Haste to the Wedding

The title of this episode is from an old dance tune. It describes what is happening in this part of the trip. We have finished the Great River Road, visited New Orleans, and looked around a little (not enough) in Cajun country. Our next event will be Jean’s granddaughter’s wedding, but first we have to get there, all the way across Florida on a diagonal. What adventures await us along the way?

Our first stop was to go back twenty miles to Port St. Joe. Jean’s phone did not update the time when we crossed into the Eastern time zone, and there was supposed to be a US Cellular store in St. Joe. It turns out there is none in St. Joe, so she went in to a Verizon. When she got there, her phone was showing the right time. They explained that where we were camped, her phone was hitting a cell tower in the Central time zone, thus the difference.

On the way out of town we pulled in to a gas station. It turns out that the only diesel pump had a small car in front of it, unoccupied. Right next to him was a big drink truck, getting ready to unload. Luckily, we still had plenty of fuel, so we pressed on.

Along the way we passed another lighthouse, so we took a picture. Many of the lighthouses along the Gulf coast are of a steel, skeletal construction. It is interesting to see the differences.

Crooked River Light

While waiting at the Verizon store, Gene checked on camping possibilities ahead. We would have liked to stay at St. George State Park, where we had stayed before, but they were full. A couple of other places we tried were also filled. Finally, we found a possibility at the Sopchoppy City Park. We had difficulty finding it (which made us hope others had difficulty, too) but finally got there after some back-tracking. It is a nice, quiet park with camping sites along a lazy river. There were plenty of spaces.

One of the other campers did not have an RV as such. Instead, they had a C-Dory, a 23-foot cruising motorboat on a trailer. It is for them an amphibious RV. They travel around, and when they are on land, they camp and live in the boat. When they get to a destination on the water, they launch the boat and cruise for a while. They are from Idaho and do this all over the country. Gene was impressed.

This campground has no check-out time, so we were lazy in the morning. Some fellow campers told us about a local joint down the road. They said the magic word, “oysters,” one of Jean’s favorite foods. We left later than usual so as to get there for lunch. It turned out to be farther than we thought, but was worth the drive. It is really “country,” with walls filled with pictures and dollar bills.

J

The food was good, too.

Then back on the road. We followed the coastal highway, but this part goes around the Big Bend area, where there are few roads near the coast, so it was all pine woods. We spotted a couple of signs advertising a Worm Grunt Festival. We couldn’t imagine what that could be, but weren’t eager to find out. Not a very exciting day. We found a campground that had a space open (rare this time of year) and settled in early for naps.

Next day (Saturday) we headed out fairly early. We drove down the road to a big restaurant for breakfast. The breakfast was also big; we each took home what amounts to a full serving of country ham.

After breakfast, we drove to the town of Inglis and topped off the fuel tank. Our goal is to drive across the peninsula to the Atlantic side, so we headed off on county 40. When we got to Dunellon, we lost the route (no road signs) and wandered about lost for a little while. We finally found a road that would take us to Florida 40 and were back on our way.

On the way across, we spotted a feed store that had propane. Since we were almost out, we pulled in. It was a short while before they closed. That turned out to be slowest propane fill we ever experienced. It took 30 to 45 minutes to take on six-and-a-half gallons. No one was pleased.

Pressing on, the rest of the run was uneventful and we made it to Ormond Beach by mid-afternoon. For those interested in statistics, Florida at that point is about 120 miles wide. We drove to the beach and thanks to the off-and-on rain, we were able to find parking at the beach front. While Jean enjoyed the beaches on the panhandle, she doesn’t consider it a “real” beach unless there is surf.

Ormond Beach

The beach in this area is wide, flat, and hard-packed sand. In the early part of the twentieth century, car makers used Daytona Beach for speed trials. For, instance, in 1906, Stanley Steamer set a record there of 120 mph using a special race car that was dubbed “the Flying Teakettle.”

After Jean got her beach fix, we headed south on US-1 and began looking for campgrounds. Jean found a promising one, but they didn’t answer their phones, so we went looking for it. That turned out to be a problem, hampered by trees in the median (we determined it would be on the left, of course) and a heavy rainstorm. We finally found it, and they had space available. It turned out to have a really good laundromat (oh, the things RV people dream about), so we booked another day and next day did a serious laundry.

Sunday was mostly a lay-back day. We did the laundry, but beyond that Gene spent a lot of time on the internet, catching up with email, etc. One of the interesting neighbors in the campground was the tractor of a tractor-trailer rig parked in a site. Gene noticed that the big fifth-wheel hitch had been replaced with a platform holding a three-wheel motorcycle. There is a RV-size fifth-wheel hitch behind that, so it is assumed that there is a really big trailer someplace.

We continued down US-1, which we will follow almost all the way. At Melbourne, we turned left and crossed the bridge to the island and beach. This area is called “Indialantic.” I guess they ran out of “Beach” names. There was ample parking at the beach, though it had meters. The meter we parked by had quite a bit of time left on it, so we lucked out. This beach has a little softer sand than Daytona, though not as hard to walk on as Gulf Shores, AL.

Things are quieter after Spring Break

There was a little surf and a few people were trying it, but only one guy on a stand-up board seemed to be having any luck.

Today is Tuesday. We had planned to arrive on Wednesday, but we are close enough to make it easily. In order to spend some time in Sandy’s driveway, Gene dumped the holding tanks before we left. He needed to stretch the hose out full length. As soon as he started pumping we had a geyser in the yard. There was a hole in the hose. A bit of duct tape fixed the problem for now, but it looks like another repair is in our near future.

It was sunny when we left the campground, but the weather deteriorated as we went. We ran a couple of last-minute errands, and as we left after the last one we drove into a waterfall. The heavens just opened up; and the GPS wanted to put us on the interstate. We weren’t interested in the interstate, even on a good day. So we killed the route and drove back to US-1.

The rain eased as we went, so that by the time we arrived, the rain had stopped long enough for us to get settled in and up on blocks as needed. That takes us to our destination. We will hang out here for an unspecified period. See you for the return trip.