This quite interesting area stretches along the Florida coast from about Mexico Beach one the west to St Marks on the east. Once this area supplied 10% of the oysters consumed in the US, but now that industry has dried up due to human interference. If that isn’t enough to make you cry, then Mother Nature sends in an occasional hurricane to destroy the things both God and man have built. A hurricane in the fall of 2018 was headed straight for the Eastpoint area where I am now, but turned a little to the west and came ashore at Mexico Beach. Coming in from the east, we saw little of the destruction with just a few empty slabs or houses in bad shape. Yesterday, we drove east to Port St Joe and Mexico Beach for ourselves. Route 98 has only recently reopened along the coast there and it was evident why it was closed for over a year. Between 98 and the gulf, there are many slabs that once had a nice little house on it. There are two large hotels there, only one being rebuilt at the moment. And like the phoenix, from the ashes comes something new. As the price of real estate hit an all time low, more and more retirees are buying up cheap land and battered homes and rebuilding this area into a very nice place to live. We like the area to visit and may ever stop here next Christmas, but this is not our retirement place.

We arrived safely in Eastpoint, Florida on Friday the 13th. The drive took about four and a half hours and was uneventful, but we had fog almost all the way here. Met up with my niece Armida (she lives just west of our resort in Apalachicola) for dinner and drinks. We went back to the rv to relax and had a rather nasty thunderstorm roll thru, but the rest of the night was quiet. The next morning we awoke to a glorious sunrise over the Apalachicola Bay. Out in the distance in the picture below, you can just make out the barrier island St George Island, and we will be exploring there tomorrow. As a result of the oil spill years ago, the shrimp and oyster business has all but died. The area continues to grow again as a retirement area with restaurants and bars and an endless string of parties, festivals, music, plus all the outdoor activities like hiking, shell hunting, fishing, or just sitting on the beach letting the gulf take away all your stress.

Yes, the recent number of my posts are slowing down, but it is because we are slowing down. First, we have an air conditioner and heat pump combo that has never worked right since we go it. I have gone to hell and back to get this fixed, but I needed a home base to do it. We finally found out that it is a broken wire in the wall and we need to bring it to the shop near here for 6 – 8 hours so that they can pull a new wire. Meanwhile, we continue to explore the neighboring state park and preserves. Leaves are falling from the hardwood trees, but the evergreens and palms are oblivious the seasons. Up until we hit Florida, almost all of our stops have been 3 – 5 days with 14 days in Michigan City, and then 10 days in Chattanooga. Our 4 stops in FL will total almost 11 weeks with the last 4 (starting 12/13) on the gulf in Eastpoint. Then we will start our trek west. Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, New Iberia, Beaumont, and then wherever.

Are you thinking alligator? WRONG!
Are you thinking canebrake or cottonmouth? WRONG!

Ready?

It’s GEEZERS IN GOLFCARTS ! ! ! Our second of four stops here in Florida was in Summerfield, a little town between Ocala and Orlando. Just south of here is an area called The Villages which is a collection of retirement parks. Some are townhouses while a lot of them are prefabs (mobile homes), but they almost all have at least one golf cart in the driveway. This is the preferred method of travel here and there are paved paths that link them to one another and also to the shopping centers, medical centers, and recreation areas. There are even bridges across the main route thru here made just for these carts. Most businesses have separate parking for carts usually right in front of the door. And although you always see cars stop for pedestrians, you will never see a cart stop. So if you visit this area, be warned, they are silent and deadly, half blind and hard of hearing. Good luck.

When you think of Orlando, the first thing that pops into my mind is DisneyWorld, but the number of attractions is way up there now with Universal, Seaworld, Icon Park, LegoLand, and many more. And with those park come people, LOTS of people. We wanted to explore, see interesting things, and not pay $125 per person to get in. So we so we went down and made two stops. First was Leu Gardens. It is a lot like the Chicago Botanical Gardens but with the tropical plants, trees, and flowers of this area and south. Palms, bananas, papaya, and more. Several areas were so close to scenes from Jurassic Park it was scary. There is a path with dinosaurs to amuse the kids. After enough fresh air, we traveled about 2 miles to the Orlando Science Center. This place will entertain a kid for hours with all the interactive exhibits. Adults will enjoy all the information presented in exhibits like AI, Kinetic Zone, and more. From balancing a ball in a stream of air to making paper airplanes, they keep adults entertained, too. At the ‘Do your own weather cast’ exhibit, Claudia learned why no tv meteorologist ever wears green. We maxed out ours fitbits that day, but what fun!

Yesterday, I travelled back in time, way back over 50 years to the sixties. A very nice gentleman named Julio took his nephew Robert and Robert’s two best friends, Jim and myself, to a place called Raceway Park, an eighth mile oval racetrack to watch car racing. That day, a spark was lit in each of us. He took us to other tracks like Santa Fe, a half mile clay track, O’Hare, a figure 8 demolition derby track, and Illiana Motor Speedway, a half mile asphalt track in Indiana. One afternoon Illiana was closed, and Julio took us to another track down the road – US 30 Dragstrip. We never went back to the oval tracks. Within a couple of years, we all had our licenses and we went almost every week. We walked the pits looking at cars, we even raced ours own cars just to say we did it – I did the quarter mile in just over 25 seconds in my 65 VW! We started going to Union Grove, a track just north of the Wisconsin border. The earsplitting sounds and the breathtaking smells of nitromethane washed thru my brain as I walked the halls of this museum. One room was devoted to Don’s top fuel rails – almost all of the Swamp Rats are there. Other rooms were full of funny cars bearing the names Snake, Mongoose, Kalitta, Muldowney, or a smaller room filled only with engines and carburetors. Another was filled with old cars that Don and family and friends had restored over the years. Lots of Fords from the 40s along with oddities like Ike’s 1956 Imperial, a 1950 Mercury driven by the Fonz, and a 1974 Karman Ghia that was never titled – 27 miles on the odometer. The only thing missing was having Jim and Robert walking with me.

It’s freezing here. Yesterday it was only 46 when I woke up. I had to were a sweatshirt to walk Digger. Then it only got up to 66 for a high. We could not go swimming! So we went looking for horses. Ocala FL is the Horse capital of the world, but I see a lot more cows here. We found the Florida Thoroughbred Museum – an interesting collection of memorabilia but no horses. So we travelled across town to Fort King. This fort was built during the Seminole wars.

When you visit the city of St Augustine, you see the waters of the Matanzas River, but not the ocean because of all the little islands here. The two big ones are Anastasia Island and Vilano Beach which is more like a peninsula. Walking the beaches around this area is unique as although the sand is light gray, almost white, the ocean side beaches appear yellow. Close examination shows that there is that light colored sand, there is also a layer of finely crushed sea shells on top. The sand is covered with these fragments as well as whole shells. From Vilano Beach, we traveled up A1A to Mickler’s Landing, a beach just south of Jacksonville. Closer to the city, this beach had more people, but other beaches along the way were almost empty. Here the air is fresh, the sound is deafening, the scenery is breath taking, and you never want to leave.

After seeing the city center, we needed to get out of the city and out of the crowds, so we went out to St Augustine Beach and to the Alligator Farm. Here there are hundreds of birds, snakes, lizards, crocs, and of course, alligators. We saw feeding time in a lagoon with about 250 gators and two crocs. The turtles from Galapagos are really huge and old. Do any of you remember the story from the summer about the gator they caught in the Humboldt Park Lagoon? This is his new home

We have arrived safely here in St Augustine, Florida and it is a beautiful city indeed! We attended Sunday service at Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, the birthplace of the catholic church in America. Established by the Spanish in the 1550’s, the church was destroyed several times until the current structure was completed in 1797. The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest masonry fort in the US. Built by the Spanish in the late 1600’s, it was a defense against British attacks. Flagler College is also here in town with beautiful grounds and architecture.