Good-bye to the Gulf (Andre)

It’s funny, if you don’t have a plan, a plan develops whether you like it or not! Maybe it’s something like a void needing to be filled. And, or, maybe it also hearkens back to one of my favorite lines from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when Bilbo describes the road outside his front door as one of the most dangerous things in the world – take one step on the road, he cautions, and you never know where you will end up. The road goes ever on, he further warns and encourages us all!

Well, Laura and I first stepped onto the shores of the Gulf of Mexico on this adventure about 6 weeks ago! We drove out to Pine Island north and west of Brooksville where we were having RV repair done. It was cold, windy, and the water was pretty green, actually approaching olive green.

Since then, we have visited, followed, walked in (not swam in yet), laid alongside, camped along, among other things the Gulf in central Florida, northern Florida, western Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and now Texas – we drove down to the Gulf in Texas and spent three days along the 12 foot seawall that was built to protect the town after the 1900 storm that largely devastated the area.

It’s been fun certainly. We fondly recall the many looks of the Gulf. It’s been more vacation-like than we expected, kind of like we have been voyeurs on others seasonal beach-side vacations – of course we do not mind joining in! It’s been informative – we have followed with interest the history of the Spanish conquistadors and exploration in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, and we have been enjoying and working to recall what we are seeing of the road to Texas independence and statehood. And, as we have been writing, it has been sobering at times to see the wide-scale and lingering damage that Gulf storms have had on the area. All the while, it’s been a bit staggering how we have come to be part of and experience something to some level of intimacy that we only previously peripherally knew and had visited. When you have lots of time, you can ‘stroll along’ and get a bit deeper!

Like Tolkien wrote, the road goes ever on, as does, it seems the Gulf!

As this post is titled, though, we now say good-bye. We will next turn west towards Big Bend, our home address for the next three months, and certainly far from the Gulf, the beach, and the road we have been upon the last 6 weeks.

By the way – and not that we are counting, we have started our ninth week and third month on the road!