Saturday, February 15, 2003
The Florida club planned to serve a lunch, so we again walked one of the Alabama walks in the morning and a Florida walk in the afternoon. For our morning walk we choose the one that went east on the ocean side drive for 5 km and then had the option of walking straight back on the beach 5 km. The day started cloudy but turned into a sunny, warm, summer-like day by late morning, which is just a great feeling in the middle of the winter. The first 5 km down the drive were typical “beach strip development”, if you know what I mean. For me, the prototype of this is always Ocean City, Maryland, which has a main drag with high-rise condominiums on the beach side and a motley collection of motels and shops on the other side. This strip followed that pattern of high rises on the beach side, with more being built, and businesses across the road.

The turn around point was in a state park, but I was surprised to find that the State of Alabama had developed the land and was competing in the resort business as well as having cabins and camping. How far they will take this I don’t know, but it felt distinctly odd to see a fancy resort on state park property. The State Park included a fishing pier that gave us access to the beach for the return leg of the walk. For the beach part of the walk Monika took off her shoes and socks, rolled up her pant legs, and walked at the water’s edge. I kept my shoes and socks on and walked just below the high tide mark, dodging any of the waves that came up that far, which added some spice to the walk. The adults were walking on the beach, fishing, or sunning themselves—only some of the younger children were venturing into the water. They made it into a kind of game where they would run down to the waves, get wet, and then run screeching back onto dry land. So we had a pleasant, if slow, walk back to the start/finish.

Click on the film reel to view a 15 second video.
If you can't view the video go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ to download the free QuickTime viewer.

The lunch with the Florida club was the same menu as the previous night and just as good eating. When we signed up for the walk and paid for lunch, we saw that Monika’s name was listed as the winner of the previous day’s drawing. Sure enough, there was a nice gift wrapped parcel with her name on it. We unwrapped it while eating lunch and it turned out to be a very nice stuff toy pelican. He fits right in with our menagerie of stuffed animals, and we put him in the rear window of the truck together with the little Indian maiden. Such a nice surprise!

The lunch gave us the energy to do the second 10 km walk and we choose a triangular course that had as one side another beach walk on Perdido Key. The walk route was over to the bridge to the mainland but then under the bridge along the intracoastal waterway and thru a resort golf-course complex that is still being developed—lots of lots for sale. After the checkpoint and some much appreciated water, we took a side road that led straight to the beach. Monika again imitated a barefoot girl with cheeks of tan while I played it safe. We noticed the sand was softer here and seemed like harder walking, but I’m not sure what was causing this. On this section the surf was rather heavy and we saw three surfers trying to take advantage of it, and a guy was throwing a ball into the surf which a Labrador Retriever was retrieving and having a whale of a time doing it.

Click on the film reel to view a 15 second video.
If you can't view the video go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ to download the free QuickTime viewer.

The trail had been labeled the “Blue Heron Trail” and son of a gun we had a close up and personal encounter with a Great Blue Heron while walking on the beach. This heron was wading at the side of the surf right where we were walking and seemed unconcerned about the presence of people. It walked right around us while I was making a movie of it. The only other time that has happened to me is when I was surrounded by herd of reindeer while taking a movie of them in northern Norway (see 1985 trip to Europe). The heron was a lot less threatening than the reindeer, thank goodness.

Click on the film reel to view a 15 second video.
If you can't view the video go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ to download the free QuickTime viewer.

After the nice beach walk the trail finished with a short loop out and back to the entrance to the national seashore park. We then returned to the Best Western to have our books stamped and were quite tired—I had trouble standing up straight—but not sore! I bought a cold drink on our way out and we drove back to the campground for a leisurely afternoon and dinner. I had a slight sunburn, but on the whole I felt so fortunate to be here while back home they were anticipating 12-18 inches of snow! For the evening I wrote the journal while Monika crocheted until it was time for bed.

During the night we had a real howler of a rainstorm. At times the rain was drumming on the stretched rain fly so hard that the top of the tent bent in a bit, but once again the tent did not break and we only had minor leaks through the zippers on each door, and we were thankful for that. I can sleep thru a light rain, but this rain was so hard and noisy that it kept us both awake for part of the night. Lightning was also zapping around us, and one bolt must have hit pretty close because the lightning and thunder were almost simultaneous, and extraordinarily loud. Part of the problem with sleeping is that you are thinking about things like “when will the tent cave in?” or “if lightning hits the tent, what happens to the people in the tent?”, and that type of thinking tends to keep you awake.

When the rain abated for a time and Monika went out before dawn, she saw huge puddles over many of the campsites and the moonlight gleamed on a weird white streaking on top of the water, especially on our campsite. She thought maybe a raccoon had gotten into our paper towels and had pulled them apart. I guess she was thinking of an animal version of “TP”ing our campsite! For once, however, the raccoons were blameless. When I checked it out in the morning I found our campsite (and the truck!) was covered in a heavy coating of light green pollen. The pine trees surrounding us had apparently decided to celebrate spring by putting out copious amounts of pollen overnight.