Florida is taking a lot longer than I had anticipated. Not only is it very long, but there are things that seem to demand a little longer look than just spending the night. Key West was one of those places. Not that there was really much there besides rather silly “tourist” things, but just because it has occupied a place in my “bucket list” for many years. I think it would be an entirely different, and more fun, if I had taken the time and effort to get involved in water related things such as fishing, snorkeling or just swimming. But I didn’t, I stayed with my feet firmly planted on the ground. It was pleasant, but I am unlikely to return any time soon.

It took a few driving days to finally get back to beach front roads. The lower half of the state has lots of beaches, but they are all either behind private fences, or require more effort than I was ready to spend for the public beaches. I peaked in a few times but only saw people sitting or milling around on the beach, doing nothing much. I like to do that sometimes, but this was not the time.

After looping inland and driving a hundred and fifty miles on totally boring highways through trees I came upon the little town of Flagler. It immediately appealed to me. For one thing it sits immediately on the beach, which is totally open, accessible and parking is free. It feels a little like a “surfer” town from the ’60s. I ended up in a rather funky, run down and poorly maintain hotel called Topaz Motel.

I was immediately drawn to it because it was NOT anything like the Best Western hotels (and others) that I have been staying at on most nights. It is true that there are only two working outlets, and those are used up by the hotel things such as lights, clock, refrigerator, etc. I have to unplug some essential item in order to plug in a computer, charge my phone or other things. The room comes with an in-room jacuzzi but it is all rusted, in pieces and has a big sign to NOT use it because it is broken. It just takes up room in the corner. The television doesn’t work. My biggest disappointment is that while I managed to get a room overlooking the ocean, the shades can’t be moved aside so there is no view of anything. The Motel itself is well on its way to becoming a hole in the ground. Rot and broken things are the most obvious features – but I like it in spite of all that. It feels right. I like it so much I decided to stay a second night.

The beach is quite close, perhaps 200 feet from my room, across road A1A which is pretty quite here. If I walk across the road to be able to see over the top of the protective dunes, I see something like this view:

Last night I walked less than a half a mile toward town and found a really nice open air bar that had live music playing many of my old favorites from the “hippy” days – the musicians were vintage also. I got so engaged it listening to the music that I forgot to order dinner. By the time I remembered that I was hungry every restaurant in town was closed. The band stopped playing at 9:00 – it wasn’t as if I had stayed up until the cows come home. A bit of moldy cheese and a handful of crackers made do for dinner.

By morning I was pretty hungry. A short walk back toward town brought me to a “resort and spa” that advertised breakfast and that it was open to walk-in customers. I walked in. The menu had none of the offerings in “normal” American diners. No grits, no hash-browns, no eggs any way you want them. I ended up getting an egg crepe. It was beautiful, I should have taken a photo of it, but didn’t think of that until I had finished eating it. It started as a round crepe covered with some sort of meat based filler, then the edges were folded over to make a square shape with a hole in the middle where the sunny-side egg sat. It came with fresh fruit and great coffee. The chef came out of the kitchen a couple of times to check on how I was liking it. What a nice breakfast. It was pretty, tasted great, with a beautiful of the early morning ocean with a few fishing boats out at sea and little gangs of pelicans gliding along the surface of the water. On top of that, but the waitress was cute and friendly. It was a perfect breakfast – the best meal of the trip.

It was a little funny watching the surfers attacking the waves during the morning. Most of the waves were perhaps five inches tall and barely made the waiting surfers bob in the water. About every ten of these ripples turned into a rideable (noticeable) wave. The largest that I saw was perhaps a foot high, but it was enough to push the surfer toward shore. The whole thing was a slow motion encounter with the sea, where there was a lot of hoping and fantasy, but not a lot of action. By afternoon I see that things have changed a bit. There are some white caps offshores, and a few low breakers. It might actually be surfable.

I think I have modified my travel plans in some significant ways. My son, Kevin, called yesterday and offered me a little advise about how to get home quicker, easier and cheaper than just forcing a long drive home. It is about 3,000 miles across the country. At my normal rate of 150 miles a day, that is 20 days of driving until exhaustion each day. I realize that 150 miles is not much for normal folks, but it is just about the end of my tolerance on a regular day-in day-out basis. I had planned on 20 days to return.

Kevin asked if perhaps I wouldn’t be better off shipping the car home and flying. That seemed reasonable, I think it costs something like $2500 to ship a car across country. It is costing me almost $200 a day in my current mode of travel, which would be $4,000 driving. I could save $1,500 and not have to beat myself up. I then wondered about just selling the car on this side and carrying the money. It costs nothing to ship the money. I suppose I can get an airline ticket for around $700 dollars, and can ship the stuff I want to keep in a box for another $100 – saving more than $3,000 and my back.

So that is my current plan. I am going to keep driving up to see my friend Warren and his wife Jill in Maryland, taking about seven days to do that. Spend a few days until they get tired of me, pack up the camping gear, sell the car and fly home. I am getting ready to be home again, so this sounds very appealing to me. Once I get home I’ll go buy a new car, which was my plan all along. I am just sort of “squeezing” the last bit of good out of the car that I am driving.

Perhaps this will get me home around the first of July – a far more relaxed approach to what I was doing. I am really beginning to miss my home, my friends and the comfort of being in my own “territory.”

Yesterday turned out to be one of “those” days. It started out in a normal fashion, but quickly unraveled. Since it turned out that Miami Springs was several miles from the coast I decided to drive east until I found water, then turn north for a easy 2 1/2 drive to my next destination. Getting to the coast was fairly easy, I just took a big, many lane road through a forest of giant, super fancy “sky scrapers” that appeared to be mostly banks or 50-70 story apartment houses. I guess all those big banks require all of those people stacked up in the apartments. In any case, all I had to do was stay in the middle lane and keep on going until I could go no further.

I found water, bridges and what appeared to be an island between me and the open ocean. I then plugged the new address goal into the car’s GPS and headed out. The first part of the new trip was through the more “seedy” part of town with the freight trains, garbage facilities, car crushing facilities, bars, strip joints and “adult” toy stores were congregated. I enjoyed it because it was colorful, and the traffic was light. However, I eventually got through that part of town and entered the more upscale parts – and traffic virtually stopped. I had purposefully started traveling around 9:00 am, thinking that I would leave the beach area around 10:00, thus missing the rush hour. If I missed it, I can’t image what that would have been like.

The roads in Florida seem to be uniformly a nightmare – for many reasons, and this was no exception. The roads through town tend to be seven or eight lanes wide, running at 90 degrees to each other. Every couple of blocks the cross using very long cycle time stop lights. So there is a constant crush of cars in all directions at the stop lights. It normally takes 2 or 3 light cycles to progress one block. I is not unusually to finally get to the head of the line and still have to wait though even more cycles because block ahead hasn’t cleared yet. It took me almost 2 hours to go the four miles to get “out of town.”

By the time I roamed around Miami trying to go north I was totally lost. Actually, since I had never been there I started totally lost. I did what I normally do in these situations, trusted the lady in my dash telling me when to turn, and when she is going to recalculate because I failed to follow her directions. However, since my car’s map showed that I was headed north, and the time of arrival seemed about correct, I just relaxed and went with the flow. However, once traffic eased up a bit I started glancing at my paper map to get an idea where I was. The paper map is important because the range shown on the car map is much too close in and detailed – you can’t tell where you are in general. Not only that, but once you set the destination it stops showing it, it just tells you where the next turn is going to be, and it shows the estimated arrival time and distance. I keep looking for road I was on and couldn’t find it.

I finally pulled off the road to concentrate a bit on this problem and finally found it. I was traveling west, not north. It turned out that two things had changed on the map, both of which were unknown to me. One thing was that the map display now was showing the orientation of the map to be “north” rather than what is had been doing for the past month, which was showing the direction that the car is pointed. I assumed the “N” on the display meant I was going north and since the road I hoped to travel was almost due north that seemed correct. But the “N” meant that the map was oriented north, but I was actually traveling west. A slight confusion. Then I noticed a much larger problem. The road that I had entered for next hotel was Okeechobee Road, but somehow or another that became the city and the map was set to take me back to the hotel that I stayed in a week ago in the town of Okeeechobee, and I was almost there!! Suffice it to say, my nice 2 to 3 hour drive turned into a grueling 8 hour drive without even a lunch break.

At least there was a nice Mexican restaurant within walking distance from my new motel. The hotel is one of the typical clusters of hotels and fast food joints at the intersection of large highways, with lots of big rig trucks everywhere you look.

Hopefully today with be a bit better. I am going to have to drive longer days if I am going to get back by mid-July.

I turned a corner and am now heading north. I mistakenly thought that I could make the 125 mile trip from Key West to Miami Springs in about three hours, leaving me plenty of time to go the 30 miles to the beach. I failed to add in the last nine miles from Miami South to Miami Springs. That nine miles took a little over two hours, and there was no accident or road work, and it wasn’t even “rush hour” yet. The roads have stop lights every other block, and it took two or three cycles for each stop light. That used up the “extra” time I had planned for a trip to the beach.

I got another room in a Best Western, the best so far. Nice, quiet, everything in good order, great free breakfast – and an Irish Pub within easy walking distance down the street. It was sort of easy, because it was also pouring rain – in bucketfuls. I drove.

The pub was separated into two parts – an outside bar that was packed with guys (no women) with not even standing room available, and an inside bar/restaurant that was much quieter, and I could get a seat. I chose the inside options and got into fun discussions with a couple of older gentlemen. They told me their names, but I forgot them.

When they heard that I was writing about my travels they wanted to know if they would be included, and I said that it is likely. So they wanted a photo to go along with it. The bar tender took the photo for me. This morning I thought it might be fun to use that at practice sketching since I have always been afraid to attempt drawing people. Here is my effort, the second attempt in my life. A week or so ago I attempted to draw a sketch of a friend of mine, and it came out rather ghoulish. This one isn’t much better, but it gives a feeling of the moment. While it doesn’t classify as “good” or even “art” – it was fun to do and gives me a little hope that with practice things might improve. At least they look like three different guys.

I also stopped in at a little bar and grill for lunch on one of the Keys. I don’t recall which key, or the name of the place – but they served a pretty good burger, and three others in the place carried on a lively conversation. They indicated that I had walked into a local establishment, not a tourist place. It was interesting to hear what they had to say about growing up on the keys, and how difficult they found living in the city to be. They just grew up “country” and that seems difficult to get past. They had all “gone out there” – only to return to a place where they could relax and breath a little.

I am going to continue north this morning, but perhaps making a bit of a loop toward Fort Lauderdale just to see what I can see. My good friend Warren used to go there on spring break, I was always curious what was drawing him across the country to do that. I am still curious, so will take a fly-by knowing that I won’t see much.

I decided to break my travel plans of moving every day in order to give myself a break, and perhaps have a little more time to experience Key West. It is clearly a different sort of place that requires a little more time to get the feel of it. Actually, it would take a LOT more time for that. I will just be scratching the surface.

I realized that I would be missing a lot if I didn’t take in at least one beach side restaurant. Therefore I went to Dog Beach which has free beach side parking. I parked at a memorial beach honoring AIDS victims, which was right next to a slave cemetery. The sign on the slave cemetery told about a pre-civil war situation where a couple of American ships were illegally bringing in loads of slaves. The American navy caught the ships and rescued the people on board, but conditions had been so bad on the illegal ships that something like 300+ men, women and children ended up dying from illnesses they contacted on the journey. Those people were buried on this beach. The remainder were cared for in the hospital on the island and eventually returned to Africa – but not necessarily to where they had been. Yet another sad chapter in the story of American enterprise.

Next to these two beaches is a “garden club” garden located in an old brick fort. Beautiful garden, well laid out and signed. Finally I came to a beach side restaurant, and took a table facing the Atlantic Ocean.

After lunch I headed back to my hotel, stopping at an old fort that had been made into a museum. The museum had some interesting displays concerning Cuban refugees from the past sixty years or so. Other than that it was the normal collection of old pianos, old tools, old cannons – old stuff. The evening I hung out near the hotel pool and met a couple of very interesting people. In a place such as Key West perhaps the interesting people are the “tourists” – they come with interesting tales of their lives. One of the guys I met is an ex-marine. Finally having gotten his fill of the adventures that come with carrying guns into war zones, settled down, had children and is now one of huge “army” of utility workers re-wiring America. He was in Key West working on that project. Another guy that I met was a commercial airline pilot but got into a horrible automobile accident that put him on the injured-retired role. He now just travels to interesting places, having been in this hotel for about two months on this trip. There were other, much briefer, discussions.

I am going to spend another night in Key West, meaning another day. I am not sure what I will do with my time, perhaps go to some other keys and poke around a bit to see what I might see. The weather has been good; not too hot, mild breezes, almost bearable humidity, and no rain.

I decided to turn right for a little bit and check out the Keys, particularly Key West. Perhaps this is not the best choice for which Key to hang out in, but it seemed obvious at the time. The drive down from South Miami was different than I had anticipated. I expected the bridges connecting the string of keys to be much longer than they actually are. There are many similar bridges around the word, some are called causeways, which seems to be a better term for the road to Key West. The entire road feels like a 130 mile long causeway, even the parts that are really just roads on the keys. Interesting experience whatever it is called. An interesting feature are the old bridges paralleling the current bridges. They have just been left there as a rotting eyesore. Some parts have been fixed up so they form very long fishing piers, but mostly they are blocked off and crumbling into the sea.

I ended up staying in the hotel on Key West that is furthest from “the action” (the old town). That means it is necessary to take some sort of vehicle to see anything of interest. Parking is a nightmare, I haven’t found any reliable public transportation, and the “tours” are more expensive than I want to pay at $85 a person. The hotel provides a shuttle service every hour – that was my choice. Unfortunately the pick up point is a very long walk to Duval Street, which is the hub of activity. I was pretty worn out by the time I got to the place that I wanted to walk around and see things.

The concierge at the hotel explained the reason for the large distance between the hotels and “old town.” He told me that the key used to be less than half as large as it now it. The old town was the entire key. At around 1980 it was decided that more room was needed for the hotels, fast food joints and knock off shopping centers. They then built the other half of the island! It is huge, considering the effort that must have been required to move so much sand, and the monumental environmental destruction that undoubtedly accompanied that project is mind boggling. I assume they dug the sand out of the nearby water ways, they wouldn’t have trucked it in. I wonder who paid for that effort. In any case, now the normal cluster of hotels exists on the part of the island that is not “old town,” and everything of interest is several miles away. I am rather sorry that I missed Key West in the days before the monster hotels and easy highway access.

I don’t know exactly what I expected to find in the old town, perhaps I found it – plus a lot of other things. It seems that perhaps 60% of the stores are woman’s dress shops. Perhaps 10% are stores selling mementos and there are many art galleries. One end of the street is packed with restaurants and bars. If I were looking for a partner my feeling was that it would be easy to connect up with a man, but not so easy to find a woman. My impression was that the women were with their families, I didn’t see many single women. However, single men were very obvious. I chose to remain a sightseer. My takeaway was that I found the entire experience to be mostly boring. The building architecture was interesting, but the “vibes” were just another tourist trap dressed up as a used to be turn of the last century get-away. Perhaps it is still a place conductive to writing or art, just not for a tourist like myself. I don’t know what else I could have expected.

I decided to stay a couple more nights to give myself enough time to investigation other things on the island, or perhaps other nearby keys. Throwing myself into the center of the beast on Duval Street did just what I should have expected – it is more like a funky Disneyland than a “real” place. Perhaps some place, such as Ram Rod Key or Marathon Key with the Boys Scouts adventure camp would be better choices.

I spent an hour or so at the hotel pool last night, enjoying a wine at the poolside bar. Once again, I believe it would have been easy to pick up a guy, but that was not exactly my goal. It was sort of too bad, I would have liked to talk to someone but there were no women to talk to, and the guys were clearly making eyes at me. So I just enjoyed the warm weather and the wine.

Yesterday was a shorter travel day than I have been averaging. The distance from Okeechobee to my hotel in South Miami was only about 125 miles. That gave me a little time to look do a few other things. One of these was a shopping trip looking for tee shirts to wear in the hotel gyms. I thought that would be a simple thing to purchase given the large number of malls. However, while I got to see the inside of quite a few large stores, I wasn’t able to find tee shirts that fit “normal” sized people (I mean my size). I found plenty for tiny people (up to XX), but none for me. I’ll keep looking.

The trip was pretty because for a lot of it the road skirted Lake Okeechobee along the “moot” surrounding the levee. I realize that the moot is the hole created to get the dirt to pile up for the levee. It is a long “borrow pit.” At one point I managed to get up onto the levee to get a view of the lake, and was surprised to see a vast, open water, lake. It was not full of brush and trees as was the case on the northern part of the lake that I had seen previously. I have to retract my comments that I made yesterday. It all depends upon your vantage point when observing the lake. However, from what I have read, it is a very shallow lake.

The weather report called for strong winds, heavy rain and flooding. That was true, sometimes and at some places. There were many large, dark clouds filling the sky and obvious rainstorms popping up in small areas. I drove through several of these, lasting for perhaps ten minutes and then I would be out in the sun again. The region wasn’t raining, just spots that moved around with the clouds. One of the problems that I encountered was that the windshield wipers didn’t wipe the glass clear, they left what appeared to be an oily residue. It wasn’t bad enough to hamper driving, but it was a bit irritating. I don’t know if that is a build up of road gunge after driving over 5,000 miles, or something local. I hoped that the rain would wash it off, but that didn’t happen.

Having not much else to do, I spent a lot of the drive watching the clouds – noticing a couple of things that I hadn’t seen before. One was a common condition where the clouds actually had dark lines defining their edges.

A couple of days ago I had been playing around with attempting to sketch clouds and came to the realization that they need to be sketched “backwards.” I can’t sketch white, so in order to get white I need to make the other parts dark. Darkening the sky is the only way to make the clouds white. For well defined clouds such as the background cumulus clouds in the photo, there is no “line” separating the white of the clouds from the dark of the sky – the two colors just bump up against each other. I convinced myself that is what happens within the clouds also, it is all about shading, there is no “drawing” of lines. However, yesterday I noticed that there actually are “lines” in the clouds. The clouds in the upper part of the photograph have actual dark lines surrounding the puffs of clouds, it is not all just shading – parts of it can be drawn. Of course the drawn lines are slightly fuzzy, not sharp edged – but lines nevertheless. That is a bit of a relief to me because it is much easier to outline the clouds with a line and shade inside than to just use shading to indicate the edges.

The second thing I noticed was the appearance of orange clouds. Being somewhat color blind I am not positive that orange is the right color, they might have been green, or even brown – but they definitely had a color, not just white and grey. The colored clouds were shaped line the regular cumulus clouds, seemingly behind them off in at a distance. I have no idea what was causing that effect, but it was striking and persistent. I tried to take a photo of them but I was on the freeway without any way to stop to take a photo. I snapped one out of the window, but it wasn’t very useful. Perhaps it was something to do with my dark glasses, I didn’t think to take them off to check on that – because I forgot that I was wearing them.

The hotel web site gave the address as being in Kendall. However, my GPS didn’t offer Kendall as an option. Not only that, but my map of Florida doesn’t have enough resolution to be useful as a street map. It is fine for the State, but not so great within towns. Not knowing a solution I just set my GPS on “South Miami” knowing that is in the general vicinity of Kendall, hoping that I could figure out the rest when I got there. I drove into town on wide, four lane road – heading toward the beach because I knew that Kendall is near the shore and south of South Miami. I figured I would at least bump into the correct town, and since I had the street address would eventually find my destination. However, while sitting at a stop light I noticed the top of a hotel peaking over the top of a large department store – I could see the hotel logo and it was MY hotel, right there waiting for me. What luck!! I haven’t been able to find any sign of a town called Kendall, but the street I drove in on is called Kendall Avenue when it gets closer to the ocean.

The hotel and room in South Miami is FAR better than what I have been staying in lately. Everything is nice and clean, the furniture isn’t banged up and chipped, the paint is nice, and there are no stains in the carpets. Not only that, but the lobby is open and comfortable, very inviting. Even the pool is better. For one thing it has water in it which was rare on my trip, but there is shade and some landscaping in the pool area – it isn’t just a bucket of water surrounded by bare concrete. The price is the same, but the feeling couldn’t be different. I don’t even hear any hammer drills or sledge hammers being used in the surrounding rooms as I did at my last hotel.

Since the drive was so short, I had time to go exploring before dinner time. The ocean is located due east from my hotel, and the main drag was headed east so it seemed like I should be able to just drive a few miles and see the ocean. That was a mistake. It turned out my hotel is about seven miles west of the ocean, I thought was a mile or so. However, the road almost got that far before degenerating into a neighborhood road rather than a main drag. I went as far east as I could, finding a N-S road paralleling the coast. However, I was never able to find the coast because the is a solid line of mansions between the road and the water, most of which had big iron gates with guards. Many of these “houses” were bigger than the hotels that I have been staying at, perhaps averaging 20,000 sq feet or so – some tiny 5,000 square foot homes, but most much larger, grander and expensive.

The architecture that I could see through the surrounding vegetation was uniformly outlandish, reaching across the spectrum of grand old colonial styles to modern art forms. There was so much wealth surrounding these streets that I actually found myself getting sick to my stomach realizing just how be the gap is better the “well to do” and the wealthy, and how many people have acquired vast amounts of the nation’s wealth. It was just sickening, literally.

I had been traveling north along the coast and finally reached Miami. The architecture that I saw there was equally as wild, but a lot was much older. Quite spectacular, what with the curved lines, bold colors and just plain interesting shapes. Even the sky scraper are crazy, doing things like twisting like corkscrews as they reach for the sky. The streets were filled with cars and the sidewalks filled with pedestrians. It all looked interesting, and perhaps even a little exciting. I attempted to find parking so I could join the pedestrians, but none was to be found. I saw a sign offering parking spaces for $20, but I didn’t feel like doing that for the hour or so that I wanted to spend. I finally arrived at a marina where the boats mirrored the wealth of the homes. Of course there was no parking there either, and no beach.

Running out of time, energy and interest I returned to my hotel having failed in my search for a beach. Perhaps I’ll try again on my way up the coast from the Florida Keys. Miami appears to be one of those places that you just have to immerse yourself in, on foot, for a few days. I heard on the news that today is the last day of the city providing tram service. Up until today they have offered free tram based transportation, but that is no longer going to be the case. It is now going to be Uber based, using normal cars. I wonder how that is going to work out.

This morning I will start down the long bridge to the keys.

I found that this is such a pleasant little town of about 5,000 people that I decided to spend an extra day getting caught up on laundry, some business, and just kick back. That plus the dire warnings about torrential rains, strong winds and massive flooding. Apparently those are local weather events, one town might get walloped and the next one five miles away get nothing. Right now the storms are localized, high energy events (not yet tornadoes I hope). I have been dithering with my decision about whether or not to go down the keys. Weather reports of the area make me a bit nervous. I am putting off that decision until such time as I actually have to make it.

Yesterday I decided to see if I could actually find Lake Okeechobee. My GPS says that I am perhaps a quarter of a mile away, but seems to be very difficult to access because of the giant 130 mile long levee around it. There are a few wide sections of the levee where you can drive high enough to see the lake and launch boats. However, in most cases even that doesn’t allow observations of the lake because is almost isn’t a “lake,” it is more like an enclosed swamp. The name Okeechobee means “big water” – which is true, but not a lake like Lake Tahoe for example. The lake is 10 feet or less in depth, often much less. From what I was able to see, it is more like watery paths through trees and brush with very little open water.

I drove about 40 miles along the shoreline finding three boat launching facilities. The giant circular levee has what appears to be a large moat along the outside edge of the levee. This “moat” appears to be the primary source of boating and fishing activity since it is easily accessible almost its entire length. There are very large groups of single wide trailers and small houses almost the moat, giving many water front access with small private docks. There must be several thousand people living in these “adult” communities on the outskirts of Okeechobee – probably accounting for much of the vigor of the community – there is likely lots of retirement money to buy things without flooding the job market.

I tried to imagine what it must be like inside, and almost scared myself out of going in. But in the mood for an adventure, I found the door and just walked on it – wondering what to expect. It turned out to be almost deserted, a couple having a beer and eating corn dogs and the waitress. I ordered a beer and a cheeseburger – which was good, but so sloppy that it was almost impossible to eat. Frog legs were on the menu, perhaps they would have been easier to eat.

I noticed a lot of garbage cans and big pots sitting on the floor in front of the bandstand. When I asked the waitress about them, she replied that “they had a bit of a leak during the storm two days ago.” Then she acknowledged that it was actually more like a waterfall. The pots and garbage cans were more or less permanent features that get moved aside when it isn’t raining and people want to dance. She indicated that the locals know when to come and when to not bother.

I when to an interesting restaurant that evening. It was obviously a well liked local establishment serving a wide variety of meals, mostly centered around fish in one form or another. I had excellent shrimp fettuccine with a side of a wedge of lettuce. The “wedge” of lettuce was an entire head of lettuce sliced in half, then smothered in excellent blue cheese dressing. As usual, I sat at the bar to eat and got into nice conversations with the folks on both sides of me. It was a pleasant and tasty evening.

The only other issue today is that I am finding my legs are starting to object to too much sitting in one position and not enough exercise. I started an exercise routine this morning. I hate to “exercise” but find that I have to do something or it will undoubtedly get worse. Most of the hotels that I stay at have little rooms with few exercise machines. I need to start using them. But first I have to get some “gym clothes” (mainly tee shirts). I’ll get some this morning since there are two big shopping centers almost next door to my hotel. Other than that, things are going along just fine. Long days of driving sometimes, but interesting things now and then. I am off to Kendall this afternoon. It is just a few miles south of Miami, perhaps it will be a fun place to visit. After that it will either be south down the keys, or north up the Atlantic coast. I won’t know which it is until tomorrow morning.

The drive east from Punta Gorda to Lake Okeechobee was a refreshing change from driving through dense jungle to much more open farm land with cows, sheep and various crops including citrus trees and sod farms. I could finally see the homes and farms, and see a bit of the landscape. I only drove about 100 miles yesterday, so not only was it pleasant from the point of view of the scenery, but because it wasn’t just a hard drive to get to the next hotel room.

The town of Okeechobee was an even better refreshing change – it is actually a “town” in the old time town sort of way. The area feels very rural, but the town has a lot to offer – there must be a much larger population than it feels like. I wonder how this place managed to maintain its feeling of community while so many others have not. I think it might have to do with a few subtle, but important, design features. Apparently someone thought it all out, or maybe it was just an accidental sort of thing – but it appears to work.

The first thing that is apparent when entering town is that it is chopped into four quadrants by intersecting four lane highways. It is chopped into big pieces, but not bypassed. The speed limit on these highways is reduced to 30 mph through town with several sets of stops lights, so they can be crossed easily with vehicles or on foot. The main east-west road parallels the “town” main street, perhaps 200 feet to the north. The main street still functions as a main street, but has easy access to the highway. There are two large shopping centers less than a 1/2 mile to the south of town on the N-S highway. Main street has many shops that are too small, or too different, to have competition from the shopping centers. There are perhaps ten little eateries of various types. There is an old-time style cafe, an organic restaurant, a Mexican place, a sweets place with candy and coffee, a coffee shop, and others. There are three pawn shops, and a second-hand store next to “Hippy Haze” which is a consignment place with beads, crystals, tie-dyed things, bells, incense and that sort of thing. There are two dress shops and a western wear store. I am sure I am missing several other offerings, all of which appear to be thriving.

The center strip between the highway and main street was a long, green park containing an interesting art display featuring full sized bronze statues of a couple of working cowboys, a cow dog and a bunch of cattle being driven though the park. The sculptures were created by a guy named J. Michael Wilson from Lehi, Utah and cast in Alpine Utah. Obviously these are important art works for the community, they must have cost a lot. The town must be pretty “sensitive” and appreciative of much more than seems typical in their part of the world.

The other side of the highway is more “industrial” in nature, including city hall, the sheriff department, some granaries, the schools and a few larger restaurants of the “bar and grill” nature. All of these are part of “the town” just not on main street. Everywhere I went people were relaxed, friendly and inviting. I felt none of the tension that I have been experiencing for the past few weeks, it just felt comfortable. The bar and grill that I went to for dinner last night appears to be a “gay bar” given the clientele and the signage on the walls. Even that is accepted in this little town.

I had a pleasant meal watching them enjoying themselves playing pool, or just sitting around chatting with each other. Once again, it was just comfortable and inviting. I also stopped in at a more rowdy appearing bar and grill, just to get a feeling for the “macho” side of things. Once again, although it had all of the appearance of being a “western style” rough and tumble place, it was very pleasant and friendly. I enjoyed my visits with the locals, just talking about “things” in general.

During the afternoon I went to the lake to see what I could see. The lake is not very accessible because it is contained by a 15 or 20 foot levee all the way around. There is a road surrounding the lake, built at the bottom of the levee so you can’t see the lake except at the few locations that are built up as parks with lake access. I found one of these and just settled down to watch it for an hour of so.

The road from Steinhatchee was long and boring. So far the roads I have encountered in Florida are very different from what I am used to in California. They come in three varieties (1) Major four-lane freeways cut though dense jungle with no view of anything, (2) small paved roads servicing the towns, (3) dirt roads. The road system is functional, but quite limited. The dirt roads are usually just cuts through the overgrowth, revealing white “dirt” (I suppose it is limestone). The “freeways” are interesting in that they aren’t freeways like in California – rather they are two-lane divided roads usually with a 55 MPH speed limit, with side roads entering directly onto the highway, I have yet to see an on-ramp or overpass. They often go past the little towns, but the speed limit slows to 30 MPH in the “business” districts. When entering an area with increased population density stop lights are common – they just stop all four lanes of traffic for the cross traffic. It is quite “primitive” in comparison to California or Arizona norms, but I suppose it is functional and inexpensive.

After driving between two walls of trees for a couple of hours I got bored and decided to turn off on one of the white, dirt side roads. My GPS was indicating a grid of roads just beyond the main highway, so thinking that perhaps the community was “hiding” behind the trees I went to see what I might see. It was a main road for the local community, but barely wide enough for cars to pass. It went straight into the jungle. At first I assumed that I was in an uninhabited area, probably mainly used by sportsmen or loggers. However, it turned out to have a lot of houses, perhaps on five to ten acre plots. Most of the houses were hard to spot because they were nestled back in the trees and had been pretty much overgrown by the jungle. Old, single-wide trailers were the norm, along with old cars, new cars and piles of stuff. It felt very much like what is depicted on television programs such as the “Swamp People.” I managed to get out of there unscathed, which felt like success!

After surviving my excursion into the Florida jungles, I then stopped in at a roadside diner for lunch. The most noticeable customers were the now common group of men in bright orange shirts, part of the utility crews that seem to be swarming the southern half of the USA. The walls were decorated with several very large mounted fish, wall plaques with funny sayings, and photographs of the proprietor’s children and grandchildren. I ordered a Rubin sandwich that turned out to be quite good, along with a bowl of inedible potato salad. Everyone was friendly and cheery.

The next stop along the route was a State Park Nature Preserve that promised manatees. That seemed like an easy way to spot one of those critters, so I pulled in. It turns out that the place was set up to care for injured animals, all of which had something happen that prevented the being returned to the wild. The park was accessible by a nice, 15 minute boat trip through the jungle where we viewed an alligator, a turtle and a “snake bird” (Anhinga) sunning itself on an old snag. I saw two manatees, one was cruising the little lake having lunch, the other was in the “hospital” recovering from a nasty encounter with a propeller.

This all put in into the Tampa area during the “rush” hour, waiting at the many stop lights spaced about a 1/4 mile apart. On top of that, it started to rain pretty heavily. I finally finished my planned three hour trip after about eight hours of travel. The motel operator indicated that I might like to try the restaurant located almost directly across the street. He said it was a rather “high end” place with high prices, but none of his customers ever complained. So that was my choice.

When I got there I was surprised that there were no cars in the parking lot, and even more surprised when I ended and found that there were no customers. None. It was a big restaurant with several large rooms full of tables, a nice big bar area, and all of the decor I expect in a nice restaurant. Everything but customers. I asked the receptionist if it was open and was assured that it was.

As usual, I sat at the bar for dinner. I looked over the menu, which had a wide variety of delicious sounding items as high, but not unaffordable, prices. I noticed several items that were described as Croatian specialties, so instead of just ordering what sounded good I asked the bartender/owner if he was from Croatia. He was. Feeling in a of an adventuresome mood, I asked his advice for a selection that I would be sorry if I hadn’t ordered it. He immediately said pork or lamb chops. These were $50 each, more than I really wanted to pay. I looked again and found pork and lamb shanks for only $30. I asked about them, and he really lit up! He said it was his favorite piece of meet and his wife (the cook) did a wonderful job of cooking it – slow roasting it for five hours with all the right seasonings. I couldn’t resist, so ordered it along with my normal glass of chardonnay. Soon a giant chunk of pork shank was served alongside a huge serving of seasoned rice and marvelous fresh homemade rolls. I was in hog heaven!

While I waited for the food to be prepared, he stayed at the bar and we talked. He told me that he left Croatia immediately after the war with Russia was finished, having been given the choice of going to Germany or the USA. He choose Germany, thinking it was closer to home and perhaps he could return to his home one day. He told me of many family and friends who died during the war, told me about how hard it was to fight and try to survive. He pointed to the places were he had bullet holes, and the scare on his neck when someone tried to kill him with a knife. He was very sad when talking about those things.

I asked him why it was worth all of that just to avoid living under Russian rule. Afterall, the Russians won and that was the outcome – what was the point? He said it was very simple, Freedom. Freedom from living under a despot in a dictatorship that prevented personal or political freedom. He was sorry they lost, but hopeful that somehow, some way, some day it would change again.

When if got to Germany he found that they totally control refugees. His only job opportunity, the only job he was allowed to have, was cleaning. On top of that, he was prevented from having an income that would give him any sort of acceptable living. So he left, and ended up in Clearwater Florida in 1998, with a wife, two children and $600 in his pocket. Whatever organization helped moved him to Florida helped him find an apartment and got him a job driving a forklift. The apartment cost $1400 a month, the job paid $175 a week. He instantly recognized that wasn’t going to work, so after two weeks he quite and started a side business fixing big rig trucks. (I didn’t dig deeper into what sort of background allowed him to make that switch.) His truck repair business was a success, he hired 6 mechanics and did well until one day he happened upon an old out of business restaurant for sale, cheap. His wife was excited about doing that, so he switched his attention to fixing up the restaurant and all that. I was in that restaurant. He said it is normally very busy, usually packed with waiting lines. He didn’t know what happened on that day, but being empty just didn’t happen.

About this time the conversation turned to the food and menus, he pointed out that almost everyone ordered the inexpensive house variety of wine. At that point I recognized my error in ordering, and apologized for not asking his advice along with his advice for the meal. He chuckled and said he had a lot of other “house” wines that they could have ordered.

At that point I recognized my error in ordering, and apologized for not asking his advice along with his advice for the meal. He chuckled and said he had a lot of other “house” wines that they could have ordered. He then did an interesting thing, he brought out an unlabeled bottle of wine, set up two glasses and we each had a glass – mine was complementary. He then leaned back against the back bar and we started to talk, just a friends! We had moved past the customer/bartender situation and moved onto real topics.

He asked me about my trip. I told him that it has been a sad thing to see all of the almost ghost towns, sad to see how gutted the freeways and strip malls had left the communities, and how dangerous it felt in Arkansas and Alabama.

He was interested in all these topics, and agreed with my assessment – including Florida into that category of dangerous places. He asked if I preferred Trump of de Santis. I expressed horror with either choice, and then we were off to the races! He knew we could talk, talk about the dangers of what is happening in America right now. He agreed with my assessment of the danger that the rebels present (I can’t think of another name for them right now since the main point of their anger is a desire to crash the entire political system.)

He finished up the evening with the story of the beginning of the war in Croatia. He said it had changed so that it felt exactly like it now feels in America with the “moderate” Democrats and Republicans trying to find a way to operate in the midst of a vocal group of people attempting to set it on fire and burn it to the ground. He said one day it just started, it started small with some little riots and demonstrations but that by the second day all of the store windows had been broken out and the merchandise stolen. At the same time the guns came out from hiding, and there were dead people in the streets and Russia invading by day three. It was all out war from then on. It only took a day to turn, and he is scared. He said it looks exactly the same to him here as it did there then. His fear isn’t that as shift in political control is coming, his fear is that civil war is at our doorsteps. He saw it before so knows how quickly and easily it can change.

Wow!!! No wonder everyone is so afraid to talk to me, why the whisper that they are on my side but can’t talk about it, no wonder they shy away from any discussions that might be overheard. It took this guy over an hour in an empty restaurant before he felt comfortable enough to talk. I pointed that out to him, and he said he had to do that because he needed customers and he would be boycotted or worse if he said what he thinks.