I have lived my entire life without a plan, taking whatever has come along and making the best of it. No regrets.

Now that we are 2.5 weeks into the transition tour, that lifelong dearth of planning has changed. We planned, and the plans are working out!

Plan 1: Stay off Interstate highways as much as possible and eat local roadside grub

We left I-185 north of Columbus, Georgia and have not seen an Interstate since. First stop, Eufaula, Alabama (bass fishing capital of the galaxy) where we hoped to find a good southern breakfast. Despite the town’s beautiful architecture, the food gods were not with us. Instead, we found a non-descript little place with tasteless bacon, dry grits, watery coffee, rude staff, and ridiculous prices. Lesson learned: if it doesn’t resonate goodness from the moment we set foot in the door, get the hell out. (This place felt like it would be everything that it was. I wonder if it will be our last experience of poor judgment.)

From Eufaula to Dothan to Panama City. A quiet scenic drive that was utterly relaxing, and the time in Panama City was just awesome, but you can’t read about that until you get to Plan 3. The best part may have been the boiled peanuts (pronounced bawled p-nuts, or, as I prefer saying, bawled goobers) and fresh cracked pecans. Bawled goobers, by the way, have become our munchie staple as long as are in the Deep South. We are not picky: plain or Cajun style are both fine. My only regret to date: I haven’t photographed any of the boiled peanut vendors: each one a classic southern stereotype working comfortably from the back of a pickup truck or a roadside stand with either a gas grill or a couple of crock pots. Yesterday’s first vendor had fresh picked strawberries to accompany the goobers, and the second had Florida oranges. After Rebecca settled into the passenger seat and I was fiddling with stuff in the back seat, the second vendor leaned over my back and whispered in my ear: “Got anything good to drink in there?” Sharing some decent scotch with him in the middle of a desolate Florida highway just didn’t seem like good fun, so I assured him I didn’t. That might have been my first lie of the trip; I am sure it won’t be my last. He seemed relieved, letting us know that even though his son drives the truck, his wife gets upset if he starts drinking before he gets home. Now I wonder if not sharing a cocktail with him might not have been a mistake; I bet he would have provided no shortage of good blog fodder.

Plan 2: Avoid long stretches of driving

Since Panama City to Fort Pierce is 8 hours (avoiding Interstates, of course), we took two days and moseyed. Stop 1: Apalachicola. We wanted oysters at the Gibson Inn, but the restaurant was closed until 4:00, so we had oysters at Boss Oyster instead. And damn, did we ever have oysters: raw oysters, roasted oysters with parmesan, and oyster stew.

For those of you who don’t know, Apalachicola oysters (or Apalach oysters as they are known locally) may be the best in the world. Apalachicola Bay is famous for its oysters. But the bay is severely stressed, and the oyster fishery is in dire jeopardy. I want badly to write a book about the decline of Apalachicola Bay. It used to be the most productive native fishery in the US, but no longer. Atlanta’s overdrafting of the Chattahoochee River for its water supply is but one of several causes. Others include the management of the river by the Corps of Engineers and changes to the geography and ecology of the bay, including convenient shortcuts for shrimp boats going to the Gulf and changes in salinity and temperature that attract predator species into the bay. But that’ll have to wait. I’m not writing that book yet.

From Apalachicola across the Panhandle coast, we photographed fried chicken livers at a QuickMart and surreal tree roots just west of Carrabelle Beach. We stopped to fill the cooler with smoked mullet at a roadside restaurant east of Carrabelle. (Mullet used to be a poor-man’s food because it was so plentiful. Today, smoked mullet is a regional delicacy that even rich folk sometimes like to eat.) We stopped for the night in Perry, Florida, a hell hole of a town where the best motel we found was the Best Host Inn and Resort, a $49 quiet, clean, and EMPTY place with an abandoned swimming pool filled with bricks. Like many other small motels in the US, it was owned and operated by Mr. and Mrs. Patel … and they genuinely could not have been nicer.

SIDENOTE: Picking motels  Rebecca and I also have a plan for picking overnight motels when we are en route. We drive to where we want to stop and scout the motels. We decide which ones look decent and which don’t. We use our phone to check the places out on Hotels.com or Trip Advisor and rule out those that are bona fide scuzzy. We then head to the cheapest, check out the lobby and desk, and ask to see a room. I check for general filth, and Rebecca checks out the bed. (Plastic mattress pads are an automatic disqualification.) If the place seems OK, we take it. So far it is working, though we’ve only had two motel nights thus far: Manassas, Virginia and Perry, Florida. We’ll have more, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

 

We left Perry at dawn with three destinations in mind:  The Villages near Ocala, the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, and our friends Steve and Peggy’s house on Hutchinson Island near Fort Pierce.  We also looked forward to boiled peanuts and fresh oranges.  Success on all counts!

An old friend/colleague from Connecticut retired and moved to The Villages a few years ago. He loves it. The more he told me about it, the more the descriptions tickled the hell out of my inner sociologist. Billed as “Florida’s Friendliest Retirement Hometown,” The Villages covers 23,000 acres (32 square miles) and has 115,000 residents with an average male age of 62 and female age of 60. The residents drive golf carts, often wicked pimped out. In 2011, by an unconfirmed website, The Villages accounted for 1% of the new home sales in the United States! Truth be known, Rebecca and I drove in, passed a very long greeting line of chain restaurants, retail stores, and supermarkets, then we turned around and drove out. As suspected, it was definitely not our style, but hey, an awful lot of our age peers seem to love it.

My very favorite factoid about The Villages: It has the highest rate of STDs in the state! Since I wasn’t sure I believed that, I googled it … a few times. From all indications, it is true, and snopes.com has nothing at all about it as an urban legend. What would you expect from Baby Boomers who experienced the Sexual Revolution and are now spry and healthy in retirement? You go, gang. No need to let a little herpes slow you down at our age!

Florida Southern College in Lakeland had a rather different feel. A small Methodist college on a beautiful 23-acre campus, it is home to the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings in the world, 10 in all. Suffice it to say it is gorgeous and was a totally cool detour on our journey. If we ever get to Lakeland again, we will spend more time and take the tour.

The rest of the drive was uneventful … except, of course, for the boiled peanut guy who wondered if I had anything good to drink. I’m not sorry I lied.

Plan 3: Stay with really good friends who will welcome us and with whom we will have a memorable time

Man, do we ever have some fantastic friends! Maria Roloff and her husband Bud hosted us in Panama City. Ten whole minutes passed from the time we arrived until we were in the boat heading out to go fishing. The bad news: the water was ridiculously rough. Maria and Rebecca only lasted an hour or two. Bud, his pal Steve, and I gutted it out. We left just enough time to clean the fish before darkness fell … and then we adjourned to the house for drinks, amazing conversation, laughter, and delicious fresh fish on the grill: bluefish, snapper, and redfish. WooHoo.

Maria and I worked together in the 1980s and 90s when she was in Human Resources, first at the MBTA and then MWRA, and I consulted to those organizations doing training and curriculum development. We became friends and stayed friends, but since she now splits her time between Asheville, NC and Panama City, we rarely get to see each other. In fact, we were on the verge of losing contact when I received a call about a year ago from our neighbor on Grand Isle, Vermont. Brent called from the coast of North Carolina to say that he was having drinks with Maria Roloff! Too weird! How could that be?   They met; Brent said he lived in Vermont; Maria said she knew only one person in Vermont, me. Brent said, “No way!” Our houses are three doors apart! We’ve been looking forward to reconnecting since, and did we ever have fun!

And now, I am writing this entry from our personal condo. I have been pals with Steve Kuniansky since we worked in the kitchen together at Camp Barney Medintz in Cleveland, Georgia in 1965. I’ve only known his wife Peggy since they married 20-something years ago. Last year, they moved from Parkland, Florida, west of Boca Raton, to Hutchinson Island near Fort Pierce. Their condo is directly across Route A1A from a beautiful beach. (I know, because I walked 7 miles on it today.) They liked it so much, they bought the condo next door too so their kids and grandkids would have a place to stay. Since they rent the second condo for the winter, we had to plan our visit carefully. We’re outta here Thursday because they have a renter. In the meantime, we have our own damn condo! How cool is that!

Plus, Steve enjoys cooking even more than I do, and I think he’s better at it too. Our first night: grilled venison loin with a homemade berry reduction sauce, roasted brussel sprouts, and mashed celery root. Last night: jambalaya. I just hate that we have to leave in only two more days!