Current location: Terlingua Abajo campsite, Big Bend National Park, TX (sorry, we got a bit behind).
We took Friday morning to get an oil change for good ol’ Hobbes and then pointed ourselves west. We commented how we’d be heading almost entirely west or north for quite a while. This day, however, didn’t see a significant move. We drove across Alligator Alley on I-75 and quickly realized they were not joking around with that title.
4 lane highway, divided grass center, fenced sides followed by a canal then a pile of alligators for about 50 miles or so. We started as full on tourists saying “ooo, there’s one” or “that one looked pretty big” at 70 mph. After saying “alligator, alligator, alligator, alligator” in a matter of 10 seconds we realized we could give up on the count-the-alligators game. Early afternoon we ended up at the Big Cypress National Preserve visitor center and with the help of a ranger made the decision to stay in the park and enjoy a leisurely afternoon of scenic driving and picking out a campsite at Burns Lake.
When we arrived we paid our minimal fee and looked out at the resident alligator in the center of the lake, not 40 yards from our site. We also took note of the signs about being in an active panther crossing and, oh yes, they have bears here too. Nothing like forgetting you have a few other apex predators at your feet when you sleepily step out of the van at 2am to take a whizzer then realizing it after a few steps and having a mini heart attack while you scan the ground with your headlamp in expanding circles from your toes to the bushes beyond. Good times. Earlier in the afternoon we had taken a drive down the park’s loop road and got up close and personal with a few alligators sunning themselves not 3 feet off the side of the one lane dirt road. We did take a few minutes to stand in the middle of the road amongst the dark, meandering water of one of the ‘strands’. As we stared at the egrets and marveled at the cypress trees lurching out of the water we just listened to the swamp. We could hear the wind passing through the wings of the few dozen of vultures circling over the canopy, the multitude of insects and birds. We talked later that day about wanting to increase our sound memories and focus on those as much as sight or even feel or taste. It really is something we use so heavily but don’t particularly think of as a memory. But we all have those sounds or, most likely, songs that bring us back to a certain point in our lives.
Smallest Post Office in the US
After a restful evening and slow start to the morning, spent stretching and relaxing in the sun, we loaded up and continued our northwest trajectory. We played the game of vanlife tetris, meaning we lined up the next few days, what fixed dates we have, how far we do/don’t want to drive, what highlights do we want to see, what secondary places would we hit if we had truly unlimited time and, most importantly, where are we sleeping at night. We settled on a solid plan to stop at Ocala National Forest, after a stop at a brewery of course. We rolled into the campground at Fore Lake to a steady cool rain that we heard tapping on the roof after falling from the huge trees enclosing our site. The next morning we had grand plans to stop at a state park featuring a natural spring that the manatees flock to in winter. However, a completely locked gate at our campground lead us to having to wait until 8am to get out. Side note: We had heard of locked gates at parks or even campgrounds but there was always a secondary way to get out. We found it kind of mind-boggling that this was somehow 100% closed, locked, can’t-get-out. Oh well, the state park and the manatees were out and we just made our drive north to the Florida panhandle towards Pensacola Beach.
We had reserved a site at the Fort Pickens Campground on the Gulf Islands National Seashore so we were set to hang out, enjoy the sun and wind, bike down to the fort and wander onto the dunes for sunset. The beaches here are barrier island, similar to those at Assateague and the Outer Banks but the water is crystal clear and the sand is a perfectly fine white.
The fort was really interesting and the self tour took you into the caverns used to hold cannonballs and, later, artillery shells as well as onto the 10’ thick walls with huge cannons staring out at the Gulf.
That night we met our campsite neighbors and they invited us over for some their own home-brew beer. We stood around the trio’s campfire for about an hour or so, chatting about our trip, what they did for a living and one guy’s run in with Colorado Search and Rescue on a trail run that went awry outside of Crested Butte. They were all from the panhandle of Florida somewhere and were all runners of some sort, 5k’er to frequent marathoner/trail runner. They were in their upper 50’s or low 60’s. One even had his own accounting firm and we spent plenty of time nerding out about public accounting and “how the hell did your company allow you to do this??”. It was nice chatting with some new faces, albeit darkly lit faces.
The next morning we continued on westerly into Alabama, Mississippi and eventually Louisiana. After spending a week and a half in Florida it was nice to breeze through some states, even if it was just a moral boost. We did, however, make a stop in Gulfport, Mississippi and did a nice 3 mile run overlooking the beautifully white beach. This was a state neither of us had ever been to and I wanted to make sure I continued my check-off-states-I’ve-been-active-in exercise we are doing on this trip. We stretched on the sidewalk next to the beach in the sun and light breeze on a 70 degree day. It was gorgeous.
We saddled up again and made our way to New Orleans for some city life for a night.
E