This morning it was cold and rainy. Travalon had to get his oil changed because it was at 15% life left, so he looked up a nearby oil change place and went there... but it was closed. He went to another one... but there was a forty-minute wait. So he went to a third place, getting lost on the Florida State campus, where there was a race going on so a bunch of roads were closed. Finally he found the place and got his oil changed. Meanwhile, I was happily doing DuoLingo and writing in my diary Mariah. Travalon got back just before checkout time, and we headed out... and then he saw there was an oil change place practically across from our hotel in the opposite direction from the one he'd been directed to. Why didn't that one come up first? Who can understand Google searches?
We somehow went south a bit but then found our way to Highway 10, which I really liked because it had a rest area every time I needed one. One had a sign that the toilets were out of order, but they had pretty decent port-a-potties. We stopped for lunch at Beef O'Brady's, a Florida chain, in Defuniak Springs. I had a surprisingly healthy lunch of blackened grilled shrimp, rice, and broccoli.
The beach we usually go to, Grayton Beach State Park, had flood warnings for the roads leading into it, and besides the weather was miserable, so we just headed straight for Pensacola. Once there, we took a walk around the Palafox Pier and the Plaza de Luna Memorial Monument, featuring a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Tristan de Luna. Here are some photos.
We saw pelicans and a cattle egret.
Then we drove to Mobile, Alabama in time for 5:30 Mass. The church was an unattractive modern one, and I forgot to take a photo of it, but the music was surprisingly wonderful. The opening hymn was another of my Lenten favorites, "Forty Days and Forty Nights," and the closing hymn was that one with the chorus that goes, "Praise the Holy Trinity, Undivided Unity..." but we only did two verses and skipped the one about the Holy Spirit. Even the communion hymn by Marty Haugen wasn't horrible; it was his setting of Psalm 23. I was a bit confused at communion time because a guy came down our aisle, so I thought he would be distributing communion from the back, like they sometimes do at these huge, modern churches. He saw me looking at him and held up a host, so I received it... and then I realized he was going around giving them to people who had mobility issues. So Travalon went up with everyone else to receive from the young priest, and I sat in my pew and sang Marty Haugen.
As we drove on US Highway 45 through Alabama, it was very eerie. It has a weird vibe even in the daytime, but at night it's really eerie with the trees close on either side. We listened to Delta Blues, which is some eerie music, to add to the feeling. I'm not one to like scary movies, but being slightly scared like that was thrilling, so now I get it. In Mississippi the highway widened to four lanes, but we saw some deer that almost ran in front of us. I have always gotten an eerie feeling from Alabama and especially Mississippi, like I can feel the ghosts of angry, murdered black men watching me. The sign for Mississippi, with the S's that look like nooses, did not help. This is the first time I've stayed overnight in this state - I feel like those people who pay a lot of money in Savannah to get locked in a basement overnight with supposedly thousands of ghosts of Confederate soldiers.
It was after eight when we stopped in Waynesboro for dinner. There were a bunch of chain restaurants, but not even Southern chains like Waffle House, just McDonald's and Burger King and Hardees, like that. We drove around a little and found this place.
The smokehouse was closed, but next door there was a bar and grill that was very lively. We were ignored by the waitresses until the bartender walked by and I caught her attention, so she waited on us. I was happy to go somewhere local, and Travalon had a barbecue burger so at least he got his barbecue. I had chicken with sides of broccoli and macaroni and cheese.
We got to Meridian about a quarter after ten, but the pool was open until midnight (said the front desk lady; in the pool itself, it said it closed at ten) so we hurried down there. It was a lovely, warm pool, but weirdly you had to go outside to get to it in its own building, and we swam for about twenty minutes. Three young guys came in and toked up in the corner by the hot tub, so we weren't sure about using it, but we did go over... and it was cold. This is not the first time I've encountered a pool warmer than the hot tub. Then we couldn't get the key card to open the door to the hotel, so I asked one of the three young gentlemen, figuring they would be highly motivated to get us to leave so they could smoke their wacky weed in peace. One guy came and opened another door just to the left of the one with the key card reader that we hadn't even noticed, so then we felt a bit stupid. Of course, it's like 40 degrees out there, so we weren't inclined to spend a lot of time looking around while dressed only in wet swimsuits.
Travalon wanted me to include this photo.
These are the panthers he was hoping to see yesterday at Homosassa Springs. I guess they are really good at hiding, even in a small enclosure. No wonder they're so hard to spot in the wild!
Famous Hat
No comments:
Post a Comment