Daytona Beach

While driving down A1A on the east coast of Florida, I wandered into Daytona Beach, Florida.

And at some point I pulled up near the beach to see what it looked like and take a few pictures. Imagine my sheer awe and delight as I realized you can drive your car on the beach! Why had nobody mentioned this to me before?

I didn't actually do it -- I was in a rush to move on and the last thing I want to do is get the heavily weighted Honda Fit stuck in sand kicking more sand into all sorts of normally clean places. But what a cool idea!

Beach Camping at Flagler Beach

I'm working my way down the east coast of Florida towards the Florida Keys and spent the weekend camped at Gambles State Park at Flagler Beach, Florida.

Flagler Beach is now a small beach vacation town with plenty of homes setup as either vacation properties or winter homes for snowbirds that fly down from up north. It's very much a typical east coast beach town: Quiet, lots of empty houses awaiting vacationers or winter snowbirds from the north, a friendly character and not a lot of traffic.

I've never camped on or near a beach before so when I saw a camping icon with a state park near a beach, I figured I'd just show up and give it a try. It's here I learned that camping in Florida is very popular and most of the folks I met had made their reservations online months in advance. Because someone left early, I got to use their campsite for one night to try the place out.

After a long bike ride the next morning, I decided I was in no hurry to leave. I'd met Mark and Sherry Bean of the Amelia Beach, Florida area the night I arrived and they invited me to pitch a tent on their site for another night. So I spent another 24 hours reminded that camping has many benefits including the new friends you make and the kindness between strangers that camping seems to bring out in everyone around me.

Of the city itself, the most memorable thing I saw was the Pirate House. What a cool idea in a sea of relatively bland beach homes. At the time I arrived to take photos an ambulance had just arrived a few doors down to attend to someone and a resident of the Pirate house was on the roof deck watching. But I didn't notice because she blended in so well!

St. Augustine, Florida

Explored St. Augustine, Florida yesterday. I had no idea what to expect from this city but it looked interesting and had a historic fort to explore. Turns out St. Augustine is an old Spanish city that was then transferred to the British and then the Americans. It's loaded with history but the architecture stands out the most!

There are times I wish we Americans had just kept the styles of Europe going and improved upon it. Sometimes I think our cities now don't look nearly as good as they did over a hundred years ago.

St. Augustine is a bit touristy, so visit it when you're on vacation and in a mood to walk around, see the sights, take a guided tour, eat some local food and buy some souvenirs.

Camping with the iPhone 3G

Jack Kerouac wrote the book "On The Road" in the 1950s that made the idea of exploring America and yourself by driving cross country seem romantic.

He had a big American car, route 66, AM radio, independent motels, local restaurants, small-town country sheriffs, nicer, kinder, country people and everybody had a slower pace of life.

He did not have credit cards, fast food, a well-built and efficient interstate highway system, GPS, cell phones, XM satellite radio, extremely reliable Japanese cars, mp3 players, podcasts, email, texting or Apple iPhones.

Kerouac didn't know what he was missing but I do. Thirty plus years of newer and better technology has trained me like a dog to think that for every problem there's surely some gadget to help solve it. But I'm a romantic and I like the simplicity of Kerouac's times so I try my best to avoid gadgets for the sake of gadgets, new for the sake of new.

But with this trip I convinced myself that it was time to ditch the four year old aging cell phone with an Apple iPhone because it would overcome obstacles on this trip and truly solve problems. Not just the iPhone, but a heavy duty case, two backup batteries, and an external warranty that anticipates a racoon chewing on it or something. It was a lot of money and a bet that it would pay off.

So last night camping out under the stars in relatively rural South Carolina I put it to the test. Could I chat online with a friend several states away, from a tent, from the woods? Absolutely!

It took a little effort at first: ditching the Facebook chat app for AOL's AIM app for the iPhone and then all was well. As my battery went down, I plugged in the external battery pack I'd bought and it let me keep on chatting. No power outlet needed, thanks. And while speed typing on the iPhone's touchscreen was no where near as enjoyable as speed typing on a good keyboard, the iPhone's automatic correcting of my typing errors worked out for the best, most of the time.

Each week I find a reason to love the iPhone more. "Surprise and delight" was called "awesome!!!" when I was a teen in the 80s exploring home computers. This kind of feeling for a new product in my life is something I haven't felt in a long, long time.

South of the Border

On Wednesday I stopped at South of the Border.

For those of you who don't know because you missed the hundreds of signs lining Interstate-95 for several states nearby, S.o.t.B. was once a new, fresh and wonderous place for tourists to stop on I-95 where the North and South Carolina borders meet.

This place was designed to be a magnet for tourists. Seriously, that Pedro head is a magnet. That and the offerings of roller coasters, video games, carnival rides, junk food, t-shirts, leather goods, mexican goods, african goods, and, of course, fireworks.

Fireworks is no big deal when they are legal in your state but when you grow up in Virginia, DC or Maryland, South of the Border is the place to go for illegal goods.

Most of South of the Border is pretty run down these days and its not the recession: it's been like this for years. But whoever runs their fireworks department is doing a great job.

Night one - Off to a good start

Well I'm on the road now and it feels great.

Yesterday after a slow start and some challenges packing the car I left Durham, North Carolina for.. south. No plan, just south towards Florida.

Of course, once I got on the road and the initial excitement wore off, I realized I needed a destination for the night.

I ended up returning to Santee State Park near Santee, South Carolina. I found this campsite earlier in 2009 when I was working my way back from a drive-n-camp trip to Florida and I needed somewhere to stay in the middle of the night.

Santee State Park is a self-service campsite after hours meaning you can drive in at any time, setup a camp, spend the night and make arrangements and payments for your stay in the morning. I love this. It's perfect for me because I love driving into the night and I often spend too much time during the day talking to someone interesting or taking pictures when I need to be driving.

Like most modern "developed" campsites, you get a plot of land with a picnic table, a grill or fire-pit grill, a place to park the car, truck or RV and water+electric hookups.

The white building in the background is a public bathroom and shower. I was a little dubious about the public shower when I started camping for the first time last year but all it takes is one night of camping and one warm shower afterwards to like these things really fast. Most are very clean, private and comfortable to use. The worst ones I've seen are in need of a bleach hose-down and charge you via quarters for time. Santee's "comfort center" is free and clean.

The bugs at Santee's campground are free, too. If you can arrive at a campsite in the dark and use a headlamp to setup a tent, jump in and crash for the night, you're doing fine. Last night I was in a good mood and I wanted dinner, so I made the effort to setup the stove, grill some chicken, pasta and sauce and eat dinner. I did this all the time in my Fall 2008 trip, but tonight while I'm at one end of the picnic table what can only be described as a swarm of moths, gnats and mosquitos is attacking my lantern at the other end.

Despite the bugs I'm off to a good start and very excited about the days ahead!

Day one - Packing the Fit

Oh yes, I remember where this all began. Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at Margaret and Lou's house in Durham, North Carolina.

This is my 2007 Honda Fit Sport with a Yakima Skybox Pro 16S cargo box on top.

What do you see?

The cargo box has clothes, two tents, camping air mattress, scuba gear, rope, shoes, two chairs and a pillow.

The front seat is normally reserved for my Archos 605 mp3 player and my Nikon D70 or D90 camera. I want the camera as close as possible so I can pull over and take pictures of any thing or any activity I see on the road.

The backseat has a mountain bike, more clothes, Marmot backpack, firefour white Sterilite plastic tubs with food related things (one is my kitchen, three are my non-perishable groceries).

The trunk area has three coolers, two tubs of books, a tall tub of books+first aid+cereal (in boxes), and a footlocker that is my safe for storing my valuables when I need to be away from the car for a while.

Is this too much stuff? Absolutely!

Just a couple days earlier in Maryland I did a test run of packing the car and after packing most of the major items I was thrilled to find two empty passenger seats. What went wrong? Well I didn't pack all the major items, didn't put the bike in the back seat, and didn't pack the long list of miscellaneous items that clutter up the car. And I bought some more groceries.

I'm not there yet but I want to keep working on this packing challenge until I master it. I like to be self-sufficient which means having all the things I need but I also yearn to be the guy confidently and comfortably traveling to Europe with just a hiking backpack. A stuffed car is the same as heading off to the airport with two heavy suitcases and a carry-on. It doesn't feel right and that's not the way to start any trip.

So I'll lose some weight, but it'll take time for me to figure out how. But this whole trip is about learning to balance out parts of my life so packing the car is a fine place to start this journey.

Bon Voyage!