Travel Archives

August 11, 2012

Why Are They In Florida?

I got back into West Palm Beach around 7:30 p.m. I didn’t get much sleep last night. The huge mass of fish camp oysters and shrimp were rolling around in my stomach communing with each other or something. You’d think frying would kill ’em, but they were doing loop de loops and pole vaulting until about six in the morning.

Traffic moved along pretty steadily. There was a jackknifed overturned travel trailer in the median somewhere in S. Carolina, but it didn’t cause much of a delay.

It’s SUMMER in Florida

A hundred or so of my fellow road warriors decided to pull into the I-95 Florida Welcome Center at the same time I did. Geez, what are those folks doing here? This is SUMMER. I chugged my obligatory paper cup of orange juice, jettisoned a corresponding amount of liquid, then dodged the chaos in the parking lot to head south.

Wife Lila was at a meeting, so I decided to stop in Ft. Pierce for a sandwich. Just as soon as I got on the Big Road, the clouds decided to open up. Visibility was down to about 100 feet a few times, then it cleared up enough for a spectacular rainbow to pop out. When I backed into the driveway, it was raining so hard I could barely see across the street. This was a shock since I had only seen rain about twice in the six weeks I was in Missouri.

August 11, 2012

I Love Fish Camps

I spent a day and a half roaming around Gastonia, N.C., looking for familiar sights without finding many. Maybe being in the town for just under two years didn’t imprint many memories, or maybe the town really HAS changed. I couldn’t even find the two places we lived while we were there.

One thing I wanted to check out, though, was a fish camp. They were huge, barn-like affairs with long tables (and equally long lines of people waiting to get in). Huge quantities of seafood and other delicacies were served family-style and all-you-can-eat.

First fish camp so-so

I was told the one we used to frequent had changed hands several times, but another one was just down the road from it was recommended. I showed up and got a huge quantity of food, but it was nothing to write home about. It tended to the greasy side.

Long Creek Fish Fry

I was still in town at 2 o’clock, so I thought I’d give Long Creek Fish Fry a try for a late lunch. I ordered a shrimp/oyster combo and added a buck to get onion rings instead of another side.

I hadn’t expected to take any photos, but I just had to pull out my Droid smart phone to shoot the Before photo of my plate to send back to Wife Lila. Sorry for the fuzzy pix.

The sad thing is that I ate so much that one more bite would have caused an unpleasant explosion, and I still had almost half a plate of oysters and shrimp left. I was tempted to stay another night so I could heat the leftovers in a hotel microwave.

Cost: about 20 bucks, including tip.

August 9, 2012

I Could Skip the Clown

I keep an audiobook in one of my MP3 players just for visits to the dentist’s office. An audio book and some gas makes the quarterly cleaning go by in no time. I started Stephen King’s book IT about three cleanings and a crown ago and and had barely made a dent in the book. He must get paid by the pound.

Anyway, I decided to listen to it on my trip. It got me all the way TO Cape, around Cape and past Murray, Kentucky, where I spotted this guy. (You can click on the photos to make them larger, but you may not want to.)

King’s clown a creature of evil

One of the nightmarish characters in King’s novel is Pennywise, otherwise known as “It,” a prehistoric creature of evil who can change shapes at will. “It” primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children.

Some folks have commented that they developed a fear of clowns because of a mural of them on the wall of Dr. Herbert’s office, but I escaped childhood relatively unscathed in that category. I’d hate to be a kid in Murray, Kentucky, who read IT, though.

June 23, 2012

Kentucky Traffic Safety Message

We cheated death once more. pulling into Cape in late afternoon. I tried to shoot a few frames of the Nashville skyline at the split, but decided that I didn’t want the last photo before (or during) the wreck to be of the Nashville skyline.

Kentucky reinforces safety message

Had I seen this memorial to Kentucky traffic fatalities BEFORE I got to Nashville, I might not have tried to shoot the skyline photo from a moving car. I pull into that rest area on almost every trip, but I don’t recall seeing the memorial before.