The (Liquid) Sunshine State

Ever set up expectations for yourself that you then get upset because you aren't meeting them? I guess it happens a lot in life. I have to say, that's part of the problem with my First Exit blog. I keep thinking I'm going to blog deep, important or at least interesting stuff about my journey on a regular basis and then either not seeing anything that meets that standard or forgetting to tell anyone about it. Half the time my camera is buried under "stuff" in the truck and I take pictures with my cell phone and post them on Facebook. I might not get a picture in this post. Depends on what I find that I can upload.

I was getting pretty frustrated with my trailer in repairs north of Houston, even though I continued to travel around. When it was finally fixed and I was several hundred dollars poorer, I took off hell-bent for Florida. When you travel along the coast, Mississippi is only 70 beautiful miles wide and Alabama isn't much more. By March 19, I was in the Florida Panhandle. Even though it was crowded and expensive, I felt I had arrived. And it rained.

It's rained, hard, about every other day for the past two weeks. Some days, I just don't even open the door of the trailer.

I did a lot of sightseeing in the Tampa area. I followed a story that was set there and contacted the author for pointers on what landmarks inspired what he wrote. It was fun and I cruised up and down Florida Avenue saying, "Oh yeah." One recommendation I got was to go to Tarpon Springs for a grouper sandwich out on the docks. I went to Rusty Bellies and had blackened grouper, onion rings, hush puppies, and dark beer. Yum.

Now I need to digress. Not like there was a point to anything I've said so far. Quinne is 21 today. Happy birthday my first, best, and only child! She decided that she needed to go out and travel like I was and bought a ticket to Hawaii. One way. But her trip kept getting delayed. Insurance issues. Health of her host in Hawaii. Stolen wallet and I.D. Finally, I got a message that she'd taken off. I called her to find out how Hawaii was and she said she was in Seaside, OR. Then she said something very important to me:

"Dad, Hawaii was beginning to feel like a destination instead of a journey."

When I started the trip I'm on, I told you all it wasn't about the destination, but about the journey. As I looked back on the previous week, I realized that I'd made Florida into a destination. I'd spent all of two hours crossing Mississippi, and although I camped a night in Alabama, I was focused on some work I had to get done. I "planned" to be in Florida all of March to go to baseball games and play on the beaches. Quinne's words to me brought me to a screeching halt. I was here, so now what?

Well, I've been in Punta Gorda with my old friend Don Randolph for a week. He and Susie are heading out to Myrtle Beach today and tomorrow I'm headed for Naples. I'm spending a week there. I plan to park for longer times and do more exploring, meeting people as I go. I've found a group that drum on the beach in Port Charlotte on Sunday night and I'm taking my drum out there tonight. Instead of driving straight out onto the Keys, I'm going to camp in Everglades National Park. I'm going to slow down and enjoy the journey like I intended to in the first place.

That means that I won't make it all the way to Maine this spring. I'm not even going to bother trying to travel U.S. Hwy 1 (or 1A). I'm thinking I might want to explore the Blue Ridge Parkway and visit my nephews and nieces in Virginia and West Virginia. It's possible that I won't make it back to Seattle until late August or early September, but I never intended to just be driving all the time.

On her twenty-first birthday, I want to thank my daughter for getting her dad back on track!

2014-New Day!

I am back on the road and promising to start posting again regularly. I left Conroe, TX at 4:30 Friday afternoon, March 14 after three months of delays.

What, you might ask, was the reason for this astounding delay? Well, I'm giving you the short story today and later (or earlier) I'll fill in a few of the more pertinent details.

It all started after Thanksgiving.

I was slated to return to Seattle for a month to celebrate Solstice for the last time in the old house, to have several doctor/dentist appointments, and to get the house on the market to sell. I was going to fly out of Lubbock to Seattle via DFW on 12/7. Then the snow, cold, and ice of Winter Storm Pax moved across the south. My flights were canceled three days in a row because DFW was iced in and I finally got back to Seattle on 12/10.

The holiday went fine, but by my return date of January 7, the house wasn't near ready to go on the market and we'd agreed on a market date of 1/15. I postponed my flight until 1/15 and set to work making sure the house was completely ready for photos and open houses. It looked really good!

Friend J showed up at noon on the 15th to take me to the airport and I had my bags in my car when wife M received call that her stepdad was in the hospital and not expected to make it through the weekend. I canceled my flight and late that night took M to the airport to get to Minneapolis. Her stepdad passed away early Sunday morning and she was in Mpls for another two weeks.

In the meantime, the open houses went well, we accepted an offer and the real work of emptying the house began. I worked on that and a couple of jobs that came in. Then daughter Q announced that she was "pulling a Dad" and going off to travel. She leaves for Hawaii early tomorrow morning, just two weeks before her 21st birthday.

I finally got back to Texas on February 12. After unwraping my trailer from it's nice warm cozy, I discovered my water heater was leaking. My truck battery was also dead and we had to get that charged. I called emergency repair and got a bypass installed around the water heater until I could get a dealer to service it.

 

Sadly, I discovered that all the dealers in Dallas/Fort Worth were tied up at the Dallas RV Show. I went to it, but made a reservation with the dealer in Conroe, TX to get the repair as then I'd be ready to launch eastward along the Gulf Coast. Fortunately I did get to meet with my editor, Jim, while I was in Fort Worth. I've just about got the next story ready to go to him.

 

I got to Conroe, TX Camperland first thing Monday Morning February 24. After sitting for two days in front of the repair bays with the water heater torn out, photos taken, etc., we found out it would be at least until Monday before a new part arrived.

 

I decided it wasn't very scenic to sit in front of the garage doors, so I decided to just head out for the weekend and go to Corpus Christi. I had thought about doing that earlier, but decided it would just be too long before I could continue east. Little did I know. On the other hand, for the first time I got some decent weather on the South Coast did some serious walking along the beach.

Of course, it was still a long time before the trailer would be finished so I went up to Galveston for Mardi Gras. It was so wet and rainy on Fat Tuesday that I stayed in bed reading all day. I did go to the Houston Space Center before deciding to continue east along the coast as far as New Orleans. (I'll include pix of Galveston-New Orleans in a separate post.)

Suffice it to say that I was gone nearly two weeks instead of a weekend and had to buy clean underwear and shirts along the way. I got back to Conroe on Monday the 10th only to find that we were still waiting for one little tool that was required to fit a part mandated by the manufacturer. When it came on Wednesday, they repaired the leaky line in the kitchen, only to find that the faucet itself was leaking. Tired of waiting for parts to ship from the manufacturer, I went to Lowes and bought a new faucet which they installed on Thursday afternoon. The paperwork was finished and everything checked out, including getting my hitch rebalanced at 4:30 Friday afternoon, at which time I got the hell out of Dodge.

I only went as far as Pumpkin, TX to the Timber Lodge RV Resort where I spent the evening playing cards with several folks from the park. I felt like I had escaped the shackles of bondage and was almost a free man. Today, in spite of torrential rain on and off all day, I traveled 170 miles East to DeRidder, LA where I parked, plugged in, and had chips and margaritas for dinner.

I will add one or two previous posts to describe a bit of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, but I expect to make it to Mississippi tomorrow if this rain stops. Otherwise, I'll probably spend another day in bed reading!