The Battle Of Ocean Pond

The morning after Thanksgiving dawned and I was up and about waving a camera and a dog at the world and expecting bright flamboyant Florida colors in the sky. However this was as good as it got and what started out as a test photograph ended up as the sole picture of the sky with any color other than gray. 

I stepped into the state park and followed Rusty's nose checked the scrub palmettos and pine forest in the state lands that didn't look so different to the National Forest land on the other side of the fence. A car had approached Thanksgiving evening as we sat down to our stuffing and beef dinner and the occupant said he had driven from the Olustee Monument State Park up the road. Weren't we surprised!

These palm fronds have spikes on the ends and make walking through them rather more painful than you might enjoy.

Thge trick then is to stick to the roads and trails.

Somebody with a powerful motor mower had carved a path through the pines. A local resident told us this is the site of a battle and the ground is apparently littered with human and other remains from the 1864 conflict at Olustee.

We were alone in the silent woodlands as we put the kettle on and got ready to seek our fortune in Gainesville at Trader Joe's. From the sublime to the prosaic.

The gods had figured out it was a day off for me so they obliged us with yet another sprinkle of rain.

I was untouchable, bathed in the rays of pure adoration from my very misguided dog;

We drove back to Highway 90, turned left off the dirt roads and pulled up at the Olustee Battlefield Monument. There were 5,500 Union troops coming from the east and they met up with 5,000 dug in Confederates at Olustee, near a lake still known as Ocean Pond which is the formal name for the battle that ensued in February 1864.

The Battle of Ocean Pond on 20th February happened  rather by accident and ended up being the largest Civil War conflict in Florida, hardly surprising as the peninsula was pretty much uninhabitable and key West, the largest city in the state was firmly in Union hands.

The short version is that Union troops landed in Jacksonville and the General in charge, Truman Seymour took it on himself to try to capture Tallahassee, the state capital. Had he succeeded you might have heard of him before today but the Confederates won the battle and the Federal forces contented themselves with holding Jacksonville while leaving Tallahassee alone.

The battle itself was a mess, with the Confederates dug in around Olustee Railroad station and the Federal General Seymour underestimating his opponents assuming them to be untrained militia. Instead the Confederates had regular troops who had been sent as reinforcements from Georgia and they shot up the groups of lackadaisical Union troops as they advanced piecemeal. The destruction of the Union Army had a weird footnote inasmuch as their retreat from the battlefield was covered by African American soldiers. They did their job valiantly and more than that their fighting presence on the battlefield enraged the Confederates who stopped to slaughter the wounded black soldiers and thus allowed the bulk of the Union army to escape back to Jacksonville. Weird details of history. 

Not so weird were the casualty lists: The Union army lost 1800 dead wounded and missing while the Confederates  lost about a thousand men the same way.  A pretty spot in which to die I suppose but what  a waste.

This is the other end of the road closed by the gate, "Road Closed: Gate Ahead" read the sign. Rusty wasn't interested so we inspected some trash cans instead.

Trader Joe's was empty according to my wife, the masked shopper, so she amused herself checking the aisles while Rusty slept and I read on the bed in our portable home.

My wife got this picture later when we stopped for dinner, but while we drive he prefers to be up front with us, snug between Layne's legs. He is getting used to the van, as are we, as we continue to refine our use of the vehicle and the accessories we learn to live with. We learned form boat living that adapting to the space and the systems would take time and we are finding it to be so. I have no idea how people step out of their homes into a tiny space, with no prior experience, and don't go mad adapting as they learn on the road..

People who don't know me very well think I am impulsive but I am the least impetuous person om the planet. What looks like a wild unplanned burr under the saddle is a carefully thought out idea gradually pout into practice. During the long drive home my wife and I reminisced about our first foray into the world of RVs looking at vehicles at the Tampa show in 2014 with Cheyenne the ever patient Labrador in tow. Commercial vehicles never convinced us with their shabby construction and weird lowest denominator equipment choices. By the time we stumbled on an affordable custom builder we were ready to make the leap but it took us almost six years to get there. 

We got what we wanted, our own eccentricities satisfied to a build quality we cannot complain about. I feel lucky and furthermore I feel very thankful we both enjoy this odd way of traveling and Rusty is getting used to the program too. It was a good week away from home and in three weeks we plan to do it again. 

The open road:

Boondocking Holiday

I admit I am strangely in love with the Florida countryside. It's easy to be astonished by extra long sand beaches, if you like that sort of thing, and the tropical islands of the Keys hold their own obvious fascination if you are into the tropics and not everyone is. I like it, all of it, the cattle country in the center of the state, horse ranches and white post-and-rail fencing around Ocala, the huge live oak trees Up North and the Alabama back country along the panhandle. To me the sandy trails and scrubby pine forests of the national forests are as much worth exploring as the dreary mangrove flats in my own backyard. Rusty? He has mixed feelings, fear of the unknown mixed  with the pleasure he gets at being outdoors on a. sixty degree day.

Florida has 175 state parks ranging from Fort Taylor in Key West to every kind of historic site, forested backwater, canoe trails and alligator ponds up and down this most varied and under appreciated of states. Frankly I like living in the state that has given the nation and possibly the world the "Florida Man" memes. If you haven't had the good luck to laugh at Florida Man let me explain a bit. The Internet has given rise to reports of people in Florida doing stupid, preventable, harmful things in ways that are absurd and slapstick. Harold Lloyd made a very good living acting like Florida man in early films. Nowadays it is fashionable to deplore the antics of Florida Man but I enjoy slapstick and eccentricity writ large. Florida is a terrible place to be bored or to be a bore, and my fear for Key West while Layne Rusty and I go traveling for a few years, is that the bores will take over. Already Florida Man is extinct in the Keys. Especially in relation to Key West. So Florida is far from boring and to back that up the State of Florida is doing a surprising job of actually preserving the unique pieces of wilderness it can for future generations. Here Florida people can hunt and screw around in the wilderness. Me with a camera, them with guns. 

Sand and mud and water are the obstacles to a deep woods retreat in Florida. Dispersed camping as the National Forest Service describes it allows for lonely campers to hang in the woods for up to two weeks and this form of van life is known as boondocking, ie: parking without outside facilities, a form of vacationing most often enjoyed in the western States, places with scenic vistas, majestic grandeur and fewer people over a larger area.  In those places dusty trails are filled with rocks and slopes and the sort of landscape most often shown in 20th century cowboy flicks. Florida is to all intents and purposes a sandpit with high heat and humidity, insects and great swimming beaches. The bits in the middle belong to people who live here and can't take the time to go rock hopping in Utah but limit themselves to sand spinning on their ATVs in these more modest backwoods.

Layne and I did briefly think about buying a four wheel truck and putting a camper shell on the back but several features of such a vehicle dissuaded us. The cab has no pass through from the truck requiring the campers to walk outside to switch between driving and living. Plus access to the rear always requires several steps as the camper is set high on the truck bed. Against all this you get off road capability. Let's face it: we aren't on going on the road to do deep off-road exploration and we know it. We wanted comfort and simplicity and ultimately we will equip ourselves to risk our home on deserted sandy beaches in remote places but not to drive up cliffs or to ford jungle rivers. I like asphalt roads to be honest. A two wheel drive van works just fine for us.

We don't have hot running water in our bathroom and surprisingly my wife was agreeable with this eccentricity of mine as she found it unnecessary on our boat where we used solar showers. So I designed an outdoor shower with a blanket a couple of clips and the solar shower we carry on the van. We could use it inside but we'd rather be traveling in a climate that allows for outdoor showers.  Two kettles of hot water added to the shower give enough heat to make the shower comfortable we find. All this to not be parked in a campground with electrical outlets and shower blocks and toilets. Worth it? 

In a time of pandemic the isolation of boondocking in a warm winter climate is a great thing. For us a crowded campground is outside our comfort zone at the moment and though we look forward to a vaccinated future we are unwilling to compromise months of isolation and hand wringing by being impatient at this rather unpleasant stage of the pandemic. I am learning to enjoy gravel roads and the van handles them very well. We usually roll around 20 miles an hour and so far we haven't caused furniture to shift at these modest speeds or to spill anything from our locking drawers. 

Thanksgiving should be a time to gather but this year it simply isn't. It is weird parked out in the woods like this but Layne is cooking steak and stuffing and Trader Joe's sold us a pecan pie and Rusty gets his share of protein. 80 degrees, the sounds of the forest and a rising moon.  Not bad.

Testing our MoonShade portable awning...weird fun isn't it?

Happy Thanksgiving wherever you are and stay safe this holiday.