Across the Southern U.S. – Day 11

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Esso Station in Mena, Arkansas

Mena, Arkansas, was where we took our overnight stop, and as you can see, it is shortly after sunrise that we are getting underway. This old Esso gas station opened back in 1928, and after years of decline, it was renovated before the turn of the century and is now a roadside attraction.

Driving west to Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas

Mena is located at the foot of Rich Mountain, which is the second-highest peak in Arkansas, standing at 2,681 feet or 817 meters. We were heading up towards Rich Mountain when I took this photo on our way to Queen Wilhelmina State Park.

Driving west to Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas

There’s very little time to stop and smell the flowers as we have 1,200 miles to cover between now and tomorrow night, so we end up taking some of our photos right through the windshield of the car while driving up these winding mountain roads. Oh, you can tell this is from the driver’s side? Yeah, I’m guilty of this small bit of unsafe driving.

Jutta Engelhardt and Caroline Wise on Steam Engine #360 at Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a closer look at an old steam train and then to find out that we could crawl up on it, well that deserved a photo. We are about to leave the Queen Wilhelmina State Park on our race westward.

Jutta Engelhardt, Caroline Wise, and John Wise entering Oklahoma

Leaving Highway 88 behind and joining Highway 1, also known as the Talimena Scenic Drive as we pass into Oklahoma.

Llamas and alpacas on a grassy hillside with flowers? Well, that adds to the scenic quality of this road in my book.

We won’t be in Oklahoma long as we beeline it to Texas.

This tortoise from Antlers, Oklahoma, as opposed to a tortoise with antlers, is certainly moving a lot slower than we are today, a matter of fact, too slow, and so we pulled over to nudge it to safety. This one, fortunately, didn’t need to be lobbed like a football.

Valley Feed Mill Paris, Texas

Welcome to Texas and the land of long roads.

Paris, Texas

You should know that Wim Wenders has inspired this visit to Paris, Texas. I first learned of Wim Wenders from Dennis Hopper, who told me about working with him on the movie The American Friend. Another bit of nostalgia: it was during these meetings with Dennis Hopper that I also met Harry Dean Stanton, who plays the lead role in the movie Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders. How I came to hang out with Mr. Easy Rider is another story that I’ll publish at some point.

Paris, Texas

Of course, visiting Paris in Texas is a bit of a treat for my mother-in-law as she never heard of another Paris outside of France. The town is pretty quiet today, and looks like its prosperity is on the wane.

Muenster, Texas

From Paris to Muenster, Germany…I mean Texas.

St. Jo, Texas

This required some sleuthing on Google Maps to figure out our driving route and what town this might have been as we were driving from Paris to Muenster and then the time stamp on the photo so I could get an approximation of how many miles we might have driven. Turns out that we are in St. Jo, Texas and Google Street View confirms it, although the town has been renovating the main square since we drove through.

Bull statue at Lonestar Hereford Ranch in Ringgold, Texas

Good thing others take photos and write about missing roadside attractions otherwise, I may have never found out that this bull statue used to stand at Lone Star Hereford Ranch in Ringgold, Texas. It’s sad to see such large lawn ornaments go away; kind of makes you wonder how you retire a 20-foot-tall bull.

Jutta Engelhard outside Henrietta, Texas

If the mother-in-law is falling asleep in the back seat, a surefire way to wake her up is to make a stop at a Dairy Queen. Jutta didn’t know how much she liked “fake” ice cream until she tried a Blizzard, and then every time we passed one, she’d be sure to point out, “There’s another Dairy Queen.” This particular one was in Henrietta, Texas.

West of Wichita Falls, Texas

We are west of Wichita Falls, Texas, as we trek across the Lone Star state.

West of Wichita Falls, Texas

If we didn’t pass cattle and oil pumping operations we might not have known that we really were in Texas.

Old Gas Station in Mabelle, Texas

A far cry from the Esso we visited earlier in the day back in Arkansas. With no one around to ask we had no way of finding out anything about this old gas station that has obviously been closed a good long time.

Edit: Turns out this was in Mabelle, Texas, but has since been torn down. 

This could be somewhere between Lubbock and Plains, Texas, but then again, it could also be between Guthrie and Lubbock.

More friendly horses and two German women in western Texas.

After more than half a day driving across that gargantuan state, we are finally in New Mexico and seeing hints of the Arizona sunsets we are about to re-encounter. From Plains, Texas, we drove to Lovington, New Mexico, on our way to Artesia, New Mexico, where we’ll spend the night in some cheap roadside motel.

Though we were in the car the majority of the day we still were able to carve out a great encounter with the countryside of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and a bit of New Mexico late in the day. Obviously, we stayed off the major highways, and that certainly extended our time on the road, but we managed to drive nearly 800 miles today and, along the way, collect some memorable moments that will now stick with us for the rest of our lives.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 10

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

This is not getting any easier. The deal is that for the past couple of days, these blog entries are not coming from notes such as the extensive highly detailed notes that accompanied the first week of our road trip. Instead, I’m trying to pull details from a journey we made 15 years ago. At times Caroline lends a hand as her superior memory, while not infallible, is often carrying details I had long forgotten. What I can tell you about this photo is that the horse and pasture yummies are all from Tennessee, and the reason I know that is from the time stamp on the photos and that the next photo shows us crossing into another state.

Welcome to Mississippi, where we are just dipping our toe into the state to gain bragging rights to having visited the north and south of the state. Our visit was pretty brief because we had to head back up to Tennessee and into Memphis specifically.

Not knowing if we’d ever visit Memphis again, we had to take this opportunity to visit Graceland, home of Elvis Presley and his final resting place.

For my mother-in-law, this isn’t exactly her idea of a great place to visit as she never developed a fondness for kitsch, nor was she a big fan of Elvis. As for me, this is an interesting look into a kind of prison that had likely become a madhouse. While others will feel a kind of closeness to the King by being among his possessions, all I can see is a place designed with the hope of being able to escape fame. During better times, this may have been a partying refuge where Elvis could entertain and share with friends and family, but then there’s the madness, isolation, and depression that came with his drug abuse and not being able to lead a normal life due to his bizarre fame.

I’d like to imagine that Sister Rosetta Tharpe once dined here with Elvis as he said thank you for teaching him what rock ‘n’ roll was going to be. While Elvis won accolades, fame, and fortune, she will live on in rock history as the pioneer who defined the sound of the electric guitar as an essential part of a music genre that has endured for the better part of 50 years.

Funny that I’ve enjoyed walking in the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, along with my share of castles, palaces, historic homes, and not-so-famous dwellings, but the feeling here is of a kind of anguish I felt at Dachau concentration camp in Germany. I don’t mean to imply that some kind of atrocities occurred here or that Graceland and Dachau should necessarily be compared; it’s just the sense of foreboding heaviness that has me ill at ease walking through this man’s home. Was it ever his intention to allow his refuge to be a museum where even his privacy is sold to those who want just a little more of him?

Once I took the thread of finding despair here at Graceland, the self-guided tour became too oppressive. This wasn’t helped by the fact that everyone was moving around in silence as visitors were given headsets to listen to a narrative about Elvis’s life here. The feeling of isolation was probably appropriate, considering that the majority of Elvis’s time here would have to have been alone. Taking off the headset, I was still feeling awkward, except now creepiness walked with me as the zombies in the house shuffled silently about, robbing the place of chatter and laughter.

The King’s wealth let him buy a lot of things, including a kind of immortality, as he entered the history books, but he couldn’t buy happiness. I was 14 when he died a hero to many who had worshipped a man they had had fond recollections of from the late ’50s to the mid-’60s. To me, he was cool in a “black and white era” kind of way but was a tired, bloated buffoon as I was busy worshipping the throne of Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. All these years later, I can’t help but feel sorry for Elvis and the majority of others who have found fame in America, the double-edged sword where money carves away privacy, leading to megalomania or deep depression.

Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas is our next stop. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to bath in. While Bathhouse Row is historically awesome and architecturally beautiful, the baths are long closed as the age of therapeutic mineral baths gave way to shock therapy. Just kidding about one replacing the other, but the fact remains that public baths have fallen out of favor, so we won’t be doing any restorative swimming this fine day.

It’s pretty here in Arkansas. I don’t know what I expected, but this is beating those expectations. Okay, I know what was on my mind, more of Deliverance and squealing pigs. It’s sad this impression of the Southern United States as being one of backward, intellectually handicapped people that have been stereotyped ad infinitum during my lifetime. The idea that a bunch of “Gomer’s” lives down here is not my creation or sole interpretation; it is an image played across America millions of times a year. Why is this? Because the majority is hostile to anything less than total conformity, and those who control cultural hegemony are quick to label those that they find to be different. To be different is to be hated, and that’s just the way it is.

Good thing trees are harmonious and carefree without time to hate on others or choose to avoid certain neighborhoods due to prejudice. Instead, they grace our landscape, shade us, help produce oxygen, house us, warm us, and only on rare occasions try to kill us. For the most part, they offer us a beautiful backdrop and a place to carve our names to demonstrate that we will forever love someone.

Flowers, on the other hand, offer no permanence to carve a message upon, though they, too, indulge us by provoking our thoughts of love and romance.

A garden gnome riding a snail? Whoa, this is the most perfect thing we will EVER buy in Arkansas and it is coming home with us. I know what you are probably thinking, “Hey, is that symbolic of you riding the snail, John?” I’ll just offer you a sly grin for my answer.

Horses in lush pastures are nothing but love and are effectively the sunset and bookend for this day in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas (pronounced Arkansaw).

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 9

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Maybe there should have been a sense of disappointment that we woke to overcast skies, but here in the land of hollows (pronounced holler in the local Appalachian dialect), it feels fitting that a kind of foggy mystery is hugging Earth.

We needed to stop at the Looking Glass Falls on Route 276 on our way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The upcoming road is one of America’s most iconic thoroughfares. After having driven the Natchez Trace Parkway a few years ago, it was our dream to visit this other major historic road that glides through the countryside, offering visitors a view of this small part of the United States untouched by man and machine or parking lots and commerce. We’ll only see a tiny section of the 469-mile parkway that travels from near the middle of Virginia almost to South Carolina, but even a brief firsthand glimpse of the incredible beauty is better than nothing at all.

The road ahead cannot be known as it is shrouded in fog and beyond the horizon; if there is one, it remains unknown and incomprehensible. Maybe this sounds ham-handed and as if I’m using heavy poetic license to make something more of what should be obvious, but this is my adventure, and without embellishment, romantic notions might be lost on cold logic. Who needs objective truths when we are talking about flights of fancy, where the imagination is filling the void that lies around the corner?

Dewdrops on flowers, now here’s a great setting to help fill in the gaps. Ornamental decorations can add color to the tales being woven out of what some may call ordinary travels, though there is nothing ordinary about stepping into our world. The television, on the other hand, is a poor surrogate for having “taken” someone to an exotic location, as the viewer cannot know the hushed tones and delicate soundtrack of a forest with a stream in the distance or the stillness of a viola just before a drop of water falls from its petal.

In the mid-1980’s while also in the middle of my existential angst period, I was busy consuming every word of Friedrich Nietzsche, and on the cover of the Penguin edition of Ecce Homo (Behold The Man), I saw the scene above. Now here it is 17 years later, and existential crisis is a distant problem that gave way to an anti-foundationalist Romanticism (idealism for those who’d appreciate not having to look that up), and I’d rather just soak up the beauty than consider the hopeless masses of humanity who will never be able to appreciate these moments where aesthetics, scientific phenomenon, history, nature, and poetry meet at the mountain top of our intellects to produce emotional sacrifices on the altar of life. The photo was taken at the Wolf Mountain Overlook.

Caspar David Friedrich

This scene titled Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich from about 1818 was the cover that graced Ecce Homo. Courtesy Wikipedia.

The arteries of life crisscross this landscape and all I can see are trees and streams. My eyes are blind to the microbial world, and even with what I can see, such as the mosses and leaves, I cannot identify precisely what they are. Why is this information about our natural world seemingly so unimportant to us humans? It’s not enough that the scene is beautiful; we owe it to our short lives to understand and know the earth we live upon and within.

Being this close to another National Park, there was no way Caroline and I wouldn’t take the time to peek in.

I suppose that trying to brag that we’ve been on the Appalachian Trail would be nothing less than disingenuous, even though we are standing on that very famous trail. The fact of the matter is that we are right next to a parking lot where the A.T. crosses the road, and so we’ve “hiked” about 100 feet of the 2,180 miles of the trail. For the math nerds out there, we’ve covered about 0.000008% of the A.T. and only have 99.999992% more of the trail to hike.

Uncertainty is never fun, and so while I think these are maitake or hen-of-the-woods mushrooms I wouldn’t bet money on it or cook some up and gobble them down to find out.

Ah, yes, that is blue sky beyond the trees.

Wow, a hornet up close and personal. I’ve been told that these flying demons are aggressive beasts, but being only inches away from it, I’ll bet I was more nervous than it was. While it may pack a wallop of a sting, it also packs a wallop of evolutionary efficiency in its design as it looks to be a perfect form considering its life among the rest of us living things.

While the hornet is free from rent, obligation to pay taxes, or barter its time for food, we humans, on the other hand, are often bound to conformity. This march to social conditioning often starts here in the church, and while some may argue that it is a foundation of our ethics, I believe we are naturally moral beings and that the church does much harm to propagate complacency in ignorance by reinforcing our laziness to challenge authority. Someday, I believe all churches will be relics of another age, just as caves and pyramids are reflections of an earlier primitive self.

Philosophy, art, ethics, nature, history, conflict, and harmony do, in fact, travel with me on vacation as I’m not able to escape myself. The composite of who I am is what helps form how I see the landscape and subsequently try to capture these images that will hopefully bring me back to a moment of inspiration. From this scene, I want to imagine being an observer here about 600 years ago, before the Native American population first encountered Europeans. What was it like to walk free, find, capture, or harvest food, explore without permission the surroundings, or layabout in the valley and watch skies above travel overhead to places unknown?

It’s beautiful here in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but like so many other first-time encounters with our national parks, this one was too brief.

Seeing the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant on our way eastward was a conflicting sight as I’m at once fascinated by the technology and convenience while simultaneously uncertain about the waste issue. Of course, coal is not a viable answer either, nor the dam that has backed up these waters to destroy a healthy river system. Seems to me that only leaves, wind, and solar, which come to think about it, are two of the elements that, in their natural state, contribute to these trips being extraordinary.

The trees are on their way to full summer bloom here in mid-spring. I’d like to return in two months to see the trees with their leaves filled out and the little house and yard covered in shade. It’s pretty out here in Tennessee where nature doesn’t portray a poor education or hostility towards others, just an indifference to being here regardless if I am or not.

Seems that even many locals disdain boiled peanuts but Caroline and I sure enjoy them. They taste a bit like lentils. Being on vacation, we weren’t in much need of anything being notarized, so we weren’t able to take advantage of that while picking up another road snack. By the way, you won’t find boiled peanuts west of the Mississippi or much further north than Virginia.

Like boiled peanuts, this isn’t something we see every day: gourds. While popular as containers, musical instruments, birdhouses, and other crafty things, I can’t imagine why anybody driving by would be inclined to impulse buy gourds. Maybe this is the regional distribution point of dried gourds, and my ignorance of the area doesn’t let me know the important role they play in Tennessee culture.

Why a pig? Because this company called Piggly Wiggly changed the world of grocery shopping back in 1916. Prior to this chain of stores that got its start in Memphis, Tennessee, people would give a clerk a list of what they wanted and that person would fill their order. What changed was that Piggly Wiggly’s founder gave customers open shelves and a cart to collect their groceries themselves, and with that, the modern grocery store was born. You can learn a lot about America just by driving across its breadth.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 8

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

I’ve never woken up in Georgia before, but I have now. We are in Brunswick, and it is too early to try the stew this city is famous for. So breakfast was something mundane and average, but we’ll be in Savannah by lunchtime, where we have a date with a home-cooking style restaurant, and black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, and something fried will be on the menu. Meanwhile, we’ll meander and dream of the Brunswick stew we have yet to taste.

Who can come to Georgia for the first time and not have the banjos of Deliverance playing in their head? Maybe the same person who could go to North Carolina and not dream of listening to Blue Velvet in Lumberton. Of course, if you thought the very next sounds in my head had something to do with squealing like a piggy, you’d be correct. Does anyone want to go canoeing with me?

Research for must-see places in Georgia and Wormsloe will be found high on everyone’s list. While the place looks really cool, I had no other information about what was in the state park and with no brochure near the gate, we couldn’t justify the expense of going in for an unknown. That was probably a mistake, but should we ever find ourselves in the Savannah area again, we’ll have something new to see.

This is when infinite amounts of free time and unlimited budgets would come in handy by letting us charter a boat that could take us out on this waterway and any others that might catch our interest. Our time in Georgia was only intended to give us the briefest of impressions of the state, it was quickly becoming apparent that we bungled things and will need a return visit.

Magnolias are right up there with plumeria in the beauty department. I’d swear this thing is as big as Caroline’s head and almost as pretty.

You know you’ve arrived in Savannah upon seeing the famous Forsyth Park fountain. It’s quiet here, not what I expected regarding crowds. This is one of the pleasures of traveling outside of the main tourist season and arriving on a Thursday.

My imagination says come this weekend, these streets will be packed, and by June, it will be wall-to-wall throngs of people, but who knows?

Savannah is turning out to be simply charming. Then again, we’re restricting our explorations to the central historic core and won’t be paying a visit to the suburbs.

This is the city of monuments and squares. There’s a lot of history shared in these open spaces, and helps lend a quality to Savannah that begs for the place to be explored on foot. With an abundance of trees, park benches, and beautiful architecture taking influence from Italianate, Regency, Georgian, Federal, and Romanesque styles, there is much to experience here that dazzles the eye and mind.

And so we just keep on walking…

…. zigzagging as we go with no real plan other than enjoying our short time in the old South.

Sure, we could have gone to the Bonaventure Cemetery, where everyone else goes to see that famous statue made so, by the recent Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil movie, but we chose to meander in the Colonial Park Cemetery because, from our view, the departed all look about the same at this stage.

This monument to the clawfoot tub is only missing a park bench and a larger area to make it into a proper square.

Had a nice chat with a guy we ran into on the street who was from Los Angeles. We’d stopped him to ask for directions, and after he offered us help, I inquired if he was from California. Surprised, he said he was and asked how I knew, “It’s your accent.” With that, he explained he was an author and was on business here for a friend of his named Ben Affleck. He offered to snap this photo of us, which was great as typically I’m in front due to having the camera and shooting selfies all the time.

Can you tell we’ve left Savannah?

These strawberries will not make it to North Carolina.

Update: Fifteen years later, in 2018, we still have this strawberry bucket.

While we are still moving generally north, we are starting our return to the west. This is another new state for Caroline and me to visit and, of course, for my mother-in-law, too. Now, on to the business of trying to create a photographic representation of all that South Carolina has to offer.

First up are the lush landscape and post-depression architecture that lies in decay. Not a lot of shopping in this village or even a cheap motel; even residents were difficult to find.

Why the locals decided to place their park benches in the lake as opposed to next to the lake will forever remain a mystery to us. We were on Highway 221, passing through Parksville, when we stopped in for a view of Lake Thurmond (also known as Clark’s Hill Lake).

Turns out that the abandoned home two photos ago was part of a decaying suburb, but here on Main Street, up in McCormick, a vibrant economy is hard at work with plenty of on-street parking readily available.

We tried crossing the Long Cane Creek with a ferry, but wouldn’t you know it, they are all gone. So we had to make the best of it and paddle the car across this waterway. Good thing we brought oars on this trip. It was here that we decided to travel even smaller roads and took the 81 toward Calhoun Falls.

This home in Mt. Carmel even had electricity at one point.

A couple of old goats came out and welcomed us to their neighborhood, so I can now say I’ve certainly experienced awesome Southern hospitality. We are all encouraged to come back for a more in-depth visit in the future, but for now, we must bid adieu to the fair state of South Carolina.

Wouldn’t you know it, that as we arrived in North Carolina, all radio stations were playing Bobby Vinton or Roy Orbison? That’s a Blue Velvet reference for those of you who are wondering what the hell I’m talking about. By the way, there are NO motels or lodging out here in the woods on the North Carolina/South Carolina state lines.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 7

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We woke in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that much we know, but the details that were noted during the first part of the trip are nowhere to be found after our return to Arizona. So, without further ado, let’s get going with the day and see what we can drag out of the old memories. Our first serious stop was here at Vero Beach; we are continuing our travels north today.

We are on the boardwalk for a nice slow walk into the Turkey Creek Sanctuary after following the Indian River Lagoon Scenic Byway up the coast. The name was enough to draw us in as all three parts speak to our sense of curiosity: turkey because turkey’s, creek as we love waterways, and sanctuary as it sounds like something that’s protected. Put it all together, and it sounds like a perfect place.

Those amorphous gray shapes among the shadows and reflections are manatees. Fortunately, Caroline and I saw a couple at Disneyworld in Orlando a few years ago. Otherwise, I don’t think we’d have a very good idea today of what they look like. We’ll keep our eyes open for other opportunities to show Jutta what these lumbering giants look like.

The Turkey Creek Sanctuary is a beautiful spot surrounded by Florida’s growing urban blight that is encroaching on the most precious and desirable natural environments. This is so very indicative of our worst qualities, find a beautiful place and then have too many people move to this treasure.

The plant life here is broken into three categories, including hydric (wet) hammock, mesic (moist) hammock, and sand pine scrub. Walking through these areas and other natural habitats across America, it’s a wonder why we don’t make the collective decision to start building greater densities on smaller land areas to preserve our natural areas and restore ones that we’ve decimated. I can only assume that the majority of American citizens would rather have another drive-thru fast food restaurant or space for their own pool so they can remain out of contact with the primitive horrors found in nature.

Like this toxic and deadly dragonfly that would overpopulate our planet and kill us all if it were allowed to propagate its evil species. Just kidding, the dragonfly is not toxic, deadly, or evil. It’s a beautiful reminder of summer and buzzing fields of life basking in the sun, where birds dip into the waters on hunting expeditions, and the wind rustles the cattails.

Some anonymous person gave us a tip on a better location to see manatees and for a short while, we stood at a marina, watching them in the distance. All of a sudden, a young man and woman approached the dock, apparently drawing the manatees’ attention. They told us that if we wanted to see them up close, to follow their example, picking leaves from some nearby shrubbery that the manatee enjoys.

After offering them a snack, they came up closer to check us out. After a sniff or two, they gently pulled the leaves from our hands and allowed us to rub their heads. I should apologize right here to any naturalist or official who would want to discourage this kind of behavior from us dumb humans, but they were so fluffy, cute, and gentle. Who could resist?

While we are on the Space Coast, Caroline and I are choosing to be selfish, as we’ve been here before, and we already decided for Jutta that she wouldn’t be that interested in visiting the Kennedy Space Center. Instead, we are heading to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge just north of the center.

Rockets or alligators, both are pretty incredible. While Kennedy was of great interest to Caroline and me back when we made our first visit, and Jutta certainly grew up in the space age, we also know my mother-in-law’s appreciation for seeing the side of America not seen on TV in Germany: interviews of people following shootings, obesity from our purely fast-food diet, or celebrities talking about nothing in particular. Her witnessing the breadth and beauty of the United States, with stops for regional culinary specialties that move beyond pizza and burgers, left the greatest indelible impressions on her. While anyone can see a rocket on television, it’s rare to see an alligator or turtle in the wild or to have the opportunity to just check it out in its natural habitat at your leisure.

We’ve arrived in the oldest city (established by Europeans) in America. St. Augustine, Florida was founded by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés back in September 1565, a full 42 years before the first English colony took hold up in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. It wasn’t until 1819 that Florida was ceded to the United States. Our first stop is at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, which started construction in 1672 making it the oldest masonry fort in the United States.

Lots of history can be found in the Old Spanish Quarter, including this old watermill from the 19th century that is part of the Milltop Tavern.

I can’t help but be a bit miffed by my poor education that, in some ways, portrayed the pivotal moments of America’s “founding” as being white Eurocentric while neglecting the Spanish settlers that were in Florida and the Southwest before English or central Europeans ever landed on these shores. To this day, I don’t think we give a fair portrayal of the thousands of years of Native Americans living here and how we portrayed them, to steal their lands and our ancestor’s attempt to exterminate them into a nearly extinct status. Here we are in 2003, and our black population is still on the extreme margin where education and the lack of it can keep people suppressed and when need be, incarcerated.

It is precisely the diversity of architecture, culture, food, music, and clothing that works to make America a great nation, but it is our petty, fearful view of giving credit to other cultures that makes us small and stupid.

How appropriate for the last image of the day: a bridge. We all need to remember that it is precisely this invention, the bridge, that connects those things and places that would have been inaccessible to the majority of people. It is an essential device for closing a formidable distance. So, how do we go about building bridges across our myopic views and ingrained ignorance that the worst aspects of our culture reinforce daily? I suppose we just have to keep forging ahead.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 6

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We wake in Homestead, Florida, the city that had borne the brunt of Hurricane Andrew back in 1992. It’s our sixth day out with a plan to meander down the Keys. Instead of taking Highway 1, which we have to return on, we are entering the Keys on Card Sound Road.

A perfectly clear sky has made room for a well-rested sun to rise unobstructed, bathing the morning in orange and gold before alighting the heavens with a radiant blue ceiling.

We check in with the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park for a glass-bottom boat tour of the nearshore waters. The tour departs at 9:00 a.m., giving us an hour, so we check out the local waters looking for fish or other signs of life. The visitor center has a small aquarium that we spy on for a moment before we recognize it’s almost time to board our boat. Our three-hour cruise won’t deposit us on any exotic islands today, but we are expecting a spectacular tour. Slowly, we are pulling out of the dock area, passing mangroves to our right and left when in front of the bow, half a dozen large rays swim along with us before diving below the green waters.

Under the best of conditions on a glassy ocean and not a cloud on the horizon, we travel southeast. After an hour we slow to a float with the clearest of waters, giving us a wonderful view of the sea life teeming on the reef. Our captain deftly positions his craft, offering up parrotfish and multi-colored schools of other fish that there are so many of it’s hard to keep up with which species are which. Corals, plants, and a plethora of shrubbery appear so close to our eyes that the impulse to reach out and touch them is tough to resist.

It’s almost like scuba from the view of things, then again, not. Still, this is pretty cool, and Jutta is loving her time out on the sea.

The captain, recognizing the incredible clarity of the water on this particular day, offers us a rare chance to view an artificial reef in superb detail. On our way to this sunken treasure, dozens and dozens of flying fish that thrust out of the water, skimming well above the surface for distances of up to 300 feet, join us!

Twenty minutes later, the ‘reef’ comes into view: it’s the USS Spiegel Grove. The ship lies on its side on the ocean floor 130 feet below us. Being 84 feet wide and 510 feet long, the ship at its widest point is only 46 feet below us. Truly amazing today is that we can see the bridge of the ship which is so far below the surface. We were told this is exceptional water clarity and a rare day indeed. Sadly, we departed after 15 minutes; our tour was almost over.

Driving south on Highway 1 around noon; we bask in our ocean adventure. Before we know it, mile marker 37 is ahead of us, signaling our next destination, Bahia Honda State Park. A surprise awaits Jutta, which it turns out seems more of a fright than anything pleasant. Caroline takes her mom to a changing area while I visit the gift shop. Upon Jutta’s approach, she eyeballs the snorkeling equipment in my hands and quickly exclaims that she “doesn’t do that.” Fair enough, as my mother-in-law is 68, so I ask if she’ll oblige me and put on the mask and just look in. Standing in chest-high water, Jutta dons the mask, dips her face past the surface, pops back up, and blurts out an enthusiastic, “I do that!”

We float about, taking our time exploring the coast, occasionally sharing something we find exciting or beautiful. We float about a bit too long. I likely have third-degree burns and will pay dearly in the coming days for not wearing sunscreen on my back. While the burns aren’t literally third-degree, they are still painful enough for me to make one of those rare concessions to Caroline that she was correct and I should have let her layer on the sunblock.

Intensely happy, I think we all feel that we have left the most grueling part of the road trip and are beyond doubt on vacation. Before leaving the beach, I snap a photo of us still in the water and feel as close to Jutta as I ever have, as I see her enjoying herself like a child at play.

The road through the Keys sometimes finds itself seriously close to the water’s edge. This mix of bridges and tiny islands certainly lends itself to the sense of going somewhere profoundly different than anywhere else any of us have traveled before.

The southernmost point in the continental United States and only 90 miles to Cuba: we have arrived in Key West. The crowds are not conducive to our mood or a pace we can relate to after such a lazy day, so after a quick view of mile marker zero, we turn into a local neighborhood.

Flowers abound, and while many may find the bars a natural draw or the architecture a beauty to look at, we are too busy gawking at hibiscus, bougainvillea, and plumeria. This, more than Santa Barbara, California, is a flower lover’s paradise!

Or maybe a seashell lovers hookup place, too?

I could have shared many photos of flowers, but then this blog might take on too heavy a botanical slant when there are other things yet to share.

Turning a corner, we find ourselves approaching Ernest Hemingway’s former home, now a museum and tourist attraction. The Hemingway Home and Museum is closed, unfortunately, as it’s after 5:00, and the gate is locked. We will have to satisfy ourselves with a visit to the lighthouse across the street. The Key West Lighthouse & Keeper’s Quarters Museum is closed too, as it’s after 4:30, and its gate was locked even earlier than Hemingway’s.

Not having a serious drinker among us that might compel a crawl of the many open bars, we are about to depart when, in my peripheral vision, a business marquee catches my eye. While researching our route across the southern United States and looking for various recommendations for must-see, must-experience, and must-eat at destinations, I was reminded of a name that rang a bell as I sped by. We just passed and need to make a quick U-turn back to the Blond Giraffe.

Although it may not be very accurate to make such a bold claim based on such a limited sampling of key lime pie, I would be willing to tell the world that this is the best key lime pie you will ever find. We drive away, splitting a single frozen, chocolate-dipped key lime pie on a stick, saving three slices of key lime pie for later. Oh my God, this key lime pie on a stick is absolute heaven on earth; whose idea was it to split one three ways? Us car occupants are in ecstasy while simultaneously howling regrets for not purchasing individual pies on a stick. We vow to return someday, but in case that isn’t possible, we keep their website close to someday order that overnight delivered package of 30 slices of chocolate-dipped frozen key lime elation. Yummy.

Our time in the Keys is coming to an end. Fort Lauderdale, our destination for the evening, is still more than 180 miles north of us. While the setting sun gently takes its golden light below the horizon, we can afford the luxury of a few more stops along the road north out of the Keys. It has always been difficult for Caroline and me to leave any coast, and the Keys are no exception after this perfect day. With the ocean surrounding us, we share a waking dream of staying right here overlooking the Gulf of Mexico while the final glimmerings of light pave the way to evening until the next morning when we can turn around and watch the first rays rise over the Atlantic.