americountry

Evenin' campers! SilverCliche' here checking in tonight from Sopchoppy, Florida (with apologies for calling it “Slopchoppy” last night… oh well!)

We're rapidly settling back into life on the road. We woke up to a Florida April morning with thin fog, temps in the low 60s and the sound of a crow in a tree above the Airstream. Given that we had windows and both roof hatches open for ventilation, it sounded more like the crow was in the trailer. And April in Florida at 60 degrees means wet and humid. Every soft surface including linens and clothing feels like it spent 5 minutes too few in the clothes dryer. We ran the coffee pot and settled into the recliners for the first good test since they were installed. Ahhhhhh…. And we started the morning reading. The combination of fresh coffee, reading and no particular plans for the day drove the distraction of dampness right out of my head.

Eventually we got tired of leisure and caffeine (after several hours!). I generally plan the route during that time of day if we have travel ahead. Tripadvisor is a great tool to scout out interesting things to see or do en route and especially any places to eat. Today was not typical. Scouring the route from Dunnellon to Sopchoppy was easy enough. Finding a place to eat was easy enough (Deals Famous Oyster House in Perry, FL won our business) but finding interesting things to do was not so easy.

As we began the drive it hit me. We've been here before. We've seen this place. We've passed through the interstellar wasteland that is the space between our country's bright and shining spots. At one point I asked Mrs. C' “If you just woke up from a coma and looked outside could you tell me what state we are in?” (Take it easy out there… that coma thing is just a thought experiment… no actual comas are involved in this travelogue… plus, if Mrs. C' was in a coma the last place I'd have her is in the front seat of the truck driving between Dunnellon and Sopchoppy… I'd have her at the Mayo Clinic and I wouldn't be asking if she knew where we were driving… I'd be asking “Doctor… when will she emerge from this frickin' coma?”… and when she did emerge I'd ask “Honey… it's me… are you ok?”… but for today the imaginary coma created the necessary mind clearing scenario for my question… I'll be more thoughtful next time.) Back to our story… she responded “I don't know… Maryland?… Arkansas?… Nebraska?… Kentucky?” My suspicions were confirmed. There is a certain sameness to portions of rural America that appears in every state we've visited. There are long stretches of flat ground crisscrossed by two lane State highways (with three foot paved shoulders!) bordered by fields in which no marketable crop is growing and backed by stands of trees that looks the same everywhere. These stretches are interrupted occasionally by a crossroads or even a small settlement. Those locations inevitably included a traffic light that is flashing yellow in our direction, a permanently closed gas station (if the last price per gallon sign is still visible I try to guess in what year the last gallon was pumped) and generally ¼ mile past the intersection a “courtell” (roadside motel) of about 10 rooms each of which has its own parking spot and a door facing the main road and which is either abandoned or one room appears to be occupied by (presumably) the owner of the establishment. There are occasionally other forms to be seen. A shuttered storefront (farm implements? auto parts?) a working US Post Office the size of a one car garage and the magnet of any place two paved roads with double yellow lines intersect in middle America a very busy Dollar General store! I realized we've seen this over and over and over. Perhaps some of you know this already. Maybe that's why you wave and say “have a good trip!” when we leave. I'm thinking some of you prefer to read this rather than taking the trip because you realize what I'm about to say. These stretches of American pavement are endlessly boring. That's where we spent the day and those bastards at Tripadvisor saw it coming and all they had to offer us was an Oyster House!

I've decided these segments of America need a name. Everything that is common and annoying has a name. Think about it: mosquito, Federal Income Tax, television commercial, teenage years. Doesn't the repeating pattern of boring, rural American sameness deserve the same honor? If we name it then we can use that name in conversation and nod knowingly as our friends and acquaintances tell us what happened to them. So, I propose “americountry”. Let me use it in dialogue:

My friend said “Silver Cliche' you look horrible. What happened to you?”. “Mrs. C' and I spent nearly three hours today trying to get through a wicked stretch of americountry” I replied. “That accounts for it.” he answered “At first I thought you had pneumonia, but I realized you look way too bad for that. Hours stuck in americountry makes way more sense."

So that's how we spent the day. Stuck in amercountry (Note that the “a” is not capitalized. It doesn't deserve to be.)

There were a couple of interesting things to see today. I told you I'd look to get a panorama of the Rainbow River in Dunnellon if the sun allowed this morning. It did (after it dispatched the fog) and here's what that looks like:

I wish you could see how clear that water is and how quickly it was moving from right to left in the frame. A very peaceful spot.

Tonight we are camped in Ochlockonee River State Park on the banks of the Ochlockonee River (duh!). The Ochlockonee (It's most accurately pronounced with a distinct clearing of the throat. Try it. Just don't make the mistake I did. Turn away from your loved ones for the first three attempts.) While the Rainbow River was a short sprint of clear water rising from the Floridan aquifer through a natural spring, the Ochlo… oh to hell with it… “the 'O'”… seems to be comprised of water that didn't make it into the aquifer. The river is a distinct red color where it is shallow enough to see through at all. It's quite wide, meandering, eroding the land and dropping the trees that stood on its banks. Here, look at this:

Those roots were once in soil and that tree will soon be in the river. For you, my reader (or, hopefully, 'readers') I climbed out onto that tree to take the panorama below. Don't tell Mrs. C' (she generally doesn't read the blog. I give her a summary as we drive through americountry the next day) that I risked a drop into the blood red waters of the “O” to bring you this pic. She might drop into a coma if she knew. Here it is:

So, that's our trip for today. Tomorrow we head to Destin, FL. We've both wanted to see a community in that area called Seaside. We owned and for 10 years lived in the first house built in its sister development “the Kentlands” in Gaithersburg, MD. You may have seen Seaside. It was the location chosen for the filming of the Jim Carey movie “The Truman Show” about 15 years ago or so. On the way to Destin we will follow the coast, see the Gulf and escape americountry with a stop in Panama City (Florida that is).

Until then…

SC'