We're in the Sunshine State!

Our original plan this winter was to travel east down the Gulf coast. But we ended up taking a detour north, that we have really enjoyed. We still wanted a little beach time, so we crossed the state line, and finally found ourselves in Florida! Denisa was really impressed with the Florida visitor center that offers orange or grape fruit juice to welcome you to their state. Besides her juice, she is also holding a Florida brochure, and a fresh orange. We were only three miles from the state line, and she had already determined that she really liked Florida!

It's nice to see all those palm trees again! We drove south through the panhandle, and crossed the cause-way of East Bay and its sparkling blue water.

Our destination is the little town of Mexico Beach. Situated right on the Gulf of Mexico, it's 30 miles southeast of all the hype in Panama City and its spring break crowds.  That is a very positive characteristic to us.

We are camping at Rustic Sands RV Park (another Passport America campground), just a half-mile bike ride to the white sand beach. So as soon as the motor home was parked and plugged in, we were walking on Mexico Beach.

This sand is made of fine quartz pieces that are like powder. We found that it literally squeaks as you walk on it. We talked to a local that explained we wouldn't see the turquoise blue water that this emerald coast is famous for, until later in the year when the rain curtails. For now, the water looks a little brown, as the spring rains are bringing run-off from the area rivers to the gulf.

The water of the area rivers are stained a dark brown from the tannin in the cypress tree roots. We saw evidence of this tannin when we walked to the area where one of the canals empties into the gulf. Our new friend explained that this entry point will silt over in time, but busts open again with a large rain. In the meantime, the children on the beach loved swimming across the tea-colored canal.

It was great being just a short bike ride from the beach, so we went there often. It was amazing that it could be calm at our campground among the trees, but blowing gale-force wind at the beach or the pier. Note to self--it's a waste of time to fix your hair in the morning before going to the beach.

Another by-product of that wind is sea foam. Denisa remembers having a sea foam green crayon in her big box of crayolas. But this day we were getting sea foam tan as the tide was receding and leaving it trapped on the shore.

If we tired of the beach in our little town, we got directions to get to Crooked Island Beach. We heard rumors that this was a better place to find sea shells. Just four miles outside of town, it is part of the neighboring Tyndall Air Force base, but open to the public. After parking the car, we walked a long boardwalk over the dunes. The boardwalk keeps the foot traffic from trampling the sea oats, so important to keep the sand from blowing and keeping the beach habitat healthy.

Few tourists know about this beach, so we shared it only with a few locals. We met a couple people carrying buckets of shells back to their cars, so we decided that the rumor must be correct.

Sure enough, about a mile north of the parking area we found a widening of the beach, and began finding more and more shells.

Knowing that several buckets of shells had just left the beach, we wondered what it had looked like early this morning. We didn't find any of the big shells on the beach, so Mark waded into the water to find some new ones just washing up on the shore.

He would watch under the water as a new wave brought a fresh supply of shells that had never been seen by human eyes. Then the game was to reach under the water and grab the treasure right before the next wave swept in to drench him and take the shell back out to sea. He was loving this game!

He was finding some Atlantic Giants, sand dollars, conch, and olives.

We also found a horse shoe crab on the shore. We were pretty sure it was dead.

When we found the second horse shoe crab upside down and with a broken tail, we were real sure it was dead. Being from land-locked Oklahoma, we are amazed with all these sea creatures.

We are also amazed with all the beautiful shells we found on Crooked Island Beach! We feel like we are wandering His wonders when we see the intricate beauty that washes up on the beach. God sure makes beautiful "beach trash."

The clouds were heavy on this second afternoon on the beach, and we were forecast for a rain storm. So we felt lucky to get this second day on the beach. But our dry weather wouldn't be lasting much longer . . .

Musings about Leaving Alabama

Our camp site in Dothan, Alabama, was at a Passport America park--A-OK Campground. Passport America is an organization that provides half-price camping at membership campgrounds. Because we are traveling on a budget, we stay at lots of these Passport America campgrounds and we highly recommend it. They usually are not fancy, but we've enjoyed getting to know many of the owners. A-OK is three miles south of town, on a hill that has been recently converted into an RV park. There is a little pond on the acreage, as well as two donkeys patrolling the area.

They love attention, and followed us around, hoping for a handout of carrots or apples.

Around Easter we saw a facebook story that pointed out that the donkey is the only animal that has a cross on its back. It is also the animal that Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem before his crucifixion. This picture of our new donkey friends shows that cross very clearly.

The picture also shows Denisa's white hair shining in the light of the setting sun, so it's a little hard to see it clearly. But she's glad to report that her latest Alabama hair cut was a success.

We have lived in Alabama for over a month, and have enjoyed watching spring unfold. We entered the state at the northwest corner, and stayed in 6 different campgrounds as we headed out of its southeast corner. Covered in forest and countless rivers and creeks, the landscape is much different than western Oklahoma.

We have found the people to be very friendly, and we loved that they use the word "ya'll" even in their text messages. But we've noticed a few idiosyncrasies that we just have to mention.

One difference has to be the number of turn-around opportunities on some four lane roads. We found while driving through a rural area that there were paved turning areas between the divided lanes every quarter mile. In the picture below, there are three visible. We're not sure who needs to make so many u-turns and why.

The sad thing that we noticed with most of the smaller highways we traveled was a large amount of trash. We have never seen so much garbage in bar ditches as we have experienced in Alabama. Not as noticeable along the interstate, but most of our campgrounds have been along these smaller trashier roads. No pictures, because we don't like taking ugly pictures.

We were glad to be traveling in a state that the Pew Research Center ranks as the most religious state in the country. We actually felt that influence as we traveled through Alabama. What we think is interesting, is the number of churches--especially Baptist churches. Traveling down a single road outside our rural campground in central Alabama, we could count six different Baptist churches within 5 and a half miles from the entry of our park. In order to differentiate them from each other, they have to get creative with their names--adding a street name, or the words "Primitive" or "Missionary" before the words "Baptist Church."

With six to choose from so close, we decided to attend the church nearest to the park, assuming they were most used to getting camping visitors. We must say that Stone Tank Antioch Baptist Church was one of the friendliest we have ever attended. Mrs. Finch took us under her wing, helping us through a service that used no hymnal and had no bulletin to guide us. She even gave us her phone number and address so we could call the next time we were in town. She was disappointed that we were leaving the next day because she wanted to invite us to her home for a meal. We would also say that this was the best dressed congregation we have ever experienced. Most of the men were wearing black suits and ties, and the women looked even better. Did we also mention that we were the only white people there? It was the liveliest worship service we have ever experienced! It was great!

Our final observation on life in Alabama, has to highlight their boiled peanuts. We had never tried them before, but now we are used to seeing them everywhere. They are available at farmer's markets, in tents along the highway, in convenience stores, and even available in cans in grocery stores. Our first purchase was the best, and we kept buying more peanuts to try to find that yummy taste again. But we can now say that all peanuts are not made boiled equally.

So we really loved parts of our extended stay in the state of Alabama. But as always, we are looking forward to new states to come!

Playing Tourist in Dothan, Alabama

One of the interesting parts of living in a motor home is finding interesting things to do even when living in pretty uninteresting places. Dothan, Alabama is a city of 68,409 people, so we tried to find the things that all those people do for fun.

We discovered Todd Farms, just north of town. While in his 70's, Mr. Todd decided to learn how to make cane syrup the way some of his ancestors did in the 1800's. So he planted some sugar cane, and refurbished the equipment necessary to mash the cane and then cook up enough syrup for his family and close friends.

Word got out that he was making this old-fashioned treat, and last year they bottled 10,000 jars to sell in their store. They had a film production team from South Carolina's public television come to the farm to interview Mr. Todd about the process of making syrup. We watched the well-made video, and then Mrs. Todd took us on a tour of the farm. It would include seeing the giant syrup cooking pot (above) and the largest collection of cane presses in the world (below).

While Mr. Todd was collecting cane presses, Mrs. Todd got interested in finding old syrup pitchers. The picture below includes less than half of her collection.

It was a factory tour on a smaller scale, but we so enjoyed getting to meet both of the Todds. It also included samples of all their products, and we bought a jar of pure cane syrup to take home. We'll report on uses of it later.

Sugar cane isn't a big crop around Dothan, but peanuts are. In fact, 65% of all peanuts grown in the United States are grown within 100 miles of here. So naturally the peanut is the Dothan mascot. There is a map available from the visitor center that showed all the places in town that host a uniquely decorated peanut. We found the Elvis peanut and took a picture.

Since 1938, Dothan has hosted the national peanut festival. It started with Dr. George Washington Carver as the first speaker, and now 150,000 people attend the festival every October. After posing with Elvis peanut, Denisa is now posing in the shadow of the world's biggest peanut at the national peanut festival grounds.

With all this talk about food, we needed to get some exercise. We discovered two different bike trails in Dothan. The visitor center told us about a brand new trail called, "Forever Wild" and we rode the 1.5 loop trail twice. At the same site there was also a "pump trail" that looked like fun with its hills and moguls and sloped curves.

So of course we had to make several loops on the pump trail as well.

The second bike trail encircles Westgate park, and winds through the forested area surrounding soccer fields, the water park, baseball diamonds, etc.

It was a unique mix of walking and biking trails that are together at times, and then split off into separate trails at other junctions.

It was a partly cloudy day, with delightful temperatures for riding bikes on a forested trail. The picture below provides a shot of that sky, but was totally unintentional. It happened when Mark was fumbling with his camera to get one of those trail action shots. As the camera hit the trail, it took a picture of the sky. (Public service announcement - No cameras were harmed in the making of this blog.)

Also in Westgate park is a BMX bike track. The big brother of the pump trail we had ridden earlier, we would have definitely tried this track if it hadn't been padlocked.

We also walked through the Dothan Botanical Gardens, but wouldn't recommend it. After being immersed in the azaleas at their peak bloom all over Alabama, the gardens had nothing to compare. We also wouldn't recommend the George Washington Carver Museum. We had hoped to learn more about this black scientist that did so much for the peanut industry, but the video wasn't working, and the rest of the museum centered instead on black history events. Mark did some trouble-shooting on their video problems, and thought about staying to make sure they got it working again.

But we had some shopping to do. People that live in a motor home do very little shopping except for food to eat. But we needed some things, and a city of 68,409 people plays host to all the big box stores and a mall. So after a day of shopping we came home with our purchases. It might not look like much, but this is more purchases than we have made in all of the previous 14 months put together.

But the biggest project of the day was shopping for a hair cut. Denisa's least favorite part of living on the road is having to find a new place to get her hair cut every time. In a very unscientific process she ended up in a random chair, entrusting her hair happiness to a complete stranger. We were obviously breaking our rules of finding a stylist with a similar hair cut to trust with her conservative cut.

Stay tuned for future blogs to see how our final Dothan purchase turned out.

The Murals of Dothan, Alabama

In our latest drive south, we settled in for a few days in the small city of Dothan, Alabama. In the southeast corner of the state, Dothan isn't known as a normal tourist stop. But it was the right distance between places we wanted to be, so we went searching for things to do. In that search we found some of the best murals we have ever seen in their historic downtown. Denisa is standing in front of this wall, just to show the massive size of this mural sponsored by a local church.

We got a map of the different murals that are painted on the brick walls of buildings within a seven block area. This mural, commemorating a riot over a new tax that took place in Dothan in 1889, was painted right on a building on the corner of Main Street.

Most of the murals commemorate something about this section of Alabama, known as the Wiregrass area. This three-part mural pictures the four industries of the area, but we could only fit two of them into a single photo. You can barely see 6-foot-tall Mark standing in the lower left corner, dwarfed by the ten-foot-tall cotton bole in the mural.

Mark thought this mural was interesting, mostly because we didn't have to pose in front of it. The artist painted a passerby admiring the mural in the lower right corner.

But our favorite murals were those depicting the animals of the wiregrass area of Alabama.

The detail was incredible, and on such a large scale!

Just in case the detail is lost in the picture above, we took one closer that showed the shading on the beak and the life-like eye. It is amazing this work of art is on a cinder block wall instead of on a canvas.

Mark stood in front of this big Tom turkey, that is a little bigger than the last ones we saw in Oklahoma at his parents' house.

We were glad we happened to drive by this street and saw our favorite mural, because it wasn't on the chamber of commerce list. Then we realized that it wasn't on the list because it was too new. In fact, it is a work in progress, with just outlines of the next animals for the wall.

We were hoping that we would see the mural progress during our three-day stay, so we purposefully drove back downtown on our last day. We were so glad to see the artist at work on the bob cat!

He had pictures taped on the wall to inspire him with the details, and he was building the coats of paint necessary to make the lifelike animals we had enjoyed so much. We talked to Eddie Leroy for some time, finding out that this was the first of three days that it usually takes to complete one of these animals. His work schedule is based on the weather, so he probably wouldn't be back for the rest of this rainy week. Eddie's usual medium is smaller animal paintings, and he prides himself on making them look like they are photos. But today he is using a special paint used for outdoor murals. Denisa could have stood here all day watching him paint and asking him questions!

But we recognized that we were slowing his progress and breaking his concentration. So we pulled ourselves away with this final picture. 

We'd love to circle back through Dothan to see his finished picture, knowing that the bobcat would look much like the photo taped on the cinder wall today. In fact, we'd love to see all the other animals he will paint to fill this blue wall that continues another 40 feet down the sidewalk. Good job, Dothan, Alabama!

Kayaking with the Ospreys

After almost 15 months of living on the road in our motor home, we've decided to hang up the keys and stop traveling. It's no fun any more hiking and biking and seeing new things every day.

April Fools! After 15 months, we are still loving this life style!

Now that we have hiked and biked, to finish up our exercise trifecta we put the kayak out on the lake that we can see from our camping site here at Cotton Hill. Denisa has been spying on the osprey nest closest to our site since we arrived.

She had watched as they dove into the water to snatch up aquatic plants. 

The birds would carry them in their claws back to the nest, and then work to mold it into the interior of the nest.

So we pumped up our inflatable Sea Eagle, and set out on the Walter F. George Reservoir with its 640 miles of shore line. The trees around the lake have leafed out, and turned that beautiful color of early spring green.

We found that the osprey nest we had been spying on was just one of ten different nests we would paddle by this day. We found nesting pairs that were readying their nest for their families this spring.

In order to keep the blog PG-rated, we can just say that spring was definitely in the air.

It was fun to paddle close to nests to see how they were constructed. Some included spanish moss, scraps of ribbon, old clothing, live branches . . . anything that would weld together these massive nests over the water.

Ospreys are also called "fish eagles", and we were hoping to watch their fishing skills. But we only saw the bird on the left, flying away with the fish already in his claws.

We saw other birds on our kayak trip, like this one guarding the "slow boat zone" sign . . .

but the ospreys and their giant nests were our favorites. Their preference seems to be flat-topped cypress trees in the middle of the lake. We could barely see the head of the Mother Osprey that already seemed to be sitting on eggs at this nest.

We only paddled 5 miles this afternoon, but really enjoyed the little touch of nature that we could share in that distance.

We are really enjoying our spot at Cotton Hill, with the deluxe sites found at most Corp of Engineer parks. But we had rain the last two days we were camping. 

The good news is that the rain helped to wash the pollen off our motor home. We also used the time inside to finish our income taxes, and do some spring cleaning. Even on perpetual vacation, into every life a little rain (and a lot of taxes and dust) must fall.