Tin Can Travels

2nd May – 6th May 2023

Some of our travelling is going places. Some of our travelling is visiting places of note and repute. But sometimes our travelling is killing time and finding somewhere to stop and just exist whilst a bit of time passes. This was the situation for the next four days. We had a booking for Savannah on the next weekend, a long held bucket list destination for us and an experience that we were going to be sharing with our good friends from Conneticut, Greg & Gigi, who were flying in to see us.

Our pitstop was ‘Walkabout Camp’, an RV park with an Australian flavour by virtue of the husband of the couple that owned it being from Melbourne originally. Apart from its name, some shade sails around the pool area and the bathrooms being labelled ‘Blokes’ and ‘Sheilas’, it didn’t feel particularly Australian. It did deliver on the requirements for a good pitstop however:

1. Good bathrooms, laundry and wifi. Non negotiable.
2. Somewhere to walk – there was a nice maintained trail that meandered through the wooded land next to the park. It was only about a mile long but very pretty. No-one else seemed to either know about it or be interested in walking it so we had it to ourselves.
3. A nice pool area – this was also barely used by the other inhabitants, so practically a private pool as well for the Hampsons. Nice.
4. Somewhere to bike – The local town, Kingsland, was about 3 miles away and a safe and easy cycle. It was a town of two halves. The new part was close to the highway, was busy with lots of traffic, new construction, tons of eateries, businesses, petrol stations supermarkets and acted like a massive service centre for the highway. We didn’t go there. Instead we cruised into the ‘historic district’. This was very different with almost no business or eateries, dilapidated old homes, abandoned buildings and much quieter.
5. A quirky place to eat – the purpose of our journey a’bike to Kingsland was to have brunch at ‘Steffen’s Diner’, pretty much the only restaurant in town. It’s been run by the same family since 1948 and serving up Southern delights and classics continually since then. I had ‘The Benedict’ which was ham and poached eggs on muffins smothered with sausage gravy in lieu of hollandaise sauce. Perfection! We realised why this part of town was so quiet. Pretty much everyone had congregated here. It had been a good idea to come for brunch rather than lunch as there was quite a queue by the time we left.
6. A petting zoo – I’m not sure why there was a collection of (mostly pint-sized) animals here, but they added a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the ambience of the park. The early morning dawn chorus was the bleating of goats rather than birdsong and the flock of about ten chickens free-ranged amongst the rvs and trucks, having no respect for personal space and dashing towards the rustle of any packet of crisps or crackers at drink’o’clock. There was a depressed looking miniture pony called ‘Hulk’, an equally depressed looking miniture cow called ‘Brutus’, a couple of piggies who did nothing but sleep (so maybe also had low moods) and four goats who looked quite happy. There was also a whole bunch of squirrels to offer us entertainment and amusement. It’s difficult to ascertain the mood of a squirrel but I think that they all generally feel quite upbeat due to their very cool ability to climb trees and perform death defying leaps between branches.

So that was that. A few days of chilling out and then we were back on the (short) road to Savannah.

27th April – 2nd May 2023

Housekeeping:

Before I start blathering on, it seems that those people that subscribe to the site are not getting the photos included with the post when it is sent by email. This is likely a glitch at my end and I shall try and fix it. In the meantime you can go directly to the site at tincantravels.net, or copy and paste the link at the end of the email.

The Blather:

We headed north and crossed into southeast Georgia. Destination Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a 630 square mile area that includes 90% of the world renowned Okefenokee Swamp. So you’ve all heard of it, right??! It is another small slice of this massive country that is ecologically hugely significant and mostly unknown to all but locals and those in the business. In fact it is so important that is has been designated a Wetland of International Importance and is on the tentative US list for World Heritage Status. So there, now you have all heard of it!

Okefenokee is a vast bog that sits inside a huge saucer shaped depression that was once a shallow ocean floor. It gives rise to two rivers that flow out of it in opposite directions and its waters are inky black, stained by the tanins from the rotting vegetation.It’s name translates to “Land of the Trembling Earth” and the massive wetland is home to a myriad of species of plants, trees, insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. Its the whole shabang of an ecosystem.

There is a park in the swamp called Stephen C Foster State Park, oddly named for a 19th century composer, and we were here for five nights. We love these parks. They are usually off the beaten track, in wooded areas with large secluded pitches, firepits, great simple facilities and a give a sense that we are really ‘camping’. The down sides are usually a lack of wifi, and bugs. We knew that coming to a state park in a swamp was going to be ‘bug heavy’ so we had stocked up on 40% DEET – you know, the stuff that makes your skin smoke when you apply it: that’s one of the ways that it repells insects. There were many miles of long, straight, quiet, pine tree bordered backroads to get us there and we really felt like we were heading into the wilderness. Depite being nicknamed ‘The Peach State’, Georgia actually earns 40% of its GDP from forestry. We were right in the middle of it.

The park offers opportunities for fishing, boat tours, motor boat, canoe or kayak hire and a few walking trails. It is also a designated Dark Sky Area for star gazing if one is inclined to sit outside at night and be monstered by mosquitos. The waterways in the swamp are signposted and mapped and the more adventurous can do multi day trips with designated camping facilities throughout the area. There is lots of wildlife to see but the most impressive, and I would argue most plentiful creatures, were the alligators. Hundreds of the blimin’ things! They ranged in size from 1ft babies all the way up to 12ft big’uns. They seemed completely unfazed by the presence of humans and a couple of large ones were even resident in the small marina basin, floating near the boats and boat ramp and basking in the sun near the canoe rack. Although there have been no reports here of an attack on a human since 1937 we were warned not to attempt to get close or try and take selfies with them. This seemed like common sense to us but we spent some time chatting to a ranger who had seen plenty of humans behave with a bizzare lack of self preservation skills. It did also feel at times like a squirrel safari park. These were also very numerous, unbothered by our presence and very entertaining.

We did some walks around the park and our land-based wildlife exposure was mainly insect based, heavy on the mosquitos, despite the 40% toxo-spray. There were some amazing dragonflies and shimmering flying beetles. One huge flying something followed us closely for about 200m, like some sort of tiny, airbourne, well trained, black labrador.

Our internet access was limited. A short cycle with laptops took us to the office/gift shop at the basin which had a insect-proof, screened porch area with rocking chairs where we could get the satellite based wifi connection and here we sat for an hour or so each morning. It’s important to stay abreast of the complete dearth of news, the lack of emails from our solicitor about the sale of our house, checking weather forecasts that blatantly lie and the inanity of the rest of the internet offerings.

One day we took a guided boat trip with a very genuine and helpful young chap called Alex. He lacked any iota of sarcasm, irony or cynicism. It’s dificult to know how to interact with people like this. We slowly motored out onto the swamp and he was very knowledgeable about the fauna and flora and the history and ecology of the area. He called me Ma’am a lot and this made me feel quite old. There were loads of alligators both in the water and hauled out on logs, basking in the sun. They are quite magnificent creatures, unchanged genetically for millions of years. Its as if they evolved initially into an animal perfectly suited to their life and then nature just brushed off it’s hands and said ‘Done. No improvements needed. No natural selection necessary. Finito’. There are only 2 species of alligator worldwide. This, the American allicator, and the Chinese alligator.

The next day we risked believing the weather forecast and got up early – well 8am – to rent a watercraft. It was sunny, and more importantly due to be only light winds for a few hours. We broke our 3rd rule for a long and happy marriage¹ and shared a double canoe. There was an option for a 4hp motor boat, but it was a beautiful calm morning and we didn’t want to disturb our own serenity.

With disclaimer signed, money paid, lifejackets donned and paddles and seat cushions in hand we dragged our big aluminium canadian canoe to the water’s edge and managed to board it and float ourselves without incident. I sat in the front seat and was happy to be the lucky recipient of a very helpful and constant stream of instructions on what I was doing wrong with my paddling technique, how to steer properly, and how I should pay more attention to what direction the boat was going in. I accepted my lessons calmy and quietly with grace and gratitude, of course, and it did nothing but enhance our swamp cruising experience …. (The rules¹ are there for a reason, Folks…) Despite all that we had an amazing trip. We saw no-one else out there until we were heading home and it was so beautiful. There were alligators up the ying-yang.

The ones on logs and on the banks were as still as statues and the ones floating in the water would just slowly sink below the surface as we approached. I’m glad that the water was so dark because I think it would have been very unnerving to be able to see them swimming underwater around us. There were acres of waterlilies and the waterways were boarderd with Cypress and Black Gum trees drapped in the all pervasive Spanish Moss (which, interestingly is related more closely to bromeliads and pineapple plants than to other mosses).

Naturally occuring wildfires caused by lightening strikes are a normal part of the ecology of the swamp. They aid the propogation of some important species of tree but this area experienced a massive wildfire nicknamed the Bugaboo Fire in 2007 and the landscape still shows evidence of this with large areas lacking larger trees. The fire started in the Okefenokee when a tree fell onto a power line in high winds, this joined with another caused by a lightening strike on Bugaboo Island in the swamp. The hot and dry conditions caused the fire to and burn for over two months from April to June. Having merged with other fires and spreading into northern Florida it became the largest fire recorded in the history of both states, having burned over half a million acres and the smoke spread as far north as Atlanta, Alabama, Mississippi to the west and down south to Fort Lauderdale.

We did have several thunderstorms whilst we were here but happily without any nearby lightening strikes or scary fires. The mosquito situation was better than expected on the whole and, except for a busier couple of days over the weekend, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It had been incredibly peaceful and a relative partial tech detox. Any period of relative wilderness living is best followed by a spell in more civilised suroundings and our next stop was to take us up further north and back towards the coast in Georgia. We bid a fond farewell to the swamp and its prehistoric inhabitants and headed back the way we had come.

¹The Hampson Rules for a Long and Happy Marriage:

Rule 1: Do your own ironing. (This rule was abandonned early. Now Nick does it all)

Rule 2: Close the door for number 2s

Rule 3: Never share a double kayak or canoe

20th April – 27th April 2023

We were happy campers to be back on the road proper. The sun was a’shining. Big Dave and TinCan were reunited. Indicators were functioning and left turns were again possible without compunction. The 35-45 mph wobble had resolved and although the traffic through North Orlando to get to Highway 95 was hideous it couldn’t dampen our spirits.  We eventually hit the open road and headed north-west up towards the Atlantic coast. We were off to the beach!

The state of Florida is filling up fast. Many folk are looking for one, or a combination of, its warmer winters, lower taxes and less liberal politics. The Snow Birds come for the winter season. Lots of people are coming to live full-time and choose to endure the hot and humid summers. Homes are being built at a frantic rate, prices are going up and its the only place in the US where we have experienced the traffic as bad as LA.  However the crowds seem to congregate in southern Florida and the further north we drove the more relaxed it all felt.

After a busy week of doing naff all we had decided that were going to have a week of relaxation on the coast near a town called St Augustine. This is the oldest city in the USA having been settled by the Spanish in the real olden days of 1565. It was the capital of Spanish Florida for about 200 years then was the designated capital of British East Florida in 1763. It returned to the Spanish in 1783 who ceded Florida to the United States in 1819 when it was the Floridian capital again from 1821 to 1824 when the title was transfered to Tallahassee. It has some beautiful old buildings, churches and a fort and a definite Spanish flavour. It also boasts the first catholic mission on US soil from 1565, Mission Nombre de Dios, and the site is commemorated with a 204ft metal cross.

Our camp was only a few streets back from the beach, less than half a mile from the supermarket and several bars and restaurants and was an ‘easy’ 8 mile cycle to town.  (I put ‘easy’ into inverted commas as there was a dedicated cycle lane all the way there with only a very slight elevation change, but we haven’t cycled for a while and the ol’ undercarriages have tenderised since last summer. We were to suffer some saddle soreness). The camp was an ‘RV resort’. This generally means that the place has great facilities, a pool and but is priced accordingly. We were going to have to pay Florida holiday prices if we wanted to behave like we were on holiday in Florida. Which we did. We spent time by the pool every day, further converting our skin from the shade ‘English Winter Alabaster’ to a well recognised Northern European shade- ‘A-bit-red-now-but-will-be-Light-Brown-in-the-morning’.

Depite the temperature ranging from hot to very hot there was a lovely on-shore sea breeze and we tried to combine a visit to the beach with a power walk most mornings that we didn’t cycle. Some exercise was well overdue! The Atlantic itself didn’t look that inviting yet – cold and messy conditions – so most people were either walking, cycling, fishing or sitting and gazing with only a few hardy souls paddling. Even the multitude of dogs didn’t really want to go in.

Our first full day here was a sorting day. At one point it looked like we were having a fire sale with bags, tools, boxes, electonics, leads, chairs, bikes, BBQ, and all sorts of other guff spilled out all over our concrete pad. We unpacked our bags, repacked our warm stuf and put it away. I packed away the duvet – won’t be needing that for a while. We re-aquainted ourselves with all the things that we own here, which is a suprising amount of stuff. There are lots of half-used bottles and tubes of stuff, tools and equipment that remind us of all the repairs and maintanance that we have done along our travels. Like the tyre iron that we bought in Arizona after one of our rear wheels came loose and nearly fell off in the desert. Fun times, happy memories…. Eventually we made some sense of the place and all was tidied away again, with a satisfying bag of rubbish to be disposed of.

Our first foray to town was by an intriguing ride-share/on-demand trolley bus. I had found the number on a flyer pinned up by the toilets (One has to be careful in these circumstance as to what one is getting into, so to speak). The RV resort reception staff denied all knowledge of the service and when I called the number I was given the direct dial number for the driver of the bus. I was to call him for a pick up after 4pm. It all seemed quite unusual. At 4pm I got through to Lloyd, the driver, who due to a combination of background noise, my accent and trying to navigate a big bus through traffic, took a while to understand my request for a pick up. We got there in the end though and a time was set: 6pm. Were we going to The Amphitheatre? No, Historic Down Town, I said. Would he show?? At 5.45pm we headed to the pick up area at the resort entrance, all washed and dressed and there he was, waiting in old noisy bus disguised as a trolley. We settled into the uncomfortable wooden seating, another couple jumped on the bus on a whim and we were off! On the way we picked up a few more couples from a hotel and it transpired that there was a big concert on at the Ampitheatre, a 4000 seater local concert venue. The performer for the next three nights was ‘Billy Strings’ (no-us neither), but next week it was hosting Billy Idol and Pat Benatar (on consecutive nights, not in a bizzare fantasy genre chimera duet performance). He dropped them off there and us to town. “Just call when you want picking up’, Lloyd said as we disembarked, “but it will have to be at 9pm at the latest so that I can drop you off home before the concert finishes”. This seemed a bit vague so we asked him to pick us up where we were getting off at 9pm. A firm plan without needing a phone call seemed a better option. He agreed. But what do they say about the best laid plans…..

We had a lovely few hours in town. We wandered through the town square lined with tall trees draped in Spanish moss, through the old narrow historic streets, past the grand churches, the clock tower, and old Spanish colonial hotel building that is now a university (none of which we took any photos of) and then after a much needed cold beer in a local microbrewery we had dinner in a great restaurant called The Floridian. It was off the touristy beaten track but good enough to have a constant queue of people waiting for a table. The food was great, the service excellent, the drinks cold. What more could we ask for? Well I’ll tell you… ‘people watching’ opportunities. We had managed to score one of the best seats in the house on the veranda giving us a prime vantage point to observe the natives. It really was a perfect restaurant experience.

We walked back to the pick up point for the bus in plenty of time but by 9.10pm he still hadn’t turned up. We called him multiple times and after not answering the first few calls he eventually picked up and said he wasn’t coming. He was now on the wrong side of the bridge and it was now too late to fetch us before the concert ended. We were stuck 8 miles from home with no public transport and 4000 people leaving a concert in 30 minutes time. Time to pray to the Gods of Uber…. 2 minutes later our angel in a Honda Accord arrived. She was not the most joyful individual in the firmament. During the entirety of our ride she drove with one hand whilst the other shovelled a constant supply of nuts into her mouth whilst complaining about her lack of rides that evening, bills she had to pay and the fact she couldn’t afford to eat. (She was quite a large lady so I think that the lack of food situation must have been fairly recent.) We tried to cheer her up and engage her in conversation between mouthfuls, but to no avail. As she dropped us off we reassured her that her night was going to get better very fast if she hung around the Amphitheatre and she went on her sullen way. Not all angels wear smiles.

The next day was undercarriage ruination day. On a Saturday morning the Amphitheatre hosts a weekly Farmers Market and although we had no desire to buy armfuls of vegetables or useless arty knick knacks we knew that there would be a food truck or two that could serve us something tasty for brunch. It was 30 minutes to the market along the old beach boulevard with the aforementioned cycle lane. Very civilised. We called in at the lighthouse to take a picture as it was very handsome with its fresh black and white paint job, and arrived at the market with a healthy hunger and the beginnings of ‘seat fatigue’. This was forgotten with a wander around the stalls, a remarkably good cup of coffee and a very tasty, albeit very slowly prepared, breakfast sandwich. Whilst waiting for our sandwich to be readied a lady of a certain age and demenour walked up to the hatch the food truck and said this verbatim: “Is there onion in the egg salad? No, good. I’ll have the egg salad sandwich but without the bread”. So she was really after a bowl of egg mayonaise… We ate our sandwiches whilst listening to a local country/bluegrass band play some tunes and sing some songs. They were mostly ok but a lady took vocals for one track and nearly made our ears bleed.

We continued our journey to town, over the bridge which had a scary metal grate in the middle drawbridge bit, and tied up the bikes on the waterfront. By now it was a’sizzling and Mr Hampson needed a new shady hat. First stop: the Panama Hat Co. shop. Here there were walls and walls of multiple types of hat and a multitude of hot sweaty tourists trying to buy them. We joined the throngs. He found a very fine hat, offered in a size sufficient to accommodate his gargantuan intellect which was happily not an original Panama. The difference in price was equivalent to our spends in the Floridian the previous evening. Suitably attired we spent an hour or so wandering around the streets, looking at the fort from the outside and then walked back along the waterfront to the bikes. The ride home was hot and painful. Them seat bones…..

The next day we gingerly cycled the short distance up to a nearby mini golf course for the first round of the highly competitive ‘2023 Tour’. Despite Nick’s early glory with a hole-in-one on the first hole, and much to his dismay, I won by one stroke. He had the yips on the back 9.

A day’s rest out of the saddle saw our nethers recovered enough for a ride out up to Anastasia State Park. This is a small park in the same area as the Ampitheatre with a campsite (sadly fully booked otherwise we would have stayed here) and a large swathe of protected beach. We packed a picnic lunch and cruised on up there. We ate our sandwiches on the beach, gazing at the sea which was still pretty rough and unfriendly looking. Beautiful though.

We met one interesting chap in camp. A chatty Irish man in his mid 50s who had moved here at 20 years old. He had a peculiar Southern drawl with irish inflections. Within 5 minutes of talking to him he had divulged that he had been a bounty hunter and then a power linesman until he suffered a high tension electric shock that had nearly killed him. He had shown us his burn scars that went up the back of both legs and the scar across his mid-chest that he had covered with a tattoo of an image of …his own heart…He had told us about his 12 heart attacks and that he had recently had a big heart operation where the heart was taken out of his chest for some service and repairs whilst he was on a bypass machine and that the surgeon had carefully stitched his chest wound up so that his heart tattoo was lined up again. Now he was a dog trainer and lived full time in his trailer on the park with his wife, who was also a dog trainer, and a very handsome German Shepherd called Zeus, who was, predictably, very well trained. We heard about his kids and grandkids, his lack of family in Ireland, his family in UK and the fact that he had duel citizenship of both countries so that if he wanted to get American citizenship he would have to renounce one of them. Five minutes, I tell you. He barely drew breath. Nice bloke though.

We had a few more beach walks over the last few days and on our last evening we strolled to a very close local bar for a beer and our first burger. (My father thinks that this is ALL we do when we are here-Not true, Dad!). The evening was warm, there was a light breeze, fairly decent live music playing on the deck, good beer, a good burger and a nice couple that we got chatting to at the bar. A great finale to our first stop on our route.

The next morning we packed up and headed to our next stop. A swamp in Georgia.

12th April – 20th April 2023

A whole year has passed since we put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in a storage unit in Orlando, Florida and returned to the UK. It has been a year of catching up with friends and family, a year of living a reasonably conventional life in a house, and a year of wondering what our short-to-medium term future looked like. After a month of tent camping in France in the Summer of 2022 we realised that our future is definitely on the road, but not under canvas. We are committed to one last big trip in the USA and have decided to become full-time nomads in Europe and the UK for a few years after that. To that end we are selling our house, have packed our possessions into a storage container, have sold our car, have put a deposit on a motorhome to be ready later in the year and we are now back Stateside.

This trip, like most of the previous ones, started with a degree of uncertainty. What state would Big Dave and Tin Can be in after 12 months idle? This was the first time we had stored them ‘under cover’ rather than inside and we knew that at least two hurricaines had passed over Orlando in the time we had been away. Last time Big Dave wouldn’t start and we had begun that trip with a low-loader ride to the garage, a 3 week delay and many thousands of dollars in repair bills. Nervous times ahead.

We headed to the storage unit in an Uber after a night in a hotel in Orlando. Mid- April is already hot,hot, hot here. We had left behind an unseasonably cool UK Spring and it was lovely to feel the heat again. The lilly white flesh would need some rays to tone down the glare.

First impressions revealed them to be filthy, covered in dust from the past storms but in one piece. Big Dave started first time without a cough or a splutter, the trickle charger having done its job. We opened up Tin Can and apart from most of the pictures having fallen off their 3M fixings with the heat, all seemed well inside too. So far, so good! The first few days of our trip were to be visiting friends in Sarasota so we unpacked and repacked our bags for that and embarked on our first ‘off-load’ of Tin Can. He was staying here as the start of our trip proper would bring us back this way and we had another week left on our storage rental. Big Dave needed an oil change – a very easy task without TC, tricky with him due to his height.

We headed off, procured an oil change – which was nearly a transmission fluid change due to an error by our mechanic that was caught just in time – and drove to Sarasota. The 2 hour journey took 4 hours, which seemed to be purely due to the weight of traffic. En route we realised that Big Dave’s left indicator lights weren’t working. This was going to need attention.

Our hosts in Sarasota were Ed & Karee, the couple that we had met on the ranch in Arizona during our last trip. Karee was away so Ed was hosting us solo. It started in true Ed fashion… He has a regular weekly date with a group of buddies at a local establishment for drinks and an early dinner and we were invited. The venue? ‘Hooters‘, of course! We had a 5 minute turn around after arriving and within fifteen minutes had beers in hand, delivered by a very perky lil’ thing clad in small T-shirt and even smaller orange hot pants. Up until now we had not frequented a Hooters on our travels and I think both of us thought that it would be a bit seedy and frequented purely by groups of lecherous men. That may be the case for many franchises, but this one was delightful! The clientèle was very diverse including grandparents and grandkids and the girls were all lovely, especially to the women. The company -Ed’s friends Ron & Mario- was good, the food was tasty, the service attentive and the beer cold. What’s not to love?!

We had only planned to stay in Sarasota for a long weekend, but Big Dave’s indicators needed fixing. Ed knew a guy who ran a garage and he fitted us in the next day to look at the problem. The indicators required a new relay which needed ordering. There was also a light fitting that needed replacing on one of the flared rear wheel arches. In the end we were with Ed for a week as the truck took longer to fix than planned (due to a part being wrong when it arrived so needing to be re-ordered.) It was a very pleasant week of maroonment after the craziness of the past month. We were happy and well behaved house guests. We cooked a few meals in, had a few meals out – including an evening over at Ed’s mum’s with take away fried chicken – started to do some onward bookings for our trip and spent some very happy hours by the pool. We even did some wildlife rescue of a red eared turtle out of the deep end. It wasn’t entirely happy about being scooped out in a leaf net, but I’m sure felt better in the nearby pond than the salt chlorinated water of the pool.

At the weekend, when Ed wasn’t working, we had a couple of outings. For the first, on Saturday afternoon, we drove the 1 hour up to St Petersberg, near Tampa, to accompany Ed to an LSU ( Louisianna State University) Alumni Crawfish Boil. Ed is an LSU alumni, a big fan of of all things LSU and a massive fan of a boil up. We met his friends, Lou and Barrie, but really it was all about the crawfish. This was served as a massive tray of the bugs, boiled in a delicious red spicy sauce that gets round your face, all over your hands, down your arms and everywhere else besides. Our verdict after this our second boil up? Very tasty, a lot of work for minimal food reward and I shouldn’t have worn white trousers.

Our other noteable outing was on Sunday afternoon to watch a waterskiing show. I thought this sort of thing had been lost to the past, but no! A club called Ski-A-Rees (No idea why it’s called this. Google had no info either) stage a weekly free show to show off their skills. They put on bigger shows once a month or so and compete nationwide too. It was good old fashioned fun with the crowds sitting on aluminium bleachers, a compère giving us a run down of the performers and a steady parade of club members of all ages doing jetty starts on fat skis, twirling on one leg, going backwards and forwards, riding on each others shoulders, doing acrobatics, doing jumps and yes, doing that thing only every seen in retro posters of 50s waterskiing…building a waterskier pyramid! It was fantastic. I would have failed to even do a jetty start, so I was very impressed. The ‘free’ show ended with the donations bucket being passed around, but it was definitly worth the cash we threw in.

Finally the car was ready and before the next Hooter’s rendezvous came around, we were off back to Orlando. The indicatiors all worked now and we could finally turn left without fear. We arrived, we reloaded TC and set off North up the coast to our first camping destination.

5th April – 13th April 2022

Our next journey took us out of the Florida panhandle and sadly away from the delights of the Forgotten Coast. A three and a half hour drive along some very lovely quiet roads through some beautiful Floridian forests brought us to Ozello Key, a small, end of the line sort of place on the West coast of the main Florida pennisula. The area was filled with multiple modest waterfront homes on a haphazard canal complex giving nearly all the properties water access to the marshlands and the Gulf beyond. Our small camp was co-located with a small marina and as the three days here was going to be the last of the touring part of our trip and we were looking forward to being able arrange a fan boat trip out on the water. As usual we had no plans to drive anywhere once we had arrived so we made sure we rocked up with plenty of provisions and our research told us that there was a good restaurant bar an easy walk away.

The marina had spaces for 3 RVs, right on the canal-side, and our host informed us that no-one else was booked into either for the other sites for the entirity of our stay. We were to have a private camp. Perfect! That meant that the little bathroom block and laundry were all ours too. The laundry was even free. How much better could it get?? Well, TV reception and WIfi might have been good, but the location made up for it, sort of….

It was stinking hot and windy when we arrived so after we had set up we did nothing except sit outside in a shady spot with our books and watch the world go by. The world, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Except for the wind in the trees it was deathly quiet, with the only action being provided bay the odd lizard and shore bird. Unfortunately, because of the wind, all the fan boat charters had been cancelled for the next 24 hours and the forecast was not looking good beyond that. It looked like we might not get out after all. Bummer. The heat continued for the whole three days and we put the air con on for the first time and even had to sleep with a fan for a couple of nights. It didn’t seem that long ago that we were sleeping under 5 blankets and a duvet with a hot water bottle and the heating on all night. Warms up early down here.

A couple of fishing charter boats did make it out and we did get to know a young captain of of one of the small boats that tied up just alongside where we were camped. He was called Teddy, was about 25 years old and was a part-time radiographer, part-time fishing charter captain. He worked 7 days a week when he could and seemed to have his life sorted. Quite a work ethic. It was exhausting just talking to him!

So with no TV and no wifi, what was there to do?? Free blimin’ laudry, that’s what! I washed everything and I washed it good. Got to get our money’s worth somehow.

The local restaurant bar was visited for dinner one evening. We walked the half mile there as slowly as we could to avoid getting too hot and sweaty, but without success. We just looked like suspicious loiterers and then arrived with more than a seemly glow and sheen upon our brows. Luckily there was a spot on the lovely breezy over-water terrace and we cooled down with a cold beer or several. The seafood offerings were more than satisfactory and we had a lovely evening.

The few quiet days at Ozello were good to prepare us for our next stop: A long weekend of fun in Sarasota staying with our new friends Ed and Karee. For those whose memories from which this might have slipped, we met this very fun couple at Rancho De La Osa, Arizona on my birthday weekend at the start of January. Once we found out that they lived in mid-Florida we had cheekily invited ourselves to stay with them at the end of our trip as we were booked to fly out of Orlando, a mere 2.5 hour drive away from their place. They kindly agreed and now we were on our way there.

A couple of hours drive from Ozello brought us to the Florida that we had managed to avoid so far, the busy part. There was more and more traffic on the highway the further south we travelled and as we approached Tampa an accident necessitated a diversion off the highway into the burbs. These roads were equally busy. We limped along, finally arriving in Sarasota and after a quick pitstop to purchase booze as our contribution to the weekend’s supplies, we headed to Ed and Karee’s.

Happily (to all four of us) we still got on like a house on fire. There was none of the awkwardness that is always possible when you follow up a fun holiday friendship with actually meeting up again, rather than just emptily but very enthusiastically promising it when you say your goodbyes. Especially when that involves parking up your not-inconsiderably sized camper on their driveway and requesting to borrow a long extension lead and to plug it into the mains to keep the fridge cold, then being four day house-guests. Even when for the last of those four days you actully spend the whole day and evening out with other friends and just come back to sleep (more on that later) and then before you leave on the last morning you are equally demanding and annoying and create more chaos by giving the aforementioned camper a pre-storage washdown on the aforementioned driveway. None of this phased Ed and Karee one jot and they were magnificent hosts. It is their superpower.

We started our stay with some light afternoon drinking whilst we caught up on the past three months since we had seen them on the ranch and than had an early dinner before heading out to catch sunset at the beach. We started at the roof-top bar of the Westin initially but the cool view was overshadowed by the chilly breeze and we relocated to the shelter of the gound-level terrace of the bar at the nearby Ritz for second cocktails. How swanky was this?! Quite a fancy sort of sundowner compared to our usual beer-straight-from-the-can-around-the-campfire affair. We had returned to civilisation! The rest of the evening was spent back at their house, sitting around the outside fireplace and much rubbish was talked into the wee small hours.

The next day we slowly emerged and a plan for the day was formed. Our conventional tourist activity was to be a visit to the Ringling Circus Museum. Sarasota was the HQ and winter quarters of the imensively impressive Ringling travelling circus. The Ringling Circus was run by five of seven brothers and in its various incarnations ran for nearly 150 years, closing only in 2017. In its hey days of the forties and fifties it travelled around the country on extended tours, running two mile-long trains transporting the three thousand performers and personel and eight hundred animals including many, many elephants. The circus mostly only visited each town for one day and in that time the team would errect its enormous big top, all the tents and enclosures for the animals, all the tents for the kitchen, canteen, costumes and accommodation, all the tents for hairdressers, blacksmiths, doctors and other services for the staff and all the tents for the candy, popcorn and merchendise sellers. They would usually put on two performances of the show, take the whole lot down again, load it all back on the train and then travel to the next town. It was an amgalmation of a town, a zoo, a business and a show on the move each day, every day. No wonder they needed a winter base in sunny Florida for a nice rest. It all sounds very exhausting. The musuem was set in the grounds of the scenic Ringling estate on the shores of Sarasota Bay. Several of the brothers built rather impressive homes on the estate which are now available to tour or rent for events. We wandered around and then it was time for another meal! We met Ed and Karee’s daughter, Emily, son-in-law, Casey and one year old grandaughter, Leila, in town and had a very relaxed late lunch in the sun whilst all trying not to get sunburnt.

An afternoon lull at home took us back up to sundowner-time again and Emily organised us all to drive up to the beach for cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton Beachclub. This sounds more glamorous than it was. The beach bar was quite literally a sand-between-your-toes sort of place on the beautiful white sandy beach. Unfortunately it got really windy and quite cool and an not insignificant amount of that sand was trying to get into our ears, eyballs and teeth. The beach bar was also only selling its hideously overpriced cocktails in crappy plastic cups and stopped serving ’30 minuites prior to sunset’. What??? At a beach bar whose chief quality is it’s sunset view?? Oh, and whilst the men were buying the drinks (a three-man job apparently), they left us unchaperoned ladies alone long enough for a sleezy chap to come over and chance his arm on a pick up. Well at least I think that was what his intention was. He had a few irresistable lines, like “Do I detect an accent?” and “I like your sweater, is that from England?” What a temptation he was… Anyway after a lovely sunset, no prospect of a second drink and borderline hypothermia we decamped back to the house and ate pizza.

The next day the swank was amped up to level 3 and we found ourselves being taken to watch a game of polo at the Sarasota Polo Club. It was an afternoon of fabulous Ra-Ra, Florida style. (As neither of us have ever been to the polo before, this is now our only frame of reference) Our spectators’ pitch was set up on the sidelines with several gazebos, many lawn chairs, a picnic table or several and a healthy amount of food and fizz. (Of note: most of the food was fried chicken, which incidentally is a perfect accompaniment to a glass of chilled bubbles, or is it the other way around. I digress). Prior to the whistle/kick off we were treated to a guided tour of the ‘backstage area’ by a local polo groupie. She was very enthusiastic and effervesent and happy to have a reason to be hanging out with all the players, grooms and ponies as they were getting ready. I think she was also quite knowledgeable, but again, no prior frame of reference. The match itself was a bit incidental to the day as we were enjoying the chitchat, the sun, the bubbles and the fried chicken, but it did provide a rather lovely backdrop to the day.

On our final day in Sarasota we managed to catch up with our friends Greg and Gigi (and two of their three kids) who were visiting Florida from Conneticut. Greg and Nick are friends from school when Nick spent a year here on an exchange after A levels. We had tried to meet them on our trip around the Gulf Coast, but it just hadn’t worked out. Very fortuitously Greg’s mum lives only about 6 miles from Ed and Karee, and they were visiting her for Spring Break, so we had arranged to spend the day with them. This involved a lot of chat, an afternoon on the beach (the fabulous Siesta Key beach, voted one of the USA’s favorite beaches with silica sand so fine and white and cool on the feet even when the sun is blazing), more chat, lunch on the beach, drinks, chat and a seafood dinner before they delivered us back to Ed and Keree’s. It was great to see them but sad to only have this limited time together. We consoled ourselves with the fact that there is a very good chance that we will see them in France over the summer.

The next day we bade our farewells to Ed and Karee and Sarasota, but not before giving Big Dave and Tin Can their final washdown on the driveway. We had planned to do this at at commercial place en route to storage, but bizarrely for a state full of people with RVs we couldn’t find a tall carwash. We headed towards Orlando and stopped at a place called Davenport, about an hour southwest of the city. We had one night here to do our final clean, laundry and prep to put the team into storage the next day. It was hot, hot, hot but there was no rest for the usually idle and we worked up a sweat doing all our chores. Happily we are now a well oiled machine and know exactly what needs to be done. This storage is below the ‘freeze-zone’ so there was even no need to worry about winterizing the pipes with anti-freeze. We were so organised that we even managed to fit in a swim and a short spell sitting in the sun by the pool before our ‘last supper’ of the usual interesting meal created from the fridge scrapings.

Our last day dawned, still hot as hell, and we cruised to our storage unit which was a short 20 minutes drive from Orlando airport. The bags were packed, the laundry was done and everything was ship shape. We put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in their outdoor, covered unit, plugged in to a trickle charger. Despite the 30 degC temp we had to change into our travel clothes of jeans and boots before wheeling our bags up to reception to grab and Uber to the airport. When will we stop sweating??! (Soon. We are off back to a UK Spring via Iceland.)

Another trip is over. This has been a five month journey from the Northwest corner nearly to the furthest Southeast of this vast country. A journey which started with the lows of an enormous mechanic’s bill and some terrible wet and cold weather and the many, many highs including fabulous landscapes, interesting people and places, great food and new friends. Coronovirus was the constant backdrop to our travels, but at no point directly affected us or significantly altered what we did. We were very happy to have ‘braved’ this trip and finally got back on the road again. Our happy place.

So as I write the last few lines of this final Tin Can Travels post it is with great relief that, after procrastinating its writing for two whole months, I can finally say…..It’s a wrap!

18th Mar – 5th Apr 2022

Think Florida? Think Disney, Everglades, Keys, retirement communities, suburban sprawl, traffic, developed beach resorts. The Forgotten Coast bucks all these norms, mainly because it has been just that: forgotten. As the crowds have poured into Southern Florida, to live and holiday in the tropical winterless climate, the slightly cooler coast of the Florida panhandle remains a gorgeous gem that seems to have become lodged in the years somewhere between 1950 and 1985. The long term locals and holiday-makers of yore would lament that it too has been a victim of progress and that development has altered its charm, but to our eyes, it was a complete retro delight.

Our day of out-running the storm brought us through Pensacola, Panama City, Mexico City and Port St Joe, with each conurbation getting progressively smaller and less developed. Mexico City and Port St Joe had had their own weather nemesis in the form of hurricaine Michael in 2018, but the rebuild efforts looked mostly complete. Our journey took us beyond civilisation to, quite literally, the end of the road and a small settlement called Indian Pass. Here a quiet 3 mile stretch road ran down a narrow penninsula with a swampy inland lagoon on one side and a long white sandy beach on the other. There are a variety of well spaced out beach houses that are mostly vacation homes but with a scattering of full time residents. At the top of the road is a small grocery store and ‘raw bar’, the only businesses within 12 miles and at the end of the road was a boat ramp, a turnaround and our camp. This was truely ‘getting away from it all’.

Camp was a real ‘sand between your toes’ sort of place that looked like it hadn’t seen any real maintenance for several decades. None of the sandy pitches were very level or had any sort of hardstanding and they were all higgledy-piggledy, slotted between the large old trees. The power and water hookups were placed in random locations, often on the wrong side of the sites, so that it was difficult to get hoses and leads to reach their plug ins. There were no sewer hook-ups and the single dump station for the whole camp was situated in the main thoroughfare. It was also located on the brow of a small hillock so that any tank discharge had to navigate a moderate contra-gravity route. (Physics need not apply here.) There was also no TV reception, no Wifi and the bathroom block, situated in a portacabin, was tired and dated. It was perfect.

(Soon after we had arrived I noticed that what looked like pale mud splatters all along the passenger-side of Big Dave was actually paint, still a bit wet, but drying fast. We had no idea when we had picked it up, but it was super-sticky and probably road-marking paint. Removing it was a labour of love and over the following weeks it took many hours, much elbow grease, several pints of rubbing alcohol and considerable swearing to get rid of it. It was mostly removed from the paintwork by the end of our trip but the wheel arches are a lost cause. I will just over-spray these dark grey when he needs a pre-sale tarting up.)

We had booked nine nights, and in order to stay so long at the short notice that we had given, this meant a moving sites again during our stay. Despite all its short comings this was a very popular little campsite and many people have been coming here for decades. Nobody that we spoke to wanted it to change one iota. The beach was only a hop and a skip away from most of the sites and the comings and goings at the boat ramp made us very whistful for our past boat ownership days and our paddleboaords at home.

Just off Indian Pass point there is a largish uninhabited island called St Vincents Island and a deep channel with strong currents separates it from the mainland. This attracts lots of fish which is what brings most people here, for the fishing. It also, for the same reasons, apparently brings a lot of sharks to the channel, making it one of the most shark infested stretches of water in the world, or the USA, or Florida. I can’t quite remember what my source of this information actually said, but it certainly put us off swimming even more than the brisk water temperatures. During our stay we only saw one small shark but there was pod of dolphins that hung about most days, obviously grazing on the all-you-can-eat-fish-buffet. Very scenic.

Having avoided one storm to get here we copped a second one soon after arriving. There was much thunder and lightening; it rained and rained and rained; stopped for a bit, then rained again. With the aide of a large umbrella we managed a brief spell on the beach for a ‘sundowner’ and were unsuprisingly out there by ourselves. All the other sensible people were chased inside by the imminant danger of death-by-lightning-strike and eventually we lost our bottle too. Just in the nick of time as the next strike sounded pretty much overhead.

It rained all night, but cleared up the next day again allowing us to cycle the 3 miles back to the raw bar for a late lunch. This place is brilliant. The ‘raw’ refers to the oysters on the menu and this is essentially a very simple seafood bar. On arrival you are given two pieces of paper: a booze tick-sheet to record the drinks that you take from the ‘honesty fridges’, and the menu tick-sheet to order your food and drop off at the counter. Then you pay at the end. It has been here for donkey’s years in various guises, and although been modestly extended in recent decades, it has been doing the same thing in the same way for a long time. The oysters are all from this area and fresher than a fresh thing from freshville.

I think my face says all you need to know about the glorious pairing of a tray of baked oysters covered in an unexpectedly good melted cheese and topped with toasted breadcrumbs and a tray of stuffed prawns having their last swim in a lake of liquid butter served with a slab of absorbant bread. No other words needed.

The rest of the week was a bit of a blur of hot sunny days, a few more rainy days, long walks on the beach, sitting in the sun, reading, chatting to camping neighbours, having evening fires on the beach and finally feeling like we were ‘on holiday’. I know that sounds a bit rich, as our current existance is mostly one big fat holiday, but this place was something special.

One day we took a shuttle boat over the channel to St Vincents Island with our bikes. The island is uninhabited, has no power or running water and criss-crossed by several rough tracks. The cost of the 90 second transfer was a bit steep, but there was no way that we could leave Indian Pass without a visit. In the 1940s the island, which is about 9 miles long and 4 miles wide was originally a privately owned hunting retreat, stocked with many exotic game species like zebra, sambar deer, eland and black buck. In 1968 the island was bought by the Nature Conservancy who removed all the exotic game except the sambar deer, creating a wildlife refuge. These deer are a type of Asian elk and are enormous, as big as a medium sized horse. The island is now also home to many alligators, wolves, eagles and numerous migratory birds. Our boat shuttle only gave us 2.5 hours on the island and we set off on our bikes down the main track, unlikely to have time to make it to the end of the island before we had to turn around. It was beautiful and deserted but very heavy going due to all the recent rain. The brisk breeze was at our backs initially, then compounded the work of our return trip an we saw none of the alleged wildlife except one very small turtle. It turned out to be quite an expensive bike ride through a forest. Yer live and learn.

During our time here we got to know a colourful local couple called (Mr) Lynn and Barb who owned one of the very few permenant trailers on the camp. They had had it for years, and despite also having a proper home in the nearby town of Port St Joe, they spent most of their time here. King and Queen of the ‘sundowner’, which commenced long before the sun was anywhere near the horizon, they held court every later afternoon outside their pad, spending hours chatting to friends old and new who were either passing by or who sat to join them. There was always a cooler full of beer, always a pile of empties, always a couple of tame squirrels who came to be fed monkey nuts, always an endless supply of interesting tales and always the sound of Lynn’s laughter filling the air. They were priceless. Lynn, a renowned artist specializing in reptiles and flora, became louder as the cooler got emptier and then could always be found round the back of their trailer having a wee in a bush at regular intervals. As our pitch was right next to their trailer we found it impossible to resist drawing up a chair and sharing a drink or two as long as the no-see-ums allowed…..

Which brings me to no-see-ums. Biting gnats. Little tiny, flying jaws of menace. Mercilous, miniture bugs that were the only downside of our time spent on this coast. They are about the size of a UK midge, are very interested in procuring human blood, and stalk their prey at all hours, especially dawn and dusk. On the upside, they can’t fly in windy conditions, on the downside, they are smaller than the mesh on our window screens which consequently offer no protection so we weren’t even safe inside. On the upside, they are repelled by slathering yourself in 40% DEET products. On the downside, you have to slather yourself in 40% DEET products. It was the rough to the Forgotten Coast smooth.

Eventually our extended stay here came to an end, which was very sad. We bade our farewells to Lynn and Barb and continued onwards. Our next stay was a single night stop-gap in a far fancier sort of place, Carabelle Beach RV resort. It was just across the road from a very lovely beach (clue’s in the name) and a whole 45 minute drive away from Indian Pass. Life ‘on the road’ was being spent less and less actually on the road these days. We arrived, checked in and were directed to our site which was one of those fabulous enormous and perfectly flat and level concrete slabs. No wiggling backwards and forwards, left and right to find the flattest spot. No arguing about whether we needed to get the levelling blocks out and how many we needed under which wheels to achieve some semblence of horizontal. (This is not only important for the efficient functioning of the fridge-freezer, but makes sleeping more comfortable-any head up or head down is disconcerting, cooking less sporting- think fluid levels, and means the doors on cupboards and the bathroom don’t fly open or slam shut all the time.) Anyway, we just pulled up and it was perfect. The sandy shabbiness of Indian Pass had been absolutely charming, but you have to love 100 sqm of perfect pad and patio. It was hot and breezy, so no no-see-ums, we sat by the pool, we read, we walked over to the beach, it was all rather civilised.

Our next stop after this was another epic 30 minute drive away. We may be paying more for our campsites the further into Florida we go, but at least our fuel costs have decreased considerably. We were booked for the next eight days into another waterside park called Holiday Campground (another clue in the name)on the Ochlockonee Bay which was near a town called Panacea. In the late 1800s the town was originally called Smithville due to the large number of people of that surname that lived in the town. The town was the site of numerous hot sulphurous mineral springs and as the medical tourism industry started to boom in the country, Smithville confidently renamed itself ‘Smith Springs’ and waited for the tourists to flock in. No-one came. Before the turn of the century the town and its springs were bought by a group of Bostonian property developers, who renamed it Panacea and came up with an inspired marketing campaign. Each different spring was touted as benefiting and healing different ailments. A pavilion complex was built around the springs and suddenly Panacea was a popular destination. Unfortunately the boom didn’t last. A destructive hurricaine in 1928 was followed closely by the Great Depression and then the springs inexplicably dried up. Panacea had had its day. It is still a quiet backwater, attracting mainly tourists who come for the amazing fishing.

Camp was very pictureseque with half the pitches backing onto the beautiful Bay with great views of the water and fantastic sunsets. This offset the slight lack of space between the pitches and no pretence of anything being flat. Out with the levelling blocks again… Luckily our neighbours were quiet and neat which couldn’t be said of everyone. There’s something about being on vacation that turns up the volume on an American voice. That ‘something’ is proabably afternoon drinking, I think.

Panacea itself was about 5 miles down the road and we had no need to go there. Locally to camp was a shop, a couple of restaurants and nearby was a nice beach. Despite this area being apparently a bit down at heel it had been singled out to have an enormous amount of money spent on building cycle paths. $35million allegedly. The process was well underway and we were very happy to take full advantage of this luxury. One path went the 3 miles down to the beach which we visisted a couple of times, one path was in progress to link the town of Panacea with the beach area and then extended a further 10-15 miles inland beyond the town (to where, I don’t know) and then another path followed the tranquil road 10 miles through the forest to the neighbouring town of Sopchoppy.

Sopchoppy gets its name from a native Indian word for ‘long and twisted river’ and is a small settlement of less than 500 people. I’m not quite sure why a lot of money was spent to build a dedicated cycle path alongside a very quiet road to link a very small town to a smaller bayside settlement, but they did, and we took advantage of it. There’s not much in Sopchoppy: a gas station, a hardware store, a grocery store and……a microbrewery! Hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it…Double hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it that had a visiting food truck scheduled to be in attendance…Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!! Of course we had to go. So one sunny afternoon we saddled up and set off. Ten miles is quite a long way to cycle for a beer and dinner, but we are nothing if not committed to supporting local business and very time rich. The calorie burn would also offset the beer and burger fiesta we had planned. Win, win.

It was a delightful hour’s spin through the forest on our almost personal bike path, because you know that there was pretty much no one else using it. We arrived a bit hot and sweaty but nothing that a few cold pints of good beer didn’t sort out pretty quickly.

One important thing that you should know about Sopchoppy is that it is the location for an Annual Worm Grunting Festival. This is a competion to lure the most earthworms out of the ground by creating vibrations made by rubbing a piece of metal along a ribbed wooden stake. This grunting noise apparently sound just like the approach of the arch nemesis of an earthworm – a mole. So they all try and escape to the soil surface, where they are collected to be used for fishing bait. Genius and bonkers. This would usually be exactly the sort of event that we would attend and we were very disappointed to find out that we were only going to miss it bay a week.

After several pints we realised that the plan for a food truck dinner in a few hours was not going to be compatible with retaining the level of sobriety and athletic ability required to make the return 10 mile journey enjoyably. We sensibly decided to head back early and went to one of the seafood restaurants close to camp to continue our evening. This was a good decision.

We managed to fill our time here with walks on the beach, sitting on the beach, lying on the beach, working on removing the paint from Big Dave bit by bit, having camp fires, watching many beautiful sunsets and eating and drinking. You know, the usual. What I obviously wasn’t doing was writing the blog as I sit here back in the UK struggling to finish this penultimate post on the 3rd June, more than two months down the line.

14th Mar – 18th Mar 2022

Alabama is our only previously unvisited state of this trip. We had not taken Big Dave and Tin Can to California or Florida before, but we have holidayed in these states in previous years. So, exciting times! Unfortunately our Alabama stay was going to be limited to its short coast, which we knew was not going to give us a typical Alabaman experience. The state is fairly rectangular and nearly land-locked save for a small forked tongue of territory that juts south between Mississippi and the Florida panhandle to reach the coast. This gives it a shipping port, Mobile, the large protected Mobile Bay and a small slice of quite beautiful gulf coast with white sandy beaches and gulf barrier islands. Our selected stop was a place called Gulf Shores and given the timing of our visit we were going to see it at its zenith, Spring Break.

Spring Break is a quintesentially American phenomenon. It is a week-long holiday from school or college that happens on various weeks in March and which has eveolved into a mass exodus of holiday makers from the cooler Northern states to the warmer climes of the Southern beaches. Often this involves car journeys of epic proportions of which ‘ Peking-to-Paris Rally’ competitors would be proud. Some places have become hot-spots for the mass gathering of swimwear-clad, hormone-ravaged, partying college students and thus has become an important calendar date in the academic year. Gulf Shores is one of those hotspots. Spending time here was like going on safari. We wanted to see this spectacle of the great migration for ourselves. *

*Longterm friends, family and any passing aquaintances of my husband may possibly be aware that he spent his gap year on a scholarship exchange to a US private school in Massachusetts. During that time he too, with a friend called Bruce, made the unfathomable automobile pilgramage to the southern shores during a Spring Break week. You may have even heard the tales of driving endurance, brushes with the law, illegal camping, washing at beach showers, gluttony at all-you-can-eat-buffets, schemes to get into nightclubs with fake IDs and of course the alchohol that washed it all down. Even though his destination had been Daytona Beach in Florida, not Gulf Shores in Alabama, it meant that there was a large degree of nostalgia to this part of our journey.

We arrived into Gulf Shores very,very slowly. The traffic was heavy and it seemed that we had been caught in the (sedate) stampede to the sun. The town is a temple to vacations and has a huge number of hotels, holiday apartments, restaurants and bars. It also has the Gulf Shores State Park with a 600 space campsite. This would have been our preferred location to stay but was fully booked until kingdom come. In fact we were very lucky to find any space at all and we had happily secured four nights at a private RV park a couple of miles from the town and beach. We stopped for provisions at Walmart and spotted multiple small herds of the newly arrived party pilgrims doing the same. They were easily identifiable in their small single-sex groups of four or five individuals (a car-load), dressed in beachwear despite it being a little too cool for it and pale-skinned having come from the wintery nothern climes. The groups of girls were busily filling trollies with a variety of foodstuffs, the groups of boys seemed to have no idea what they were doing.

We had three full days here. Unfortunately we lost one day to crappy weather and another to me having an attack of vertigo. The fact that the two things didn’t happen on the same day is quite unfair. Anyway, our last full day here was beautiful and we broke out the bikes to do three days worth of exploring in one day. This also happened to be St Patricks Day. Wearing nothing green, unlike the majority of everyone else out and about that day, we set off. Our campsite was linked to town by a splendid cycle route which carried on to the state park. We cruised around the beautiful park on miles and miles of lovely paved trails and it was great to see so many people out of their cars doing the same thing. There were even communal bikes at various stations around the park that you could just borrow for free. Our rollings took us on a very circuitous route down to the beach where most of the seafront is given over to the concrete sprawl of hotels and condos. The beach itself is quite splendid and I can completely understand why this place became a popular holiday destination to those that live in the chilly North.

Once on the beach we started to see the first signs of drunken merriment, and it wasn’t amongst the youthful Spring Breakers, oh no. There was a very large contingent of ‘Irish-for-a day’, green-clad, silly headgear-wearing gangs of middle aged people – mainly women – who were already wasted and staggering around at 3pm. We sat outside a bar which was subtley decorated in a pink hue (!) and had a couple of re-hydratory cans of beer whilst watching the spectacle of some ‘sober’ ladies trying to pick up their ‘less sober’ friends from the floor. There was much shrieking and giggling and it was quite an amusing show. By now it was reasonably hot and there were quite a few people sunning themselves on the beach but almost no-one in the water. We strolled down to the shore with our beers in hand to check out the sea temperature and discovered why – it was still brass monkeys. Thankfully the beach patrol police officer that we casually sauntered past didn’t clock that we were (quite innocently) violating the NO ALCOHOL ON THE BEACH law, so we escaped getting into trouble. A travel adventure that we could live without.

We continued our prommenade down the beach and soon discovered where all the young folk were hanging out, and it didn’t involve any alcohol. It transpired that Gulf Shores was hosting the Intercollegiate Womens’ Beach Volleyball tournament, and guess where all the boys were?? Very sporting of them to support the (bikini clad) female athletes…. Nick resisted taking any photos. It was for the best.

After a while we decided that we had seen enough of the outside world and headed back to base before the real madness of St Patrick’s Day kicked off. That was also for the best. We had clocked up a respectable 20 miles in the saddle.

On the morning of our leaving day I woke up feeling rotten again. There was a very dicey weather forecast for lots of rain, damaging hail, high winds and a possibility of tornadoes. Our gut reaction was to stay put and see if we could get another night where we were. Better to be stationary in both a storm and an attack of vertigo. This was not an option however. No room at the inn. So we hastily packed up and set off. The weather was on its way and headed in the same direction as we were for about 100 miles until our paths were going to diverge -according to the forecasts. We were about an hour ahead of the front so as long as we kept moving we hopefully would escape the worst of it. We had the radio on and the programs were intermittantly interupted by a frantic sounding warning sirens followed by storm warning alerts. It was a bit unnerving. Very happily, though, we arrived at our next destination without even seeing a speck of rain. We were now in Florida, in the Eastern time zone and my dizziness, for now, had gone. Our next camp was a rough diamond in a gorgeous location. Indian Pass.

6th Mar – 14th Mar 2022

Our next day on the Hampson Gulf Coast Slow Tour took us a whole one hour’s drive eastwards into Mississippi. We were long overdue a laundry day, with no machines at our next place, so we factored in a laundrette stop en route. There is something deeply satisfying about doing all ones washing in one foul swoop and, despite the obvious evils of tumble driers, that includes leaving a laundry with a big folded pile of hot, dry, clean clothes, sheets and towels. Another cheap dopamine fix for me.

Our next stop was a small, genteel town called Ocean Springs, a short bridge-based journey from its better known neighbour, Biloxi. Biloxi’s skyline is moderately blighted by large hotels and monstrous casino buildings but Ocean Springs is still, with the exception of an isolated town-centre brutalist block, a charming collection of late 19th C and early 20th C homes and buildings. It even had an actual old town centre. Marvellous! Add to that a beautiful white sandy beach fronted with many handsome homes, plenty of safe cycle routes, lots of magnificent old oak trees lining many of the roads, a plethora of hostelries and a definate artsy vibe and this was another of our favourite types of place.

Only 3 miles from town is another great park called Davis Bayou Campground which is located within the Gulf Islands National Seashore. This National Park extends along the coast from Mississippi, through Alabama, to the Florida panhandle and includes many of the gulf barrier islands. We had booked eight nights here thus starting the phase of our trip with extended stays in each camp. The weather was improving and it was time to stop dashing about as much. As I write this I realise that my describing our existence as involving anything remotely close to ‘dashing’ is a bit of a stretch, but even we have scope for slowing down. We also are starting to visualise the end of this trip and are now back-planning our stops and journeys to get to our end-point at the right time. We have time to kill.

As the name might suggest, the park was situated on a bayou. Happily the mosquitos weren’t too bad and there were some very sweet little bats that came out at dusk to help with bug control. We saw the first fireflies of our trip and the first moderately sized alligator ‘at large’. It was only about 15m away but we unfortunately have no phographic evidence. Oh, and there was one worryingly confident racoon. This was out in the broad daylight and had absolutely no fear of anything. I had to fend it off with my camp chair. It might have just been used to humans, but there is rabies here and although it was not foaming at the mouth it did look a bit dishevelled. We reported it to the resident ranger. She was going to get maintenance to ‘deal with it’. Sorry dude. You were just a bit too freaky. The most annoying wildlife was the dreaded ‘No-See-Um’. A tiny biting gnat that was small enough to squeeze through our bug screens. There was no escape. They were everywhere. Kept at bay only by a smokey fire, a brisk breeze and 40%, skin-melting DEET spray. They are evil.

We cruised in and out of town several times during our stay here. The weather was mostly lovely and we found a few good places to have lunch. One of the bar/restaurants was owned by a very interesting chap called Ken who had many amusing anecdotes of his work and travels in the Middle East. He managed to match the garulous chit-chat of my beloved and we spent several pleasant hours chewing the fat with him over a pint or two of his own brews. The town’s art credentials are grown on the back of its most famous son, the nationally acclaimed artist Walter Anderson. In his later life he was a recluse and spent much time by himself out on Horn Island, rowing out the 12 miles in his little wooden boat. He would draw and paint the wildlife and landscapes in bright watercolours. The town has a great gallery museum of his life and work, including his old boat and a relocated little studio cottage, the interior of which he entirely decorated with murals. No-one had seen this during his lifetime. The museum is also connected to the original community centre of the town that he also completely decorated internally with murals. He had offered to do this for the town but they weren’t that keen for some reason. He wasn’t that well known then. Eventually they relented and paid him $1 for the commission. He didn’t quite finish the work before his death from lung cancer at the age of 62 in 1965. Now he is famous and the town is pleased as punch with their masterpiece. Suprise, suprise. His work wasn’t really to my taste.

There were a few nice shops in the town but we resisted the urge to buy anything. After four trips we are really maxed out on storage space. We have all that we need and no space to store anything new. Our extra stuff is slowly taking over the back seat of Big Dave and its a ‘one-in-one-out’ situation now with clothes and things. If it ain’t consumable by us (food & drink) or by Big Dave (petrol) then generally we don’t buy it!

This was a week with many strolls and bike rides, many camp fires and meals cooked over the hot coals, many games of cards,one thunderstorm and one dump-station drama. (Nothing that a brisk hose-down couldn’t solve but was a trifle embarrassing). We had a whole day of doing absolutely nothing and one day we had to move campsites. I even managed to get the height-shy Hampson to cycle to the mid-point of the Biloxi Bay bridge. He is very brave.

25th Feb – 6th March

Our slow easterly trajectory continued and we found ourselves spending the weekend at The Hollywood Casino, Bay St Louis. Most casinos have adjoining hotels and many also have RV parks on site. They are usually pretty good and relatively cheap, subsidised by gambling losses no doubt. Our visit here was a happy stop-gap. At this time of year, as the weather starts to improve, the state park camp grounds, like Fontainebleu where we had just come from, get fully booked up really early for the weekends. We had been far less organised than the weekending locals and found ourselves looking for space at short notice. The casino came up trumps and this had the added benefit of the prospect of an evening’s entertainment. I am partial to feeding $20 into the slot machines with the express purpose of taking more than $20 out. (It’s something learned at my mother’s knee – in my thirties) It is also one of my lesser used methods of accessing dopamine. There’s just something about the noises they make….. I have absolutely no interest in pulling up a chair to a green baize table.

The RV park was quite satisfactory and we picked a site away from the melée in a quite corner near the swampy waterway (which was much nicer than I realise than that sounds). There were no alligators to see but a large number of jumping fish which kept us amused. The nearby hotel and casino were concrete monstrosities in muddy yellow and there was a busy golf course. There were some very impressive rigs in the park and one of our near neighbours made us feel quite insignificant…

It was easy cyling around here and during the day on Saturday we had a great few hours cruising around the waterfront, admiring the houses. Now we were in hurricaine Katrina territory. The massive hurricaine that hit this coast in August 2oo5 caused immense damage to a wide swathe of Gulf coast, but most of the international news that reached our ears was focused around the unparalleled human toll that weighed on the heavily populated New Orleans when the levees broke and flooded the city. This area lost many, many buildings but luckily most people heeded the call to evacuate and the death toll was thankfully quite low considering the force of the beast.

We had Saturday evening in the casino. A cigarette smoke-filled, maskless place that stepped us back in time to 1999, let alone pre-Covid 2019. Its amazing how what once was normal has become so weird. We got a bit dressed up (although this is the land of casual attire so we stood out like a sore thumb by virtue of the fact that we weren’t wearing baseball caps and trainers) and I even put on some make up (well, a lick of mascara-if that counts). Our itinerary for the evening: Play the machines, have a few drinks, have a nice meal in the steak restaurant, listen to the live music, play the machines, home. Our gambling budget was $20 each. Somehow this translated into Nick losing $30 within about 9 minutes and me spending $10 over the course of the whole evening and winning $12. I am very satisfied to have extracted a whole $2 from the casino coffers. It is the principle of the matter. We ate fish in the steak restaurant, which was delicious and the band wasn’t bad either. This was a genuine ‘night out’, a rarity indeed.

Our onward journey from the casino was a mega 9 mile trek to the other side of town. The adjoining town to Bay St Louis is called Waveland. It was originally part of Bay St Louis but granted status as a seperate municipality in 1888. It was badly hit by hurricaine Camile in 1969 but in 2005 it had the misfortune of being ‘ground zero’ for the landfall of hurricaine Katrina. The 125mph winds and 30ft storm surge all but obliterated the town, leaving only a few brick builings partially standing. The rest was match wood. We visited the town’s museum – originally a school house and one of the aforementioned two brick buildings – which documented the destruction of the hurricaine. There were some amazing photos, videos and first person accounts of the destruction. It was very sobering. It is also amazing to realise that everything that we could see now was due to rebuild efforts, even if there are still many ‘ghost plots’ dotted around the place. This is the name that I gave to what was obviously the site of a previous home that had been destroyed, but with the foundation/driveway/gate posts remaining. These quiet spaces where homes once stood sometimes evoking more emotion than the photos of their destruction.

I don’t know why Waveland is called Waveland. This is the Gulf coast so there isn’t really any consistent surf. It was a lovely coastal community, however, and had a lovely beachfront bike/walking path all the way round to Bay St Louis. Waveland is apparently the only city on the gulf that has banned commercial contruction on the waterfront, and this gives it a very relaxed vibe. We were staying in Buccaneer State Park, a park on the site of a parcel of land once owned by Andrew Jackson, 7th US President. It was a big, busy park with lots of weekenders still in situ. Luckily our site was on an outside corner with a bit of space and privacy but lots of sites were cheek-by-jowl with RVs packed in like sardines. It was Sunday before Mardi Gras and people were in party mode. America celebrates a federal holiday called Presidents Day on the third Monday in February. In the Mardi Gras states they swap out this day off for the day of Mardi Gras. Sensible.

Like everything else in this area, the park was obliterated by Katrina and had been rebuilt with all the key buildings: office, laundry, shop being hoisted aloft on stilts. This was a real family orientated park with lots of playgrounds, a wading pool and a waterpark (both shut for the season), a frisbee golf course and the park roads were a general race track for kids marauding around on bikes. We thought that it would be the kids that irritated us here, but instead it was the adults. The music blaring, golf cart dependant, tobacco-chewing & spitting adults. There is definately a difference of attitude between the vacationners/weekenders and the long termers in the RV’ing world. It is mainly to do with the level of noise they create. There is much more ‘hooplah’ with those on holiday. The golfcarts are riduculous. Lot of people bring them purely to drive around the park instead of going for a walk. One chap was golfcart walking his dog. Plenty of people were taking their dogs for a ride. Freaking madness. As for the spitting. Please. No. Its. Gross. Don’t stand there talking to me whilst chewing tobacco then hoik brown disgustingness at my feet. Excuse me whilst I quietly retch.

The joy of our stay here was, suprise, suprise, the bike path . It ran alongside the white sandy beach from near the park entrance all the way round to Bay St Louis, a distance of about 6-7 miles. We did the journey multiple times and enhanced our exercise by seemingly hitting headwinds in both directions every time. How is that fair? On Mardi Gras day itself we found ourselves in downtown Bay St Louis to be confronted by the crowds awaiting the arrival of the parade. This was entirely unplanned and we were kicking ourselves for chosing this day to come for lunch. Surely it would be too busy to find somewhere nice to eat? We needn’t have worried. After we strolled about to soak up the buzz of the building crowds we stopped at a dacquiri shack and got a oversized alco-slushi each. We drank these too quickly whilst sitting on the kerbside, then stood up and realised that our legs didn’t really work. We staggered off to find a place for lunch just as the parade was starting, thus guaranteeing getting a table at a cool waterfront restaurant. We were just finishing up when the parade finished and as the bead festooned hungry hoards arrived, looking for a late lunch. Perfect accidental timing. Our cycle home was slow and steady as we battled the duel handicaps of the ever-present headwind and dacquiri-plus-beer legs. We got there eventually.

Our next weekend involved an EVENT. Not far from where we had been was a town called Kiln, called The Kill for some reason by all locals and those in the know. Whereas Bay St Louis was an important port for the bootleggers of imported illeagal booze during prohibition, The Kill, given its location on large waterways, was an important distribution hub to get this booze to cities such as New Oeleans and up to Chicago. This was also the location of ‘Swamp Pop Music Fest’. A three day extravaganza of who knew what!

I found out about it by pure internet browsing accident and before we knew it we had booked tickets for the whole three days including three nights RV camping on site, the local county fairgrounds. Information was very limited but the weather promised to be good and it was going to be a cultural experience in some shape or form!

The fairgrounds had a large area for RV parking with power and water hook-ups and hardstandings. When I booked I had paid a bit more for a site ‘on the fence’. There was a significant derth of online information and I had assumed that this was going to give us a perimeter spot with a bit of extra space away from the crowds and noise. What it actually meant was a site by the fence on front row of the RV park right next to the music stage. Exactly the opposite of what we wanted. We sucked up the extra cost of the mistake and hastily reorganised a quieter spot with Brandon, the man in charge. It transpired that there was plenty of availability as the festival had been organised far too close to Mardi Gras for it to be well attended. He was overly laid back about the whole thing which led to him accidentally reassigning us one of the few spoken-for sites. It was a particularly nice one with a shady tree, which was obviously why the stern, local lady who pitched up two hours after we were well and truely installed, had specifially requested it. She had arrived in a small convoy of a large motorhome and a truck towing a trailer carrying a golfcart *. She coughed and spluttered, flapped and harumphed, postured and paced. We sat serenely, unmoved by her irritation and immoveable from our camp chairs in the dappled sunshine under our disputed tree and sent her back to Brandon. His problem, not ours. She might be local, but we are British. Top trumps, lady, top trumps. Happily for us all, there was another similar site available with another (smaller) tree and she was mollified. There was not going to an uncomfortable trans-atlantic diplomatic incident after all.

Now true Swamp Pop is a music genre specific to the Arcadiana region of south Louisiana and an adjoining section of southwest Texas. Created in the 1950s by young Cajuns and Creoles, it combines New Orleans–style rhythmn country and western, and traditional French Louisiana musical influences. That was what we thought we were getting. What we actually got was a variety of bog-standard bands playing covers of mediocre country music with the headline act, Doug Stone – seller of 9 million albums- playing his own mediocre country music. It was a very small, very local affair with one small stage, one beer concession selling only three types of light beer, two food trucks, two small bouncy slides for the kids and four portaloos. Glastonbury twasn’t.

The joy of staying on-site was that we could easily wander backwards and forwards to the festival enclosure, using our own loo and opting in and out of procedings depending on how the music sounded. One evening it was too cold to stay more than 30 minutes, so we extracted. One evening we ordered fried catfish and crawfish with chips from one of the food carts and then took it home to eat then couldn’t be bothered to go out again. On the last day there was a Crawfish Boil -a competetive cook-off- and a teeny tiny car show during the day, and the underwhelming Doug Stone in the evening. We endured 45 mins of his durge, then extracted. We knew that this was not our natural environment or our preferred music genre but the locals seemed to enjoy it. Everyone seemed to know each other and every third or fourth number triggered an influx of folk to the front of the crowd (seated in a higgledy-piggledy collection of BYO camp-chairs) and a spontaneous outburst of line dancing. I think they learn it at school.

*Now back to the golfcarts. It was approximately 100m from the back of the RV area to the festival enclosure, so most people were camped closer than that to the gate. At least 1/3 of the 30-40 RVs had brought golfcarts with them to do the ‘journey’. Many of these were obviously people that had no problems with mobility because we saw them dancing. Stern Local Lady amongst them.

21st Feb – 25th Feb 2022

Our last morning in Houma was blissfully quiet as the partying, for now, was over. Until next weekend. When they do it all again. But bigger. Busy times for party bus drivers and street cleaners. Our leisurely extraction from the Civic Centre carpark was punctuated, but luckily not obstructed, by a little bit of drama. A chap in a large truck towing a good sized 5th wheel trailer was leaving the carpark at an excessive speed that got our attention. Ten seconds after he passed us there was a crash. The trailer had fallen out of the hitch, smashed the tailgate of the truck and crashed to the tarmac. Whether this was due to ‘user error’ or due to the hitch failing as he claimed, it made for a very bad start to the day for Mr Speedy Gonzales who had been in such a hurry. He had sustained quite a bit of damage that was going to take a lot of time to sort out. Our emotions were equal parts pity and schadenfreude.

Our journey for the day was not that long, but promised to be one of our more interesting ones. New Orleans was on the way, but we had decided many weeks ago that we were not stopping here this time. The city sits on the south side of Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow 630 square mile lake. There are highways that circle the lake on both sides, but 1956 saw the opening of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. This is an epic feat of civil engineering that saw a low slung bridge carrying two lanes of road built right across the middle of the lake from New Orleans to Mandeville, a small north shore town, a distance of 23.8 miles. In 1969 a second parallel bridge was opened, increasing the road to two lanes each way. In the same year it was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest bridge over water. In 2011, after the opening of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China, Guinness split this catagory into ‘continuous bridge’ and aggregate bridge’, thus allowing the Louisianna behemoth to retain the title of ‘longest continuous bridge over water’. It is quite a weird senasation to drive over it. There is a point midway when land nearly completely disappears from view. Quite amazing. It is a toll bridge, but to ease congestion on the city-side, and on the bridge itself, only to south-bound traffic. Winner, winner for us as we were only taking a one way northbound trip.

Mandeville is another classically arranged American town. It has a historic district with some nice old buildings and boutique business but the majority of the action is located in strip malls and roadside businesses that line the highway that run through the more newly developed areas. We navigated some unusual road layouts involving some counterintuitive traffic flow at junctions and some bizarre, compulsory U-turns and having stocked up on food and firewood we headed to camp. This was at the exotically named Fontainebleu State Park, about 3 miles east of town. Named for the forest of the same name outside Paris it was on the site of a historic sugarcane plantation owned by Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, founder of the nearby town. There were some crumbling brick ruins of the old sugar mill and lots of the informative signs around the park detailed the lives and struggles of the slaves who had been instrumental in him garnering great wealth from his endeavours. The park had some nice walking trails, and most importantly was located on the Tammany Trace Cycle Trail. This is a 30+ mile. ex-railroad, paved trail that links all the north shore towns which gave us a delightful and easy route to get into town from the park. I just love cycle trails, but you all know that by now.

The camping area of the park was a bit stark and open having lost a lot of trees in the recent hurricaine Ida but happily many of the gorgeous and ancient oak trees in other areas had survived. The well oiled machine of Hampson Camp Set Up was put into action and we were soon installed. Very soon after that we got chatting to our neighbour, Jeff, and instead of having a mid afternoon cup of tea we found ourselves sampling moonshine with him from the tailgate of his truck. This is how we were discovered by his wife, Monica, who arrived back from town in their other car half an hour later. She rolled her eyes and lamented that she couldn’t leave him for 5 minutes without him making friends and getting into deep philosophical discussions about the American Civil War. I can sympathise with her. Jeff and Nick are brothers from a different continent. Jeff’s moustashe is better though.

Monica, Jeff, daughter Ivy and Zeke, the late middle aged German Shepherd who would like to murder all other dogs and all the squirrels if only he could be bothered to move fast enough to catch them, are another family of ‘full timers’. With another daughter now at college they sold up 18 months ago and now call their big 5th wheel home. Ivy, 16, self home schools and joins local swim teams for training wherever they are, Jeff is an sales agent for tools and shower doors and plies his goods nationwide, chatting and charming his way into many business he has contacts with and many that he doesn’t, and Monica picks up the occasional part time job if they are stopped anywhere for long enough, plays tennis as much as she can, and practices her English accent frequently!. They also have a regular gig as ‘camp hosts’ at a camp in Georgia. This is where you can get a free site in exchange for helping manage a camp for a block of time. We clicked with them instantly and spent many hours of the four days that we were here in their company, laughing a lot. Along with sharing a couple of early evening sundowners around our camp fire they also joined us in town for our first crawfish experience.

Chowing down like a hungry labradors on a pile of spicy, flame-red, boiled crawfish, served on a tray with a pile of potatoes and chunks of corn-on-the-cob, with juice and (crawfish) brains smeared around your face and up your arms to your elbows, whilst sat outside at a waterfront restaurant in a light breeze on a hot and humid day, throwing the husks through a hole in the table directly back into the water was the perfect Southern eating experience that we had been hanging out for. It was becoming apparent that that might not exist so we decided that the time was now and settled for the more civilised version in the Mandeville Seafood Market, a casual restaurant on the north side of town.

That morning we cycled into town along the Tammany Trace. It was lovely and warm and we parked up the bikes and wandered around the old part of town and down to the lakefront in the beautiful sunshine. From there we could see the causeway head out across the lake and disappear into the far distance over the horizon. We had arranged to meet Monica and Jeff at the restaurant at 1pm so we got back on the bikes and followed The Trace as it wound its way up to this area of town. Unfortunately we were forced us to take a very long way round due to the lack of a bridge over a swampy ditch and then only way to get to the restaurant involved half a mile on the busy main highway with no shoulder. We arrived on time, but very hot and bothered and glad to be alive!

With sweaty, pink faces we joined our new friends at our table and planned our food attack with help from our next door table neighbours, who seemed to have the lay of the land. A massive serving of ‘mud-bugs’ as they are also known, was procured along with a round of thirst quenching bottles of the local brew and we dug in. Jeez! They are messy, spicy, fiddly and very delicious. We were coached on how to pull off the heads before sucking out the brain juice then pinching out the tail meat, which was mostly quite slim pickings. Despite the massive pile of detritis indicating that we had eaten many, many, many crawfish each, plus the added potatoes, mushrooms and corn that accompanied them, we were all still hungry by the time it was all finished. Nothing that a couple of shared po’boys, cajun fries and the most spectacular portion of onion rings couldn’t fix though. With by now very full tummies we were saved from the prospect of the return cycle journey by loading the bikes into the back of Monica and Jeff’s truck and getting a lift home. It was for the best.

The rest of our time here was filled with walking, another cycle along the Trace, joining the campsite pilgramage to watch sunset over the lake, an explore of the town’s sports complex – an enormous acreage of sports pitches, courts, and indoor gym facilities – and genearal loafing.

We were sad to say our goodbyes to Monica and Jeff but we will find each other again in this large and bonkers land – some day around some campfire, with some sort of drink in hand on some campsite somewhere. And that’s a promise!