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.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 5

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

The day starts with a visit to the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. We are near the borders of the Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve. Our tour through Fakahatchee follows a 2000-foot-long boardwalk that starts among the mosquitoes. As luck would have it, the pesky bloodsuckers don’t follow us in. Making our way into the preserve exposes a rich depth of life and an intriguing entanglement of plants and animal inhabitants. Birds sing from above and scurry below. Flowers burst forward in strange shapes and delightful hues.

Trees wrap around each other in a symbiotic relationship of dependence as one holds up the other. Spiders dangle. Palm fronds, ferns, and the canopy shade us while we do our best to walk in silence to hear all and see all. Towards the end of the boardwalk is a lagoon harboring our first alligator. The gator floats silently while a large school of fish swims nervously, trapped between a heron and the gator. The fish don’t seem to have much to worry about as both the gator and the heron are lazily lingering; maybe they have already taken their fill. Then we realize that this lagoon may be a landlocked pond due to the low water level in the preserve; if this is the case, these fish have much to worry about.

Silence in these natural settings, aside from the chattering of indigenous species, is always at a premium. It’s not long before a small army of boisterous tourists is making their way up the boardwalk. For us, it is the signal to go, and for them, unfortunately, the heron and the gator responded to the commotion by leaving, too. Along with the preservation of the great wildlands of America, my other wish would be for the tourists to these places of natural beauty to respect the solitude and tranquility so many of us travelers are trying to find at our shared destinations.

We’re on the approach to the entrance of the Everglades National Park after just three and a half days and 2,355 miles from home. I’m reminded of how my mother-in-law’s excitement gives her the energy for the endurance she needs on such a grueling road trip. Jutta has made three other trips to the United States, and each time, we ask a lot from her because our excitement has us forgetting that we are traveling with a retired lady who might not have the get-up and go that we have. Jutta has accompanied us on hikes in Zion National Park to the Emerald Pools and down into the Grand Canyon, where she was able to witness two Bighorn Sheep butt heads a mere 20 feet in front of her. We have taken her to walk among the giant sequoias near Yosemite, and we’ve walked the trails around geysers and bison in Yellowstone. From inside the caves at Kartchner Caverns to a trip floating down the Colorado River, Jutta has always kept pace with us.

We have strolled amongst the ruins of Chaco Culture National Historical Park and found rest on the grounds of a California Mission. She’s stayed in the Luxor Pyramid in Las Vegas and slept in a cliff dwelling called Kokopelli’s Cave in New Mexico. Watched a grizzly bear feeding with her cub and has been face to face with elephant seals on the Pacific coast. After trying new foods and talking to strangers with strange accents, her back straightens with determined pride. I have come to appreciate my mother-in-law all the more on these road trips because, besides her occasional desire for a quick cat nap, this grand old lady has a spirit and most delightful gratitude that is both honest and from the heart. When, after a trip to America, we hear back from her in Germany about how she recently saw on TV a place she had visited, we hear the excitement all over again as she is full of appreciation regarding the extraordinary journeys she has had the chance to make. If only others had her zest for life and the wherewithal to rise to these challenges.

Another challenge greets my mother-in-law: we are asking her to step onto one of the loudest watercraft she may ever take, a fan boat, also known as an airboat. We are in Everglades City with reservations to have Speedy Johnson’s take us out into a private area of the Everglades outside the National Park. We have chosen Speedy, as their tours are limited to 6 passengers.

Gently, we push along out of the dock, and then our pilot hits the gas with a thunderous roar of the unmuffled V-8 engine that screams white noise as we glide over the water. Just as quickly as he gunned the engine, the pilot kills it, letting us float up to our first view of mangroves. Approaching the entangled roots a pelican lands on the edge of our boat just a foot away from where I sit, looking at me like I’m going to pull a fish out of my pocket and throw him a treat.

From the open water, our boatman fires up the engine, and we speed directly into the low ceiling of the mangrove forest, with its shallow black waters providing just enough depth to allow our passage. We narrowly missed getting whacked by the mangrove branches as we buzzed by.

Turns out this little guy is a friend of the boatman who has been enticed by treats. I’m guessing that the adage about feeding the wildlife doesn’t mean a lot when a vendor needs to deliver an experience that satisfies everyone on board.

The mangroves are sporadically growing in bunches here and there, or so it looks to me. Between the forests are grasslands.

In a larger clearing, we again stop the engine and start to float, we have an approaching guest. This is no ordinary alligator; he has acquired a taste for a meal that doesn’t come from the Everglade he lives and hunts in; he’s coming right at us. He’s coming for marshmallows. My first thought was, “How does he get the marshmallow cleaned out of those huge dagger-like teeth?”

The fan boat heads for another larger open body of water, and the pilot tells us to look at the approaching ripples in the water to our right. It’s not another killer gator; it’s a dolphin who has taken up residence in the Everglades. This is not normal behavior for dolphins; they are social creatures. Our pilot tells us they think that maybe he was separated from his pod or that he’s an outcast and that he took a liking to the warm waters and is now a local. This was an unexpected site; to be sure with all three of us getting down to pet the friendly visitor, we were having a sagenhaft moment.

Our one-hour tour is already over, which is okay as our hearing is nearly ruined. We opted to go without the headphones to feel and hear the full experience of the airboat. We cannot get over the delight of how cool this introduction to the Everglades was. Trying to leave Speedy’s, we get turned around again and again until, finally, we are on our way east on Route 41.

Historic and tiny is the Ochopee Post Office; if one were astute, they might remember that Caroline and I were here back in 1999. This is America’s smallest post office measuring but 7-foot-by-8-foot and has been the stand-in since the other post office burned down in 1953. We are stopping to drop off postcards and to pick up a few new ones from the post office itself to send to friends and family in Germany.

Driving into the Everglades National Park, the road is lined with wildlife from herons to gators, even a couple of vultures. The rest of our day will be spent here in the park. Strikingly flat is the first impression, with a sea of grass in nearly all directions. I expected jungle-like conditions, kind of like the photo above, but with even denser trees and mosses hiding gators and old, toothless men. The trees that are here rise in patches as islands amongst the brown and green grasses.

Even with large National Parks like the Grand Canyon, you have an idea of the task ahead, as you can scan the horizon and from above recognize in the expanse what kind of effort may be necessary to see even a tiny slice of the park. Here in the Everglades, you see the vastness only on your map as the park spreads out across the bottom tip of Florida. On the ground, though with flatness stretching out as far as the eye can see, I feel lost on where to begin. Under these circumstances, it would seem best that we speak with a ranger and find some orientation and a recommendation.

It turns out that this won’t be as intimidating as I first thought. We are in a car and are not prepared to see the park by canoe so our choice is simple: drive the road ahead of us. We’ll be taking the 38-mile long drive from the Ernest F Coe Visitor Center to the Flamingo Visitor Center and hold on to the dream that maybe someday we will make the canoe voyage. There was no way to do a canoe trip through the Wilderness Waterway this year due to the route running 99 miles and requiring seven days to maneuver.

Pa-hay-okee Overlook is our first stop to look out over the river of grass. Matter of fact, Pa-hay-okee is from the Seminole Indian language meaning “grassy waters.” On to the Mahogany Hammock where a trail leads us to a boardwalk over the wetlands and into the tree island, officially known in the glade as a hammock.

Fresh chutes of green emerge from the dark waters while the detritus of winter still sits on the ground, waiting to be consumed by the land. Inside the hammock, the light is filtered through a dense canopy of treetops and palm fronds, casting pale shade until near the ground, only shadows exist. Birds are heard but rarely seen while silent snails can be found glued into position on the trees we are passing. Earth and plants that can attract even a minimum amount of sunlight are able to thrive. We stop to take a closer look at a tree limb with layers of plants, mosses, grass, and weeds that have taken up residence, similar to what we saw nearly six months ago in the rainforest of Olympic National Park in Washington.

Leaving the hammock, we spot a couple of mangrove trees taking hold in the waters in front of us, and I wonder, if we come back in 15 years, will this be a mangrove forest similar to the one we were touring on the airboat earlier in the day?

West Lake is our destination, but on the side of the road, I spot a sunning gator. Being an intrepid photographer or a fool, I leap out of the car for a better photo. I had been of the opinion that if the gator so much as wiggled a toe, I would be jumping back in the car, but instead, he made a beeline into the water. Fearlessly, I followed him to the water’s edge, half expecting him to be long gone. Instead, I found this large alligator looking over his shoulder just offshore, letting me snap a couple of close-ups.

The greenish-yellow waters of West Lake are murky and lonely at first glance. As I scan the horizon, I only find a calm lake lined by a mangrove forest, but upon closer inspection, alligators can be seen in the distance poking their eyes above the water’s surface. From the tree line, a bird takes flight, followed by another and yet another. The birds dart from the safety of the canopy only to quickly dash right back in. Fish splash the surface while gliding alligators dip back out of sight. Mangrove trees push right up against the boardwalk trail, making for an intimate walk back and forth to the lake, giving us a great opportunity to peer into these entangled and otherwise impenetrable forests.

Low dark clouds have been creeping up over the southern tip of the glades, images of powerful storms playback in my memory, and I hope this will be but a passing hint of the potential for bad weather. Flamingo Visitor Center is as far south as the road permits, and we are near that end. Eco Pond, just before Flamingo, bends around a hammock on the other side of our boardwalk with an overlook affording us an elevated look into the pond and birds that are living undisturbed by us tourists. My Arizona sense of approaching rain suggests we head back to the car before the downpour starts. This sense is finely tuned for desert dwellers who must develop better-calibrated rain antennae for the little amount of precipitation that graces our arid lives.

With the rain coming down and our shopping excursion into the visitor center finished it’s time to follow the road back up the way we came. Maybe we’ll escape the rain with the trek north, where it doesn’t look so foreboding. After only a few more miles, we start glimpsing sunlight behind the clouds as the rain quickly fades off. At the Royal Palm Visitor Center near the entrance of the Everglades is the Anhinga and Gumbo Limbo Trail that we passed by earlier in the day. The sun will set soon, and this dictates we take the shorter of the trails; our final walk in the Everglades today will be on the Anhinga Trail.

This trail was well worth saving till the end of the day. The southern part of the national park is a series of hammocks, grasslands, and waterways, while this trail area is better described as a wetland. Herons, green herons, egrets, hissing alligators, and various other creatures scurry under the brush, in the water, and among the trees.

This has been our most intimate encounter with the fauna of the Everglades. Late dusk, and the waters are relatively still, mirroring the grey sky and trees. Our nearby star makes a final peek through a sliver of sky between the horizon and hanging clouds and begins its rest for the day.

But the egret knows that there is still time for a couple more bites.

Across the Southern U.S. – Day 4

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Last night, we checked in early at 9:30 p.m. this morning; we are leaving shortly after 6:00 and will soon be in Alabama. A misty gray sky lends mystery to the woods on the sides of the road where, in the distance, we can nearly make out the dueling banjos. “Was that a squealing pig I just heard?”

The sun breaks up the clouds and creeps over the Alabama horizon on Bayou La Batre.

It’s a stunning morning, yikes; it’s about to be stunning in another way to a giant turtle we just passed in the middle of the other lane. I turned the car around with my two passengers, oblivious as to what precisely I was doing. It seemed both were looking the other way, or maybe they were falling asleep.

This is one heavy-duty turtle, but even with its armor, it’s hardly a match for a speeding two-ton car, so we will move him off the road. Before that, though, I’ve got to get a photo of this guy. Down here, this is one mean-looking, razor-clawed, thick-leathered turtle, except for that optimistic sort of smile he has inadvertently going on. Laying in the street too now, I put the camera within inches of this face, and he seems to pose while I snap away; good thing he’s a slow-moving turtle.

Now before a car comes barreling down the road, it’s good deed time, and who should be selected to perform this? Caroline. She reaches down and gently starts to put her hands around his midsection when SNAP! Like lightning, a blur of dinosaur monster-turtle attempts to chomp off Caroline’s left arm with a single severing bite. Thanks to her ninja skills, she is able to save her limb in the nick of time by yanking her arm from the turtle’s jaws of death.

But now, HERE COMES A CAR! No fear, Jutta is here. Having quickly learned from the turtle’s stealth-like high-speed reflexes to attack her daughter, Jutta goes into high gear with Caroline and I standing in stunned awe by the following rapid chain of events. With a quick step right and a football-like snatch that would have had my mother-in-law drafted by the National Football League had they seen such skill, she swooped in for the grab, swing, and toss. The turtle disappeared off the road and was saved from certain death. I’d swear it was losing its breakfast over there in the grass from the motion sickness Jutta had inflicted. We made sure it was right-side up and doing well. With her newfound energy, Jutta sprinted back to the car, and we continued down the road.

The land is flat and wet with grasslands on our sides; we are driving through Heron Bay.

Too bad about all those hurricanes this coast is prone to, as it’s beautiful down here in the early morning quiet.

With the approach of the sea coming closer to the road, we soon cross the bridge to Dauphin Island. Dauphin Island is off the coast of Alabama and is in line with the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

We ferry across the waterway separating Mobile Bay from the Gulf of Mexico to join Route 180. Caroline and I could ride ferries all day while traveling over rivers and through wetlands and coastal areas. Approaching the other side, we spot some pelicans sitting on pilings. We are starting to feel a frenzied excitement, as these pelicans are an indicator that we are getting closer to our ultimate destination.

Welcome to Florida.

The gulf shore is an inviting spot to take a moment to dip your toes into the warm water. We walk along, looking for shells while strolling in and out of the calm surf. Although the sky is cloudy, the clouds part from time to time to give us a glimpse of blue sky that is like a smile from above.

This coast is flat as far as the eye can see. Compared to the 1400 miles of coast we’ve traveled along the western United States, where even while at the beaches, you can see mountains on the horizon, this land is flat in all directions.

Florida and the landscape appear to have changed again. Dunes, white sands, and clearing skies are as inviting as they look relaxing. As we drive along in the warmth of the clearing day, we are all getting a little drowsy. We stop for a rest with Jutta taking a short nap in the car while Caroline and I take a walk down by the bridge along the waterfront just before entering Fort Walton Beach.

On our way again, the roadside is a tropical paradise. Soon, we veer back out toward the ocean with Mexico Beach, bringing our attention to its pristine white sands. We zig instead of zagging back inland through a tropical forest off Point St. Joseph and are again ready for another stop, this one in Apalachicola.

In the old town section of Apalachicola, we take up our place sitting on the dock of Apalachicola Bay next to the fishing boats. It’s a beautiful sunny day with light clouds, a balmy 70 degrees, and a cool coastal breeze that feels perfect. Jutta takes a moment to write to her friend Renate; the two have known each other since University. The waters lapping the shore, the sounds of the breeze rustling the trees with birds in all directions singing and squawking, and not a car to be heard let us get lost here picturing fishermen in the early dawn light preparing these boats to head into the gulf. For nearly an hour, we drift here before we begin the drive south.

For Caroline and me, this area of northern Florida is the epitome of green, something a resident of the desert can truly appreciate, while for Jutta, this is the very essence of wild nature, something a resident of Europe’s accounted for and planned flora can easily appreciate. We scan every tree, shrub, and corner. We are looking for eagles, hawks, and squirrels; we look for gators, manatees, and turtles.

The sunlight and blue sky are reflected in still waters, with its edges cast in shadows, hiding communities of aquatic life just out of our view. Horizons disappear behind densities of plants that look impenetrable. In this watery world along the road, we cross the famous Suwannee River, immortalized by Robert Foster in the song ‘De Swanee’ more than 150 years ago. Someday, we’ll find our way up to its waters to their origins in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

The sun begins its routine of disappearance while the clouds moving back in overhead lend dramatic flair to our closing day.

With about 200 miles to go before reaching Ft. Myers for the night, this would be the last photo that punctuates the day. Tomorrow, we enter South Florida and the Everglades.