Rural Graffiti

The road linking my campsite in Clayton Lake and the town of Clayton is approximately twelve miles of windy road between thousands of acres of grassy plains used by ranchers to raise cattle. Near the town the road winds through a canyon with large rocks on the sides. This is where the local kids come out to paint their flags and mark their colors.

Camping with the birds

This is my campsite in Clayton Lake State Park in north-eastern New Mexico.

This place offers beautiful views and peaceful surroundings but also a few functional things I've wanted for a few weeks now.

In Florida I had to pitch the tent on rough gravel that is uncomfortable to say the least. Here I've got flat, clean, smooth cement for my tent base. A bed of pine needles on soft brown earth is ideal, but I'll take this over the Florida Experience of stones and white coral dust.

The sun's rays shine down on me here just as much as in Florida, but I have a steel shelter providing shade above me at all times. It's hot here, but its not humid at all: this is my first experience with "dry heat" and I'm loving it.

My particular shelter is home to a few birds that have made mud nests under the roof of the shelter. When I'm around they seem to be pretty afraid of me so they stay quiet and usually fly out and flee to somewhere else. But when I'm in my tent and they can't see me they sit in their nexts and chirp up a storm chatting to one another in an usual sounding style. It's like their sitting around the water cooler complaining about the new guy.

Camping in Rural Clayton, New Mexico

I'm in north-eastern New Mexico near a town called Clayton driving as the GPS tells me towards a New Mexico state park where I can camp for the night. This part of the rural midwest is stunningly beautiful if you can appreciate the kind of beauty whose soundtrack is mostly that of silence interrupted only occasionally by birds chirping, the soft rustle of grass in the wind and a rusty, creaky windmill pumping water for the cattle at its base.




When I finally arrive, I find a sunken valley in otherwise flat, barren grazing land. The valley is the state park with narrow winding dirt roads surrounding a calm man-made lake in the middle of what seems like nowhere.

When I imagine what my next camp site is going to be, it is usually a variation of something I've seen before. "Camping lake" on a map suggests a basic lake with some pine trees around it on a gradual slope and some camp sites nearby the trees. This is nothing like that, nothing I could have imagined. The sun is going down so I've got a clock ticking but I take the time to drive around in search of the best spot. The one I end up choosing is on a terrace overlooking most of the lake, the fishing pier and other campsites below. This is a pleasant surprise.

Dodge City, Kansas

There aren't many organized places like state parks to camp at in rural western Kansas so I drove the car to Dodge City, Kansas last night and found a no-frills independent motel. The Thunderbird is run by Indians from India with a lobby that smells like curry, rooms are $39 a night with free -- sporadic and unreliable -- Wifi internet access, and offer a mix of early 1960s and 1980s room styles and fashions. My room was the first room I've ever seen to offer three full size beds. I wish I had taken pictures of it as it was pretty hip in a weird, unusual and charmingly cute sort of way.

After I checked out of my room this morning I went exploring the town in search of the glorified cowboy town from western movies. Dodge City was once a thriving hub of commerce for the hundreds of thousands of cattle ranches that surround it. This was one of those towns where cowboys would ride in from the ranch to do business, eat and drink at the saloon and occasionally get into a gunfight.

A couple generations have past since those times and a lot of changes have happened. The old wooden buildings seen in every western movie were here but they pretty much burned down or were torn down and replaced by brick and mortar buildings. Styles changed and in the 50s, 60s and 70s many downtown buildings took on contemporary styles that were quite different from the western days. Globalization has been forcing changes on towns like Dodge City for about thirty years and its struggling to do well in modern times.

They've rebuilt part of the center of downtown here to look like it did back in the historic days. It's cute and tourists probably love it but I'm in search of the real thing. The difference between the Dodge City I had in my head and the Dodge City that's working hard to survive is a good opportunity for me to put my expectations in check for the rest of my trip. Between the rebuilt, attractive historic downtown of Dodge City and the tourist-oriented historic hotel that still stands there is a reminder of modern times: a very plain and boring 1990s style Applebee's restaurant. It's time to get outta Dodge.

The Mystery of an Abandoned Farm.

First, consider the place I am going to show you is a tiny dot nestled amongst all of this:



Perhaps you're flying in a plane, looking down and you watch it for a moment wondering what it is. Then the stewardess asks you a question, you turn to answer her, and when you turn back, the place has passed by only to be forgotten.


If you were driving by it on in a car you might look out the window and see this view for a few seconds. Maybe you would notice something unusual about it and become curious.



If you stood in front of it, you'd notice it's not just a farm, but an abandoned farm.

If you're me, you go exploring...

I parked my car near the road where a driveway used to be. I make the following observations: The small building on the west is definitely not in use because the roof is falling down. But the main house doesn't look as bad: Could someone still be living here? Grass is growing over a foot high all over the property but the driveway leading to the farm has definitely had vehicles on it somewhat recently. There is an old red pickup truck on the edge of the property, some equipment in the back behind the houses, and three or four large pieces of oddly colourful farm machinery away from the houses to the east. What kind of place is this?


The red pickup truck is the farthest item to the western edge of the property so I check that out first.





This pickup hasn't been used in so long that rats or something similar were nesting in the cab. Bedding had fallen out of the cab when I opened the door and droppings were present all around. This is (approximately) a 1955 GMC pickup truck. It is 54 years old.



Behind the smaller house that I've skipped for now is another GMC pickup, this one on its side. This is back when trucks were simple: notice all the open space in the engine compartment? I love the huge mechanical horn in the lower left.

At abandoned remote places I see the chassis of cars and tricks on their side and upside down and always wonder who makes the effort to tip them over?



Near the back of the property are two fuel drums. I've got to assume that the fuel would be delivered periodically and these would allow the farmer to fuel up his truck and heavy farm equipment as needed. Don't smoke near the fuel tanks..



Another clue to the farm? Relatively recent oil containers just tossed in a pile. Was this the farm owner or someone using the land after the owner disappeared?



Two stationary engines for unknown uses. Pumps? Generators? Hard to tell.



A peak inside the barn.. The other views made it hard to photograph and hard to get near without getting into danger from snakes, rats.. or whatever else is around.



This hole in the ground lined with study bricks was either part of a well or a storm shelter or a little bit of both. It was located about 12 feet outside the backdoor of the main house.



Here is the back of the farmhouse... It's definitely abandoned. Want to go in? Sure you do!



The first room I enter is a little office area with a desk. As I pan to the left you'll see a door that goes to the bathroom.





You can see hot+cold water pipes through the wall where the bathroom would be.



The desk is pretty dirty. From the looks of -- everything -- its been a while since this house was inhabited. There was nothing in the drawers -- I checked.



Amazing! They left the television..



This is the central space heater that would have provided heat during cold, windy winters. I don't actually think I recall seeing a fireplace anywhere and this makes sense because there really aren't any trees in this part of the country to chop down for firewood. So you might as well skip that and plug in an electric furnace.




Here I realize that there was probably a sink in the middle and this was a kitchen area, too? Homes in America weren't that big for most people until relatively recently and farm houses were no exception.





I found this old catalogue on top of the television set.. The way the paper is torn suggests rats and mice have been tearing away at it for bedding. What catalogue is this and.. when is it from?



Montgomery Wards from 1976! In the days before Walmart people that lived in rural areas like this would get catalogues from Wards, J.C. Penney and Sears as one of their primary shopping methods. Order it by mail or phone and it would arrive in four to five weeks. Even in Maryland I remember paging through these catalogues when I was kid -- perhaps even this issue.







This is the small living room area..




Some pictures, like this one, will look a bit different because I've enabled the flash.



A solitary chair sits alone in the master bedroom. Imagine standing here in this very spot with a howling wind off in the distance on a cold night, a creaky windmill whistling from near the barn and an old wooden door on a rusty hinge creaking open and banging shut against the wood frame. What happens to you next ?






This is the front porch area where our farmer's family would have sat outside after dinner on warm summer nights watching the cars go by.



After I returned from photographing the porch I found a door in the corner of the living room that went upstairs...



Why is there so much stuff up here and less downstairs? One theory is that people -- like me -- who've explored the house after the owners left took things and missed the upstairs. Another theory would be that squatters might have lived upstairs while the windows and walls of the downstairs started to crumble.




When I explore a place like this I'm usually near a quick exit so if something spooks me I can quickly get out. But upstairs I started to feel a bit trapped, turned around to go back down and noticed just how filthy this place is.




This is a shot of the bathroom as seen from outside. The walls to the bathroom have collapsed and the sink, bathtub and other fixtures are gone.




This second small house sits to the west of the property. There was too much grass and greenery around it for me to get near the front porch and attempt to enter so I had to hold my camera up over my head and take blind shots through the widow.



Three pieces of farm machinery and this GMC truck sat alone in the field about 300 feet east of the house in a grassy field. When I passed by on the road the bright colors of the farm machinery made them look like they were still in use. I thought maybe the farm house is shut down but someone is still operating the farm? So I went to take a closer look..



This truck hasn't been operated in a very long time. The branches and grass were the nest of a bird. The bird, now dead, sits near the front edge of the passenger seat.



From the road this tractor looks like its in good condition. There isn't even that much grass growing around it. I climbed up and opened the unlocked door to take a peek inside.




This picture frame caught my attention. I can imagine a farmer spending hours slowly cultivating the field, occasionally looking down at a picture of his wife or family. I opened the frame to see what was in it but the paper was so old everything had faded to black and the paper disentegrated in my hands upon any light touch.



What happened here?

The property is a typical Oklahoma farm on a fairly large acreage of land. A small farm house, a smaller guest or farm hand house and a classic wooden barn still stand. When they were vacated they were probably in normal condition. It's time and the elements that have brought them to their current condition: there is no sign of a tornado ripping half the house apart and killing the residents, causing the farm to halt its operations.

The red GMC pickup truck on the west part of the property was probably old when the farmers left but keeping old trucks from this era running is something folks out here do well so it was probably still running or close to it. On the eastern part of the property three pieces of farm expensive farm machinery and a GMC truck sit as if they were each parked at the end of work one day and expected to be started up and used on the next.

Nothing about this farm looks like it was carefully shut down with the expectation that operations were going to be suspended or that the equipment was going to be moved or sold. In some ways, this farm just stopped one day.

The land around the farm appears to be cultivated today, at least for grass or wheat. But I don't know if this is official or if this could simply be a nearby farmer letting the grass grow so it could be made in to bails of hay and used for free.

There are too many questions with this place. Having visited it, touched it and experienced it in person the unanswered questions haunt me. If I get the chance in the future, I'll return and find the answers.

As Far as the Eye Can See...

Today I felt a strange feeling while driving along the road observing everything around me. I was nowhere I could identify and yet I felt like I had arrived somewhere.

I had arrived in the prairie. The prairie of stories like "The Wizard of Oz."

I could describe to you a spot on the earth near the Eiffel tower in Paris, France and you could travel there, follow my directions and arrive at the exact spot. But the idea represented by a place like Dorothy's home in "The Wizard of Oz" is as much a state of mind as a place.

It's flat and open surrounded only by fields of wheat or grass. There is a single road that connects this place to the world and allows it to be marked on a map so that it is not wilderness. There are few people, few cars and few buildings.

There is a tremendous sense of relaxing solitude and peace here.

The feeling here has a permanence to it: You can stay here as long as you like for this feeling as opposed to the peak of a mountain where the same feelings are tempered with an awareness that soon you must leave and return to somewhere else.

The feeling here has a persistence to it. Hours later, the place and the feeling is the same. It's different from the same quiet solitary awareness you achieve on the peak of a mountain: You know that soon you will have to leave and return to somewhere else. Here, you can stay and the solitude welcomes you as long as you like.

I wonder what it would have been like to live here fifty years ago with no cellphone, no long distance, no cable or satellite TV: just you, your family, your crops and a single speaker radio pulling in the staticy broadcasts from far away.

Greenburg, Kansas: Midwestern Hurricane Katrina?

I left Wichita yesterday and headed west on highway 55 going west. As the sun started to get lower, I pulled out the map and looked for camping spots marked with a little tent icon. I spotted one not to far away and set the GPS to take me there.

By coincidence, it took me straight to Greensburg, Kansas.

Greensburg was hit by an F5 tornado in 2007 that destroyed 95 percent of the city and killed eleven people. I'd only heard of it when my brother mentioned a television show on the Discovery Channel about how the town was attempting to rebuild as a "Green" town since then.

When the possible campsite in town turned out to be a no-go, I decided to drive around a bit and see what the town looked like. At first, I didn't see anything that looked too unusual. But after slowing down and paying attention to my surroundings I realized the devasation had been all around me: everything was gone but ghosts remained.

I found myself next to a patch of land that I assumed was just a big open lot with green grass and a few old trees growing on it. But when I looked closer I saw the cement driveways that used to connect the road with the driveways of houses. Houses that were completely gone except for either a flat cement foundation or a dug-out basement surrounded by cement walls.

The trees weren't just old, but a closer look showed they'd been ravaged by wind and rain. These few trees represented the few that were strong enough and lucky enough to survive the powerful tornado.

I had to drive a few streets over to see houses still standing with visible damage. Once my eyes trained to it I could imagine how the area must have looked immediately after the storm: trees knocked down, limbs and green leaves littering the roads, houses with roofs blown off, windows shattered and brick walls caving in.

Two years later many houses are either significantly repaired to the point where they look fine or replaced by brand new homes that look like any clean, suburban neighborhood. A few structures still remain without any repair work done, and some properties show only remnants of what once was standing there.

A major reconstruction effort is taking place along their main street. I spotted only one building that looked like it was there more than fifty years ago. A few buildings look have an extremely modern look that looks fairly out of place in a town otherwise simple, wholesome and humble.


Wikipedia's entry on Greensburg, Kansas

Liberal Air Museum

Just like in 'nam, Tevas and all.

The Liberal Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas resides in an old military aircraft hanger just off one of the runways on the grounds of a World War II military base. In the 1940s servicemen were trained to fly the B-24 "Liberator" aircraft from this base. Today, the runway is still in use as Liberal's municipal airport and the military buildings that once supported troops have been converted to commercial business use like the museum.

Approximately ninety percent of the indoor space of the museum is taken up by aircraft of one sort or another. The remaining ten percent is a display of support equipment, historic photos, and material from the bases operational days in the 1940s. Outside the hanger on part of the runway approximately ten large aircraft are on display as well.

They've done a good job with the museum but I was hoping for more World War II planes that I could enter and photograph. I look back at those days and see their lack of sophistication and technology as simple times. But despite not having so much technological support the designers of aircraft fromm this period were able to provide the operators with a tremendous amount of complexity using only mechanical methods like buttons, dials and knobs connected to basic electrical circuts and pulleys. Today's "fly by wire" systems are much more complex and reinforces my nostalgia for the good old days.

One Man's Trash is...

Spotted this in a little town on highway 55 west (somewhere!) of Wichita, Kansas.

Motor Fuel Carrier #5

I see this kind of scene a lot in the midwest.



As I imagine it, it basically goes something like this: One day somebody parks a car or truck they own on a patch of land they own. There's a lot of land here and a culture rooted in maintaining and repairing old things after they've become old and out of fashion so nobody minds another old car or truck sitting in a field. They assume the owner's got a use for it or plans to restore it in the future and its not bothering anybody. An old truck like this just sits here and day by day the owner neglects to do anything with it. Years pass and the grass grows thick and tall around it and the other things that happened to be left nearby. Years later the entire area gets forgotten and nature starts to reclaim the things and the land. It's the old story of "dust to dust."

Blue Lights in Wichita

Trying my hand at Lightning again, this time in the prarie. I've gotta do a little storm chasing sometime because open, flat space would be a great place to setup far away from a storm and get some good shots.

This is just west of Wichita, Kansas where I'm house sitting.

Steve, Amy and Eva's pad

I'm house sitting at Steve and Amy's house in Wichita, Kansas.

Their house is open and spacious in a way that makes a pretty big house feel even bigger than it is, yet this is no over-priced, impress-the-neighbors McMansion of the east. It's a simple design that works really well and the way they've decorated and furnished it makes it feel like living in luxury. I've stayed here twice and each time I question why people pay so much more for so much less near one of the big coastal cities.

Steve and Amy's house sits on a big plot of land that isn't locked in with a clear start and finish but blends into their neighbors properties. The view from their impressive deck is one that combines lush green grass, a small flowing creek, a neighbor's manicured pond and a forest of trees off in the distance.

I've been traveling for a few weeks now and a chance to stop and slow down is exactly what I needed. My favorite time of this is sitting with the laptop on their deck at sunset. The air gets cooler, a lazy, steady midwestern prairie breeze sneaks up on you, and the sunset is amazing. I bet they used to it and forget how good it is, so I took some pictures to remind them.

The thumbnails are nice, but click on the pictures for the full size versions that do them justice.

Historic Guthrie, Oklahoma

In the late 1800s and early 1900s America was in an age of growth and prosperity.

In 1899, ten thousand new settlers participated in a land rush that provided them with land for raising livestock and growing crops. Cities sprang up in order to provide these new settlers with opportunities to trade and purchase goods to support themselves.

The town of Guthrie, Oklahoma was once the capitol of the pre-statehood territory of Oklahoma. It thrived in those days with booming business for the new settlers and midwestern commerce. Investors employed skilled builders and craftsman to build buildings for the long run: brick and mortar buildings with ornate decorations designed to last for very long periods of time with class and style.

I enjoy seeing buildings from this period because of the human mindset they represent. When you see a building you see the people behind it. The people who created Guthrie had the same desire to make money and be rich as anyone else but they did it in a style that expected profits on a slower pace over a longer period of time. In today's market the Walmarts and Best Buys of our country don't have the ability to build long lasting, beautiful structures like these. They're focused on their financial results for the next quarter and how Wall Street will judge them. The question is not even as simple as whether you might favor a retailer in a restored historic building over one in a big box store because both retailers know there is a strong chance you'll skip the store altogether and shop online.

This period in America is seen today through the towns that still preserve their historic buildings from a hundred years ago. Many towns don't have the economy or appreciation to keep them in good shape. Guthrie, Oklahoma is making the effort and the atmosphere of their historic downtown is impressive.

You'll find Guthrie, Oklahoma by getting off the fast modern highway and taking route 77 north of Oklahoma City headed towards Wichita, Kansas. I only spent a few hours there but it was worth my time.

Guthrie, Oklahoma on Wikipedia

Fields of Gold in Rural Oklahoma

This is the kind of shot you see in National Geographic yet for all my traveling around the midwest, I hadn't seen it much. Across the road from this patch of yellow daises is the thickest, greenest patch of cornstalks I've ever seen.

Click on the images for the full resolution, full color view.

Friendly Squirrels in OKC

I'm in a little county park north east of Oklahoma City near a reservoir where it seems many other people have been feeding the squirrels.

Every time I made the sound of a bag of potato chips opening, or anything like it, this guy keeps coming closer.

So I'm doing my part by feeding him cheerios to make him even fatter.

Later I sit on top of a picnic bench to eat my own dinner and he decides my bread is what he wants instead..

Volkswagon Graveyard

Found this unusual sight while driving in rural Oklahoma towards Oklahoma City. The faded and rusty sign for the garage suggests this was once a thriving auto repair shop, probably specializing in Volkwagons, but now there are about a hundred or so just sitting there. I keep wondering why somebody hasn't made a business from picking up all the rusting old cars in the midwest and melting them for scrap. There's lots of them out here.

Gas Stations - Old and New - on Historic Route 66 in Oklahoma

While driving west on the remnants of the historic and fabled route 66 in Okalahoma, I stumbled upon this old stone structure that was once a gas station. The folks that own the land (a ranch) now, have preserved it in this condition and even placed a letter on the front explaining the history of the station as best they can.

I'll slam on the brakes and skid across the road to explore places like this. This would have operated in the 1940s with travellers coming from as far away as Chicago and going as far as California. Think Andy Griffith and Goober the gas station attendant from the Mayberry, sitting outside waiting for customers needing fuel or oil hand pumped from huge drums.

Now fast forward many years but only a few miles down the road to what I call the Gas Station of the Future. This thing is so clean and beautiful. The mystery of the old station is what happened to it to let it die? The mystery of this one is why someone would build something so clean, modern and european east of Oklahoma city surrounded by corn fields.

I didn't go in.. I thought maybe I'd get stuck in the future never to return like some bad TV show.

Well I made it to the cool temperatures I was searching for ever since I left New Orleans. The last two nights I stayed in Queen Wilhelmina state park in western Arkansas. It's on the same sight as a historic lodge built as a resting place for wealthy railroad travelers in the Quachita ("Wa-shita") mountains. It's much cooler, with far less humidity and a nice breeze coming up from the valley.

I put aside the comforts of being at a campsite within the RV crowd near the restrooms on the top of the hill and chose to camp out at the end of the campground in the tenters only section. This guy is Alex M., and I'd seen his cool little two person tent and an old 1980 Honda cruising motorcycle sitting out and thought: this guys going to be interesting.

Sure enough, this is one of the most interesting guys I've met on my roadtrip so far. Alex is on his own road trip with his own set of questions and his own journey to answer them. We both wanted to stop travelling and stretch our legs a bit so we did a few hikes in the park. Some of the trails lacked maintenance to the point where we couldn't see where the trail went after five to ten feet. But the two trails we did take were interesting and they gave us a chance to talk about life, where we've been and where we're headed.

I think that day was just what the two of us needed and on Tuesday: a break from putting more miles on the road and a chance to reflect. This is why people hike the Appalachian trail: not just to physically push yourself but to mentally push yourself and be in a different place as well. If you haven't tried it.. it's there for you when you want to try it..

Motorcycle Graveyard in Mena, Arkansas

The sun was setting and I needed to find the nearby state park and get a site before darkness, but I saw this sight and I had to stop.

I pass a lot of old cars on the back roads of America and wonder why: Why did this beautiful '56 Chevy just get left at the edge of this field? Why did this '67 Mustang get parked over by these two half-ton trucks from World War II and left to rust in the grass.

This is on the sight of a Scooter / Motorcycle business in Mena that still operates. I guess its a rural thing to think that instead of having some shiny new chrome out by the road its ok to let your fifty or so parts bikes rust away.

That's ok with me because I got a chance to check each one out and think about who owned them when they were new, where they went, and how much they hated parting with that old Honda when they couldn't get it fixed.

R.I.P.

Grocery Store from 1912 & Abandoned House

I'm drawn to old buildings.

I like to photograph them and imagine their history.

Who built this building? Was it a labor of love? A measure of their worth and pride? What kind of life did it have? And, in the cases of abandoned buildings like this, how did this building die?

This grocery store from 1912 caught my eye in rural Arkansas and I had to stop and explore. Unfortunately, the roof has collapsed and only the outer structure remains. I still wonder life was like when this was the Walmart for this small community.

Next door to the this grocery store I found an abandoned house. Still intact, I snuck in to take some pictures. Often abandoned houses have a similar pathology after they're left by their residents. They're usually squatted by someone that needs a home until the house becomes so unlivable that even the squatter goes somewhere else. So the pictures inside are a double mystery: Who lived here when they paid the mortgage or the rent and who lived here when those folks left? More than anything, the question asks: What happened?

Lake Bisteneau State Park

I've decided I've had enough of the heat and humidity of the south in the summer and I'm heading north in search of higher latitudes and higher altitudes. I found Lake Bisteneau State Park on the northern edge of Louisiana near my northerly route and headed there to camp for a night on my path to escape the heat.

Arriving on a sunday evening I found this park mostly empty except for a few campers, mostly in RVs. It was eerie and mysterious: while the facilities reminded me of the state parks in Maryland that I enjoyed as a kid, it was also like a ghost town in that nothing seemed to have been used in a while. You can see this lack of use in the absolute calm water surface that reflects so well in some of my pictures. This parks is about water but nobody is going near it?

The answer to why may be an invasive Asian weed that's clogging the lake to the point where the surface is covered in it and you can't see the water. Boat rentals are cancelled and I'm sure folks are taking their personal boats elsewhere.

My campsite was near the water but covered in a rich canopy of green trees. I'd had enough tent camping on gravel lots and messy sand so when I saw the option to park next to a deck and camp on top of clean, dirt-free wood, I started feeling a little better about.. camping in a swamp. It was still horribly hot and humid here and at night it cools down a little bit but doesn't drop under 75, so I ran the electrical cord to my tent and setup the fan. Camping with a fan, that's roughing it.

I don't recall what I had for dinner because the memory of swarming mosquitoes, moths and biting flies attacking my camp lantern was distracting me so much. On top of that, the flying southern cockroaches that kept leaping onto my legs didn't provide much comfort. It seems as though the cockroaches live under the deck -- you know a couple inches from my tent opening. I didn't like the idea of this but I was stuck with it. It was the fact that I found four or five had flown into my car that really bothered me. Your house getting cockroaches is easy to fix -- call somebody with chemicals -- but your car? Cockroaches crawling out of your the food bins of your car every time you stop on your road trip to camp?

Thankfully, I got them all out.

I did, right?

Quick Tourist Trip to New Orleans

Yesterday was my first visit to New Orleans. Like most Americans I'd heard of it before in regards to its stereotypes (jazz, Bourbon Street, beads, drunkenness) and its plight in wake of Hurricane Katrina and flooding that occurred after the levies broke.

Since 9/11 I've wanted to stop seeing life through the eyes of television and starts exploring and experiencing places for myself. So a chance to visit New Orleans was a chance to put some perspective on everything I've seen on the little TV box.

The GPS took me to the city and I explored downtown for a little while. It's nothing special: a mixture of short and tall, new and old buildings that are typical of an American city. Without a historical element they lack the character I love so much about european cities.

When I saw my first sign for the French Quarter, I immediately turned, found a parking lot and got ready to explore. The French Quarter is genuine in its architectural style: it definitely feels like a little bit of France. I'm not talking about the overly touristy nature of it but of the two or three level buildings with colourful plants sitting on black iron balconies the same way they'd have looked a hundred years ago. The French Quarter is a historically protected place and if you get a way from the touristy areas like Bourbon street it, slow down and seek out details it can be really charming.

One of the classic European characteristics of a city is a central plaza with a beautiful church. The French quarter has Jackson Square with the St. Louis Cathedral, remarkably beautiful and the automobile-free (yeah!) plaza surrounding it is filled with painters, crafts people, an amazing number of Tarot card readers and modern day mimes. Sure, this place is centered on tourists, but its done in a way that lets you enjoy it even if you're not spending. How can you enjoy a dozen T-Shirt shops if you have no interest in that stuff? You can't and that's why I like this area better.

If Bourbon Street is probably the most well recognized stereotype of New Orleans, Cafe Du Monde is probably one of the second most. Originally a quaint little coffee shop opened a hundred years ago serving a unique blend of coffee and french doughnuts called beignets, this is now a tourist icon. Why people would visit New Orleans in the summer where it is 95 degrees plus 85% humidity and eat hot fried dough while sipping coffee I do not know. So I had to try it. I had a hot chocolate (I'm not a coffee drinker) and a single order of three beignets. It was actually quite good: they were warm with a subtle sweet flavor made more intense by dumping powdered sugar on top of them. Each serving comes with a small glass of water and this helps digestion a lot. The shot on the right is some of the almost exclusively asian staff eating chineese food on break near their doughnut maker.

After eating my fried dough I walked northeast on Decatur touring a historical open air market looking for things to take pictures of. The air was hot and humid and I was getting dehydrated so I stopped by a shaved ice vendor for something cold. I'd expected to go the safe route and get strawberry flavor but the guy in front of me ordered "Tiger Blood" and I had to try it. It was great: the flavor of red sugar, but I was hoping for some sort of asian spiced magically delicious exotic surprise. Cold, Wet and Red is great in New Orleans.

I moved east to the Lower Ninth Ward next to see the area flooded after hurricane Katrina. This area looks like a typical low to middle income housing area with small but attractive homes built in the 1940s and 1950s. By the time I arrived I could see the damaged buildings if I looked for them: vacant houses with no windows in place but still standing and looking pretty good otherwise. The telltale signs of a Katrina damaged house was the spray painted "X" symbol on the front of it with numbers stating when the house was checked, whether anyone was in it, etc. On the few streets I explored I'd say one in twelve homes looked like this, much better than I expected. Not sure where my pictures are of this place :(

As I left the city I drove through Bourbon Street. I think the next time I go I'll bring friends and visit this part at night when I'm in a mood to party. Loud bars blasting music and offering beer specials at noon just doesn't do it for me.

I can't take pictures of the heat in New Orleans but that is one memory that will always last. It's hot and humid and this extreme combination is hard to escape. After my hot chocolate (bad idea), beignets (another bad idea) and shaved ice (great idea) I was still dehydrated from the heat and bought a Dr. Pepper from a street vendor. Seemed like a good idea but after trying it I can tell you this combination does not work. I managed to keep it down and the cure to my ills? A second Tiger Blood shaved ice. Those things were fantastic!

Drove along the Gulf coast of Florida

Drove along Florida's pan handle near the Gulf of Mexico today in order to get an idea of what this place is like and whether I might want to live here.

On the map it doesn't show much and suggests there might be just wild lands nearby. Sure enough, that's pretty true.

Florida's Gulf coast isn't like the east coast beaches. The water is warmer, flatter, and the beaches are.. like these pictures.

I didn't see all of it, but I saw enough of it to know that its not what I want. Moving on.

Chopper Dave, custom bike builder

Outside the Motel6 in Gainesville, Florida that I was checking into I met this cool guy, Chopper Dave. He'd had a little to drink but that only made him more social and relaxed with the other hotel guests. I grabbed my camera and did a quick interview with him to get him started on his 15 minutes of fame.

He built this bike from a variety of parts that not only give it a very unique look but an incredibly comfortable and fun ride. I took it for a spin in the parking lot and while its hard on corners, its upright seating position is a lot more comfortable than my mountain bike! He's even got some LED lights on the front that look like some alien creature's eyes. Don't know if they're as good as a high beam but they did fit his style.

Dave and his wife had been evicted from a place were renting and were temporarily living in the woods in a little camp. Tonight they'd decided to take a break from that and get some rest at the Motel 6. Despite his challenging situation, Chopper Dave was still a determined man. He has a strong faith in god and believes this is just part of his journey and that its the path he's got to take.

Personal Record for Time Spent in a Panera Bread

Yesterday I left my GPS, along with my Archos 605 mp3 player and an XM radio unit out in the rain. I'm on a roadtrip and I've gotten far too used to the GPS to do without it so this morning I went to Best Buy to get another one.

My old one was a TomTom 330 and Best Buy has a TomTom 340. I'm going to assume its pretty much the same thing and not do the mountain of research that I normally do when buying something like this. I need to get one and get back on the road after yesterday's challenging experience getting soaked in the rain.

I'm a hip shopper and that means I pull out the iPhone and do a google on TomTom 340 to see if anyone else has it. OfficeDepot online claims to have it for $199, but would they offer that in the store? I call them. They put me on hold until I give up and drive over. TomTom 340, $199. Sold.

One thing I love about the TomTom is that it is very easy to add additional "points of interest" or POI files that let you search for specific things like Honda Dealers, Target or Dairy Queen and navigate right to them. Plus, these third party POI files have color icons so they show up on my TomTom screen as logos -- something usually found only on more expensive TomTom GPS units.

So I go to the local Panera bread where I can get some quick lunch and use their internet to download POI files.

I don't know what my problem is but I am at Panera from 1pm to 9PM that night doing a combination of downloading POI files, email, uploading photos, reading news, and otherwise, just killing time.

I did get the TomTom 340 setup but it's too late to travel so I'm going back to Motel 6 for the night to get some sleep before heading out.

Playing Survivorman in O'Leno State Park (Gainesville, FL)

After touring Gainesville, Florida (which looks like a pretty cool place) I travelled to nearby O'Leno State Park to camp for the night before heading west on the Gulf towards New Orleans.

It was hot and sticky humid when I arrived and I had no idea what kind of park this would be. O'Leno turns out to be a woodsy area near a river that starts above ground, sinks underground for a couple miles and then re-emerges. It's a Florida thing: part of the maze of sinkholes and caves that millions of years of heavy rain have created.

When I arrived I found that mountain bikes were allowed on some of their trails, so I made this plan: Go biking for about an hour, from 4:30 to 5:30, then get a shower, setup camp, eat some dinner, read a book, then go to sleep and move on in the morning.

I parked the car in the day-visitor area near the start of the trails. Because it was a weekday and there were only a handful of other people there, I started the process of packing the car up. This means moving electronics to the trunk, hiding valuables, etc. Then I grabbed my phone, my camera and a single bottle of water, jumped on the bike and headed out on the biggest trail.

Weather in Florida is hard to predict and I wasn't bothered by the clouds that looked like they were on about one third of the park: the other two-thirds were clear, bright, sunny skies.

So I started riding on a single-track trail with dense vegetation on all sides that filled the area with natural green and brown colors. Along the trail I took these photos. The first is Jug Lake. It's surface is covered in a plant whose little round green leaves float on the surface and make it look like it's been painted by Seurat. The second is a close up you can click on.

I rode on until I reached a lake with a sign warning of Alligators and took a picture or two of that. Just then, it started to rain. I put the camera and the iPhone away in the Tamrac camera backpack and started riding on.

Then it started raining harder. And harder. And harder.

Its at this point that I had flashbacks to the TV show Survivorman where Les Stroud puts himself in a position like this: You're riding in a jungle, it starts to rain, you get a flat, what do you do to survive?

I wasn't prepared for this. No jacket, no rain poncho, no umbrella, nothing. Not even a hat. One bottle of water and no food. I started thinking of what my options are and the idea of finding a bus shelter popped into my head as wishful thinking. I quickly skipped over that bad idea and set out to complete the trail in the rain and get back to my car and a hot shower.

I kept on riding on the trail when it seemed to fork to the right and turn into the red trail. The red trail would have taken me farther into the park, so I kept going on the route I was on.

After about 20 minutes of riding in the rain like this I noticed the trail seemed to be mostly the tire ruts of a truck and not the type of trail I'd been riding on. It was still pouring and I was soaked with water and covered with specks of mud kicked up by the tires.

I rode on for another fifteen minutes hoping I'd magically arrive back at the parking lot when I noticed I'd been riding parallel to a county dirt road separated by a barbed wire fence. I was tired of riding on tire ruts and an opening in the fence gave me an opportunity to cross over and ride on the road. So I cross over and carefully pulled out the iPhone to use its GPS and map to figure out where I was.

The iPhone is protected by an Otterbox Defender case that should prevent raindrops from getting to the phone, but I cupped my hands and bent over to try to keep the heavy raindrops from soaking it, too. The iPhone was able to tell me I was on the southeastern side of the park on a little road. It looked as though I could go north/northeast and pickup a different trail into the park. I put the iPhone away and started riding.

Twenty minutes later I stopped, still being soaked by the heavy rain and listening to occasional thunder nearby. Checking the iPhone again revealed that I'd been riding in the wrong direction for the last 20 minutes. That's ok, I'm fine. Put the phone back and turn around.

About thirty minutes later, I stop to check again and I notice the soles the hiking shoes I'm wearing are soaked with water. Rain's been running down my leg, soaking my socks and getting into my shoes.

The iPhone says I'm on the right course but I don't see the park anymore. I'm surrounded by little rural homes and a few small farms. Nobody is around and only rarely does car speed by on the muddy dirt road.

Finally I get to the point on my map where an intersection makes it look like I can re-enter the park. It's been about an hour and a quarter since I got stuck in the rain. There is no entrance to the park, just some more rural homes and a private dirt road in the direction I thought was the park.

It's stopped raining hard at this point, at least, and I stand by my bike, muddy, soaking wet, considering my options. What I really want is some country person with a big pickup truck to come by, see this poor, lost, soaked tourist and offer a ride for me and my bike in the back of his pickup truck to the entrance to a park. Instead, a woman with a nice, clean, expensive looking minivan drives by. There's no way she's going to let me inside that thing. I wouldn't.

I decide the only option is to turn around on the muddy dirt road and start riding back towards where I came from. If I can find where I exited the park onto the road, maybe I can get back in and back track to get home.

As I ride on roads I know I've already been on, I motivate myself by thinking about food. I have a can of tomato soup in my car and if I can get back its mine to enjoy. In Florida it was so hot and humid I questioned why I even brought any hot foods with me, but biking in the cold, soaked by the rain, it's all I want.

After a while of riding I find a gate to the park on my right and a trail leading into the park. The bike is light so I lift it up and over and then climb the rungs of the metal gate to get myself over. Mosquitoes are swarming all over me so I have to keep moving to avoid being harassed and bitten.

This trail is different but I see red markers on the trees occasionally leading me to believe that I'm on the red trail in O'Leno. I ride for ten minutes when the trail forks to the right with a numbered sign saying 27, but I keep riding forward. Then after five minutes another fork and a sign saying 26. Then another fork and a sign saying 25. I stop, pull out the iPhone and discover I'm much farther south than I could have been in the park and I'm probably not in O'Leno state park but a nearby wildlife preserve. The forks and markers are probably trails to sites with plant experiments. This isn't where I want to be, so I turn around, again, and head back to the muddy dirt road.

At this point I've told myself that there will be no camping tonight. After all this time and effort, I deserve a motel. A hot shower, soft bed and some cable television. The motivation keeps my spirits up as I climb over the metal gate onto the road.

I've exhausted my own efforts to navigate home, so I use the maps function on the iPhone to find out where I'm at and let it pick a road based route home. It picks the route that seemed natural in the shape of a U I need to go south, west, then north. It's going to be another 10.5 miles. I have no choice.

The dirt road is mostly flat but when it does have hills, I can't really enjoy them. I'd love to race down them and use their speed to avoid pedalling as much as I can but the road is slick with mud and I can't afford have an accident now. I don't think about breaking a leg, I thinking about getting gashed on my leg, bleeding blood mixing with brown muddy slime. So I brake a lot down the hills, and pump hard on the pedals to make as much distance as quickly yet safely as I can.

When I get to the point where I'm supposed to break west and cut over to the main road that takes me north, I can't find it. I back track a bit and look or it, but it's not there, just dirt driveways on farms. I stop to ask a nice lady walking her dog about this and she says there is no cut-through because the road on my map is a private road for a boy scout farm and that I'll have to go through town. The town detour adds approximately 4 more miles to my trip and I have no choice.

The town road, at least, is asphalt, so I can go faster, more easily and when there is sidewalk available, I take that to be safer. At the half way point I'm in town and I meet up with the main road that goes north. I take a right and look at the Hardees staring me in the face. I have no wallet. Why would I need it in the jungle on an hour long bike ride? Note to self: put a $20 in the camera bag for occasions like this.

Now I'm on the road that I remember driving on when I arrived at the park. I don't recognize it at first, but then see a run down Dollar Store and a motel that give me confidence I'm on the right path. And I recall, it wasn't that long after seeing these things that I arrived at the entrance to the park.

So I keep riding ignoring the fact that my clothes are soaked, my energy is draining, my legs are hurting, and I'm flithy with mud from head to toe. But I'm close, so it's ok. Until I see the sign that says "O'Leno State Park: 5 Miles". One mile would have been hard enough but five is painful. I have: no choice.

At this point my motivations of food, motels, and television are not working. At this point I'm going to the next phase of desperation where I'm aware all I can do is just keep pushing on. I pass farms, an old gas station that someone has turned into their home, and the occasional interesting sight but I'm too exhausted to get out the camera and take pictures.

Finally I see another sign and think I can see the entrance to the park in the distance, but it's a tease that says "O'Leno State Park: 1 mile". I have no choice.

As I get closer to the state park entrance, now in sight, I feel a surge of energy that lets me propel the bike forward much faster. If I can just keep going at this pace, I'll be at my car, warm clothes, hot food, and sugary snacks in no time. But then I recall that from the entrance to the day visitor parking lot is another mile. Again, no choice. I slow down and start to pace myself.

Ten minutes later I arrive at my car, pull up and let the bike rest on the ground. I walk around to the back side, unlock it to get something to eat when I discover that I'd made a terrible mistake hours earlier.

When I'd packed my car up and relocated valuables, I'd placed my XM radio, Archos mp3 player, and TomTom GPS unit in a plastic box and temporarily placed them on the roof of my car. I must have forgotten about them and not noticed them between the roof and the cargo rack -- things just blend in up their. "FCUK!" I realized what I had done and quickly realized that I had not only left them out in the open where they were unsafe but I had left them out in the open in a rainstorm. I looked closer to see they were all sitting in about an inch of water.

I was frustrated only for a few minutes with this. I needed to get food and drink so I stopped thinking about that and ate a quick lunch of whatever I could easily find in my car: 3 fruit cups, a ham sandwich, and some chocolate chip cookies.

I reconsidered the damaged electronics. I'm on a journey and I've already covered over a thousand miles of travel and experiences. My car is not damaged, I am not hurt and, well, my camera and my beloved iPhone are not damaged. The XM, GPS and Archos can be replaced. I will survive and this is all part of my journey.

I am convinced this will make a hell of a story.

Diving in Key Largo

I returned to Key Largo, Florida to do six more dives with Ocean Divers. I took two courses with them in 2004 and became a SCUBA instructor here so this was a chance to get back in the water in a familiar location and replace memories of old experiences with new ones.

I also wanted to see what kind of emotional pull diving has on me. It was my passion in 2004 and I'd planned to move to the Caribbean to work full time as an instructor but got pulled to another path in life.

To my delight, diving for me is like riding a bike and everything came back with very little effort. Even my professional manner and natural ability to take care of and look out for other people returned without any effort.

Each day we did a deep dive on either the Speigel Grove or USS Duane shipwrecks taking us down to 100-125 feet, then a shallow reef dive in the Pennekamp marine park which was only 20-30 feet but let us stay underwater for 50-60 minutes easily. Weather was fantastic with no summer storms, rain or cloudy skies. Visibility underwater was good to excellent. Current was a problem only on the USS Duane but that was a challenge that made it more of an adventure dive than normal.

On these dives I was planning and leading dives for other less experienced divers. When I do so, I put a lot of effort into the balance of giving them the best dive available while also keeping them safe. This behaviour is something I found in myself when I was training to dive as a student and has helped me become a good instructor. The only time I can shake it is when I'm diving with a good friend whose skills I trust and dive conditions that don't worry me. Only then do I really relax underwater and not worry about where my dive buddy is or how he or she is doing.

So after getting back into diving for a couple days I'm still happy with it, but my attitude of pushing myself hard to try new things and learn new skills suggests I might have reached a peak in diving. Mountain Climbing and Skydiving are on the list. I never would have tried them I learned how to dive, but diving changed me -- it taught me I could do more than I previously thought -- so the question now is: What else can I try?

La Jolla Motel in Islamorada, Florida

A big part of travel for me is the adventure of taking a risk on something and being rewarded in a surprising way you couldn't plan on or expect. The roads you take, the places you eat, the people you meet and the places you sleep are all opportunities for reward. So why take the safe route by driving only on the highway, eating in chain restaurants, talking to "safe" looking people and staying in name brand lodgings?

For the next couple of days I'm staying at the La Jolla motel in Islamorada (Florida Keys) so I can take a break from camping and go diving this weekend in Key Largo about 20 minutes north of here.

The La Jolla is a locally owned and operated motel on US1 in Islamorada in the Florida Keys. It was originally built in the 1940s and looks like it received some upgrades in the 1960s. Today it is a beautiful example of what a well maintained older motel from the golden era of American road travel.

When I arrived yesterday to check it out and explained I was a single traveller looking for a simple, inexpensive accommodation for a couple of days, the manager suggested "Room #1". He said it was a little odd and that before he'd reserve it for me I should check it out first. So keys in hand, I took a look.

As you can see, Room #1 looks like one of those odd spaces turned into a motel room after the building was built. Perhaps a gratis room for a night manager or something, but now they rent it out. It was small, cozy, eccentric and unusual. Exactly what I like. And to my surprise it had a kitchen and fridge so I could stop using the camp stove and coolers for a few days and be civilized. They even have wireless internet in the lobby (which happened to be right next to Room #1).

The La Jolla motel has a pool surrounded by palm trees in the front courtyard area, an amazing amount of greenery, bright beautiful colors inside and out of all the lodgings, and the back of the property opens to the Gulf of Mexico. On that side they have a 6 or eight boat dock and a boat ramp so this motel is popular with the fishing crowd that tow their boats down and dock them a couple hundred feet from their rooms. Two hammocks, a large group table under a tiki roof and an outdoor grill make this a great place for groups or families to enjoy. Other rooms are much more spacious: one is a two bedroom suite with a wall of glass that lets you enjoy the sunset from your air conditioned living room area.

I wish all, or at least more, classic motels were operated this well. Most of what I run into elsewhere is an older property with low budget fixtures and slap-dash repair work to keep things running. They're still fun for me, but I don't think I'd go back to them. I will come back to this one and I'll recommend it to others.

Return to Seven Mile Bridge

Back at Seven Mile Bridge again this evening so I can enjoy another relaxing evening sunset. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

As always, you can click on the photos for larger versions and if you ever want prints of these, email me directly.

Seven Mile Bridge - My Favorite Sunset Location

What's so special about a sunset? A good sunset is a chance to slow down, stop for a little while and appreciate how beautiful things can be. No admission fee required, no special gear, just show up, calm down, and enjoy it for what it is.

My favorite place for a sunset so far is Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. This is the old, original railroad bridge that is now closed to vehicles and open to pedestrians visiting Pigeon Key, a tiny little island on the route of Seven Mile Bridge.

Watching a sunset on Seven Mile Beach places you on a small platform raised about a hundred feet above the water. You can spin around and experience open space in every direction. Look down and you'll see the endless stream of plant life floating in the water hurriedly from the Gulf of Mexico on the west to the Atlantic ocean on your east. These two are separated at the location immediately below your feet. The splashes you'll hear are tarpon fish feeding on small fishes as they race near the surface towards the Atlantic to make their escape. Wait patiently and you'll see a few large grey pelicans fly by ten or twenty feet in front of you, gliding in the air.

As the light fades, the colors of everything change from the sky and the clouds to the iron work of the bridge and the new highway bridge a thousand feet to your west. Shadows develop and give objects a perspective they didn't have at noon. Finally, the spectrum of the light changes and the clouds above and behind you turn a brilliant pink color.

The visual is amazing and the sound compliments it. A subtle hush of cars on the highway to the west and waves crashing the supports of the bridge below you ad a natural, unscripted calming effect on the environment.

You'll never want it to end. Click on the pictures for a full screen version and enjoy.

Blue Lightning

A very fierce and intense summer thunderstorm rolled right over our camp in Bahia Honda this evening. It started with clouds and thunder in the distance and turned into an absolutely torrential downpour with local lightning making loud cracks very quickly after the bursts of light made their appearance.

Fearful of a repeat of last Saturday night's tent flooding and sunshade collapse, I decided not to seek shelter near the bathroom building and instead ride out the storm under my sunshade. I'd checked the Marmot Den 4 tent to make sure it was staked down, zipped up and ready for a storm. But I wasn't confident that my sunshade would do so well. I'd setup the sunshade next to the tent and draped a heavy blue tarp over it in yet another attempt to escape the hot Florida sun. Underneath it my picnic table was covered with supplies and gear that I wanted to protect.

As the storm moved in closer and the rain grew harder the sunshade started to collapse. It's not built for bad weather and the heavy tarp on top was made heavier when it started to collect rain in low pockets and folds. I made a couple quick dashes out into the rain with a hammer to adjust the rope lines that were meant to keep it stable. Out for only 30 to 45 seconds to fix it but when I returned inside I was soaked with water.

I sat inside listening to the thunder thinking about how safe all this was. My portable fan sat on the picnic table connected to a 50 foot extension cord that was plugged into to my campsite's power port. Live power, rain soaked ground pooling with water and thunder directly over head. What an adventure!

As with most storms in the keys, after about 30 minutes, it was mostly gone. The rain diminished to a trickle and the thunder didn't sound like it was directly over head. I left the sunshade tent and surveyed the situation: not bad, everything standing, tent's ok, car is ok.

With new lightning coming from the west, I grabbed my flashlight and my camera and went out to explore. Other campsites were flooded with standing water and I saw damage to RV awnings that weren't put up and tents that weren't weighted down enough.

On the west side of the camp ground with a view of the modern Bahia Honda highway bridge I setup the tripod and took about 80 long exposure shots of the second storm stalling in the west. Here's three of the best shots from a memorable night with a grand finish.

Iguanas are very common in the Florida Keys. I usually see them in the afternoon when they come out of the mangrove areas to get some sun. In the protected wildlife area on Big Pine Key near Blue Hole (the only freshwater lake in the Florida Keys) I got this great shot of an older wild Iguana. I call him Godzilla.

Key West Minature Deer

Driving through the Florida Keys from Miami to Key West you'll pass through Big Pine Key. A portion of it has large fences on each side of the road to keep wildlife from crossing and omninous signs proclaiming a wildlife preserve for the endagered Key Deer. Signs and flashing lights remind you to travel at no more than 45 m.p.h. during the day, 35 m.p.h. during the night. I've traveled this route a few times before and I always look for the deer but I've never seen them.
Today I left my camp in Bahia Honda looking for a laundromat and a grocery story. I found both in Big Pine Key and went driving to explore around sunset. To my surprise, I finally found the miniature Key West Deer.

"Smile", Bahia Honda S.P., Florida

This is the photo I want to enlarge and frame. A cute young couple taking a self photo on the white sandy beach of Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys.
(Click on the photo for a higher resolution version!)

Soaked in the Florida Keys

Towards the end of playing tourist and paparazzi in Key West tonight, I heard thunderstorms off in the distance. For the last few days I've seen signs of thunderstorms nearby but the nature of the keys – small, very flat islands – makes it hard to tell how close a storm is and whether it's going to hit the next island over and miss you completely or the other way around.

When I left for Key West tonight at 6pm the sky was clear, blue, hot and sunny. I had no idea what was coming.

I left Key West just before 11pm and was about 35-45 minutes away from my camp at Bahia Honda. As I left and pointed the car north/northeast I saw flashes of heat lightning in the distance. I started thinking about the need to get back to camp in case the storm hits, but driving on US1 in the Florida Keys doesn't lend itself to going fast.

Twenty minutes into the drive the rain started as a light trickle, then a shower. The lightning wasn't heat lightning anymore but spikes hitting the ground in the distance. And then something opened the floodgates and the rain came down with a volume that I hadn't experienced in a long time. I put the car in fourth gear to get better traction on the road, turned the wipers on full and turned the radio off so I could concentrate. In the next few minutes visibility went to almost nothing and my headlights were illuminating so many heavy rain drops in front of me that it reminded me of driving through a blizzard in Omaha Nebraska a couple years earlier.

I managed to stay on the road by following the brake lights of the trunk in front of me. As they slowed down, I followed their lead. Two or three of us pushed on for a couple miles until they'd had enough and pulled off, put their hazard lights on and decided to wait it out.

But I couldn't do this because I knew I had left my tent unprepared for rain and my camping gear – sleeping bag, pillow, air mattress, some books and personal supplies – were all inside getting wet.

So I stayed on the road driving as fast as I could. As I drove over bridges linking the smaller keys together I could feel the easterly pull of strong storm winds pushing the car towards the edge of the road. I did my best to relax my eyes to let them take in as much light as possible so I could focus on finding and staying within the lines on the road. My fears were being blown into the side by the wind or hitting another car head on.

Finally I found myself pushing forward over a bridge I recognized as the modern highway bridge west of Bahia Honda. I looked down and recognized the lights of the campground through the heavy rain still pounding down. Occasional thunder cracked to my west but didn't seem to be on top of me.

I took a right of US1 into the state park and two more rights to get to my campsite where I pulled the car up so the headlights were facing my tent, hit the high beams and jumped out to deal with the damage.

The 'rainfly' that normally keeps wind and rain out of my tent wasn't zipped up so rain had entered in from two sides. When I entered I found half the tent flooded with about a centimeter of water. The book I was reading was destroyed and some clothes I had in the tent were soaked. The goose down Marmot sleeping bag was damp on the outside but seemed ok. My memory foam style pillow that would appear to be a big sponge for water? Raised on the air mattress by only an inch survived with no damage. From my car I grabbed a bunch of T-shirts and the two other towels I had and spent the next 45 minutes mopping up the water and throwing damaged items outside to deal with later.

The sunshade tent I had setup had completely collapsed. I wasn't surprised: this was a $40 flimsy sunshade that used two poles cross-crossed as its foundation and a bunch of guylines to tie it down. I hadn't really bothered to tie things down that securely and the poles were meant to be lightweight and not ready to withstand rain and wind. Add to this the heavy blue tarp I had draped over the top in order to further keep the sun off the sides and you've got nothing but FAIL.

Oh and I left my bike out in the rain, too. I dragged that under the collapsed tarp if only to keep more rain off it and figured I'd deal with that mess in the morning.

What I learned from tonight is that weather in Florida can be very tricky. Whenever you leave your campsite should expect bad weather and prepare for it even if it doesn't happen. That would have probably saved me tonight. But given that nothing really expensive or sentimental was damaged I can say this is just part of my learning experience and move on.

Fire, Key West, Florida

The sun had set, the light was disappearing and as a juggler started his last act, I got this beautiful shot.

Key West - Dog Star

An old act in Key West has a new dog. The dog didn't seem to enthusiastic to do his act -- walking a tightrope about eight feet into the air -- but he was fine with chasing huge bubbles his master created for him.

Tough Crowd (Key West)

So think about your job for a second. Now imagine you're a street performer in Key West, Florida doing the same gig daily at sunset for whatever dollars your audience cares to give. Some days you get enthusiastic crowds full of smiling people that are happy to throw a five or a ten in your hat for 15 minutes of entertainment. And other days, you get these folks...

Tarot Readers

I wonder what this guy did before he dropped out of it, moved to Key West and became a daily Tarot Card Reader. I also wonder how I would feel if a day after reading my cards he was working the checkout lane in the local grocery store.

Sunset Sails, Key West

Camping in Bahia Honda State Park

I've returned to Bahia Honda State Park in Florida to camp for a few days.

My favorite part of Bahia Honda is the old railroad bridge that goes straight through the park. The bridge is made of iron and steel and towers at least a hundred feet into the air above the water that seperates the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. This bridge and the railroad upon it was once the primary method of land travel from Miami to Key West. The Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroyed many portions of the railroad but later this bridge and others were converted to automobile use. A newer, modern bridge is located to the west and the Bahia Honda bridge now sits unused. A portion of the bridge within the state park is maintained so visitors can walk on top and take in the amazing views. The unmaintained portion of the bridge disintegrates in the hot sun and salty air a bit each day.

There are three campgrounds at Bahia Honda. A bayside campground for tenters that is rather secluded. An ocean side campground is a windy one way road between the trees near the ocean offering amazing views but limited beach access. The main campground where I stayed is the largest and centrally located. Once again I got to enjoy the pleasures of camping on white gravel and learned how absolutely hard it is to pound metal tent stakes into the hard coral rock below. Not much shade either as hurricanes tend to rip out the taller trees every so often.

The last photo is of a rather large crab that lived in the hole next to my campsite. Most of the time he'd just sit there but occasionally I'd hear the sound of rustling leaves and knew he was on the move in the trees around my site. One day he decided to just come walking in and when I startled him he decided that hiding under the picnic table by my feet was an effective strategy.

Camping on the Beach at Long Pine

Trying out beach camping again, this time at Long Key State Park in the Florida Keys.

When I arrived yesterday it was amazingly hot and humid out. I've been here for a few days and I'm getting used to it, but I yearn for a good patch of shade provided by some nice greenery. I've got a little bit here but not enough to really cool things off.

My campsite was a cute little sliver of land right on the beach only about ten feet from the ocean. I had running water and power, a picnic table and a fire ring. When I arrived I dragged the picnic table in the sand around every hour or so in order to maximize the amount of shade I might be able to use. It didn't help much.

I'm supposed to be reading books and writing constantly but I find this Florida heat to be exhausting.

Later that night a storm rolls in and catches my neighboring campers by surprise. They've got pretty big, tall tents and I watch them from the corner of my eye as we all rush to stake down our tents and attach rain covers over them to keep the storm out. Tonight it's just me and for only one night so I've setup my Marmot Twilight 2P. For over an hour the heavy rains and wind beat down but the tent holds up great and I just fall asleep..

Returned to Key Largo

Camping in Key Largo at Pennekamp State Park.

It is hot as hell here, humid too, and there is nowhere near as much shade as I would like. But having Iguanas come out of the mangroves behind your tent each afternoon to find food is pretty cool. Wish I could pet them!

Pennekamp's main attraction is its marine sanctuary which prohibits fishing and other harmful activities in the nearby waters. So for snorkelers, SCUBA divers and the like, this means more and bigger fish than normally found elsewhere in the keys. Three swimming areas offer a place for tourists to snorkel and for me this is a great place to try out aging dive gear. On my first night I realized my dive mask is faulty so I bought another one and returned to check that one out prior to dive the next day.

One thing I really love to do is swim at sunset. The crowds go away, the water is warm, the sun isn't as harsh and you can just... relax. On one evening in Pennekamp I swam in circles with a school of tarpon a couple feet below. Before that I found myself feeding creamed corn to the reef fish and had about fifty swimming all around me.

Sorry, no underwater camera means no underwater photos this trip.

Spent last night in Dickenson State Park near Jupiter, Florida.

Dickenson is located in a protected area of protected wilderness featuring "Sand Pine Scrub." This is the way much of the Florida coast used to look like before development came along. They'd executed a controlled burn at some point in the past near the entrance which means as I drove into the park, it looked like a forest fire a year earlier had destroyed several miles of whatever there used to be to like about this place.

But deep into the park -- the campsite is four miles drive inland -- the campsite itself is a lush, jungle-like area with lots of greenery seperating each campsite and making it feel secluded and cozy. There also weren't many people there so it was quiet and natural. Compared to many of the parking lot style campgrounds I've been in, this one felt more like real camping.

On the morning after my arrival I got on the bike and rode about 10 miles through the park. It's pretty barren and you have to really slow down and be patient to appreciate it much like you have to look for slower, hidden things in a desert.

Near the entrance of the park is a wooden tower erected on the highest hill in the park (there aren't many!) The tower offers a panoramic view of the town of Jupiter and the Atlantic ocean to the east and the rest of the park to the west. This would be a great place to take photos of a good summer thunderstorm as it passes in the distance.

Highly recommended and under appreciated campsite. Has river access that probably goes out to the ocean and 'gators if you look for them.

County Park - Sebastian, Florida

Camped last night in Long Point County Park of Sebastian, Florida.

I'd tried to get into the well regarded Sebastian Inlet state park two miles south but all the sites were taken and I was directed here.

Long Point is the first county park I've ever stayed in and its style was different than the state and national parks where I've camped. Long Point seems like the place where locals go for a long weekend of boating, fishing, kids running around, eating hot dogs drinking beer at night by a fire. It's not the place you'd drive to from the other side of the state, but I really enjoyed it.

The campgrounds are part of a central, open green space with little tree cover or greenery that separates one site from another. With not many people around on a Sunday night I felt like I had a big breezy space all to myself. I setup a campsite near the water so I could hear the waves lapping in the background.

That night and the next morning, some very friendly birds decided to visit me. These guys are surely conditioned by campers to look for scraps and expect handouts. It's not good for nature to be trained this way, but, well its really enjoyable if you're into meeting new creatures.