Apr. 17
Today we are in Apalachacola, proceeding west along the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. No sign yet of the free oil that I’m sure BP must be giving out to tourists in order to get it out of here and clean up the Gulf; but I’m sure we will find it eventually. I sure hope it is soon. We have been paying about $3.80 or so per gallon throughout Florida. We spent the last couple of nights in St. George Island state park just east of Apalachacola. Today (Sunday), we attended a Baptist church right outside the park that had an 11 AM service. Our other choice was a Methodist church, but they started at 9 AM, which, to me, is the equivalent of a sunrise service. The Baptists had good preaching, but not very good music. Nobody in the congregation sang much. It seemed like they didn’t know the songs. Maybe they did, but they just didn’t like them. And the style of worship music was, to put it kindly, “traditional.” The people were very nice however, and told us about several other state parks nearby that we should not miss. After church, we drove to one of them, which is where we are now. It is called the “St. Joseph Peninsula State Park.” The fees in these places are very reasonable, usually about $25 per night for non-residents like Lorraine and myself. You have to be both a geezer and a Florida resident to get a senior discount, so I only qualify on the one count. For that you get to hook up your vehicle to electric and water; and you can use the bath houses to shower, and the dump site for your RV on the way out. Any facilities within the park are of course available for use, and most of the ones we are staying in along the coast have beaches with access to the Gulf. All have hiking trails, and we usually try to take Logan on a nice long hike each time we touch down, to make up for all the time he has to spend in the van while we are traveling. He doesn’t say much (his English is limited), but I am pretty sure it makes him happy. Very few of these parks have any wi-fi access, so I have to look for someplace to get online when we come out, and before we go into the next one. Which is why the date on the blog entry is generally much earlier than the date that I get to post it. Such is life on the road.