April 30, Wednesday Blue Water

It was 5:35 a.m. and I couldn’t back to sleep so I said “So long” to my semi droning berth mate “Wiley Sanders Truck Lines” from Troy, Alabama and hit the highway. My early start enabled me to avoid the morning traffic in Pensacola and soon I was tooling down Highway 98 heading for Panama City Beach. I head whipped when I caught view of the Florida Gulf waters. They were not like anything I saw in Texas, Louisiana or Mississippi – the beaches were white and the waters were a tropical blue. Picture Time!!
After consulting all three of my Florida maps, I decided that I wanted to spend a couple of nights at St Joseph Peninsula State Park. Better call for a reservation. “Sorry, we don’t take reservations for the same day.” Fine, I’ll drive the 20 miles out to the end of the peninsula and see if they have a spot for the night. They did. I selected my place of moorage but when I tried to fire up the land dinghy, not a click, not a groan. What gives? The VW had a totally dead battery. But how can you have a dead battery if you’re pulled all day? After finding a pair of campground cable jumpers, I was back in the business of motoring around at 34 miles to the gallon rather than 8 miles to the gallon. But the question still goes begging as to why the battery got drained. I have my suspicions and will check it out tomorrow. Meanwhile I got to meet my Australian and North Carolina neighbors. However the “no see-ums” where driving us humans crazy. Even seeking the shelter of inside your RV didn’t provide any relief from their biting ways because they were small enough to find their way through the screens!! (As I write this, I have no lights on in the RV so the little nasty bitters are drawn to the light of the computer screen where I do them in with a light finger touch to the screen. Tomorrow I’ll have to spend time cleaning the carnage off the screen.) When I went back to the park gate to register my campsite, I got a big Welcome To Florida greeting. When I requested a senior discount on my park fee, she said, “Of course”. When she saw that I was from Washington, she said, “I’m sorry but senior discounts are only available to Florida residents.” Hello!! Florida is known as a Mecca for seniors from out of state. What a way to sock it to them by taking away a discount that every other state offers. (Isn’t there a member of the Bush family involved in politics here??) I shall inform my Washington legislators that I want a law past stating that if you are from Florida and in our fair state, you will get a senior discount to show you how much we appreciate you – if you are over 90………..

April 29, Tuesday Four States in a Day

Today I had a purpose: I was going to meet Derek Mitchell for lunch in Mobile, Alabama. To get there I started out in Mississippi, went into Louisiana then turned east again and re-entered Mississippi and traveled the entire coastal length to arrive in Alabama. The luncheon date was setup through Derek’s mom, Melanie, at my request. (My friend, Melanie –from Bellingham, is going to meet me later on for the Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI part of the trip.) Derek represents some of the best in the US Coast Guard; he’s a flight instructor for the HH 64 Dauphin helicopter. All the pilots in the service have to come to Mobile once a year for a week to get updated. Also besides being in the classroom and on the flight trainings Derek travels to the different bases once a year to check on operations. After lunch we drove the short distance to the Aviation Training Center and I was given the admiral’s tour of the facility. We were not only able to see units up close but also Derek was able to get us into the flight simulator for the Dauphin. We were treated to a student struggling to keep his aircraft from doing a crash landing. The wrap around screen view spin, the simulator lurched and the on-board instructor froze the screen so we didn’t have to endure the finale. Another high light of spending a couple of hours with Derek was our search and rescue discussions. Very fruitful for both of us. Cool place; Cool guy. Now when I hear the signature whine of the tail rotor of the Coast Guard Dauphin flying down the Swinomish Channel, I’ll think of the time with Derek.
After the tour, we said our “goodbyes” and it was on to state number four – Florida. I just got across the state line and had to throw the anchor out. I was exhausted so I spent the night nestled between idling semis at the Welcome to Florida rest stop. Tomorrow I start my two weeks in the Sunshine State; two weeks from today I leave my trip and fly back home to Seattle for a week. Travel on.

April 28, Monday Into the Sunrise

I pulled the shore power being careful not to step on the low anthills that are home to some really nasty biting, stinging red ants (as the skin on my foot can attest to), said goodbye to the resident mockingbird and headed east. The Acadian Village was a really enjoyable place to have stayed and Lafayette got a check mark as a place to re-visit. I wanted to leave early so that I could get to Gail’s house in Mississippi to be able to put in some work time. On the freeway system I noted barriers that blocked off paved cross-over’s. I was told that these were removed so that during hurricane evacuations that the incoming freeway lanes can be reversed so all lanes of the freeway are used to move the masses away from the coast. During Katrina Baton Rouge which has a population of 250,000 swelled to 750,000 in two days.
I arrived just before noon and Gail and Grady were hard at it. I helped assemble a table saw table then slipped back into my RV because I didn’t want to hear the noise of the cutting. My hearing took major destructive hits from the sound systems at the music festival. I could not only withstand the “sound that pounds” but also my internal organs where on agitation cycle as well when the percussion waves penetrated my body wall. And another reason I made myself invisible is that I don’t like watching other people use power tools; I get too freaked out. Gail and Grady sensed this and both shouted at me that it was safe to come out when they were completed cutting the 4 x 4’s. They were working on our favorite project – the boat ramp. While I was listening to music in Lafayette they had planked over the joists that projected out over the water and were now in the process of bracing and bolting the cross member at the top of the two poles on the land side of the ramp. Hard work on step ladders placed in the back of a pickup to reach the top of the poles. I really enjoyed working with both of them not only for the much-needed physical work but to contribute to the improvement of the place as a “thank you” for letting me stay there. But even more so I got to know some local folks which is always a treat for us travelers.

April 27, Sunday Festival International de Louisiana

I’ve been attending the Lafayette festival for the past four days and almost feel like a local. I’m spotting people that I’ve seen over the days. The festival has turned the downtown historic district into a walking arcade with four huge sound stages. Even though I had volunteered to be part of their 1,500 volunteer workforce, they never called me back up so I was free to roam. My main desire was to focus on local musicians and let the “international” part fall into place. There was one major treat that I happened on: the acknowledgment of a legend. The Lost Bayou Ramblers escorted to a chair on stage an ancient man in a cowboy hat and thus started a tribute to the Hackberry Ramblers. The legend, who was part of the band (I tried to catch his name, but couldn’t) started playing for dances after high school. The band was in high demand and soon became famous locally then nationally. The young members of the Lost Bayou Ramblers asked him to join them on his fiddle while they played one of the Hackberry Ramblers’ songs. A stage hand brought him his fiddle and away he went; the crowd went absolutely wild. After the song, the lead fiddler turned to the old man and then to the crowd saying, “Not bad for being 95!!!” The man spoke about starting on the fiddle at the age of 12, being taught by his dad and graduating in 1931. His band had a great singer but he couldn’t be heard in the dance halls. The man said he read about a new invention being used by orators called an amplifier so he checked it out. He bought one but there was no electricity where they played dances so he hooked the amp up to his car battery. He said that he would have to have his car running for four hours for a dance. His band was the first ever to play with electricity. And the Lost Bayou Ramblers themselves were outstanding especially the stand-up bass fiddle player. He was one with the monster and at one point balanced the instrument on edge, then climbed up on top of it and led the audience in clapping to the music! Again people were dancing up front, at the sides and in the back. The locals love their dance and it’s no “stand and face each other and shake it.” This is couple dancing; fine couple dancing. What an incredible one and a half hours.
Another group, Congre’s Mondial from New Brunswick, Canada, set me on fire both in listening to them and kindling the drive to experience their providence in August. There was a huge push from the band to connect with their Acadian Louisiana cousins that they were separated from 300 hundred years ago. As they gave the last names of the performers, cheers went up in the crowd. One of the most touching moments in their show was when they sang an endearing song about the deportation of the Acadian people in the mid-1700’s: two men standing near me were singing along with them. Afterwards I went to the New Brunswick booth at the festival, which gave me more ideas about my visit there.

Besides listening to the superb music of the festival I also people watched. This happening was certainly a local’s event. People everywhere were greeting one another with shouts and hugs. And children under foot at every turn. Lafayette is a vibrant community. However one element sadden me – smoking. I have not seen so much smoking by all ages and sexes.

I managed to sneak in a visit to another historic village across town from where I’m staying. I bought their “packaged deal” for $22. It included a National Park Service ranger lead hour-long boat tour on the Vermilion Bayou, a buffet lunch of gumbo, catfish and other local eats and then the tour of the village. The place was crawling with school kids so there were docents in period clothes stationed throughout the village to talk to them. The doors were all open to the old houses and structures that had been moved to make the "village" however one house had the door closed and I as I pushed it open I realized that it was air conditioned. And there sitting by himself with no one around was a middle-aged black man with a fiddle. He asked me a couple of questions then started talking about the music of the Cajun/Creole people. I stood transfixed for 45 minutes as he talked and played. He would play something that a Cajun band would play and then how a Zydeco band would play it. He talked about the racial mixed bands playing at "white" and "black" dances and the history of both. He spoke of how a man, just a farmer, would pick up the fiddle and dazzle the dance crowd. His one comment that made me burst out laughing was that "this was not contra dance band music!" Just before I left a couple came in and he acknowledged them by asking a question, then started talking to them in Creole French!!!

Flashback to Katrina

Randy Newman is coming to Lafayette to perform and he was interviewed in the local arts newspaper, "Living Ind". He's what he had to say:
What's your connection to New Orleans?
My mother is from there and her family is still there. They lived on Jefferson for a long time and they lived on a street called Delord Street, a street that hardly anybody's ever heard of it. So it's that area.
In going back to New Orleans, what's your assessment of the city? How do you feel it's recovering? You know, I don't feel qualified to say. I know that for some people everything's fine. But I think morale is down. You don't see it in the Quarter, but you never saw it there. All I've seen is family and the Quarter for years now. So I don't know a hell of a lot.
There were less children it looked like and sound like. My cousin told me there are fewer doctors, which her husband was. It's a different town and it's shameful. I didn't get to the 9th Ward. I didn't see it unfortunately. I badly wanted to. I know what it looks like and it's unbelievable that there hasn't been more help for the town. I mean, for Mississippi to be back on their feet, who got slammed head on.... When I was kid, it was the other way around - New Orleans was the progressive place and Mississippi was truly backwards. Now Mississippi is the home of progress.

… You know, New Orleans is not great at fixing itself. It’s not exactly what they’re really good at and they shouldn’t have to. They should have been down there with trucks, the federal government. And all the talk about “Oh, it’s the mayor’s fault,” or “Oh, it’s the governor’s fault”. It’s part of the United States, even though, thank God, they don’t act like they are.


My tour guide, Gail, was spot-on with her sense of situation.

April 23, Wednesday Home Grown

The Acadian Village is made up on a bayou and simple buildings that had history. They were disassembled and reconstructed in the village.
I’m slowly getting to know the town of Lafayette. It seems to be a laid back town with comfortable connections with its past.
It was the first night for the Festival International de Louisiana and I was there at the opening. The venue was outdoors with a broad stage with a five piece band. The announcer who introduced T-Sale' Cajun Band first spoke in Cajun French then English. It was the biggest dance I've seen in years; 100's of folks of all sizes, shapes, age and color dancing to Cajun music. The thing that surprised me the most was that strangers were dancing with strangers. Men would ask women with their husbands at their sides to dance and away they'd go. There were women there with baby strollers (they seem to congregate in front of me. It looked like a kiddie parking lot) abandoning their children to go out and dance while other moms watched their kids. Plus older women dancing with younger men and vis versa. And people talking to people; blacks talking to whites and whites talking to blacks. Again comfortable. What a grand night!

Mockingbird

Quiet on the bayou
Windows open on a hot spring night
Moonlight sliding through the window onto my bed
Mr. M singing his unscripted chorus all night long
I sleep with a smile on my face

April 22, Tuesday Which way??

After staying in the comfort of Gail’s place for a week, yesterday I unplugged the umbilical cord (shore power) and hit the highway again. When I intersected the east/west interstate, I almost turned east. For the first time in seven weeks I was heading back the way I came. I wanted to attend and volunteer at the five day Festival International de Louisiana being held in Lafayette, fours hours west of Gail’s.
When I arrived in Lafayette, I didn’t have a clue as to where I was going to stay: the casino; K-Mart parking lot? I consulted the LA phone book size camping directory but saw nothing but KOA’s. I did want to see the Arcadian Village that was pin pointed on the road atlas so as I sat in a Pier One parking lot late in the afternoon, I called them. After checking out their hours, I ask if I could just park in the lot for the night so that I could visit the village in the morning. In a thick Cajun accent the woman said that they had a RV park at the village. In a matter of minutes I was talking to wonderful Grace who was telling me that I had the pick of the place because no one was in the park. “Cost?” “First night $20 and $10 for every night there after… that included electricity and water.” “I’ll take four nights with a possible extension.” “Visiting the village is included in the price.” I’m in.

April 20, Sunday Katrina, again

Sunday was spent going to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Gail showed me where the raw hurricane force had slammed into the towns posed on the water. There were no delta lands to absorb the driving wind and water. The first three or four blocks in every town were wiped clean. However in many places building stilts that were to keep structures up above the water, were left as stark reminders that what water won’t do, wind will. Many of the roads were washed away. (I was amazed that at the west end of Galveston Island there was house after house on the beach, up on stilts. I wonder if anyone from there ever checked out the destruction on Mississippi Beaches and made any mental connections!) When we drove back into Waveland, Pass Christian, Long Beach, we saw what are called “Katrina Cottages” single-wide mobile homes with peaked metal roofs, Hardie plank siding and a front porch. The “cottages” came in a variety of charming light pastel colors. Mississippi was on the road to recovery from the 2005 hurricane. Whereas Louisiana wasn’t even “on-the-road.” I can understand why there is such bitterness in the effected area.

April 18, Friday Being Local

After working on the boat ramp, it was time for a local treat. Gail and I went to “Cajun Boys” to pickup 20 pounds of crawfish. It was packed inside their tiny place; every size, shape, age and race - all craving for crawfish. When they boil the crawfish, they throw in potatoes, mushrooms, corn on the cob. A full meal.
Much like crab feeds in the northwest there is a set ritual. First newspaper is spread over the tabletop, then rolls of paper towels, metal trays and beer. The trays are heaped high with crawfish boiled in a special brew saturated with cayenne. John and Trish, Gail’s Cajun friends, showed me the proper way to eat the little crustaceans. Trish said that this meal would clear everything out of my system. It was riotous evening of fine eating. What a local treat!!

April 17, Thursday Shock and Awe

First thing in the morning we climbed into Gail’s rig and headed south toward New Orleans. This day will be an experience for me. Three years ago Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. We spent four hours slowly driving through old neighborhood in Chalmetta in the San Bernard Parish and the different New Orleans Wards including Ninth Ward. We saw Gail’s house where she was when the levee system was breached. We spoke to an old neighbor who has since moved back into his house. But her old neighborhood was a ghost town of gutted houses with large government yellow posters with a large red “X” attached to house after house. We only saw one roofing crew at work and a hand full of contractors reclaiming buildings – after three years of the event. The hundreds of square miles of abandoned structures both commercial and residential amazed me. What is going on here?? Who is in charge? What has happened to the people?
Gail said that it was like visiting a morgue, pulling out the boxes and looking at people who use to have a life, a story, a connection. These countless gutted houses were the same; a story to tell, once a home………….
Link to more photos

April 15, 16, Tuesday and Wednesday Slow Time

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent getting settled into Mississippi. Much of the days were spent with Gail and Grady working on the place; doing parts runs for the mowers or working on the boat ramp going into the channel that Snee-Oosh lives next to. Also was getting to know Gail’s wonderful circle of friends.

April 14, Monday Findin’ Mississippi

The forty minute drive from Lake Fausse Point State Park to Henderson and Interstate 10 took me along scatter rural houses and a waterway on my left and a high grassy levee on my right. At one point I couldn’t stand it any longer so I stopped the RV and walked to the top of the levee to see what was on the other side; about the same thing as the road side – a fifty foot wide channel and then woodland.
I needed to find a post office so I could mail a box home which caused me to stop at a small store in Henderson and ask where it might be located. The customer that I asked was a tall, dark skinned man wearing a wide-woven rope belt. He shook his head and said something that I didn’t understand. Cajun? Native? Creole? The young woman next in line said that she was going right by it and to follow her when we left the store. The Henderson Post Office was a 10 by 10 gray shack and didn’t take boxes. But I got to talk to locals and see the town again – all of it based on the waterways of the area. The young woman said that she worked at a sport fishing float camp.
This part of Louisiana is flat as a table top so when I saw the freeway rise up, I got excited as what I might see. What a surprise! More woodland as far as the eye could scan but between the interstate lanes was a causeway of water and the freeway was elevated twenty feet above it on concrete pilings. And it was this way for eighteen miles! Every few miles the woodland swamp would part showing an expansive lake cypress tree islands then close back in toward the freeway. I was experiencing the mighty Atchafayala Basin home of the bayous, lakes and the Cajun people. Impressive but with great reluctance keep the accelerator pedal down. I had told Gail that I would be at her house around 3.
Five hours after leaving morning camp I had cross Louisiana and was knocking on the front door of Mississippi. In a few minutes I had Snee-Oosh backed up to a brown water channel next to Gail’s house on Anchor Lake near Carriere [CareREAR], Mississippi.
The rest of the afternoon was spent getting to know my host. She truly was a Katrina survivor. I sat transfixed as she told me “her story” something that she doesn’t usually share because of the memories that come crushing back in. When the hurricane hit, it was seven days later that her feet finally touched solid ground. Strong person.

April 13, Sunday Lookin’ for Louisiana

Time to get up and move again. I need to have several days like yesterday strung together. I can really tell that I’m in the southern latitudes!! It gets dark at 8 – not 9:30 – and the sun rises at 7 – not 5:30. By 8:30 I’m on the road wishing not to challenge the traffic around Houston. I drove by the Johnson Space Center with a twinge of regret that I wasn’t going to stop and see it. I had heard it was pretty cool. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” The highway east all the way to the Texas border and fifty miles into Louisiana was nerve racking and damaging to both me and my transportation. Construction forced you to drive on two lane stretches with jersey barriers forming a deep narrow channel with no escape places. Picture of horror: semi behind you, semi on your left; semi in front of you with everyone doing sixty miles an hour with only inches separating you and high wall concrete wall on your right side and moving metal on your left. Just everyone focus on your lane and no one freak out and we’ll all get through this.
Then if that were not enough mile after mile of bone jarring concrete seams in the freeway. Poor Snee-Oosh; poor Ron.
After eight hours of road time (I hit 4000 miles at the end of the day!!), I pulled into a sleepy little state park 40 minutes south of the freeway and stopped. Thank god I made it. It was a long day. Lake Fausse Pointe is on a massive lake about fifty miles from the ocean. Here I rest.

April 12, Saturday Staying Put

Friday night the little Rv park at San Luis filled up with pickup trucks and fifth wheels. Saturday morning everyone was out fishing. In checking out the proper way to do this you needed a garden wagon, sort of like your standard Red Flyer kid’s wagon except on steroids. Your wagon had to have four pneumatic tires plus side gates. Attached to the side gates, like you would find on a steak truck, there needed to be at least 8 10 inch PVC pipes zip tied to outsides otherwise you would be considered a wimp. These pipes of course held your collection of fishing poles piercing the sky like a gaggle of cell phone towers. Inside your fishin’ rig was your drink cooler filled with Bud or if you were man enough, Sundog Ale. This cooler kept your catch cooler and your bait can in place so they wouldn’t rattle around at you pulled your possessions across the rough parking lot asphalt. If you had space left over in your fishin’ rig, you had your folded up lounge chair. Now ya ready to do some serious damage to the finned population out there at the end of the dock or along the concert bulkhead. You go, dude!!
OR you could have your six-foot casting net and stand on the bridge and fling it in a perfect circle with an artistic flare. You got lots of extra points if you were a woman and caught fish in the net. At least she got points in my book.
At night the RV park had batteries of huge mercury vapor lights flooding out over the water. They were annoying bright. However hundreds of laughing gulls, brown pelicans and royal terns used them as fishing grounds. All night long they would set up a flight pattern through the light so no one would smash into each other and dive for fish that were attracted to the surface by the light. People also joined the fishing derby well into the night from the shoreline.

Saturday was only the second “stay put; no plan day” since I left six weeks ago. I hung out at the table in Snee-Oosh or walked the beaches in the area. Again I was impressed by the vulnerability of the stilted dwellings to a hurricane. Even if your place was bomb proof like many houses were in Galveston during the hurricane of 1900, collapsed structures formed gigantic rafts that served as battering rams against the supports of those houses still standing bring their timbers down to be added to the destructive mass. I have the utmost respect for the sea. Last month a sixteen year girl drown not more than a mile from the RV park when she was caught in a rip tide and panicked. The “Watch for Snakes” sign had been expanded to include “Caution – Dangerous Current”. I suppose in Louisiana it will again be modified to include ‘gaters!

April 11, Friday, City ,Water, Disaster

Within three minutes I was over water. San Luis Pass flushes out into the Gulf with harsh currents; a 16 year old girl drown here last month and now I was looking down on it from the ¾ mile long bridge connecting the south end of Galveston Island. Again the houses on the island were all built on stilts waiting like cranes for a high incoming tide. Traveling up the four-lane toward the northeast I was amazed to see a large electrical substation with massive power towers leading into it just sitting on ground zero. Everyone’s horror: trapped in a flooding house and the power goes out – at night.
Half way up the island the massive seawall kicks in and the houses loose their safety by resting on the ground behind this false sense of security. This protection wall was built over the years starting in 1902 after the Great Storm that killed 8,000 people.
When I reached The Strand (historic downtown), I searched out the Pier 21 Theater for it showed the 30 minute film The Great Storm. I emerged confused as to why the city was rebuilt. It’s like the town of Hamilton on the Skagit River: “Yea, this is our third flood but we’re not leaving. We’ll re-build.” Where is the logic in this? New Orleans is in the same position of making decisions after 1,800 lives were lost in 2005 after Katrina.
The city of Galveston is just a few feet above the high tide line: any Category 4 or 5 hurricane would again turn it into a flooded sinking ship. The ticket taker at the theater spoke of how her grandmother survived the 1900 storm. It was an amazing event. And now the protecting seawall is over 100 years old with many places backfilled with sand so the original 17 foot height is greatly compromised. (Katrina’s storm surge was around 30 feet.)
During Hurricane Rita, which followed Katrina, it took two days to evacuate the entire island. The ticket taker said it took her and her son eight hours to drive 150 miles inland. People were locked in traffic jams; cars were running out of gas. Go figure.
But next door to the theater was another era: the 1877 tall ship, Elissa. No sooner than I arrive dockside that a drama unfolded. A laughing gull had flown into a strand of monofilament fishing line caught in the forestay. It was hanging by one foot, head down flapping its wings. Two crewmembers had harnessed up and climbed out onto the jib boom. (They needed Caitlin, the Rigger!) They had lashed together two long pike poles with a huge kitchen knife duct taped to the end. Slowly they raised the poles and after several tries, cut the line freeing the gull. The gathered crowd cheered.
The Elissa was one of the best-kept tall ships that I’ve been on. Everything was Bristol. She was built as a steel hulled merchant ship in England. She was named after the owner’s niece. She was “discovered” in 1968 about to be cutup for scrape in Greece. She was made seaworthy and towed to Galveston where she is now the official Tall Ship for Texas. Her stats: Three masted barque; LOA 205 feet; sparred height- 100 feet; tonnage 620 tons. I enjoyed the hour I spent on her having the ship almost to myself.
Down the Galveston Channel sat an imposing exhibit: a retired Offshore Drilling Rig turned into a museum. With a quantum leap of time I now stood in the guts of the beast called Ocean Star fitted with all the exhibits, equipment, models of the oil industry proudly financed by the big name petroleum companies. Halliburton had its shingle hanging on a lot of gear also. The process of finding and retrieving the precious crude fascinated me. I was thinking of Marcus who worked a short time disassembling played out oil rigs as they stood out in the gulf. He was quick to see that it was not his calling.
The highlight of the day though was lunch at Joe’s Crab Shack on the waterfront. Even though it was a dive from the outside, it called to me. Sundog Ale with the Gulf Coast Platter was my grommet delight of shrimp presented in three different styles - with Hush Puppies on the side. Hmmmmmmmmm good!

See photo link.

April 10, Thursday, Going for the Water

In the early morning it poured down rain. I wanted to dance inside the RV because before now when it rained, I’d just stay inside my sleeping bag inside the tent looking for leaks. I kept yelling out, “Yes, LET RAIN!!” The weather broke and I longed to stay but pulled up the anchor and headed down the causeway. In this case under a tunnel of oak trees.
Getting around Houston was an absolute drag. I took a four lane belt highway with traffic lights. Every five miles it was the same stupid mall layout with the same franchised stores; Target, Best Buy, Mc Donalds, Home Depot, etc, etc, etc. Our people have let corporate American "neuter-ize" our cities and towns. They are now all the same coast to coast…………
Finally after six hours of heavy traffic driving, I saw a huge arching bridge mounting up t from the flatland. Could it be? Yes, the famous “Intracoastal Waterway” aka; “The Ditch” running the entire length of the eastern seaboard. Up the bridge incline old tired Snee-Oosh pulled and there as far as my eye could see were breakers. I had reached the Atlantic four weeks after I left the Pacific in San Diego.
I was dumbfounded to see houses built right up to the surf line. Plus new ones underway. We are such a greedy, self centered, non thinking species. DID NOT KATRINA TEACH ANYONE ANYTHING??
Putting that all aside I entered my tiny county park located on the tip of a long, wide sand spit with saltwater on three sides. I’ve tied up the mooring lines for a three day stay. It is a sweet location and what a contrast to what I left this morning. See Link for more photos. I can hear ole Glen Campbell singing Galveston, Oh, Galveston….
Time for supper. Tomorrow’s a big day. I explore the island city.

April 9, Wednesday, Still Moving East

Yesterday was wash day and I had about 20 deer keep me company at the park laundromat. What a mess. The park folks say there are about 200. Bad news for the foliage; great news for diseases. My old wildlife biology degree props itself up in front of me when I see mismanagement such as this.
On the road again –getting tired of moving everyday; I decide after looking at San Antonio on the Internet – River Walk; Alamo photo galleries - to skip the big city and keep moving. After four and a half hours of driving through beautiful rolling country side, I was brought to the hidden treasure call Palmetto (after the miniature palm trees) State Park 15 minute and a lifetime off the freeway. I immediately fell in love with the place because it reminded me of the farmland that I grew up on in Indiana. Oak trees everywhere; Burr, Pin, Red plus hickory and pecan. In the trees were cardinals and wrens both singing their spring hearts out. And in the undergrowth to keep you alert were timber rattlers, copperheads, cottonmouths and coral snakes. At every trail head was a sign declaring “Watch out for Snakes.”
I spent the afternoon walking the trails marveling at the setting. (also whispering “here snakes, here snakes, is that you, snakes?..”)
At night it was muggy again and for the first time since leaving La Conner, I slept under only a sheet and in the nude.