Thanks for your encouragement.
More fog rolls into Apalachicola. After finishing a book at the waterfront park, I continue on along my route of the previous spring, running through piney woods into Port St Joe. I attend a Christmas Eve service at the PSJ Methodist church, the first such service I ever attended. After church, I walk down to the waterfront, where the lighthouse is charging ten dollars for full moon viewing. I pass, due to the fog. Out on Jetty Park, the bay is at high tide, gently lapping at a concrete seawall. Various outcasts from Christmas stand around on the pier. An unkempt guy named Jay sits at a picnic table, smoking and listening to a scanner. As I walk by, he makes a random comment and we get into a long discussion of end time Biblical prophecy in relation to current world events. I counter his interpretation by the perspective that every generation thinks their current events are of primary importance. Just before he leaves, he says, "People go through three stages of revelation in their life. You are only in the first. In the fifty-seven summers I've lived on this world, I've seen much of the nature of men. When God opens your eyes, you will understand, too." In town at a harbor-side bar, a musician plays to a non-existent crowd, bursts of song drifting over on the damp breeze. Downtown is quiet, with only one bar doing a sluggish business.
I choose to camp behind a screen of trees on an abandoned parking lot abutting a fenced off lot overrun with weeds, a couple hundred yards from the jetty. All night into Christmas, quiet souls come and go on the jetty, and the soft bay breeze blows through my open windows. No one notices or bothers me, except for an errant mosquito or two. I have finally acclimated to warm weather sleeping. At 8:00 Christmas day, Jay is back on the jetty, along with several other old folks in battered trucks and cars. He re-affirms the pagan and demonic origins of Christmas to me, then wishes me a good day as I head on down the road.
At Port St Joe Beach, a rich-looking guy walks right up to me and asks me if the beaches are good. I tell him their condition, but he swallows his next question and walks away. In the parking lot is a Mercedes SUV with Michigan plates. Last time I stopped at this beach, I met a bicyclist riding to California with a tiny dog in a trailer. In Mexico Beach, Christmas becomes 25 hours long as I cross into the Central Time Zone. On through the pine forests of Tyndall AFB. A sign says "No Photography Next 8 Miles". Unfortunately, I didn't photograph the sign. In Parker, I stop at Under the Oaks Park, just like the last time. A reformed alcoholic sits at a picnic table, drinking coffee. He cautions me against entering the nightlife in Panama City. "You fall for drinking, and there's no going back." I take the gloomy Yuletide prophet's advice and head through Panama City in the morning light. Other than a preponderance of seedy lounges, it looks like any other struggling city. Down at the beach, huge waves are crashing and the red "High Surf" flag is flying. Heavy, cool fog rolls in, and most of the of the beachgoers flee home. The massive condos and tacky tourist traps sit deserted. I trundle on through planned communities on top of tall dunes until I come upon a dead-end (BRIDGE OUT). Up along US-98, the quiet two-lane is gone and the Florida sprawl covers all unprotected areas.
Eventually, US-98 crosses Pensacola Bay on a long causeway. A busy fishing pier parallels it for half a mile. The pier (like all piers in this area, it requires an access fee) is lined with anglers of every ethnicity, many of them camped out for the day. One van with Mississippi plates on the pier has half its windows replaced by plastic and cardboard. There is a "Hangin' In There" sticker on the rear bumper. In the main parking lot, a guy clambers into his camper top. Another ratty van is parked near a raging barbeque grill. In downtown Pensacola, dozens of homeless people wander around, rest on benches, or talk with each other. There are multiple panhandlers on every street corner with traffic. A guy in a Ford Explorer Sport Trac asks me if I know the area. I say I just arrived there. He says Are you one of these homeless guys. I said yes but I have a car. He seems satisfied with the answer and drives to a red light. As I walk past him, he looks the other way. I talk to a few of the homeless guys, the only people out on the town on Christmas afternoon. Most of them were taciturn and not in a merry mood.
On across the Perdido River into Alabama. Night falls, but the temperature remains above 75 degrees. The humidity feels to be 95% or thereabouts. I stop in a waterfront park. A fake owl on a lightpost tricks me into sneaking up on it with a camera. Mosquitos hum ferociously in the absurdly warm weather. A sinking feeling in my stomach, as I ran the A/C and drove along US-98. The temperature only rose. I turned down a side road leading to Perdido Beach, a tiny, out of the way community on Perdido Bay. 74 degrees on the bayfront, but clear visibility from a nearby house. I drove on toward Mobile Bay, and the temp began rising again. By the time I hit the bay, it was 78 degrees and 85% or so humidity, hours after dark. I drove along the bayfront highway, hoping for a campsite with a bit of breeze. On a sudden inspiration, I stopped at an ice vendor and bought a bag of ice. After driving through miles of bayfront homes, I pulled into a random empty lot. So much fog had condensed on the outside of my car from the A/C that I had to use my windshield wipers. As soon as I turned the A/C off, the heat poured in. From somewhere I got the harebrained idea that I would stay coolest with the windows closed up. Oh, and the tailgate ajar.
I woke up at midnight to an infernal whine and a suffocating closeness. In the light of my headlamp, dozens of mosquitoes danced on the ceiling of my truck and cruised back and forth. I closed the tailgate, grabbed the mosquito nets, hastily installed them outside, and opened the windows. I spent nearly an hour killing the buggers, leaving the ceiling of my truck covered in little bloodstains. Still, they came in one by one through an apparent wrinkle in the mosquito netting, and I woke up numerous times thereafter to kill more of them, trying to discern if the whine came from the frantic posse trying to batter down the netting or an intruder cruising inside. I cooled down by dipping my hands in a cooler full of ice, making the heat tolerable. The bag of ice looks to have torn, because the next morning it was half as full as when I got it, with no water in the bottom. The gallon of meltwater is unaccounted for.
76 degrees in the morning; the hottest summer night I spent in New Hampshire dipped to 70. God's sense of humor: "You're dreaming of a warm Christmas? How about this!" I stop at a Walmart in Daphne and pick up a few fruitcakes discounted at 75%. They will make good emergency foods. I cross the Blakely River on the 90/98 bridge and stop at Meaher State Park, paying the two dollars entrance fee. I find the campground shower and clean up (joy!), then head on under the Mobile River through a deep tunnel, getting dumped in downtown Mobile. The library is closed for the week, but a whole lot of us are using the open WiFi outside it.
Pictures next post.
Blurb from the description:
