself:
I know that the rap on Florida is that it’s largely populated by despoiling corporate profiteers and land developers, all of whom are the environmental equivalent of serial rapists. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case in this area of Florida. The area is largely unspoiled and manifests a deep concern for the importance of the natural order. It is as worthy a place as any we’ve seen in the Southeast to truly appreciate the beauty of God’s creation.
Tomorrow we head off to Sarasota, but knowing that there’s much still we want to do in Cedar Key: kayaking out to the keys, sampling the restaurants, visiting the historical society, touring the clam farming facility, and further exploring the NWR, including the Shell Mound area and the mouth of the Suwanee River. We’ll definitely be back.
At times it seemed like it would never happen. And we kept encountering delays and complications. And a watched pot never boils. And a rolling stone is worth two in the bush. Whatever. It’s finally here. In a couple hours we leave for Florida for a one-month-plus meandering trip, the first chapter in our retirement ambition to tour around and see as much as we can of this beautiful country.
The itinerary is: Cedar Key (4 days), Sarasota (3 days), Naples (for a week), Everglades (3 days in the park itself at Flamingo), then 5 days over on the Miami side, Chokoloskee Island (for a week), Okeechobee (for a couple days), and then a quick stop north of Orlando to see friends at The Villages. The trip is WAY heavy on way-too-expensive “resort” style RV parks, but such appears to be the nature of snowbirding in Florida during the peak of the season.
On our honeymoon, back in 1972, as we traveled around the country staying in campgrounds (and sleeping in our little rubber-coated canvas tent that we bought with S&H Green Stamps), we resolved that, someday, somehow, “we’ll do this again …” Nearly 44 years later, “someday” is finally here.
I carry with me the idea that one benefit of a motorhome is that visits to see relatives, or go to weddings, or attend college graduations, or whatever, can be handled with a road trip. No need to bother with the air travel, hotel, or rental car hassles, I can just jump in ACE and follow my nose. This trip: a test-of-concept trip to see our son whose employer has sent him off on a 6-month stint in Port Arthur, Texas. It’s a good test of my idea, I think, because (no offense intended) my pre-planning evaluation of the Beaumont area leads me to believe I’d never want to visit the area otherwise. So, the test is this: which of the following three options is best: (1) a road trip in ACE, (2) the same road trip but driving a car and staying in hotels, or (3) the air-travel-hell alternative? (That might telegraph that I’ve prejudged at least one of the alternatives.)
Thursday, November 12: LaGrange to Biloxi, MS
Biloxi is just about exactly half-way, and it fits into our 3:00/300 Rule, so first stop-over was at the Majestic Oaks RV Resort. And how does it rate? I posted a review here, but the bottom line is that it’s just a “7” in my book: it’s OK for an overnight stop, but not more. Fortunately, all we wanted was an overnight stop.
Majestic Oaks — Site #59
Friday, November 13: Biloxi to Beaumont, TX
What a trip! The drive from Biloxi and into Louisiana was uneventful, and we found the scenery (mile after mile of swamps and marshes) completely interesting. And we were really enjoying the progress of the miles until we hit Mile Marker 121 in Louisiana. At that point, we encountered the worst road conditions I have ever experienced. The junctions between concrete road segments was so abrupt that the motorhome was being shaken to pieces, I could barely control the vehicle, and the dogs were literally being thrown into the air, so much so that they were cowering and shaking, obviously suffering from PTSD (post-travel stress disorder). We slowed to 40 mph, but it didn’t help, and we eventually got off the freeway looking for an alternate. Even on the off-ramp, though, creeping along at 10 mph, the motorhome was being violently launched upwards. Finding no easy alternative, we had no choice but to return to I-10, where that traveling hell continued until around MM 104, at which point the road conditions subsided and we were able to continue on at normal speed. One lesson, though: I definitely will get softer shocks!
Eventually, we made it to our weekend destination: Gulf Coast RV Resort in Beaumont. If Majestic Oaks was just a plain “7,” this place is one step down: just a plain “6.” My review is here.
Gulf Coast – Site 124.
But we didn’t come here for the resorts. We came to visit our son, and on that count the trip was a stunning success.
Friday night, Cliff took us to a local place recommended by one of the guys at the facility: the Neches River Wheelhouse, located down an improbable series of teeny, dark roads. Important safety tip #1: if guys who have lived and worked in an area for years say that a particular restaurant is the place to go, go there. We started off with the “pistolettes” (a split-top roll fried & stuffed with crawfi sh and some special pistollette sauce), followed by fresh redfish (blackened & topped with crawfi sh & shrimp in a creamy tasso ham sauce) and other local favorites.
Saturday morning, we started off by going to Beaumont and stopping by Cliff’s apartment. Then, off to Port Arthur and to see the facility where Cliff works, plus tour around the local area. The facility itself looks like what you would expect a tank farm with various pipe manifolds to look like: a tank farm with various pipe manifolds.
What set the area apart, though, was downtown Port Arthur. Words really can’t describe the decay and blight of the area, and I was so fascinated by the scene that I neglected to take a picture. Block after block of boarded up structures, buildings with the roofs caved in, even a majestic old hotel ready to collapse in on itself. Absolutely nothing survives. We remarked that Hollywood could make a post-apocalyptic movie in downtown Port Arthur without having to construct any sets. The Wikipedia article puts it thusly: “The commercial center of Port Arthur was at its peak in the early 1900s. Together with the effects of suburbanization, which drew off wealthier residents to new housing away from town, gradually taking businesses with them, from 1960 until 1974, successive waves of economic recession caused much distress in the town. … [Then, in 2005,] Hurricane Rita struck a direct hit on the Proctor Street Seawall, and damaged many downtown businesses and homes.”
After returning to ACE to feed the dogs, and watch a little bit of the Dawgs game, we came up with a plan. Again, one of Cliff’s colleagues recommended Stingaree, a seafood joint out on the end of the Bolivar peninsula. Now convinced of the validity of Safety Tip #1 (see above), there were two ways to get there: the fast way (down the east side of Galveston Bay), or the long way (down the west side, to Galveston itself, and then via a ferry to the peninsula). Since Cliff had never been to Galveston, the correct choice was self-evident: Galveston, here we come.
Crossing over Galveston Bay on I-45, one is “treated” (if that’s the right word) to a aerial view towards Houston of mile-after-mile of refineries, chemical plants, tanks farms, and other necessities of our industrial economy. And then it’s Galveston itself, which is, I guess, the Texas equivalent of Panama City Beach. We stopped by Galveston Island State Park to see how it compared to Florida state parks, but found little to warrant a special trip there. So, off to the ferry for a quick ferry trip (18 minutes, although preceded by an hour-long wait) to the peninsula.
And then to Stingarees for dinner. And once again, a truly wonderful meal: seafood gumbo as an appetizer, fresh Gulf snapper with etouffee sauce, pecan-crusted snapper, and honey jalapeno shrimp. And a bit of key lime pie for dessert.
Then, back to ACE, goodbye to Cliff, and beddie-bye time for an early departure the next morning. Once again an overnight stop at Majestic Oaks, and then home.
Conclusion
Truly, this was a great and wonderful trip. Getting a chance to see where Cliff lives and works, the best and the worst of the area, was well worth it, even more so because it came with an excuse for a road trip. And, back to the question that started this post: which of the three alternatives is the best? The answer is 100% clear, no doubt: a road trip in ACE. Lodging costs are less, the food is better, and traveling by motorhome is WAY better than traveling by car.
Statistics for the Trip
Total distance: 1327 miles
Campground costs: $189.98 (2 x $54.99 (Majestic Oaks) and 2 x $40.00 (Gulf Coast))
Fuel cost: $271.75 (weighted average fuel cost: $1.87/gal) (woo hoo)
Weighted average fuel economy: 9.10 mpg
It’s been a L-O-N-G time since our last trip (May, to Land Between the Lakes), which is probably why I’ve been spending hours and hours (and more hours) relentlessly planning future trips. Month after month of no real RV’ing demands at least a virtual substitute. But now we’re here, for real, at Riverbend Campground in Hiawassee, Georgia.
But first — a digression. People often say that RV’ing is as much about the journey as the destination. So far, though, I’m not sure I’ve really figured out the journey thing. I think I’m pretty good about the destination part, and very good at figuring out how to get to the destination, but not so good at unplanned stops in the middle, much less a significant deviation that would take me off-route, delay the arrival, and (heaven forbid) potentially cause a rewrite of the entire plan.
This trip has taught me a lesson about the “journey” aspect of RV’ing. En route from LaGrange to Hiawassee, our practice of stopping every couple hours was thwarted by the fact that the portion of the trip in the 1-3 hour slot was all Atlanta urban hell, with no real place to take a relaxing break. Not even a rest area or tolerable gas station. So we found ourselves coming up on Blue Ridge, Georgia, after four hours of driving, road-weary, hungry, with both us and the dogs ready for a potty break, when Wendy spied a sign that said, “Fannin County Veterans Memorial Park.” “Turn here,” she said, and off we went on a “it’s all about the journey” detour down some narrow country road.
What a treat! Off the path, in Blue Ridge (population 1290), is a memorial to those men of Fannin County that have died in this nation’s wars. One obelisk for every war, with the names of the dead inscribed on each. Surrounding the park, all of the flags were at permanent half-staff. A plaque proclaims Duty-Honor-Country. And a Huey UH-1, with 1st Air Cav markings, sits on display.
And here’s the best part. The Memorial Park sits next to the Fannin County Middle School. Which means that every day, those kids go to school under the shadow, literally, of those who died so that they could go to school. Do the kids of that school realize the significance of what stands across the parking lot? Probably not. But will they someday hear an echo of voices telling them that duty to country sometimes demands the last full measure of devotion? I’m sure they will. In my mind’s eye, I can see a day when America is attacked and, for reasons some guy can only vaguely sense, he feels compelled to take up a gun and fight for his country. And those ghosts in the memorial who watched over him as a kid can rest well knowing the enduring influence of their sacrifices. Maybe what this country really needs is a veterans memorial on the grounds of every school in the nation.
Back to camping…
This trip was to Riverbend Campground, near Hiawassee. Very nice campground, with the Hiawassee River running right behind our site.
By chance, the FMCA Georgia Mountaineers chapter was at the campground, so we sat around and chatted with them for a while. One benefit of traveling with fellow RVers, it seems to me, is being able to pick their brains on an infinity of RV topics. One topic we discussed was the best timing and route for touring the Utah National Parks, and the President of the chapter even sent me a fully fleshed out itinerary based on his experience. We may have to link up with such groups regularly in the future.
Saturday we hiked Brasstown Bald, and learned that it’s amazing how strenuous it can be when two old geezers try to walk one-half mile up a steep path to the observation deck. But what a view!
Sunday it was off to see friends and go to church with them in Hayesville, NC (about 20 miles away), and then lunch, and then a couple more hikes.
Which is cause for another digression. Over the years, I seem to have lost touch with lots of people … no excuse, just too much to do and a procrastinating personality. But as we travel around, it’ll be fun to reconnect with friends and distant family in California, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, the Northeast, the Southeast, and wherever else our mobile society scatters us.
Statistics for the trip:
Trip distance: 439 miles
Campground cost: $32 x 3 nights.
Mileage: 8.45 mpg (all but the last 100 miles towing the toad)
I was just reading a post by some poor guy who lamented that he’s been camping and RV’ing for 45 years, and his family just told him that they’ve had it–they’re done with RV’ing. Fini. Kaput. What should I do, he asked? The consensus response seemed to be, “Tell them you’ll miss them…”
We’re on the other end of the spectrum. After camping and RV’ing for 43 years (as described on the Wendy & Skip page), we’re just getting started! With the wind-down in my career now in sight, we’re focused on doing those trips that will define our post-retirement time together. Some of the plans were working up:
1. Winter in Florida. After this year’s Florida trip got bollixed up with a series of improbable failures, we’re ready to try again. This time it’ll be down the west coast, hang around Naples and the Everglades (bucket list) for a while, and then back.
2. Summer in the National Parks. After heading out to Rocky Mountain National Park (I’ve never been there) and visiting friends in Boulder, it’ll be Grand Tetons NP, Yellowstone NP, Glacier NP, Little Big Horn, Devil’s Tower, Mt. Rushmore, and Badlands. There’s even a potential detour out to Mt. Rainier NP to link up with Son #2 if he can get away from Joint Base Lewis McChord for a while.
3. Winter out west. This one is still pretty iffy, but we have tour reservations for the 2017 Rose Parade, so we figure that, as long as we’re in the area, we might as well spend Christmas up in Washington visiting Son #2, and then do February in Tucson (or other areas of Arizona). I know, I know … most people might differ as to whether Los Angeles is “in the area” of Tacoma (it’s like 1100 miles), and 3 to 4 months on the road might be a bit much even for the likes of us. We’ll see…
And there are others in the works: a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a stop at AirVenture in Oshkosh (another bucket list item); Maine and Acadia NP; New Orleans and the D-Day Museum; South Texas and Big Bend NP; along with continuing annual trips in the summer to the Appalachian mountains and in the winter to warmer climes.
There are lots of contingencies in all this, but we have every intention of getting started as soon as possible and doing as much as we can in the time that we have. It’s a fact of life that we all think there will always be more time, and sometime there isn’t more time. Time’s up. And there’s lots we want to do before the giant gong in the sky goes off.
Now that both sons are campered-up, we thought it would be appropriate to get all three RVs in the same place. With Son #2 still at Ft. Leavenworth, and us in Atlanta, a rough half-way point is Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, a little-known national treasure consisting of over 170,000 acres federal land dedicated to every kind of outdoor recreation one can think of. We’d all been here back in 2007 (when both sons were with the 101st Airborne stationed at Ft. Campbell).
Piney Campground, Land Between the Lakes (2007)
So, 8 years later, it’s like coming home.
Hillman Ferry Campground, Site C63
Except that the 2007 trip was pre-K, as in “pre-kids.” So how would it work out with four little darlings, ages 2 to 6? On Thursday, May 14, Son #2 arrived from Leavenworth (although much later in the afternoon than planned), with Son #1 not due in until tomorrow, so the first afternoon was basically just hanging around, playing in the water and exploring the “secret fort” in Grandpa’s camper…
…until we were confronted with the truth of God’s plan that we are made male and female, and little boys are just different than little girls. Proof? Consider this. If you’re walking along the shore and find a disgusting, half-eaten, rotting, alligator gar, covered with maggots, what do you do?
Right … if you’re a little four-year-old boy, you pick it up and bring it around to show all the grownups what you’ve found (which, incidentally, made Mom throw up in her mouth).
Next day, Son #1 shows up, and we are all set up, three-in-a-row, ready for three days of fun in the sun!
Just one problem with the fun-in-the-sun plan: the sun. They had been forecasting pretty heavy rain and thunderstorms for whole weekend, but we decided to blaze on anyway, mostly because the likelihoods kept bouncing around, and the heaviest rains weren’t supposed to hit us anyway, and, well, whatever. On Friday night the storms hit, and they hit hard. So, we decided we had to serve up dinner and entertain the LDs in Ace, all five grown-ups, four kiddies, and three dogs. Fortunately, we had movies, good food, and Ace handles t-storms pretty well.
Next day, still raining (and forecast to continue to mid-afternoon), it was off to the planetarium and nature center.
Then back to Ace for lunch (inside again, still rain-bound), nap time, and then when the weather cleared, burgers, mac-n-cheese, and s’mores. And in the midst of that, we were treated to one of those moments that drives home the truth of the adage, “Whatever adults can plan, children can plan around.” With large areas of the campground pretty much mudded-up, the kids decided that nothing could be better than stomping, kicking, and sliding around in the drainage ditches.
But I guess that’s the point. There’s a lot to like in a trip like this: the camping itself, a great place like LBL, a chance for the two brothers to get together one last time before they’re on opposite ends of the country, more time for the cousins together, and, of course, whatever that magical thing is about kids in the woods. But, as I noted in my last post, the best part may be the virtue for children of disconnected time. I’m pretty sure that no parent ever said, “Hey–I know you’ve been shuttled from one planned environment to another for the past month, so let me make up for it by sending you out into the woods to stomp around in a sloppy drainage ditch.” But while camping, that’s not only OK, it’s the essence of the experience, in fact there are no other options, creating a memory for the kids that will stay with them forever.
4-8 March 2015: After bailing out early on the Florida trip due to mechanical issues, we did two things: (1) spent some quality time assessing whether there were any other lessons learned from the experience, and (2) since we had to head home anyway, thinking of ways to make the most of ferrying ACE back to its home base.
As to the former point, one more lesson learned:
Lesson 7: Travel-short or stay-long whenever possible. When moving from one location to another, we tend to use the 3/300 Rule–no more than 300 miles per day and off the road by 3:00 pm. But under that regimen, it’s 4:00 or later before we’re set up, dogs walked, and chores tended to, which means it’s really not practical to see the local sights. So, we’ve learned that if we are traveling to some point because there’s something there we want to do, we either have to travel for a shorter duration (say 100-150 miles per day, arrival NLT 1:00), or stay one or more extra days.
So, applying those lessons, we picked up ACE on Wednesday around noon and drove a mere 40 miles to our next stop, where we resolved to stay for three days. The stop was The Great Outdoors RV Resort. Wow. This place has over 600 RV sites, and the sites that are for sale range in cost from $40,000 for a concrete pad, to over $800,000 for a residence with an RV “garage” that’s nicer than my house! Add to that an onsite golf course, driving range, RV repair and supplies facility, chapel, two restaurants, cart rentals and repair, activities galore, and so on, and it’s hard not to be satisfied. One night we just happened to wander in to a lecture on the resident alligator population, which was as good as anything we’ve seen done by National Park Rangers! Here we are, safely tucked away at our site.
And the next day we headed off to Kennedy Space Center where we picked up some of the things we missed during our breakdown period, including the 2-1/2 hour tour and lunch with astronaut Ed Gibson, who spent 84 days on Skylab. Just before going to KSC, I had read one of Chuck Woodbury’s rvtravel.com columns in which he wondered if prolonged space travel would be a lot like being inside the RV for months on end. So I asked Ed Gibson: “I was reading a column that pointed out that a spacecraft like Skylab is not much bigger than the RVs that many of us travel around in, and I can’t imagine spending 84 days inside my RV. Did you ever just want to be back on earth and just get out, walk around, and breathe fresh air?”
He replied, “Not for a minute. Being there in space, looking at the expanse of earth every day, surrounded by the depth of space, completely overcame any feeling of confinement. Really it was the opposite. Everything seemed so infinite in all directions … It was almost too big.” Well, maybe, but to get there can you imagine sitting on top of a 6.2 million pound launch vehicle, with 5 engines developing 1.5 million pounds of thrust each?
Oh well, I’m too old to make the trip now…
Speaking of being too old, on Friday I became officially a “senior citizen”: that’s right, 65 years old. So, we headed to the local seafood restaurant for a celebratory dinner. Ah … the golden years!
After that, we headed on back, with ACE now working fine, the KSC experience completed, and us ready for the next trip.
