Ho Hum

Ho-Hum Resort, Carrabelle, Florida — Monday.

So I did write a blog entry for yesterday but I hated it so much none of you will see it.  Not just the bad grammar and stream of conscious punctuation you’ve put up with but it was really, deeply boring.

The 325km between here and Homosassa are the most beautifully boring you imagine; mile after mile of swamps and pine forests. I think I wrote the same comments last year as we did the same trip in the other direction. Only when you get to the coast does the terrain change much at all.  There aren’t even many towns along the way as the swamp and forest are pretty dense — but then we were headed into Florida’s forgotten cost.   We stopped for lunch in the parking lot of a CAT Forestry Equipment dealer — nice to have food in the fridge to stop and make lunch with.

We arrived at Ho-Hum about 3pm after a little more than five hours of travelling and settled down quickly — it was beautiful.  This is a small park right on the gulf.  This is the first place that we really wanted to get to for the place. We were in Richmond because it was the first place we could dewinterize the trailer; Santee because I was tired of driving; Statesboro to look for Ogilvies; Oklawaha because it was half-way to Naples and I could get a reservation; Naples KOA because it was the closest place to JC and Nancy’s that’s I could find and Nature’s Resort in Homosassa for similar reasons.  We’re here at Ho-Hum because we liked it so much last year that we wanted to come back and spend a few days here.

We’re fortunate to be able to return. The owners have really worked hard to return the park to service after Hurricane Michael. The entire park had been covered in more than four feet of water by the storm. It smashed one end of their laundry house and destroyed their seawall and pier and took out their utility poles. Despite all of the damage from the storm they were operational, at least partly, within a week of the storm. Much of the surrounding area is still struggling and further north from Port St. Joe to Panama City much is still a disaster. There is still debris piled high in the ditch on the highways in the area and apparently this will be much worse as we head north on Wednesday.   Our new neighbours, from Iowa, were here before the storm and given only 90 minutes to evacuate to Alabama when they call came that the storm was coming this way but were back within about 10 days and spend the winter here watching the park be put back together. You could hardly tell today that there was any damage at all.

I began the morning with Coffee on the fishing pier.  A pair of Loons were diving in and around the pair and I felt a little spiritual kinship with them. This was a mother and juvenile waiting to return to the north country, to the land and lakes of their birth; I imagined they were from Round Lake as well as another Loon called in flight behind me somewhere over the park.  A dozen Pelicans worked for their breakfast out over the bay, awkwardly taking off from the water and then flying in a graceful arc up and then swooping down inches from the glassy surface of the bay before splashing heavily in search of a meal. They would regain their composure and swallow their catch before repeating it again.  Dolphins surfaced in pairs and triplets across the bay as Laughing Gulls circled and, well, laughed.  The sun was warm against the cool morning as the Loons splashed up and down around me. A phalanx of shore birds wove their way past me dancing in complex patterns as they flew.  This is why are here.

Lorraine started some Laundry and I did a little aimless fishing while we waited for the tide to roll out.  At low tide we walked west along the beach and waded in the calm shallow water.  It was one of those mornings where you could forget this was an ocean, no waves, no wind just still glassy water.  We chased hermit crabs and looked for empty seashells. Curlews, Phalaropes and Kittiwakes scattered ahead of us.  At times it was possible to imagine that this was still a true wilderness and we were alone here.

After our walk I did a little more aimless fishing until the wind picked up and became tiresome on the pier.  I put out a lunch of the rest of last night’s homemade deep dish pizza and Lorraine finished the Laundry.  I finally got some reading done and sat outside in the sun for a while with Lorraine.  Tomorrow should be equally ambitious — maybe we’ll take the dogs on the walk.