Pensacola Cold And Damp

I have despite my own laziness conducted an experiment on my dog and Rusty has proved beyond a doubt he does not care for cold mornings. When we lived in the Keys, Rusty would wander in and out at all hours and spent as much time outdoors as inside. He had no restraints, no fences, no leashes and was free to walk off down the street and leave us at any time. 

On the road in temperatures hovering around 30 degrees he has shown himself happy to stay in bed with us all morning long. When I was working I set my alarm to 4:25 and Rusty was always keen to walk down the street and do a mail check, as I called it. We wandered onto Spanish Main, checked the hedge where the Venture Out dogs walked drearily and repetitively during the day, and then we went home. A 65 degree morning had me shivering. Later in the morning my wife who worked from home, drove him to some more stimulating location, and in the evening it was my turn to spend time with him in mangroves of course. 

Now we are back in Florida and a brisk morning is 55 degrees, a cold front blowing across a Pensacola dampened by showers in the night. We had planned on sleeping aboard Gannet 2 but our host was appalled by the idea so I had no idea it had been raining. Rusty was already yawning and pacing by 5:30 so clearly warm weather motivates him. I'm not sorry because there was no way I was getting up at dawn on a 32 degree morning. Not yet anyway as I slowly evolve into a three season human.

Thanksgiving is done, feasting is I hope behind us as this is the time of year my liver threatens to explode. Black Friday is not a shopping day when you live in 72 square feet but I did get a package from a mailman this post holiday work day.  It contains a tool for reading engine, transmission, brake and airbag codes emitted by a vehicle. When those little icons light up you plug this contraption in and it tells you what's wrong. I'm skeptical but it seems its the tool one needs for road trips in the 21st century. Yay for Black Friday then.

I have wanted to go downtown with camera and dog of a morning but Rusty shies away from driving and insists we walk the neighborhood. It is his time so I agree and he prances and waves his tail so there is some reward in sticking to what he wants. At least these aren't yet more mangroves we have to walk through. Change is decidedly good. I saw a van parked and I was tempted to go down and knock and cause consternation but the idea is funnier than the act and we wandered off admiring trees and skies and chimney pots and big white clouds flying south.

"Do Not Block Driveway" (unless you yourself own the Miata in question). I am ready to be on the road away from places I know. I got a text with Thanksgiving greetings from a former colleague who asked me the inevitable question. When I replied Pensacola he expressed surprise we weren't further away. Too many friends I wanted to reply but thought better of it. Sunday I shall be driving, but it will be due east, deeper into Florida.

I refrained from explaining to Nick that we will be in Florida a few more days. Since I got new medical coverage I have to meet the doctor according to Florida Blue rules so Monday morning I have planned a truck stop shower outside Green Cove Springs before my morning appointment to prove to them I exist and then I shall turn around and drive the panhandle one more time back to Pensacola. You can imagine this is not my most desired road trip but by Tuesday we should be our own bosses again.

It takes monstrous amounts of disentanglement to escape the clutches of modern society. Luckily we have done this previously in our lives so we left lots of wiggle room at every stage to allow for unexpected delays and issues. Some travelers will understand and Phil I dare say is one such…After Thanksgiving yesterday one of the guests expressed an interest in the van. We had a similar query from a guest at our First Thanksgiving last weekend in Tennessee. Layne did the honors then but Phil was my turn, an English expatriate with an excellent sense of humor and an unusual ambition.

When his wife died Phil decided to walk cross the US to raise money for cancer research. He left New York and walked to New Orleans where he met Pam who answered an advertisement to meet this mad walker. He explained wryly his cross country walk took eleven months to complete because he kept getting interrupted by visits from Pam who flew to meet him along the way. Pam did not have a passport when they met but since then she has joined his effort to see every country in the world and Phil has visited 120 so far. Slightly mind boggling. They were quite surprised when they spoke of driving in Transnistria and I actually knew whereof they spoke. I like atlases I explained lamely. 

Phil actually understood my plan and aspirations and he made an scary suggestion. He spoke of how he had met an interesting couple after noticing the map of their travel painted in the van. Hmm I thought instantly rejecting such self promotion but Layne liked it. We compromised. Maybe when we have actually done something, not talked about it we could draw a map on the side of the van. The space is empty and right there: 

Maybe when Patagonia is in our rear view mirrors we'll find a painter and we shall remember Phil the crackpot traveler and Thanksgiving in Pensacola in the time of plague. It will be good.

Second Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day. Even a retired old fart, a young one like me, is forced to remember what day this is so let's start at the beginning: Happy Thanksgiving!  My favorite holiday is still excellent on the road. 

I gave thanks yesterday when I saw the roundabout sign marking a new intersection under the bridge from Pensacola Beach. Traffic circles beat stop signs and lights and when the protocols are ingrained you'll see far better traffic flow. Yield to traffic already in the circle. Simple. The British have been doing this for decades, so how much smarter are they? Precisely. Let's get with the program.

We went to the beach yesterday and ate fish. I had to walk the beast first of course. Rusty loves to see what's outside when we park the van in a new space, so I dealt with that while the women got in line. When we came back to the van after lunch I found a huge indentation in Layne's pillow so I think he slept soundly while we ate.

Some call the Florida Panhandle the "Redneck Riviera" because it's where southerners come to take a seaside vacation. Some Floridians  describe the panhandle as South Alabama as it's more rural and piney than the traditional Sunshine State scenes of palms and mangroves on postcards. It's only part of Florida because that was the shape of the land when the United States bought La Florida from Spain in 1819. The US got the land in exchange for boundary definitions further west and promised to pay Spanish settlers five million bucks to settle any claims they might have arising from the transfer of nationality (!).

Spain found Florida to be a  financial burden and wanted to get rid of it which was all well and good but then Mexico became independent and repudiated the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 which required some diplomatic finesse to fix the new borders.  I imagine residents of this area must have been feeling somewhat uneasy about their national status as they never knew if they were going to get cable TV in Spanish or English for all those years of uncertainty. Things were only settled between Mexico and the US by 1832 and only until 1846 when things took a bloody turn but that war did not involve Florida so who cares? Maybe we'll take a look at that history when we're in Big Bend.

When you look at Florida's coasts and see what massive money makers they are full of realty contracts and tourists it's hard to imagine what a pit Florida must have been in 1828 when Key West was founded. The peninsula was a steamy mosquito riddled mess, full of yellow fever which periodically killed anyone it came in contact with in the sparse settlements. There were no vaccinations in those days and no one knew where yellow fever, a deadly plague, came from in the first place. So they put the capital in Tallahassee, located in a milder climate, and held on hard to the panhandle as the only part of the state fit for human habitation. Except for Key West, the port city with a reasonable climate and lots of trade which made lots of money. 

Peg Leg on the beach was recommended by Therèse our local guide and she was spot on. We had the best fried grouper bites ever, delicate batter and moist fish inside. The cooked oysters were excellent too, one a weird cheese and jalapeño concoction and the other a classic Rockefeller. The boiled shrimp were not brilliant but I didn't want to  sound the grump horn so I supped my beer and enjoyed the atmosphere on the deck. 

My friend Webb who follows assorted sports as well being something of a gymnast himself as befits a solo sailor of some repute, told me Manchester City was facing off against St Germain des Pres. Manchester versus Paris and he knew Therèse's ancestry rooted in France...so we had some rivalry ready to go when Therèse spotted the game on a television:

Perfidious Albion smacked France and I allowed myself, a non sports fanatic, a mild gloat so the day was perfect...

I enjoy the possibilities of van life created by the mobility of a 21 foot Promaster which we can drive and park pretty much anywhere a car can go. However there are also some drive up possibilities for people in boats:

When I lived and traveled on a sailboat I did this a couple of times but this kind of drive up is really meant for people in power boats easily maneuvered. Pretty cool though. 

The place was vast, no one wore masks so thanks for the patio dining. 

We were in two cars so Therèse and her sister in law went for a drive through Fort Pickens, a National Park site but we had chores to do, some light shopping. It's getting dark early, so by 5:30 it feels like the middle of the night.

Rusty loves moochdocking, and takes advantage of sunny lawns, watching the world go by, and then he goes inside and collapses on the bed.

Therèse's sister in law has an allergy to dogs she says but she noted yesterday that she hasn't met dogs like Rusty and she said she actually liked him. He is pretty non intrusive as you can see. He doesn't bark (unless there is a reason) to the point I'm not sure what his bark sounds like, and he won't beg unless you induce him to annoy you and he spends his time minding his own business. 

Have a good holiday if you are in the US and I have to go as this second Thanksgiving appears to be on track to be as elaborate as any and I wasn't expecting this. Seven people and a million dishes. Here we go.

Hobo Beach Pensacola

It's been just over one month of travel and the feeling of vacation hasn't yet left. I caught Layne yesterday on her phone measuring distances and checking Harvest Hosts between here and Austin so I think her feet are itching just as much as mine are.

Therèse lives in East Hill, a community set on an actual prominence, as close to a hill as you will find in the Florida sandbox. Take the correct street and you can get actual over the water views from high above the tideline. Not a bad place to be when the inevitable hurricanes push water up the Gulf of Mexico onto the beach.

The other good bit about this neighborhood is the variety of architecture and the abundance of plants including extremely large trees. Rusty quite like the walks as do I.

Therèse is an avid gardener so it came as no surprise to see grapefruit sized lemons hanging in her back yard. She settled in Pensacola a decade ago as her roots in the US were in Alabama (which is her team...) but Pensacola offers beaches, Florida sunshine and no taxes, the sorts of reasons I can agree with, especially after a subfreezing week in Chicago. The weather is actually quite mild by Florida standards with actual frost in winter from time to time and bearable summers for the less heat adapted among us. This is decidedly not the land of mangroves and coconut palms.

Rusty rather likes the stillness of houses. Layne said she was glad we have lots of Hilton points as we may have to give the little runt a break in a normal bed from time to time. I have to say though he is eating well, sleeping long and hard and is always ready to go and see what's what. When we arrive someplace he likes to get out of the van immediately and then he settles outside curled up watching the world go by. 

A case in point: he was stirring around six this morning in an unusual display of early morning activity so I got up, this is Florida after all and not by any means cold on a sixty degree morning (my standards have plummeted since Chicago and the snowfalls) and we too off for the Graffiti Bridge on the shores of Pensacola Bay. It's an informal free speech spot that has grown into. tourist attraction of sorts.

The bridge has been painted a bilious shade of pink in the style of a Pepto Bismol advertisement which is slowly succumbing to the blandishments of the spray can brigades. With a little convincing I got Rusty out of the parking lot which is apparently filled with interesting smells and we got busy Wirth the business of crossing the bridge.

We have been here in years past but this time we took the trail on the inland side of the tracks wandering through a shady wonderland of no people and no noise. Rusty lost his nerve a bit at one point but I walked ahead and he followed along. He is learning to not be scared of strange places which is one more step up the ladder for the dog abandoned in the Everglades. I was always amazed by his comfort levels running through the impenetrable mangroves in the Keys followed by his fear of falling leaves in deciduous forests...

Winnie the Pooh might have described it as a blusterous day, not too windy in point of fact but there was a decidedly cool breeze coming off the bay.

We walked alongside the railroad for a bit until I could hear waves beating on the beach on the other side and we then climbed the embankment to look over the top.

The small brown dog blending in.

This is why they call the place Hobo Beach. Bums don't bother me but there again I am one now.  I met a man out here years ago and I signally failed to make his picture so I cannot be sure anymore who he might have been.

He was well spoken and had travel plans which we discussed for a while as our dogs. played around in the sand. Often homeless people are shy, angry, demented, needy or lonely but he came across as none of those. People with houses come across in similar fashion to me but few housed or houseless people had the presence of mind and serenity of this particular man living in a tent in the dunes.

I looked him up on my next visit but there was no sign of him so I figured he was probably riding the rails somewhere, or living a new life somewhere else. This shack is roughly where he was living. I saw the occupant and waved. He waved back but he was young b blonde and not the old hobo I met before.

I rather think this bench, new to the site, revealed the answer to my little mystery. I took a seat and did some Googling. I am pretty certain this is my mystery man: Kent Stanton. Well worth a read if you click.

Things I saw wandering back to the van:

Hobo Beach seen from across the way at the waterfront park.

Sunshine State Redux

It feels slightly ridiculous but we are back in Florida. Not the Keys by any means, as Key West is 800 driving miles away, by a route very well known to me. However your intrepid explorers are back in the state whence they began. 

We visited a man who I can only describe as an artist. Johnny has known my wife since they first met in Birmingham Alabama quite a few decades ago and the way my wife works she has never let go. That two more friends from that era dropped in unexpectedly is part of the way that world works. An hour long visit to see the ailing artist took more than four hours and Johnny was passing out from exhaustion by the end. It was good.

Layne the indefatigable then gave Karl and Lori a tour of the van while Rusty and I caught our breath. Karl has offered us a place to moochdock when we visit Santa Cruz next Spring so I guess it was good he got to see how it works. So good he offered us our seventh moochdock of this trip and we spent the night not on the street as we had planned but in his mother's driveway in the suburbs of Birmingham.

Lori came back in the morning and over scrambled eggs and toast there was much reminiscing about the good old days where a group of young people did good work living in an old mansion they called the Kudzu Castle because it was covered in that creeping vine. Ah, youth.  Pass the bottle.

Rusty and I went for a walk on the ridge line admiring splendid mansions and vast oak trees and ...abandoned fuss ball tables?

Contemplating her lost youth possibly, or wondering about our route to Pensacola?

I often thought about coming back to Birmingham, Layne said. But I suppose by then she was entrenched in Santa Cruz. Life is all choices as the cliché goes.

While we ate Rusty met Beca and they ran around the yard like old friends. I was quite impressed as he usually freaks out when he sees dogs larger than himself. Perhaps travel is broadening his mind too.

We had a dinner date in moochdock number eight in Pensacola. We hit the road. Literally.

Cruising the backroads we stumbled upon an impossible situation, a 40 mile per hour rolling roadblock. The truck removing a well used immobile home was so wide oncoming full sized pick ups had to put two wheels in the grass or pull over if they could find space. A fired up hatch back squeezed past but we were in line behind the obstruction after the car in front of us turned off. I was pondering my options, looking for a place to pull over, walk Rusty and let the thing roll away when to my astonishment a gray cement brick appeared in the roadway. The right front wheel went over it with a loud crack which woke Rusty and Layne up and sent a jolt of adrenaline through me.

We found a forest road but there was no sign of damage and the van rode just fine. I had an intention to have to the tires rotated in Pensacola which will be an opportunity to check for damage but everything seems fine having driven a couple of hundred more miles. Lucky us. Strong Promaster. 

Rusty enjoyed the woods and was quite curious if given time to get used to the place. He is getting quite entrepreneurial in a doggy sort of way.

The sun was setting and we were outside Flomation, a peculiarly named town on the state line.  This wreck was in Alabama offered frorsale by a realtor with an area code in Florida. It must be inconvenient to straddle jurisdictions like that.

The sun started to set and give the landscape its golden color.  And then we had our second incident. Birmingham had been a tough city to navigate even in the middle of the day. Streets were clogged and it was only the laid back driving that made lane changing easy. However laid back was not the style of driving of the next logging truck we met.

We arrived at a t-junction where Google said turn right. I stopped, checked for traffic and saw none from the left. From the right there were two logging trucks coming and as I started to pull out and make the turn the second truck ignored the solid yellow line and pulled out to pass the truck in front. Had I paused to pick up my jaw we'd be dead because he came barreling at us full bore to pass the other truck. As it was I stopped hard, said nothing, and lived. Racing logging trucks; that's a first.

I told Layne about it after we arrived and she remarked she had wondered what the sudden stop was about...That one would have been a lot worse than a broken pelvis!

I think there is room for another cliché isn’t there? Making the most of the time you have or something?

I never imagined a stationary retirement, or being bored, or unmotivated to get up and go and see things. The other side of the coin is the chance of things going wrong, but better that than shrivel up from boredom and lack of motivation. Got to keep your curiosity alive I say.

Next week we cast off for Big Bend in Texas but there are a few places I want to see on the way. For now we have a real Thanksgiving to get through and more socializing. Not a bad place for it either. I thought I saw croissants and coffee prepared for breakfast before I took Rusty for a walk.

Gotta go.