What's That Floating in the Florida Night? Could it be... Indecision? - Night 7

Night 7*
After my day working in Seaside and watching the sunset by the sea side, I went over to Blue Mountain, one town west of Grayton Beach, and had an *outstanding* time at Johnny McTighe's Irish Pub. The bartender was grumpy, there were two cops at the end of the bar getting hammered, and I watched, in the wild, the mating dance of the Way Too Needy Young Woman and her male counterpart, the Douchey Rich Boy. It was at once both fascinating and revolting. Eventually those two disappeared into the dark and, after a harrowing tale from the bartender about a car crash he somehow survived at 19, I paid for my Guinnesseses and departed.

Fig. A: Johnny McTighe’s, where the deer and the antelope play.

Back at the campsite, I fired up the fire, put on my headlamp and walked the 50 yards over to the campground bathroom. It is amazing how much stuff is floating in the air in Florida, at least during the winter. In the beam of my headlamp, the atmosphere was thick with little flying floating flickering things - it looked like the footage you see from deep-sea submersibles. Through the swirling currents of air, the bathroom emerged out of the murky darkness like the wreckage of a shipwreck. I wondered how much of that floaty stuff I was breathing in, but then decided I should obsess on something a little more controllable instead.

Fig. B: a fire

I had planned to leave Florida tomorrow (Thursday) and drive several hours (plus one ferry) to Dauphin Island, a sliver of sand a few miles off the Alabama coast, where I had a campsite reserved. But when making the plans, I hadn’t realized the impact that working for two-and-a-half days would have on my trip (insert “duh” here).

Fig. C: Dauphin Island, Ala.

It turns out, pleasure traveling while working gets you more of the downsides of traveling (food & lodging costs, looking for Wi-Fi, raccoons) with less of the upsides (sightseeing, sleeping in, reducing sand dollars to sand).

Since I had to work tomorrow until noon, I wouldn’t be able to leave the 30A area until after lunch, meaning I’d reach Dauphin Island in the dark (assuming I didn’t miss the ferry across Pelican Bay from Fort Morgan). That would give me one day to look around that part of Alabama before I had to head east again toward Virginia.

I had not explored 30A as much as I wanted, and there was a possible low pressure system heading for the southeast U.S. toward the end of the weekend that could cause storms and snow all along my route.

But the idea of changing my plans was stressing me out. I had committed to myself that I’d reach Alabama. Shouldn’t I be checking off the destinations on my list? What if even 2 hours of Dauphin Island was amazing? While I was wrestling with the idea of this change, Lee texted me of one of my favorite Lao Tzu quotes, from the Tao Te Ching: “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent upon arriving.”

So I decided to stay in 30A instead of busting tail only to arrive at Dauphin Island after sunset. It would give me a few hundred-mile head start of the potential storm plus a little more time to explore the Emerald Coast.

There would be no arriving tomorrow. I was already here.


* Moment of Truthiness: I’m already back from my walkabout. In fact, it occurred LAST year about this time. I was going to post about it after the trip, but I sort of ran out of steam. So now I’m going to pretend I’m posting about my walkabout real-time, just like a reality show pretends to be reality.


Take the whole trip! I’ll even cover the gas!

TravelChuckJohnny McTighe's Irish Pub, Blue Mountain Florida, Guinness, Randy young people, Indecision, Lao-tzu, Tao Te ChingComment