In Pursuit of Spring ( and Sanity)

Biloxi, Mississippi, Sunday the 31st. What a crappy day.  High of 8C and rainy with a stiff breeze making it feel much colder.  A month ago I’d have been happy in shorts and a t-shirt — or at least able to pretend to be comfortable.  Today, I had to dig my leather jacket and my wool hat out of the closet.  This is our 28th day on the road and we’re probably a little homesick and without much to distract us from that given the weather.  At home, Alex and Sarah and the boys faced up to 25cm of new snow and the road in to the camp was closed by fallen trees and more than 30cm — and the old snow is still deep on the ground; that would almost be better at least for our mood. Clearly, we’ve been spoiled by nearly 3 weeks of perfect, really perfect, weather;  It’s been 70s, sunny, low humidity for 24 of our 28 days on the road; it’s like we’ve been travelling back and forth between LA and San Diego... Lacking energy and enthusiasm, we drove out to an anti...

Saturday, March 30, Biloxi, Mississippi On our 19th day in Florida we make a break for it and escape across not one but two state lines to beautiful Mississippi. Dogs enjoying the sun waiting to leave. Biloxi isn’t normally the kind of place I’d chose to go to but Lorraine wasn’t done with the coast and I couldn’t find a park that I liked with available spaces in New Orleans today. We considered staying in Fort Pickens — and an opportunity opened for seconds on recreation.gov (the only way you can book a site at US Government campgrounds) and then slammed shut before we could make up our mind; so here we are in Casinoland. The beach does look lovely, though. And the campground is small, not overcrowded, and has a nice pool.  The drive here took us to a very weird place. If Retail Consumerism is a religion then we attended today one of the great chapels of this golden god. I had time to read the New York Times extensively this morning before we left — we were in no rush...

March 29th, Fort Pickens National Park Today was our day to stay in the park.  Swiffer woke us early again, this time by climbing on the dining room table and looking to see if he could some get to the bread on the other side of the stove.  Food storage with dogs in the trailer can get a little tricky sometimes and when he figured we were sleeping he thought he could get away with it.  So it was time to get up and walk them at 630. The weather continues very fine — cool with a low of 10 and a high of 20 and nary a rain cloud in sight.  Northern Florida is almost 4 inches of rain below normal for March and we are the beneficiaries. For Canadians this is nearly perfect weather; no need for heaters, no need for air conditioners and we can spend hours in the sun without worrying about heat stroke. Sunburn is another matter — I don’t burn easily thanks to my mother’s genetics, Lorraine is a redhead and even well prepped for sun is looking a little pink this evening. ...

Thursday, March 28th.  Lorraine mostly wanted to stay put today but we needed to get a couple of things after yesterdays “devastation” with the toilet fountain. ( I forget to mention that the overflow was so complete that water went up the toilet stack and across the roof of the trailer as well. Lorraine also wanted to correct the quote I used. She didn’t say “what’s that sound” — I think that was in my head. She said “Why is there water pouring out of the side of our trailer?”) I think I am mostly forgiven but it took a little work today to accomplish that.  The dogs woke us up early — they have impeccable internal clocks and so 7:30 they start whining to go out every morning. Unfortunately, they don’t understand time zones and so here in Central Time they woke us up at 6:30. The sun was still well over the horizon when I relented at 6:45 and walked them out on the trail to the back bay overlooking downtown Pensacola and the Naval Air Station. At that time of the morni...

Wednesday, March 27th, Ho-Hum Resort, Carrabelle, Florida The day started well for travelling; It was 12C this morning, 53.6F, cold for Florida at this time of year — colder than it was in parts of the Midwest but with good sun and low humidity it was perfect for packing up the trailer and gettting things moving.  Everything rolled up and went away quickly and easily and we were done and on the road without issue by 10am.  I was rather self-congratulatory about how good I am getting at doing this trailer thing. The trip today was about 325km west across the path of Hurricane Michael; we’d heard there was damage and I have seen pictures but we were not prepared for what we were about to see at all.  The route was to take highway 98 along the coast through what was last year some of the cutest and most scenic coastline of old Florida we had ever seen.  Last year we hadn’t been prepared that this coast even existed in the way it did; Rustic, wild, old-fashioned...