Devastation
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 were the terms I had used. The route would leave highway 98 and go north on 77 at Panama City to highway 20 to allow us to avoid the 100 miles of over-developed strip mall that the beach between Panama City and Pensacola has become. We hated that stretch last year and it was really slow and congested with heavy stop and go traffic. This round would save us about 30 minutes and let us see some new parts of Florida.
Highway 98 was still beautiful in terms of landscape, seascape and birds but with every mile west the damage and devastation increased. Apalachicola is a quaint, old-fashioned city that has mostly survived in tact. There were places on the coast where houses had disappeared and the odd property where a tree was down on a house still ( The hurricane was almost 6 months ago) or where people were living in a trailer while they renovated their houses. Eastpoint was a little worse. Port St. Joe was still badly damaged — probably half the buildings were still damaged and some major wrecks and ruins were untouched. The highway itself has been partly repaired from dozens of wash outs between Carrabelle and Panama City – rough gravel patches, partial asphalt patches and at least a dozen crews working to the repair the road. Progress was remarkably good considering the amount of road work.
None of this left us prepared at all for Mexico Beach. Just over a year ago I observed this place was one of the cutest towns in the United States. Encountering Mexico Beach last year from the west was a very pleasant surprise. This year we had the opposite reaction — the place simply looks like the site of an atomic weapons test. Every tree in the town is either a denuded snag or snapped off at about 20 feet above the ground. New construction has been peeled of roofs and siding; Older construction is just exploded. Trailers are parked on the concrete pad where a nice house once stood with no visible attempts to reconstruct beyond piling the rubble on one side of the yard; rubble heaps are everywhere. The devastation is shocking.
From Mexico Beach the devastation continued. The nice orderly forest of Slash Pine between Tyndall Air Force Base and Mexico Beach looked like the pictures of the Tunguska Meteor Event in Siberia; Twenty miles of snapped Slash Pines interspersed with the bare twisted fingers of stripped live oak. The airforce base itself still showed extensive damage to large hangers and work buildings; a subdivision of married quarters, nice orderly bungalows, stood abandoned — largely roofless. Panama City was only a little better and we were easily fifteen or twenty miles inland before the devastation dissipated. Overall it was a frightening and somewhat depressing experience.
We decide to focus on Niceville because, well, the name. This was through a good fifty miles of plain rural Florida driving. There we stopped for lunch in a Walmart parking lot after about three and half hours of driving and headed back south to the coast and Pensacola. Navigation in strange places is tough on married couples and Lorraine and I are no different. I don’t listen to the GPS or Lorraine, I second guess both of them and miss the turn. Then I get pissy because someone should stop me… But we move on and its probably better that I drive and Lorraine navigate and then for me to apologize and make a nice a dinner later on.
Pensacola was a return, increasingly, to the Florida we don’t care for of overcrowded, ugly, formulaic developments. We crossed the bridge from Gulf Breeze to Pensacola Beach on the barrier islands; the overdevelopment doubled to the kind of theme park crammed against the beach that we really loathe and then turned right towards Fort Pickens and everything changed back to the wild Florida we love so much but this time so very different from what we’ve seen elsewhere. The development immediately gave way to rolling Sand Dunes, and Sea Oats; we could see ocean from both sides of the truck.
Fort Pickens sits at the end of the Gulf Islands National Seashore; separated from Pensacola Beach by ten kilometres of sand dunes. A lonely gatehouse admits you to the park — where a very friendly Ranger was willing to take one of our dogs in lieu of payment. Declining that and paying our twenty bucks for a week’s access to the park we proceeded to the next building — a charming old shingled house repurposed as the registration office another 5km further along the island.
We were lucky to get in here — the place has been full for months. But on Monday, after checking out a bunch of loathsome, crammed and expensive RV parks I tried this place to see what I could find. I scrolled through 5 screens of completely full reservations for campsites before finding one lonely campsite — electric, water, asphalt pad, picnic table and not one, but two trees for forty dollars a night. The cheapest site in Pensacola we had found started at $70. We are near a path to the bay side and only a short walk to the beach — 15km of beach before the development starts.
We are also quite near the historic fort — we had to drive past two WWII era gun emplacements between the registration hut and the campsite. A lovely campsite and I was very pleased at how quickly Lorraine and I got backed in to the site in record time. We are getting good at this. We went into our roles and set up everything in the trailer super quickly and efficiently. The last thing I did before grabbing an adult beverage for Lorraine and I to proudly sit in the sun with the dogs and enjoy our work and relax.
If you’ve been paying attention you know the shit was about to hit the fan.
I sat down and handed Lorraine her beverage. I marvelled at the site and the glorious weather.
Lorraine said “What’s that sound?”
We both looked over and saw a waterfall coming from the side, the stairs and the starboard cargo bay of the trailer.
“Shit.”
“Fuuucck!”
I ran to shut off the water. Lorraine ran for the trailer and grabbed a broom. Almost an inch of water had built in the front half of the trailer, running down the stairs, filtering under the bed and into the storage there and out the portal. The toilet was full of water and a literal fountain.
I surmised that perhaps in transit the foot-pedal plunger had gotten jammed down and began to run when I turned the water on. Lorraine was dubious — I think her mind went at first to some shoddy workmanship and then turned to the real culprit, a halfwit husband.
Indeed, I had become complacent and lost concentration and instead of attaching the water to the city water intake I had attached it to the black-tank flushing port. It had only required a few minutes to fill the 40 gallons of the black tank and then to overflow the toilet into the living space. Thank goodness I had done a good job of cleaning and flushing the black tank before we left this morning — a near full black tank flooding 30 gallons of human waste into the trailer could have resulted in abandoning it here and driving home. Instead, we emptied the storage, threw out our floor mats, swept and mopped the water up; Lorraine did most of this. Meanwhile I reversed the set-up process and reattached the truck to the trailer so that when emptied of water I could take the trailer to the sewage station and empty the now very full black tank. Lorraine remained behind, sitting outside with our junk strewn around the site and the dogs looking a little bewildered as to just what the heck we were doing but nevertheless enjoying their time sitting in the sun.
Thirty minutes later I returned with the trailer, now emptied again. We did an even better job of backing the trailer into the site for the second time in the afternoon. I re-established level and disconnected the trailer from the truck for the second time on this site while Lorraine got on hands and knees and scrubbed the floor with hot water and dish-soap. Well, at least now the trailer floor is pretty clean. It was almost 7pm ( Central time — sometime during the morning we got an hour back!) by the time we were done setting up a second time. For some reason Lorraine jumped and attached the water to the trailer herself this time. I suspect it may be a long time before I do the water hookup again.
Lorraine ran to have a shower while I started some dinner prep. Then I showered. Eventually, I managed both yesterday’s blog while working with Lorraine on a nice dinner of Sirloin Steak topped with truffled cheese, Cheese Ravioli and cole-slaw. And red-wine, two bottles of red-wine…
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 were the terms I had used. The route would leave highway 98 and go north on 77 at Panama City to highway 20 to allow us to avoid the 100 miles of over-developed strip mall that the beach between Panama City and Pensacola has become. We hated that stretch last year and it was really slow and congested with heavy stop and go traffic. This round would save us about 30 minutes and let us see some new parts of Florida.
Highway 98 was still beautiful in terms of landscape, seascape and birds but with every mile west the damage and devastation increased. Apalachicola is a quaint, old-fashioned city that has mostly survived in tact. There were places on the coast where houses had disappeared and the odd property where a tree was down on a house still ( The hurricane was almost 6 months ago) or where people were living in a trailer while they renovated their houses. Eastpoint was a little worse. Port St. Joe was still badly damaged — probably half the buildings were still damaged and some major wrecks and ruins were untouched. The highway itself has been partly repaired from dozens of wash outs between Carrabelle and Panama City – rough gravel patches, partial asphalt patches and at least a dozen crews working to the repair the road. Progress was remarkably good considering the amount of road work.
None of this left us prepared at all for Mexico Beach. Just over a year ago I observed this place was one of the cutest towns in the United States. Encountering Mexico Beach last year from the west was a very pleasant surprise. This year we had the opposite reaction — the place simply looks like the site of an atomic weapons test. Every tree in the town is either a denuded snag or snapped off at about 20 feet above the ground. New construction has been peeled of roofs and siding; Older construction is just exploded. Trailers are parked on the concrete pad where a nice house once stood with no visible attempts to reconstruct beyond piling the rubble on one side of the yard; rubble heaps are everywhere. The devastation is shocking.
From Mexico Beach the devastation continued. The nice orderly forest of Slash Pine between Tyndall Air Force Base and Mexico Beach looked like the pictures of the Tunguska Meteor Event in Siberia; Twenty miles of snapped Slash Pines interspersed with the bare twisted fingers of stripped live oak. The airforce base itself still showed extensive damage to large hangers and work buildings; a subdivision of married quarters, nice orderly bungalows, stood abandoned — largely roofless. Panama City was only a little better and we were easily fifteen or twenty miles inland before the devastation dissipated. Overall it was a frightening and somewhat depressing experience.
We decide to focus on Niceville because, well, the name. This was through a good fifty miles of plain rural Florida driving. There we stopped for lunch in a Walmart parking lot after about three and half hours of driving and headed back south to the coast and Pensacola. Navigation in strange places is tough on married couples and Lorraine and I are no different. I don’t listen to the GPS or Lorraine, I second guess both of them and miss the turn. Then I get pissy because someone should stop me… But we move on and its probably better that I drive and Lorraine navigate and then for me to apologize and make a nice a dinner later on.
Pensacola was a return, increasingly, to the Florida we don’t care for of overcrowded, ugly, formulaic developments. We crossed the bridge from Gulf Breeze to Pensacola Beach on the barrier islands; the overdevelopment doubled to the kind of theme park crammed against the beach that we really loathe and then turned right towards Fort Pickens and everything changed back to the wild Florida we love so much but this time so very different from what we’ve seen elsewhere. The development immediately gave way to rolling Sand Dunes, and Sea Oats; we could see ocean from both sides of the truck.
Fort Pickens sits at the end of the Gulf Islands National Seashore; separated from Pensacola Beach by ten kilometres of sand dunes. A lonely gatehouse admits you to the park — where a very friendly Ranger was willing to take one of our dogs in lieu of payment. Declining that and paying our twenty bucks for a week’s access to the park we proceeded to the next building — a charming old shingled house repurposed as the registration office another 5km further along the island.
We were lucky to get in here — the place has been full for months. But on Monday, after checking out a bunch of loathsome, crammed and expensive RV parks I tried this place to see what I could find. I scrolled through 5 screens of completely full reservations for campsites before finding one lonely campsite — electric, water, asphalt pad, picnic table and not one, but two trees for forty dollars a night. The cheapest site in Pensacola we had found started at $70. We are near a path to the bay side and only a short walk to the beach — 15km of beach before the development starts.
We are also quite near the historic fort — we had to drive past two WWII era gun emplacements between the registration hut and the campsite. A lovely campsite and I was very pleased at how quickly Lorraine and I got backed in to the site in record time. We are getting good at this. We went into our roles and set up everything in the trailer super quickly and efficiently. The last thing I did before grabbing an adult beverage for Lorraine and I to proudly sit in the sun with the dogs and enjoy our work and relax.
If you’ve been paying attention you know the shit was about to hit the fan.
I sat down and handed Lorraine her beverage. I marvelled at the site and the glorious weather.
Lorraine said “What’s that sound?”
We both looked over and saw a waterfall coming from the side, the stairs and the starboard cargo bay of the trailer.
“Shit.”
“Fuuucck!”
I ran to shut off the water. Lorraine ran for the trailer and grabbed a broom. Almost an inch of water had built in the front half of the trailer, running down the stairs, filtering under the bed and into the storage there and out the portal. The toilet was full of water and a literal fountain.
I surmised that perhaps in transit the foot-pedal plunger had gotten jammed down and began to run when I turned the water on. Lorraine was dubious — I think her mind went at first to some shoddy workmanship and then turned to the real culprit, a halfwit husband.
Indeed, I had become complacent and lost concentration and instead of attaching the water to the city water intake I had attached it to the black-tank flushing port. It had only required a few minutes to fill the 40 gallons of the black tank and then to overflow the toilet into the living space. Thank goodness I had done a good job of cleaning and flushing the black tank before we left this morning — a near full black tank flooding 30 gallons of human waste into the trailer could have resulted in abandoning it here and driving home. Instead, we emptied the storage, threw out our floor mats, swept and mopped the water up; Lorraine did most of this. Meanwhile I reversed the set-up process and reattached the truck to the trailer so that when emptied of water I could take the trailer to the sewage station and empty the now very full black tank. Lorraine remained behind, sitting outside with our junk strewn around the site and the dogs looking a little bewildered as to just what the heck we were doing but nevertheless enjoying their time sitting in the sun.
Thirty minutes later I returned with the trailer, now emptied again. We did an even better job of backing the trailer into the site for the second time in the afternoon. I re-established level and disconnected the trailer from the truck for the second time on this site while Lorraine got on hands and knees and scrubbed the floor with hot water and dish-soap. Well, at least now the trailer floor is pretty clean. It was almost 7pm ( Central time — sometime during the morning we got an hour back!) by the time we were done setting up a second time. For some reason Lorraine jumped and attached the water to the trailer herself this time. I suspect it may be a long time before I do the water hookup again.
Lorraine ran to have a shower while I started some dinner prep. Then I showered. Eventually, I managed both yesterday’s blog while working with Lorraine on a nice dinner of Sirloin Steak topped with truffled cheese, Cheese Ravioli and cole-slaw. And red-wine, two bottles of red-wine…
Wow. Harrowing stuff. Thank god, you're such a great, loving team.
ReplyDeleteVery good, indeed, as I think I pushed limits on this one.
DeleteMarchants.
DeleteOkay! I have to confess, I laughed at your misfortune. Not a nice thing to have happen.
ReplyDelete