Trip21

Saturday.

Travel day. Got up cold and early, packed up, and headed over to the Manatee Sanctuary to check it out before we left. Spent a couple hours there. It was good. Manatees from above. Manatees from below. Beautiful grounds. Trails. Birds. Two kinds of woodpeckers, and wood ducks. Wood ducks! Paddling right out in the open where we could see them well. Remember how I described the painted bunting as looking like it was painted by a kindergartner? Wood ducks look like they were painted by McKee. Elegant. Exotic.

Stopped for fuel. I have yet to stop at a gas station in Florida that had not disabled the handle clickers that let you start the gas flowing, then walk away. What is up with Florida? We have asked why this is several times, and we have gotten several rather elaborate answers, none of which make any sense to us at all. What they have done, is guarantee that you have to stand there with your hand on the handle, for an extended period with a motorhome, with your face right over the fumes. We stopped for a quick sixty gallons today. I did glance around to make sure there were no police watching and prop the handle open with the gas cap today. Can’t always get that to work, but it worked nicely today.

Highway 19 got really nice today. It’s the kind of highway back road you want to travel. Good road. No traffic. Widely spaced towns. You slow down to pass through the town and look around, then right back up to sixty-five. Some towns don’t even have a single traffic light. Turned off that highway onto Highway 98 to go west through the Panhandle. Same thing so far. I know that will change though. We have been on this highway before between Pensacola and Panama City. I recall a lot of stop and go there.

I had the greatest run today. The first ten or fifteen minutes were pretty slow and normal. But then the energy kicked in. I hit that zone where the pace picks up, the energy picks up, and it gets effortless. I feel like I could just run like that forever. I had a power run. It was brief, but it was there.

Passed an antique store called the Plunder House. Now, how good can you feel about buying something from the Plunder House? How do you suppose they get their stuff? I have the same problem with a particular motorhome. OK. There have been a lot of motorhomes. And they all need names. Ours is a Bounder. We had a Jamboree. We had an El Dorado. Maybe we’re running out of names for motorhomes. But how much did the public relations wizard make for coming up with the name “Intruder”? I can see driving a Warrior, or an Explorer, but who would want to drive an Intruder? “Look out everybody! I know you don’t want me here, but here I come anyway. I’m the Intruder!”

Annie found a friend tonight. She and Twitcher, a rat terrier kind of dog, ran each other in circles until they couldn’t run anymore. We have a very tired dirty dog with us tonight. Rags is still clean. He had to watch from the window.

Bumper sticker of the day: “I had sex, unprotected, with the IRS.”

Stopped for the night at Ochlockonee River State Park. Pine flatwood forest.

Two hundred mile day. Florida Panhandle now. Birding. Manateeing. Ducking. Cat drugging. Driving. No new birds. Manatees. Dead opossom. Grazing armadillo. Sixteen wood ducks. Sixteen!

Tomorrow. St George Island State Park.