Van Trip

I had a long standing appointment in Jacksonville to install the last large accessory we have planned for our retirement van and that meant I had to drive the five hundred miles to get the job done. Luckily I am used to early starts and after our usual pre-dawn neighborhood walk I drove away from Rusty...

I stopped amid the trash on the approaches to Alabama Jack's on Card Sound Road and started the day as I intended to carry on: stopping for anything worthwhile, including any available sunrise.

I evaded Miami at rush hour by taking Krome Avenue north out of Homestead, which is now four lanes and quite busy itself, and then droned up Highway 27 to Lake Okeechobee through the sugarcane fields. It's the season to be turning cane into sugar converting the Everglades into a scenic industrial hell:

Sugar cane is an appalling crop, a monoculture that wrecks the soil, and whose need for fertilizers wrecks the coral reefs with its runoff and it produces an industry that lives by government subsidy. These are photos of your tax dollars at work. There are bipartisan moves afoot in Washington to spend more of your money to restore the Everglades from the destruction already wrought. And so the circle turns.

North of the lake Florida becomes a series of rolling hills covered in pine forests which are broken up by fields of cows and horses. Hands up if you didn't know there are actual cowboys and rodeos in central Florida, just like their more famous counterparts Out West!

I am very fond of Google maps and especially the satellite view which allows me to spot dirt roads and potential sleepover sites and so forth with a birds eye view. I knew this was a dirt road but the satellite view did not tell me what a disastrous state it was in and I doubt my picture renders the true awfulness. In rainy season it would have been impassably slippery for two wheel drive, as it was I kept the tires on the ridges and avoided the trenches dug down the middle of the road. We proceeded at five miles an hour bumping as though on a pogo stick...good practice this for future adventures I kept telling myself with false bonhommie.

I was wondering how much daylight this madness would consume but after twenty minutes of snail-like progress the road mysteriously turned into a gravel freeway and progress increased to a steady twenty miles per hour, with stops for through-the-windshield photography.

These wilderness areas are the Florida reserved for residents, far from the beaches. This is the Florida people who love to hate this sunny state don't know about. It's here that people with guns and all terrain vehicles and tents come to get away from selfies and beach bunnies and all the nonsense of Spring Break and the headlines. In their midst you find me, the unarmed pansy who likes the woods and the solitude and ventures there with a camera and a silly on road van. 

I admit I was glad to see pavement after thirty minutes of bouncing around, even if the pavement brought with it mailboxes and neatly mowed yards and curious looks and whole bunches of young people on bicycles in orange vests and no masks. 

Highway 19 points straight north and south through Ocala National Forest. Lots of sandy tracks spin off from here, some narrow enough only for small ATVs, some wide enough to accommodate a van if the surface weren't too deep in soft sand...a front winch would be handy to get out of a sand hole were you to get stuck. Luckily they happen to install them in Jacksonville, my destination for the night. 

Obeying my principle of an early start and frequent stops I pulled over at a roadside turnout. An especial privilege as dogs aren't allowed but canoes are. Strange priorities. At home I had forgotten to empty the portapotty I carry in the van but the convenience of that little bundle of joy is that you (I) can empty it anywhere so at the turnout I saw not only a trash can but also a public toilet as well as the canoe launch. Such are the preoccupations of life on the road. Then I walked the camera down to the river. I had half an idea to take a quick swim until I heard the rather deep staccato grunt of an alligator looking for a mate, a grunt too deep for a bullfrog and too insistent to encourage me to take a swim, despite the heat. 

I pressed on and found another reason to stop, an empty parking lot. I made a u-turn on Highway 19 and found myself at a trailhead of the Caravelle Wildlife Management Area. Time for Gannet 2 and I to part ways.

I do succumb to idiocy from time to time and instead of simply photographing the map with my phone I took a paper copy that I carried with some difficulty in my pocket. I referred to it quite a bit as the walk progressed chasing white yellow and red blazes on the trees.

I know the Keys are special and the tropical environment is unique in the continental United States. However big trees, soft mulch underfoot and lots of shade can be quite enjoyable too.

Fire management, singed bark and new growth.

This I suspect is the work of a woodland vandal pecking away.

The white trail became a muddy mess which led me to figure that rainy season might not be the best time of year to visit and I was lucky this is dry season. I worked my way around the mud holes and enjoyed the reflections along the way. Mosquitoes were not in evidence either which was nice for a change.

I don't quite get the layout of the land here because this massive roadway below, was not marked except where it doubled as part of the hiking trail. That produced a fair bit of confusion in my mind until I figured it out. However I just followed the white blazes clearly visible on the tree trunks and let the other trails go where they may.

I had the whole place to myself and of course I missed Rusty, dogs are allowed which is one of the civilities I enjoy about Florida. I walked silently on, too deep into the woods to be able to hear traffic on the highway, a constant feature of my mangrove walks in the Keys...

I walked to a spot marked "Shelter" on the map and whaddya know I found...a shelter. There was a sign posted forbidding vehicle traffic beyond "this point" which I figured meant the white trail leading back off into the woods. I guess if you come by the main entrance to Caravelle you must be able to get permission to drive out here for a picnic. I walked. Ha! But I had nothing to eat or drink or any other reason to linger so I pressed on.

The sun was starting to set and I was having a sweaty good time. 

The trails were quite well marked and broad and mowed and easy to walk. It was an amble not a hike and I was entirely content.



The trail back to the parking lot broke into a freeway again running alongside a fence.  

All I carried was my phone, my van keys and my camera which came in handy but kept slowing me down.

I didn't see wildlife but I did find trees of all shapes and sizes, a pleasure to see when you are used to stunted little things.



Back at Gannet 2 after a couple of hours. The van is my source of all good things including an electric tea kettle. I turned on the air conditioning, made some tea and settled down for a short rest. It was getting dark and I had to make tracks as, more importantly I was getting tired.

My destination was a rest area off I-95 just south of Jacksonville. I like rest areas as they offer the bare minimum facilities, no one bothers you  or requires anything of you and they are free. Weirdly enough for a noise neurotic like me, traffic noise on the freeway doesn't bother me  and my wife says it sounds to her like the ocean.  I fired up the microwave and Netflix, and I chilled in solitary splendor, no need to even get up to walk a dog. Imagine that.

Bahama Village

The fact is streets in Bahama Village really are narrow. Which doesn't mean life as we know it ceases here. You just have to be patient and careful while walking, riding or driving.

The reward is pretty little Conch Cottages of which I have a selection photographed here:

The yellow corner building is the Angelina, a guest house among the less expensive in Key West (a relative concept) and very atmospheric place it is too. Inside as well as out.

Another narrow street, so mind the bus...

...but the rest of Angela Street is packed with parked cars. I know it seems odd that there are so many cars in a small flat town but I have to point out that if you go back to the 1920s before  there was a continuous road to the mainland even, cars were all over the place.

Nowadays with a decent main road to the mainland you can be in California in four long days of driving, from right here. Pretty amazing.

I haven't done that trek in that much of a hurry for a long time but my wife I once drove from Stock Island to San Diego in three and a half days and the dogs still liked us by the end of that trip. It was a rented minivan so there was lots of room for us all to spread out and our tropical dogs were quite taken with the desert as we droned across Texas and Arizona. 

Most people who choose to live her prefer to not drive and I know numbers of people who have only the vaguest idea of what the road looks like past Stock island. My explorer gene has never died and I am always ready to go see what's over the horizon. 

A bicycle, with the perfect custom made lock, a bag to keep the seat dry, a basket for errands and a cupholder on the handle bars. Not a cross country ride but very useful nevertheless...

No need to leave the Village if this is where you live.

Oh and don't do as the locals do, because no parking signs are for people that don't know the score, not for people who know where they actually are allowed to park and don't want you cluttering up their off street parking.

And if you don't know how to get a permit don't park in these spots. Locals keep a very close eye on anyone daring to park in these spots and they will call out parking control even at three in the morning if you use these spots:

And through the fence is the Truman Annex right next door. All residential, not parking for anyone else. 

Mangroves

It was sunset. I know that because I was there and because the sun sets to the left when you are looking north. Otherwise there isn't a landmark to be seen on the trail. That's life in the Florida Keys. 

Oh wait, the setting sun has illuminated the lacy threads of a cobweb. Pretty cool.

And then there is the setting sun shining across the ...mud. The effect of low tide. Oddly enough much of the Keys are affected more by tides than by rain. The water you will see in these pictures is actually salty and not even your (my) dog will drink it.

Mangroves either a0 on fire or b0 illuminated at a low angle by the sun:

Red mangroves living happily in ocean water.

What tangled webs we weave when first we practice to grow among the mangroves. 

I really like the still windless days coming this next blazingly hot summer, if only because I can never get enough of the mangrove reflections. These aren't terrible but the water is still slightly ruffled.

The rich red sunset in a cloudless sky. There is a blimp, the only blimp in the Keys operated by the air force over Cudjoe Key and known jocularly as Fat Albert.

And that is another mangrove walk in the history books.

Panama Canal

I may have reported this since the original posting in 2007. But it remains a happy memory of a journey all too long ago. N o reason not to repost I dare say so here it is.

Panama 1999

We transited the Panama Canal on our sailboat Miki G in the Fall of the year the US finally pulled out of that operation.

I doubt the Autoridad in charge these days would be too impressed were we to return and expect a transit for our 34-foot catamaran through the canal. These days its a self funding operation and every transit has to pay for itself and sailboats are very low on the totem pole. Our buddy Anna rode through with us to check out how she and her husband Ian were going to cope with their boat Joss. We had a minor crash later when the tug we tied up to left us in the lurch and we were slightly beaten up as we were dragged through the lock sideways by the currents. Damage was minor but we stared death in the face for a few awful minutes.

Days later Joss made it through fine, though I was always worrying about what had happened to us as we locked through on their trip. Ian confided in me later that he couldn't get the image out of his mind of Miki G swirling helplessly through the lock like a leaf down a drain.

We were weeks ahead of the hand-over to full Panamanian control of the Canal, but years later I did meet the skipper of the last boat to be issued a US transit permit as the seconds ticked up to the noon hour December 30th 1999. Ghost, a suitably elderly wooden sailboat that I believe was shipped back from Marathon here in the Keys, to the owner's home in Marin County California.

When people find out we sailed our Gemini catamaran from California to Florida they are always fascinated by our transit ($500, two days, and the dogs behaved impeccably!), but we remain fascinated by the country of Panama at large.

Miki G moored for several weeks at the now defunct Pedro Miguel Boat Club, next to the Pedro Miguel locks on Lake Miraflores. The marina used to be a Canal Zone perk, but during the US Administration it was also an excellent place to tie upto make repairs and rest from the culturally arduous business of cruising Latin America. Pedro Miguel was an English speaking, boater friendly, oasis even in the years after the Zone was ended and Americans only stayed on to help transition to Panamanian Administration. However the Autoridad del Canal de Panama has shut the place down after a long legal battle and pictures such as this can no longer be taken because the club is gone (plus we sold the boat to a friend in Key West who isn't interested in cruising right now!). One of these days I'm going to write an entry about all the place I've been that no longer exist. A depressingly long list, indicating an excessively long and well traveled life I think, even though the places themselves weren't that great; the USSR and East Germany high on the lackluster destinations I Have Known.

Panama started for us when we rounded the cape separating Costa Rica from Panama one dark and windy night. We blew into Panama full tilt and never got over how much we wanted to be there. The river trip to the second largest city in the country David ("Dah" with the emphasis on the "i" ) was an amazing maze to navigate. Non sailors often think rivers are refuges but we found that jungle river to be a pain in the ass with massive tides, floating debris and low overhanging branches, not to mention sandbars and few places to  drop the  anchor.I keep this picture framed in my office to remind me of our mad cap adventures trying to find places to walk the dogs away from the prying eyes of the officious Customs agent who was determined to enforce Panama's 'no pets ashore' rule. Emma, our Labrador stuck close to me while Debs, our Husky dived into the bushes like the little explorer he always was. Everyone in the rest of the country ignored the quarantine rule and we took the dogs everywhere with us, into Panama City, into Darien by rental car, and up into the mountains in the middle of the country.

We really got to enjoy Panama among the Pacific Islands that dot the uninhabited coast. There are beaches, palm trees and crystal clear waters in an immense 300 mile playground where sailors can play Adam and Eve for months and not see the same place twice. We washed up on Isla Contadora in the Perlas Islands, which has an airstrip, hotels, some stores and fuel supplies. A walk was de rigeur through the ritzy neighborhoods where rich Panamanians keep weekend homes. I like this picture, it inverts the usual stereotype of Latin Americans being the gardeners for wealthy white Americans. "Mow yer lawn, guv?"After we got through the Canal we spent several more idylic weeks in the more famous San Blas islands on the Caribbean side of Panama. These Kuna indian islanders practice a low tech medieval lifestyle in their own autonomous province known to them as their Kuna Yala, with their own system of justice and social pecking order, similar to, but more idylic than, a US Indian Reservation. These islands resembled the Keys somewhat, in as much as they had coconuts, narrow sandy beaches and lots of scrub vegetation. We sailors gathered in calm anchorages and hung out barbequing under the stars, telling stories, swimming and playing cards until our supplies ran out and we had a private plane fly us out the fixings for a massive Thanksgiving dinner in November 1999. Believe me, we were absolutely bulging with thanks that memorable desert island holiday.Teaching kids to pet the dogs (with treats of course!) on the Rio Diablo/Corazon de Jesus footbridge in the Kuna Yala. Kids are kids in the most remote places and Labradors do like their treats.

Panama was a hell of a place, far more varied and interesting than Costa Rica with a greater percentage of land given over to parks and all the benefits iof a money laundering economy with excellent banking (they use the US dollar for their currency) and superb medical facilities. Retirement? Who knows!

Night Ruminations

My wife and I went into isolation at home on the Ides of March and since then she has been teaching from home and I have been working at the police station where masks and social distancing have been strictly enforced. 

So now, a year later we are vaccinated and hoping to see a few normal activities creep back into our lives. It seems to be coming down to a race between vaccinations and virus variants at the moment and south Florida has been at the forefront of the Covid news with reports of widespread Spring Break crowds.

So I find myself trying to avoid early morning bar crowds more out of habit than necessity, still walking the side streets looking for shapes and colors I have failed to notice in a  year of wandering these largely empty streets. 

I find it miraculous any of these small galleries and businesses are still open after this crazy year but here we are. 

Island Books is displaying local authors, Key West themes and so forth. I have no data to back up my feelings on this subject but it seems to me that the writers of older generations who have cycled out of the Keys to families and communities Up North are not being replaced by younger writers. The easy target to blame is the high cost of living.

There again the way people publish and even the way they write has been going through all kinds of changes so I suppose it's fair to imagine that communities of writers will not look the way they did in the past. 

I find it rather odd to realize that the beginning of this century might very well have been the tail end of the golden age in Key West, the period that grew out of Ernest Hemingway's forced stay in 1928, which in itself grew into a decade long residence. Truman Capote, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Thomas McGuane and heaven knows how many names one can add...where are their heirs? Do they have any? Not in Key West it seems like, nor shall they.

I look at the shops on Duval, the chains which are the only outlets that can afford the rent, the restaurants that hang in despite the difficulties of a pandemic. The champagne winters spent in the tropical heat  do not necessarily translate into long under populated summers, 92 in the shade... of drama  and good stories needing to be told.  

I have enjoyed the slowed down life of the pandemic, not least because I have been paid the whole way through as has my wife and work feeds the monster of daily life. Lockdowns haven't translated into long cold dark winter days staring at the walls. Life in the Keys has been reaffirmed as privilege in some ways, and I have taken note.

Above you see the building that has been three bars for as long as I can remember, and below Lucy's that came to Key West, moved, closed and now announces they are coming back, if indeed they were ever gone. That's the way it is, even when the prophets of doom tell us Key West is sinking under the hammer blow of economic failure. 

Irish Kevin's is still the southernmost Irish pub, as they retell it, the bar that stays put alongside Ricks and Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's and the Bull and Hog's Breath and so forth. So when things gets back to normal what changes for me who doesn't go downtown to drink?

Live theater and movie theaters, friends and music and a dinner out every now and then, the loss finally of masks, the crowds, more things and people to photograph, change might even be in the air.

The homeless guys will still sit on the margins, at least until Duval Street is organized. The project manager of the company hired to review possible changes has moved to another job so the studies proposed for Duval are currently in limbo. But it seems likely there will be much talk of changing Duval and much opposition as there always is. 

Cruise ships will one day return. They are running some experimental cruises in the Caribbean apparently, and by doing that they are avoiding US ports to circumvent the US ban on cruises. I guess we shall wait and watch and be glad other people are willing to give it a try. I had hoped to go to Europe this Fall to see my family prior to my retirement but Europe remains a shambles with closed borders, hardly any vaccinations and continuous lockdowns. So much for that...

I took the photograph below on the three hundred block of Duval. The building seen in daylight is just another sloping roof but in the half light with the tree shadows it gained to my eye and exotic distant air, a Balkan building, a place not like Key West at all. 

Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, or my camera, or perhaps lockdown is having more of an effect on my mind that I think. Six months from now...another six months and we may understand more!