Would You, Could You, If You Could? - Day 8 and 9

Day 8*
After the hard lesson on St. George Island about the ability of air mattresses to retain heat (short version: they don’t), I’d bought two cheap (well, the least expensive I could find) 1.5” memory foam mattress covers. I woke up Thursday morning in the back of my metal tent, quite comfortable and warm on my two stacked sheets of foam.


Fig. A: Comfy! Also, you should be grateful they haven’t invented Smello-web yet.

Then I inhaled, and realized that my metal tent was full of damp, smoky, dirty clothes. This was a problem because after deciding to stay in the 30A area, I could not find a campground with any availability for the next two nights, so I grabbed a room on AirBNB in someone’s house.

Given the state of my clothing, I figured just walking in the place would violate the AirBNB’s no smoking rule.

So after I finished work around lunch, I did what I hadn’t done in years: my laundry, in a laundry mat. 


Fig. B: I… uh… how do I do this?

The poor attendant must have thought I’d traveled forward in time from 1824, as bewildered I was by the machines. “Which one’s the washer?” “Wait, there are three different-sized washers? Which one do I need?” “Do I put my quarters in here?” “Where do I get quarters?” “Wait, there are three different-sized dryers? Which one do I need?”

I sounded like a 61-year-old college freshman doing my laundry for the first time.

After that adventure, I rewarded myself by driving a few miles west on Route 98 (30A ends a couple miles west of Blue Mountain Beach) to Destin, a fishing town-turned-touristy fishing town. That afternoon, Manchester United, my Premier League soccer team, was playing the Wolverhampton Wanderers (known as the “Wolves” - it feels like the original marketing team missed an easy lay-up there) and I wanted to catch the game (in a bar, naturally).

Daniel and I both root for the Reds, and we often text throughout games, he in Tennessee and me (in today’s case) in Florida. We had a great time that afternoon as Manchester United pulled out an unlikely win, with 18-year-old phenom midfielder Kobbe Mainoo putting an absolutely crazy shot into the back of the goal in the final minutes of stoppage time.

Then I took the long way back to Santa Rosa Beach, near Grayton Beach, where my AirBNB was located, stopping frequently to admire the incredibly white beach and spectrum of blues and greens of the Gulf.

I was renting one room in a house owned by Susie, a teacher, grandmother and general bad-ass. We met briefly before she went out on a date and me and Max, her bull mastiff, settled in for a quiet night.


Fig. C - Max: “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up…”


Day 9*
My last full day in Florida broke warm, and soon reached hot. I planned to work my way eastward again along 30A to revisit some of the towns I’d passed through on my way west. As it was 9:30 a.m., the first stop would be breakfast. Rolling east on 30A in Santa Rosa Beach, I passed a wooden building on the edge of a large pond or a small lake. I just caught the name out of the corner of my eye: Stinky’s Bait Shack - and what I thought was a sign advertising food. I kept driving, but somehow “Stinky’s” sounded better than “Starbucks,” so about a quarter mile down the road I turned around and made my way back to Stinky’s.

Fig. D: With a name like Stinky’s, it’s got to be good!

At the front door, I had to make my way past two Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn-looking kids with poles, tackle boxes and bait balanced on their bikes, chirping about where they’d fish first.

Inside, I saw this sign and knew I’d come to the right place:


Fig. E: I guess when you’re as old as the people in Florida, you gotta get your happy hour in early just in case.

Stinky’s is the perfect blend of bait shop and restaurant, which is a sentence I just used for the first time in my life. The wood is dark and old, the bartender was chatty and happy to be back at work after recovering from an ankle break, and there was lots of fishing tackle to peruse.

I ordered Stinky’s bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, a Bloody Mary and a coffee, then enjoyed my breakfast overlooking the pond behind the building. I was sure an alligator would bum-rush the dock any second, but they were sleeping in.

Fig. F: Sure, I get why a gator wouldn’t want to eat me, but look at this biscuit!

Fig. G: Out back of the Shack

Primed for the day, I jumped in the rolling tent and headed east, looking forward to exploring 30A’s scenic towns more thoroughly than when I first came through. At a stoplight a mile or two down the road, I looked toward the Gulf and saw the Ed Walline Regional Beach Access. Well, I thought, I might as well just pull into the lot and take a look.

The beach was… spectacular. 

Fig. H: I know everybody says this, but these photos don’t do it justice.

I stood dumbfounded and… sweating.

DAMMIT it was a perfect beach day! I hadn’t had a perfect beach day since I’d been in Florida. But I had plans already to poke around the towns on 30A today. In fact, I’d canceled my plans to go to Dauphin Island so I could make the plan to explore the towns.

“The ‘should’ is strong in this one,” Obi Wan Kenobi might have said if he were observing the moment.

I should go check out the other towns, I thought. But…

It’s amazing how hard it is to abandon a plan, even when the alternative I’d be choosing is a stunning Florida beach.

With great effort, I wrestled the Should Monster to the ground and shoved him in a garbage can. Then I zipped back up the road a quarter mile, bought some Coronas at a convenience store, and committed myself to serendipity via the Ed Walline Regional Beach Access facility.

Fig. I am on the beach!


Fig. J: “Down around Biloxi…”

One of the top ten choices I ever made. Well, at least in the top 100. I spent a sublimely beautiful, peaceful, gratifying five or six hours sitting in the sun, sipping beers, watching the people and occasionally slipping in and out of sleep.

Fig. K: Not so bad.

Speaking of sleep, I have a recurring nightmare in which I find myself at the end of our annual beach week, and I realize I’ve been too lazy to get down to the sand and surf even once during the trip. The sensation of regret is INTENSE.

So, today, here I was at the Gulf, with that incredibly blue and green water right in front of me. I’d tested it - it was freezing – but I would be damned if I was gonna drive a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico and stop ten feet short of the water.

Fig. L: Yes I did go swimming.

I’d finished my time on the Emerald Coast with an absolutely perfect beach day, and tomorrow I’d be heading north. I was looking forward to it.


* 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!

TravelChuckLaundrymat, 30A, Indecision, Perfect beach day, Corona, AirBNBComment