Yes, Virginia!

Made a sudden realization as I woke up after my nap. I get up when I wake up. I eat when I’m hungry. When I’m thirsty, I have a drink. When I’m tired I take a nap. I’m a baby!

I set my GPS on “Shortest Distance” when I located an interesting campsite listing and headed north out of Tennessee and into Virginia. What an incredible, intensely beautiful area! This setting generally keeps me off Interstates as they are frequently the shortest time, but not the shortest distance. It also sends me down the business routes through downtown and Main Street instead of around the bypasses. Usually that’s great. There have been a few towns where Main Street was barely wide enough to get the trailer down, but only because there were cars parked along both sides. In general, I get to see some beautiful areas. Especially out in the country.

The folks at New River Campground near Blacksburg gave me directions from the freeway, of course, but I was coming in from the South and just followed the GPS. Scared the crap out of me. I was directed onto a gravel road that kept getting narrower. I was no more than on it when the GPS changed its tune and started saying “At first opportunity make a U-turn.” The map showed the road I was on ending. There simply wasn’t a place wide enough to turn around with a pretty steep cliff to my right down into the river. I just kept driving. In about a mile or so, the map changed to show more road, the road widened and became paved, and I found the campground. Thanks for the scare, Maggie!

I was going to take another day getting to Broadway, Virginia for Memorial Day, but there just wasn’t a convenient stopping place, so Thursday afternoon I pulled into Bennie’s Beach Resort and let the family know I was in town. It’s a pretty windy spot due to the openness and folks wanted to know where the beach was when I posted a picture of my campsite. It took me a while to find it, but it was right down there past the rusted pickup and the deer stand. Nephew Rony stopped by and told me to come over for dinner Friday. Niece Lizz and Darren came by as well and I figured to go there the next night.

There’s a lot of relatives in this clan and it was a blast to meet several that I’d never met, especially the youngest generation. I also loved the fact that campfires in the back yard were the norm in the evening. I ended up with a lot of smoky clothes be the end of the weekend!

Rony and Lecia  served enough food and enough people to make this a great gathering and it was wonderful to spend time with great-nephew and great-niece Luke and Stephanie and their kids. Then Keith showed up with his daughter, Chanel. Every time I see Keith I’m bowled over by how much he looks like my dad. And, of course, we are all very proud of Chanel, who came straight from her last day of school and is now a high school graduate. This is nephew Keith and his nephew Luke.

Saturday, I took the opportunity to drive a portion of the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. Luke told me about a hike to take and I attempted it, but there were portions of the trail that were steep enough to make me pant and feel a little weak. Guess I’m a little out of shape for mountain hiking and I’m determined to improve that so I can go back and finish the hike. The viewpoints from Skyline Drive were incredible, though.

I headed to niece Lizz’s house for dinner that evening. What a surprise to find niece Kenlyn there! Talk about kids who look like their parents! Kenlyn looks so much like her mother Judy did that I was amazed. Sadly, we lost my sister Judy last year. All the kids are still really sad about that. Kenlyn couldn’t stay, but last time I was in this area I missed her completely, so this was great.

I also got to spend time with Lizz’s daughter Angel and her boyfriend Austin. What great kids! And when great-nephew Bob showed up with his wife Bree and baby Benson, we had a laid-back and relaxed evening with some of the best cole slaw I’ve ever had. That Lizz sure can cook!

On Sunday evening, we headed just across the border into West Virginia to visit nephew Steve and his wife, Candy. For me, having even a sip of Steve’s moonshine is enough to knock me on my butt. But we had a great time, once again just sitting around a campfire in the evening and swapping stories and memories.

Memorial Day, Lizz, Angel, Austin, Bob, Bree, and Benson picked me up for a hike in the mountains. This was a little less steep of a hike than my attempt on Saturday, and we were out for a couple hours just enjoying the great outdoors. We finally got up to this stairstep falls where the kids spent time playing and splashing each other. They are so cute!

I swung back to Rony’s that evening for a bit of barbecue before I pulled out on Tuesday morning to head out of the mountains and into the wilds surrounding Washington, DC.

Tennessee

I crossed the border from North Carolina into Tennessee on Wednesday the 14^th and settled in for the weekend. There were two reasons for that. I imagined that it would take me a good bit of time to see the Great Smoky Mountains and it was raining. I didn’t want to drive.

By Saturday, I was sick of the rain and decided to go explore the Smokies anyway.

They are beautiful, but because of the constant rain and mist, the pictures are not spectacular. That haze of gray that hangs around the mountains, though, definitely earns them the title of “Smoky.” Perhaps the high point (literally) of my trek across the crest at New Pass was crossing the Appalachian Trail. I took a look at it and walked out along the trail toward Maine, exactly 100 steps. According to my calculations, I have exactly 4,125,424 steps to go. Someday.

After I’d crossed over the Smokies, back into North Carolina, I decided to travel along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had it in mind to head generally Northward along the Parkway when I broke camp on Monday. After seventeen miles, I decided this was not actually the kid of route I wanted to pull the trailer along. Some of the overpasses were barely higher than my trailer and I wouldn’t be in my own lane when I rounded a few of the curves. When I exited, though, I encountered some elk bedded down in the greenway of the cloverleaf.

As an alternative, when I broke camp on Monday, I just set the GPS to go toward the nephews and nieces in Virginia without using freeways. What a beautiful journey. Just before I crossed into Virginia, I paused at a NASCAR mecca long enough to take a photo of The Coliseum. So here’s to all my NASCAR loving relatives. I have made the pilgrimage!

And then there was Virginia.

North Carolina

There was something about traveling westbound across North Carolina that tickled boyhood memories. If you find this blog filled with boyhood memories, please understand that they seem to be flooding me lately. One thing has led to another and the fact that I am writing a serial set in Northern Indiana where I grew up has increased the number of memories.

This particular memory was of Indian Guides, a program of the YMCA in Mishawaka. We had a tribe. It was a good program in which fathers and sons met together to do crafts, tell stories, go camping, build crystal radios, and even sometimes watch TV. That’s what we were doing in October of 1959 when I was ten years old. We gathered at Craig’s house. Brian, Dennis, Mark, Mike, and me. Maybe Monte was there as well. The occasion on that Sunday night was the airing of Disney’s Wonderful World of Color premier, The Swamp Fox. It starred Leslie Nielsen in the days before “Airplane” made him a white haired comedy star. We met at Craig’s house because he had a color TV. The series was intermittent with two shows that October, four in January of 1960 and two more in January of 1961. I think we only met together to watch the first episode. By the end of that school year when we were entering sixth and seventh grades, the Indian Guides kind of fell apart. We each had our own thing to do.

So why would I think of this admittedly random memory? I was traveling westbound on Swamp Fox Highway through Francis Marion National Forest.

I ended up at a little campsite somewhere near Fort Bragg for Mothers’ Day weekend.

I have to say that I loved traveling across North Carolina. It seemed like every house, no matter how small, had a neatly manicured lawn, sometimes an acre or more. There were a lot of white fences and horses running around the gentle hills as I moved inland.

I moved on Monday, as I often do, to a site about fifty miles south of Asheville. Everyone had told me that I had to visit Asheville, so I did. What a beautiful little town filled—in my experience—with friendly people, including the two soldiers who were walking my direction and said they were stationed there. I said I didn’t know there was a base at Asheville. One soldier said they were on special assignment. The other said, “We’re everywhere. Just lift up any manhole cover. You’ll find the United States Army.”

The Grove Arcade Public Market (above), I discovered, had been commandeered by the U.S. Government back before World War II and was walled off and closed for a headquarters building. It remained in the possession of the Federal Government until it was sold back to the City of Asheville in 1997 and has been undergoing a revitalization ever since. Very impressive architecture.

I’d been reading some stories over the past several years that were set in the mountains of North Carolina and other venues, but all the locations were cleverly renamed with things like “County Seat” and “The Swamp.” It hadn’t been difficult to figure out that the swamp referred to was the Great Dismal. It took me a long time, though, working through vague phrases like, “the Interstate on the north” and “the park” to the west and “forty minutes up to the college” to decide that the pattern for the places was based loosely on Hendersonville, about twenty-five miles south of Asheville. So, like I often do, I decided to check out the county seat of Henderson County. Nice little town with some of the best coffee shops I found in North Carolina.

Apparently, the town has as big a thing for bears as Seattle has for pigs.

I decided to take U.S. Highway 176 south out of Hendersonville—a route which took me back into South Carolina in order to get to my campsite. It was narrow and twisting and I decided not to take with the trailer when I headed out on Wednesday for Tennessee.

But the route and North Carolina in general were beautiful and relaxing.

Catching up a little at a time. What happened to May?

If you’ve followed this blog in real time, you  know that I didn’t really post this on May 8. I’ve been really behind as I’ve focused on some new writing. I have had adventures, though, and will  make a few short scene posts before I finally catch everything up.

You know that awkward moment when you look up from your computer and think, “Mmm. Something smells good. I wonder who’s cooking?” Then realize you are the one cooking? I’ve eaten several over-cooked meals the past month. It’s really disconcerting to look over and realize that the pot of coffee I started making only has an inch in the pot. Not because I drank that much, but because over the past half hour I’ve forgotten to put any more water on the grounds. I make it a rule to only use one coffee cup so I don’t have half-full ones lying all over the trailer.

What would be more logical to do after Savannah than go to Charleston? And what is to see in Charleston but Fort Sumter. There’s an interesting phenomenon in South Carolina and to a somewhat lesser extent other states in the Southeast. They are incredibly proud of their role as a primary battle front in the revolutionary war and the founding of the United States. They are equally proud of being the first to secede from the union and found the Confederate States. Equal pride in building it and destroying it.

Well, Fort Sumter is a symbol of both. After hearing about and reading about this landmark for many years, I finally got to pay my $18 (for the ferry, not the park) to go visit it. It was interesting and even moving. I spent most of the ferry ride inside where it was air conditioned. It started getting pretty darn hot by the time I got back at 2:30. That didn’t stop me from wandering around old town Charleston for a while, though. After finding an incredible coffee shop, I kept wandering and found a wonderful brew house. I had to stop and enjoy a little refreshment and some ribs.

This meal sparked a great memory of childhood. Not the ribs. The cole slaw.

Bizarre memory. I love Cole slaw. I'm eating at the Smokehouse in Charleston and with my ribs came a big helping of really good Cole slaw. I got to thinking about high Triton High School and the little cafe on the main corner on Bourbon, IN. Occasionally we would go there on Sunday after Mom finished preaching. I remember one time when I ordered a dinner-size plateful of their cole slaw for lunch. I thought they had the best.. Occasionally we would go there on Sunday after Mom finished preaching. I remember at least one occasion on which I ordered a dinner-sized plateful of their Cole slaw for lunch. I thought they had the best. Funny memory.

I ended my stay in Charleston with a real discovery. A little tobacco shop happened to have three tins (fifteen cigars) of my favorite Macanudo 1968 Courts. I bought them all and sat in front of the trailer that night with a glass of scotch and a great cigar. It was a little strange, though, to hear an ice cream vendor come through the RV park with its speakers playing Yankee Doodle!

I had planned to drive west from Charleston to Atlanta to see friend, GG. Alas, it was Mothers’ Day weekend and she went to Oregon to be with her daughter. Have to see her on the way back!  So I headed north to Myrtle Beach, instead. On the way I stopped at Brookgreen Gardens, a fantastic sculpture garden that my editor, Jim, turned me onto. I was impressed with the headless statue.

Oops!

Finally found a campsite a few miles north of Myrtle Beach that was beautiful, quiet and wooded.

I headed back into the town that was mostly a long strip that was a wanna be amusement park, but once you got downtown and to the beach it was really beautiful. I had lunch with Don’s son David at The Captain’s House restaurant and then took a walk on the beach in front of it. Both were exquisite.

And that was South Carolina!

Savannah and Writing

I know I've been a naughty kitty and haven't posted anything about Key West or running around naked at a nude RV park. Oh well. There are (thankfully) no pictures of that anyway. But today, I spent the day in Savannah, Georgia and had a wonderful time. Probably not for any of the reasons that I should have. But they were my reasons and I'm going to share them with you.

The story starts in 2010. That year, I decided to do two completely different novels for NaNoWriMo in November. The "rules" for National Novel Writing Month are that you start and finish a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days. By 2010, I'd completed six NaNoWriMo novels and I needed a bigger challenge. I decided to do a second sequel to "For Blood or Money" (first sequel was called "Municipal Blondes") and already knew the story of this Deb Riley mystery: "Stocks and Bondage." (http://debriley.blogspot.com/) I also had a story that I felt needed to be told. A dark side story that was unquestionably "literary fiction" and if I ever published it, it would sell all of ten copies. I did publish "The Volunteer" in 2013 and it has sold ten copies. (http://www.amazon.com/Volunteer-Nathan-Everett-ebook/dp/B00H4OASMU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398816013&sr=8-1&keywords=the+volunteer+nathan+Everett)

These stories were as different as night and day. In "Stocks and Bondage," cybersleuth and mistress of disguise Deb Riley tracks down the murderer of a woman who left six running computers as the only clue to her death. "The Volunteer" is a journey inside the head of a chronically homeless man. Before I started writing, I decided that these two would one day cross paths. It would be the only point of contact between the two stories.

It happened in Savannah, a place I'd never visited until today.

G2's story (The Volunteer) finds him just off a train in Savannah and hungry. He finds a handout and in return for sweeping the front, a little cash at Sweet Charlotte's. In real life, this is a funky little pizza shop at Congress and Whitaker in Savannah called Sweet Melissa's. When I saw the place, it looked exactly like I imagined, but it wasn't open and I couldn't find the name anyplace. I checked at a nearby coffee shop, though, and was told it doesn't open until much later in the day. (7:00) Still, I could see where G2 got his pizza slice and swept the walks.

Then G2 sees a man drop a Savannah rose on the pavement and picks it up thinking he will be helpful and return it to the man. He is rebuffed. With his three dollars and a rose, G2 buys a cheap bottle of wine and wanders south to Forsyth Park where he sits to drink his wine. Here is the story from "The Volunteer."

♦♦♦

WITH THE THREE DOLLARS he’d gotten from Sweet Charlotte, G2 managed to get a bottle of wine and was settling down next to a park bench to enjoy a sip. It was full dark and most people had left the park. This bench was a bit out of the way and no street lights illuminated it. Rather than sit on the bench, G2 sat down beside it and leaned against the seat. He looked once again at the reed rose he held in his hand. It didn’t seem right to just throw it away. He took a mouthful of wine and let it sit on his tongue while he contemplated the matter. The wine was a little sour, but at $3.50 a bottle G2 wasn’t expecting Cabernet Sauvignon. G2 doubted that he ever got drunk on wine. It seemed he never had enough to be drunk, but as the wine warmed on his tongue a deep peace settled in over him. It was a clear night and he would sleep beneath the stars with a rose on his chest. Perhaps he would have no dreams.

It was into this peaceful state of bliss that the woman hurrying through the park with a slight limp on her left side tripped over G2. He nearly choked, swallowing the wine in his mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “Are you all right?” Not from here, G2 thought. A Northerner like himself, come south to get warm. That gave him a sudden idea. He nodded his head and held out the rose to her. She pulled back instinctively from his outstretched hand, but then approached and took the flower. “That’s beautiful,” she said wistfully. “You must be an artist.” G2 didn’t want to take credit for the flower’s craftsmanship, but he still had a bit of wine in his mouth and didn’t want to say anything. She seemed to get the message and sat on the bench next to where he sat on the ground. She exuded confidence. G2 would have guessed she was much younger, but her appearance in the dim light suggested a woman, maybe as old as he was. He couldn’t remember right away how old that was. He had been 50 a while back, but he didn’t remember if that was last year or a few years ago. She searched in her purse for a moment and produced a ten dollar bill and handed it to him. Ten dollars! She didn’t immediately get up and rush away, though. G2 listened as she rambled on. “You get to be whoever you want to be and no one tells you to be someone else. I know life must be hard for you and I don’t mean to romanticize it, but I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be truly free of everyone’s expectations and just leave everything behind. But there is so much to give up; I know I couldn’t do it. There’s my friends, of course. It is so painful to lose a friend and sit through their funeral and say goodbye forever. How could I ever inflict that pain on them and just leave. And security. Having a home, a dog, a job. Those are the things that define me.” G2 noticed she didn’t say a husband. He bet she was just as alone as he was when it came down to it. He dared another sip from his bottle and offered it to her. “No, you enjoy it. I’m afraid I can’t. That’s what life is about—what I can’t do, not what I can do. If you don’t have anything, is it easier to give up what you have?” She was silent a moment and G2 sat looking expectantly at her. Then she rose and turned away.

“God bless,” G2 said softly. She hesitated a moment as if snared by his words, but she didn’t turn back. She hurried on her way.

♦♦♦

Twenty-seven year old Deb Riley is in disguise as a 50ish woman and cousin to the dead woman she is investigating. Her disguise includes having put a pebble in her shoe to create a limp. She looks a little dowdy and the walk from the house where she is going through her subject's personal belongings to the bed and breakfast she is staying at, leads her across Forsyth park in Savannah. This is her story:

♦♦♦

Grover offered to drive me, but after my harried experience with him in traffic this afternoon, I just said I needed some exercise. It was a pretty straight shot across Forsyth Park to get to the B&B and I could use the exercise.

I hadn’t counted on it getting dark.

The longer day here in the south had lulled me into a false sense of spring. There was scarcely nine hours of daylight at this time of year in Seattle, but Savannah is so far south that it was closer to eleven hours here. It was dusk when I left Grover’s house, but full dark before I was halfway across Forsyth park. I almost stepped on the old man next to the path before I saw him. I don’t know who was startled more.

There is something about homeless people that tugs at my heart. I’m no Pollyanna. I wade through throngs of homeless every day in Seattle. Some of them even know Maizie by name and I usually have a dollar that I can give them. I know Dag must have and they shouldn’t suffer just because he is dead. But when this guy looked up at me, he was shy and looked apologetic. He held out his hand—I thought a typical panhandler—but he had a flower in it. No, it wasn’t just a flower, it was a perfect rose. A perfect brown rose. The light from the streetlamp was dim, but I could see that this wasn’t actually a rose, it was a piece of art. I thought at first that it was carved out of wood, but then I realized that it was actually something like straw or grass that was carefully folded, bent, and tied to look exactly like a rose. I was enthralled.

“This is beautiful!” I said. “You are an artist.” I sat down on the bench next to where he sat on the ground and rummaged in my bag. I pulled out a $10 bill and handed it too him. His eyes got so big around I thought they’d explode. Then he bobbed his head and said “God bless.” That’s all he ever said. “You are an amazing artist,” I said again. “Do you travel around much?” He nodded. All the way through the park, limping because of the bump in my left shoe, I’d been thinking about how hard it was to remain in disguise. Here was a guy who traveled around and I bet didn’t even have an ID. “Nobody stops you from being whatever you want to be, do they?” I said more to myself than to him. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like just to abandon who I am forever and be nobody. I suppose that doesn’t sound at all exciting to you. You are nobody to just about everybody, but still you can make this incredible work of art.” I sat there silently for a minute and so did he. Then I got up and kept walking. I didn’t look back at him because I couldn’t bear the thought of him sleeping out under that bench, or wherever he sleeps. At least its warmer here than it is in Seattle.

♦♦♦

Well, that was my trip to Savannah. Yes I went to the waterfront and read all the legends of every war memorial and riverwalk marker. I bought a cigar at the Savannah Cigar Company in the Market and ate at Anna's across the mall. There I drank sweet tea for the first time. It's kind of like drinking flat tea-flavored soda pop, but at least now I know what people are talking about when they mention sweet tea.

But mostly, I followed the footsteps of my characters through streets I'd only imagined as I wrote of their encounter--an intersection of two universes in my mind, made real by the feel of cement beneath my shoes.

After being reminded of Deb's journeys, both here and by my friend Don who read the story online, I've decided to publish the sequel to "For Blood or Money" this summer. It is currently titled "Municipal Blondes" and begins overlapping with the previous story, this one told from the perspective of Deb Riley.

Falling Off the Grid

We all talk about going off the grid at times. What a blessing it would be to not have all this "communication" come in all the time. But I didn't realize how far off the grid I was going to fall when I left Naples and entered The Everglades.

 When I passed that monument yesterday afternoon, I pretty much passed out of contact with anything. I hadn't paid much attention to locations when I made my campsite reservation. My GPS told me it was a  mile to the campground. It meant that it was a mile to the entry gate. I thought the lady at the gate said it was eight miles to Flamingo and would take me about forty-five minutes. Oh well. I figured it must be really low speed limits and lots of traffic. No. The speed limit was 55 and straight as an arrow with no cars for the most part. What I misunderstood was that it was 38 miles to the campground. I left the last internet or cell connection at the gate and wound my way southwest.

It's a beautiful campground. I have a nice level parking spot, table, grill and electric. At least my air conditioner works as it's been pushing ninety degrees out. I had my canopy out for a while in the afternoon, but the wind picked up in the evening and I rolled it in. The rain started about nine-thirty. On and off for a few hours, but nothing serious. This morning was beautiful and I met several of my neighbors both last night and this morning. I decided, though that I'd better let family and friends know that I would be out of contact for a week so no one would worry.

I drove close to fifty miles back into Homestead this morning and camped out at a Starbucks for a while. Updating all my contacts and sending text messages and email. Just wanted to let you know, I'm really going off the grid now!

This happens to have been the high point of my visit to the Everglades so far!

Social Butterfly

I spent a delightful week in Port Charlotte and saw my friends Don and Susie several times. I've no idea what these little creatures are, but they frequented my campsite several times a day.

Don made sure I had a copy of the local "Go" newspaper and there was a photo of a group of people drumming on the beach. They were called the Sunset Drummers and after I looked them up on Facebook, I found that they met every Sunday evening to drum on the beach. They welcomed me and I took my little drum ( the only one I have that I could bring in the trailer) and joined the circle. I had a very small voice compared to the folks around me, but I could feel the rhythm.

A lot of people got up to dance in the middle of the circle and if they couldn't or didn't want to dance, they grabbed hula hoops. I didn't see a single self-conscious person the entire evening. And realized I wasn't either.

It was a beautiful sunset over the Gulf of Mexico and a great way to end my stay in Port Charlotte after Don and Susie left for Myrtle Beach.

Sister Kim told me she loved Naples and I should spend some time there. So I booked a week at the Rock Creek RV Park. There are about 250 spots at this camp and about half are permanent or semi-permanent residents. Turns out I got here the perfect week. I was sitting outside the trailer Monday evening and a neighbor walked by and invited me to the community talent show that night. The hour-and-a-half show had about 45 minutes of acts in it and a lot of filling time while the next act set up and fumbled with the curtain, but there were some very good singers among the citizens.

The next evening, I was invited to the community "End of Season" hotdog roast and potluck. It was great fun to hang out with folks and talk about our travels. Of course, many of the snowbirds are leaving for northern climes this week.

 

If I didn't meet them at the potluck, I got another opportunity (every evening) to meet folks at the BYO Happy Hour at the gazebo at five. I've gotten a lot of tips from travelers about what to see and not to miss as I head south to the Everglades next week and then on into the Keys. Most of these folks have twenty years of traveling on me and treat me like the kid I am!

So, here I am with a nice camp in Naples and plans to hit the beaches tomorrow for most of the day. In the meantime, I'm writing like crazy (15,000 words yesterday) and editing a client's eBook. I'll be reading another client's first few chapters this week as well. Once again, one of my friendly neighbors stepped in to chat and take my picture with First Exit. This week has been beautiful all week with temperatures in the eighties and sun and blue skies all day long. Besides the grouper sandwiches, this was a good reason to come to Florida!

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!