Day Thirty Six: Veer South to the Beach
Distance: 58 mi.
Song of the Day: Jets to Brazil — Disgrace
When you drive a nail through all that’s good
The carpenter becomes the wood
If my concentration sounds like wreckage
It’s ‘cause I got a new feeling every thirty seconds /
We put a monkey up in space
And I know exactly how he felt
Looking at a latticework of stars
Missing his brothers back home too much for a postcard /
Mercy, have we gone too far?
Who put all these criminals in charge?
Did they win or just hold all the cards?
I’m leaving my place in LA, I’m gonna live in my car…
~ Blake Schwarzenbach
8AM: Rise and grind through Lizzie’s motor oil coffee (her words); another slow morning but alas, we’ve made a decision! We will (marginally) slow down our journey in order to rendezvous with Emma Rebhorn in New Orleans on Sunday, May 28. This modification takes any foretaste of pressure out of the logistics of getting in and out of New Orleans; we’ll now have about two days to spare.
We put our newfound freedom to use quickly: jettisoning our plans to hum across 90-West, we turn due south and head for a 73 foot waterfall and, in a day or so, the beach.
9AM: Stop at farmstand for a cucumber, red peppers, bananas, grapefruit, mango, and a quart of chocolate milk which we down immediately. Turn South on 77 and take backgrounds to the state park. Find wonderful cold water from a bubbler on the way to the waterfall — refill all seven bottles, cold water has now become a rare treat. Park ranger offers us tips on road conditions for nearly 100 miles south and westward — not bad for a $2 entrance fee, eh?
Exit the park in a calm-cool state, having dunked ourselves in the swimming hole and showered off the pond scum. I observe southbound route 77, but decide to attempt a “shortcut” through a lush canopied dirt road sprawling towards nowhere in particular.
Reconnect with 77 and run south another 20 miles. Ah, if only all roads were as buttery-smooth and cyclist friendly as Florida’s…
4PM hits and food becomes our sole imperative; unfortunately my loopy dirt road sidetrack deterred us from the intended route into Vernon; we remedy by banking west at Wausau on Pioneer road with hopes of finding an open restaurant.
Lizzie dithers with her phone on the side of the road, navigating to some Yelp destination, I eyeball Holmes Creek Pizza & Pasta Co and coast right in, ding-ding’ing bell to signal to Lizzie “hey, I’m obnoxious, and obnoxiously hungry.” Order from an 88 year-old woman: Stuffed shells with salad and garlic bread, washed down with two unsweet teas; homemade pecan pie and new york cheesecake follow. The ‘chef’ comes out to chat with us and Lizzie ogles him over how delicious everything was.
7PM: Fast declining sun glints thru the manmade cedar groves surrounding us as we approach Pine Log Nature Reserve. Tonight is our first night entering a state forest without a prescheduled reservation; as darkness approaches we hastily navigate the park’s back roads, looking for the ‘primitive’ campgrounds where we plan to pass undetected.
A few wrong turns put us smack into the well-populated main campground. Oops. Lizzie and I struggle to align differing opinions on how to handle the situation. I want to make for the side trails and either stealth camp in the woods or take a well marked dirt road which seems to lead directly to the site we originally looked for. Lizzie strongly dissents from biking further after sun fall. We fret for a minute or two, vexed about our next move. Do we poach a hapless stranger’s campsite and risk a midnight confrontation and possible booting from the campsite? Or do we ride on in darkness until we reach the ‘primitive’ campsite, risking unseen branches and rocks to reach a site which could be just the same?
We go with Lizzie’s plan, find an unclaimed RV camper site and sheepishly begin setting up shop. We’re covered in lake water, bugs, dirt, deet bugspray, sunscreen, aloe, and whatever else Florida has thrown at us; we stagger our showers so our campsite isn’t unprotected if some pissed off trucker comes in with his reservation sticker in hand. We expect troubled sleep tonight.
Lizzie vastly improves the situation by befriending Aaron, our neighboring camper, a 70 year old gay man raised in Panama City, and his dog Jasmine. She calls me over to meet and greet, tells me Aaron will “defend” us if anyone questions our intentions in stealing the campsite, and offers to let us move tent to his lot if we get booted. We get the 4x speed version of his life story; I try to offer him a single origin coffee in the morning, but he laughs and tells me he’ll dowse it in fireball and it’s probably not worth the offer.
We make fun of Tom the firewood man’s creepy white van until Jasmine gets jealous of Aaron’s attentiveness to us, causing Aaron to shoo us away. We retreat to our sticky oasis, count seven stars and sleep turns us over.
