One Lap

Date: 11/05/2013

Day: 40

Location:  Ft Meyer, FL

Miles Today: 199

Total Miles:  8942

Day 40!  More on Key West, The Geology of the Keys, The Third Turn, In the Keys, Pogo Land, What Works, Tomorrow

40 Days on the Road!

And all that is left to do is drive across the United States to get home.

 

More on Key West

So the Colonel did sample the Guinness at Finnegan's Wake Pub in Key West and found it entirely acceptable.  (It appears, unfortunately, that there is a shamrock apostrophe in the name, a  double anathema to Joyceans.)  With a handful of One Lap cards to distribute, it was proved conclusively that people are fascinated by the idea of driving around the perimeter of the  country.  At least the beery ones are.  The Colonel was actually addressed therein as "Wellington."  He will consider "raconteur in bars" as a future career path or, at a minimum, resume entry.

The Geology of the Keys

The Colonel woke up in the middle of the night last night, thinking that he had made an elementary error in Geology.  The Keys were identified, you will recall, as coral.  The night thought recalled that it is limestone hereabouts.  In fact, it is both and more geologically complicated than can be explained here.  If you are interested, there is a good article on the geology of the Keys in Wikipedia from which these two images were downloaded.

 

 

 When that ice sheet was scraping away the top layers of the north, Florida was as big as the yellowish area above.

 

The Keys as seen from the Space Station.

The Third (of Four) Turns

We are counting departure from Key West as the third great turn on this trip.  We are, in fact, going north not west, but our next continental destination is San Diego, so we have (metaphorically) turned the third corner.  We are way more than halfway and on track if not on schedule -- there is no schedule, of course.

In the Keys

 

More green stuff (mangrove, probably) growing out of the salt water.  How does this stuff survive really bad weather?

 

 

Interesting new house in the keys.  The construction looks like pretty serious stuff.  It is a few hundred feet from the ocean, so you can see why they want the water to pass on through.

 

More of the same on a considerably grander scale.

 

The guy who owns that big house probably keeps his boat in a place like this.

 



 

The weather finally gave us the chance to photograph turquoise water.  The Colonel is not attracted to the Keys lifestyle, but it is (like so much of America) a beautiful place.

 

 

Almost a perfect postcard image.  Except for the Keep Out sign threatening prosecution.

 

This is probably a typical Keys house.

 

Pogo Land

The land we passed through today was actually the Everglades, the big swamp in Florida, not the Okefenokee Swamp where Pogo lived which is further north on the Georgia border.  To the unlearned, one swamp (or wetland, if you insist) looks like another.  However, there is surely plenty of it, whatever it is called.

Old guy thought:  How sad that there is a generation walking the earth that knows nothing of Pogo ... or the equally great Gordo.  They were gentle giants, but giants indeed.

What Works

Some things do, some don't.  The faithful Acura keeps ticking along, dented hood in place, deferred maintenance still deferred.  We have a pretty good grip on taking and posting pictures at this point.  The blogging mechanism absolutely works and for free.  The only cost is two to three hours of time per entry.  Fair enough.  The Igloo cooler works well.  It plugs into a power point in the car and really does keep stuff cool. 

What does not work, to our great disappointment, is the DC inverter which was supposed to convert on board 12 VDC power to 120/60 power to run, among other things, our lap top.  This appears to be an issue with the electrical system in the car, not the inverter device, because we have tired two with no luck.  The result is the fairly elaborate notes made for this trip are available only in the evening in the motel room and during early part of the day. 

This  time limit also applies to the 258 separate road trip themed music tracks assembled by DJ DS of Berkeley nad resident on the lap top.  The Colonel thought a DJ was someone who had mastered the craft of assembling and playing for an appreciative audience music tracks from all over.  True as far as it goes, but a DJ also has mastered the genre to the point that he can assemble a large number of tracks on a particular obscure topic, like a road trip.  Something new to know.  Our evenings and the composition of these words, at least, are filled with eclectic sounds new to us .

Seen on the Road

 

Floridians love these whimsical mail box thingies.  At least these don't have hats.

 

Tomorrow

North to Gainesville or, perhaps, even Lake City Florida.  The next goal of the trip is Columbus, Georgia, where we will finally turn west.

 

Wellington Boot, Col.