Heading north two days ahead of Hurricane Michael

A little more Florida strip malls then escape!

It turns out Chiefland stretches out along US 198 for quite a while. It has a good selection of the usual chain stores, and nothing else that I could find. I chose Dunkin Donuts, because DD means a quality coffee experience to me! :). Also DD has an innovation called a coffeecake muffin that hits my spot. Sadly, both DDs I’ve visited say they has wifi, and both were lying. A couple of more towns down the road I stop at a Subway to get tonight’s (and tomorrow’s as it turns out) dinner. Strip mall Florida provides strip mall food choices – sigh…

Continue on 198 north for a while longer, until it turns left to follow the curve of Florida around the Gulf. Now I’m headed to the Panhandle. It would have been more direct to come here on the way down to Milly’s, but I was feeling time pressure then and I want to take my time here. So the plan is to take my time here today and tomorrow.

I really enjoyed this part of the Panhandle eight years ago. I’ve had a yearning to come back and really get to know it. So I’m back. I still didn’t stay as long as I wanted, but it turned out I was just anticipating what the weather was gonna make me do anyway.

I drive straight to my campground, the first campground I’ve been to before since Oregon two months ago! There was actually a camp host on site tonight, so he hooked me up with a site that he thought was grand, but which kinda sucked from my p.o.v. Anyway, I pull in long enough to eat the hot sandwich I got at Subway – now a warm sandwich. Then I’m off to St Marks NWR:

Again, despite my best efforts, I am hurrying. Five miles off the highway is a really nice, deluxe looking Visitors Center, which just like last time, I do not have time to visit before sunset. Aaaargh! I remember my history, but I’m STILL doomed to repeat it :(

As part of the hurrying theme, I got to the end of the road, with the cool building and the historic lighthouse and sunset, and charged out of the van to soak it all up. Surprise! There are a lot of mosquitoes and I am wearing my briefest of summer wear and no bug spray, so it turns out I can hardly hold still long enough to take a picture before having to slap my ankle or neck. I talked to a nice fellow. He was wearing long sleeves and long pants and seemed un-bothered. Universe, give me one more chance at this place and I promise to do it right!

The friendly host at the campground had told me there was a very good local seafood place right down the road, and even gave me a free draft beer coupon! I drove back to the campsite and decided to walk it. The walk was not very long, < 1/2 mile, but it’s a no moon night, and people whiz down 198 pretty fast. Keeping up my no planning theme, I also forgot my flashlight. Anyway, I made it, and it was a very fun place. The shrimp and dirty rice was as good as anything I’ve eaten for a while. The folks there – cute waitress, bossy but nice cook, oyster-shucking dude – were all ever so chatty. I was feeling pretty good, so I also was chatty. We had a great time, and I promised to come back for breakfast.

Sunday (Oct 7)

The spot the camp host gave me looked ok, but it seems to be next to a tweeker convention. Across the way is a crew of Sons of Anarchy extras with a big diesel truck and a big unmarked trailer. All night, from when I left for St Marks until bedtime, they were at their picnic table in that very intense, non-stop posture that normal people just don’t do. Then in the middle of the night I heard their big ole truck rev up and they were gone. The folks right next me at the edge of the campground, appear to have been here for a loooong time and are also talky and noisy. This morning they are as busy as bees, banging on things, starting their truck after a few tries and filling my van with the gasoline fumes of a flooded engine. But, by the time I got into my leaving routine of stowing things and doing a little tai chi, they were ALL gone, so woo! The Florida panhandle is non-stop natural beauty, but nicknamed Redneck Riviera for a reason!

I went back to Ouzt’s for breakfast as promised. The don’t have breakfast on the menu, but she said she’d cook it. To my regret, I got a big ole smoked sausage+scrambled eggs+grits with cheese and coffee. It was only $6.07 – what a deal! As an aside, nobody here, including the all-knowing cook, has heard of a hangtown fry! I would expect people in Nebraska to not have heard of it, but in a place where oysters are native I am really shocked. In last night’s feel-good mood I tried to talk her into making it and got the stink eye. So in the grim reality of Sunday morning I thought better of crossing her. I asked her about any kind of seafood+eggs combos and drew a blank. On the West Coast there are tons of places that will serve you clams and eggs or trout and eggs, but she gave me a look that stopped further inquiry. I do wish that maybe I should have had an oyster dish rather than a breakfast I could have had anywhere, but I didn’t. Again Universe, I will do better next time.

My goals for today are to find wifi – FAIL, and to swim in the Gulf – SUCCESS! I know from last night that the Gulf is about ten miles away. But driving east, the coast comes up to meet the road, so in a few miles of driving I was in a very pretty section with pine trees and palmettos on the right and glimpses of the Gulf through the trees on the left. I took a quick loop through the town of Carrabelle, which I remember fondly from last trip. Everything seemed to be closed on Sunday, so I drove on Carabelle Beach, which as the name indicates, has a beach! Again, this is only three days before Hurricane Michael, and nobody, including me at this point, seem aware that it’s coming.

I parked, slathered myself with sunblock (for a change), grabbed my stuff and did the beach thing for an hour or so. Felt great! The sand was that perfect gray-white super-fine Gulf sand I that I’ve been walking and driving on all over northern Florida for the last few days, but the water was not the expected azure. Rather it was a tannin-y brown. It didn’t stink, so I think maybe it was not the dreaded red tide, but still it was not pretty … kinda gross really. It was super pleasant to swim in, even if it looked nasty. Maybe it’s a hurricane thing.

I thought about continuing on westward to the town of Apachiacola, but I know that somewhere over there the awful strip mall version of Florida starts again, so I decided to consider my little snapshot of the Panhandle complete and start heading north. Looking back, I wish I’d stayed longer, had the local oysters, etc., but on the other hand, knowing that Hurricane Michael hit two days later, if I’d stayed I would’ve been part of the evacuation insanity, so I count myself lucky that I didn’t.

Cool drive up the middle of the Apachiacola National Forest. Miles and miles of extremely aesthetically pleasing wilderness. Tall, skinny pine trees with nary a branch for the first 40 feet, and a ground cover of palmettos.

My phone is telling me it’s 4:21, when I know darned well that it should be 5:21. Looking at the AAA map, I’m surprised to see that I have gone far enough west to be at the edge of the Central Zone! The official park time is Eastern, but my phone is sure it’s Central. I’m going to ignore the Central thing.

Nothing interesting went on evening. I blogged for a while, at my Subway sando from yesterday and went to bed. It was a pleasant, quiet, uneventful evening. The only notable thing was that it was the first time I heard of Hurricane Michael. The ranger mentioned it when I was registering. Even though I will be long gone, it gave me an odd sense of dread to think it was coming right at me. That night I slept very poorly, maybe my Italian BMT didn’t agree with me, maybe it was hurricane premonitions..

Monday

It’s very windy this morning. Don’t know if it’s related to the coming hurricane, but it feels ominous. Driving into Tallahassee I was buffeted pretty strongly. When I got to the city, there was a run on gas – every service station had a line of cars, sometimes stretching into the road. I haven’t see that since the Jimmy Carter days! Traffic was ridiculous all over town, I assume because everybody is out getting in line at the gas station and stocking up at the grocery store. It felt like when you kick an anthill and the ants mill about frantically. Everybody was out going everywhere, it seemed.

Lucky Goat Coffee looked like the place for me to go, somewhere in the endless suburbs of Tallahassee. It was a good place, the kind of place I hope for in a college town. Very dark inside – a computer screen lover’s response to how very bright it usually is outside. Not today though. The worry in the air has kind of gotten to me, so I did my thing then drove straight north without stopping till I was in Georgia .

[sidebar: on Twitter last night I realized that Tallahassee is the home of Andrew Gillum, the new Black Hope for Florida. I take back every mean thing I was thinking about you Tallahassee!]

I looked for lunch in Thomasville GA and was not successful. The restaurant that Yelp made look pretty good was closed in the middle of it’s normal business hours, so I’m guessing they let everyone go home to batten down. I go to the grocery as my next best bet. It also seems unreasonably crowded and frantic, and has nothing useful for me. Must keep driving north …

It turns out to be a pretty long drive to get from Florida to upper-middle Georgia. Researching the meager campground choices, Andersonville Campground had captured my fancy. It’s a municipal campground in the little town across the road from the Andersonville National Historic Site of the Civil War prison. I have an ancestor who survived that hellhole, so the idea of staying there seemed fitting.

Great idea, but it didn’t work out. The campground was really derelict and the bathroom was disgusting. I was trying to figure out how the place worked, so I did the short walk to the town center to the store where you’re supposed to pay. It was closed for the night. I am not digging this place. I checked AllStays one more time, and called a private campground not too far away. The nice fellow said I could have a site for one crisp $20 bill if I don’t use the hookups. Sold!

It took 20 minutes to get there, and there was still just enough daylight to walk over to the pay box and do a little tour of the park and enjoy sunset on the fishing pond. It was a very good sunset! The pond was interesting, quite overgrown with water plants. It looked unattractive to me, but the fishermen seemed to love it. And the sunset through the little fishing pier was a really well-composed little scene.