Florida - Day 26 - driving east along the Alabama border

Three Rivers State Park, Sneads

Saturday, 11 February 2023

Late last night I emptied a box of Milk Bones (for Dexter) and had the bright idea of offering it to the kittens for a playhouse.  It was a success.

I think that's Jimmy in the box, though I can't quite tell.

The rain we got yesterday afternoon continued during the night, but it stopped during our first walk of the day, so I decided to go ahead and get a load of laundry done.  At which point it started raining again and kept on raining until well after we were on the road.

today's route - this is confusing because I drove on the interstate through the panhandle before Christmas but today I took the parallel US-90 to DeFuniak Springs,
and then went north nearly to Alabama, and then east toward Georgia

I heard on the radio that the legislature in New Mexico is considering adding a new state symbol - this one the official state aroma.  And it will be . . (drum roll, please) . . the smell of roasting chiles, specifically Hatch chiles.  I'm pretty sure they'll be the only state with an official aroma.

I stopped at Crestview for gas ($3.16/gallon, which I think might be the least I've paid in FL), and heard on the radio about a possible superbloom of poppies this year near Lake Elsinore, CA.  I hadn't heard of either the town or the presence of poppies during my month in California, but the town leaders sounded desperate.  They said the mess caused by tourists during the poppy superbloom in 2019 had taught them to shut tourism down altogether until the bloom was over.  Here's an article about it (with pictures) I found online.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/poppy-superbloom-lake-elsinore-ca-closed

My check engine light came back on.  To the extent it's an occasional light on my display, and especially when it's flashing as it does sometimes, I can't help but notice it.  But after all the time and expense it took me in Montana trying only somewhat successfully to make it go away, I've gotten to the point where I don't care any more.  I think it's an unfixable quirk of my engine/fuel injectors, and I can't fix something unfixable.

I wanted to travel through DeFuniak Springs because I'd heard of it somewhere and was curious.  As so often happened during the railroad era when the town was founded, this town was named for a railroad official and for the natural springs - specifically the one feeding Lake DeFuniak that the town's built around.  This lake is almost perfectly round and is one of only 2 lakes in the world that are both spring-fed and nearly round.  (I'm continually amazed at the number of unique or almost unique features our country has been blessed with.)  What I especially noticed, though, wasn't the lake but instead the monsters here and there around the town that had been made of scrap metal.  I thought they looked pretty neat and am sorry I didn't get a photo of at least one of them.

It rained all morning, so sightseeing wasn't easy.  I drove north from DeFuniak Springs because I was intrigued with some of the town names on the map.  But any actual towns I came along were few and far between.  Mostly it seemed that the towns were either hidden from the road or no longer existed.  

Anyway, after driving for a long time and not finding much, I grabbed the first chance we came to to stop for a break, which was at Hurricane Creek Community Park.  That's what the sign said.  It was vaguely a park, with a picnic table and half a basketball court and a swing set.  No grass and just one tree - but it was a Tulip Magnolia in full bloom - very pretty.  Dext and I took a short walk around and we all had lunch.

I couldn't get an NPR station up here and for a while listened to an interview with someone who claimed the Luciferians were taking over the world.  This person said that about 100 years ago a woman wrote 10,000 pages that she self-printed so they could be distributed.  They explained how those who believed in the Devil, as she did, could take over the world by 2025.  That date has since been changed to 2030 (though I didn't understand who changed it), and now we're seeing the UN and WHO (World Health Organization?) and the US are all part of a movement to attain all one government and all one religion unified around the world.

What I never heard was an explanation of why anyone would pay attention to an obvious whacko from 100 years ago who couldn't get anyone reputable to publish her writings and had to do it herself via the Lucifer Publishing Co. which she and her husband created.  Or an explanation of why 10,000 pages out of the uncountable pages written before or since by everybody else would be the basis for a worldwide movement that managed to co-opt all the diverse governments that belong to the United Nations.  Although I guess you could compare that to the 1,200 or so pages in the standard Bible which has itself been the basis for a worldwide movement.  Maybe these folks on the radio were afraid the Luciferians had a more compelling message than the folks in the Bible.

I especially wanted to come this way because of the town named Sweet Gum Head.  I didn't find a town but instead only a cemetery and a Church of Christ.  However, it was obvious the church is still in use so people must live somewhere in the vicinity, just not on the state "highway" that supposedly went through the town.  As far as I could tell, the name refers to sweetgum trees, which are native to Florida.  I couldn't tell you if there were any in the area, though, because I'd have had to stop for a closer look, not being very good on the various tree species.

Near the town of New Hope, marginally more of a town than others along the road, I crossed the Choctawhatchee River.

All day we drove through rural areas.  Farms for plants, farmhouses - scattered or in clumps, towns that barely existed, some cows and horses, orchards without leaves (so they might be pecans), cotton fields, a large flock of sheep with lots of lambs.

I came to Mariana, "The City of Southern Charm," and in fact that was my impression.  It's an elegant-looking town, founded in 1828 on the Chipola River.

Continuing east, I saw a flag that had both Trump's and DeSantis's names on it.  But I can't see either of them wanting the other as a running mate.

For some reason, someone on the radio was talking about ways so-called winter vegetables can be interesting to cook/eat.  For turnips, as an example, they suggested to cut them up and saute with butter, salt and garlic.  You can do that with potatoes, so I guess any root vegetable can be cooked that way.  I said these were so-called winter vegies because winter as much of the rest of the country understands it seems almost a foreign concept down here in Florida.

Passing through the town of Sneads (est. 1894), we came to tonight's campground.  During check-in, I asked what three rivers the park's name referred to, and they gave me a brochure.  It says that the Flint and Chattahoochie Rivers combine to form Lake Seminole, and then the Apalachicola River (which I saw at the river's other end at the Gulf of Mexico) flows from the dam that created the lake.

I dumped my waste tanks when we got to the park, so of course the rain - which had let up in the afternoon - started up again and I got pretty wet before I got done.  I'd driven over 300 miles today, mostly on fairly rural roads, and I was tired, even though it was only 2:00 when we got in our campsite.

This was a tiny campground of 30 campsites arranged in a rough circle on the edge of Lake Seminole.  It was pleasant, but there wasn't much of anywhere for Dext and me to walk, which was a shame for us both.  Still, it was comfortable for the night.