If, after reading this title, you thought that perhaps we had somehow managed to drive up into the upper Yukon where the days are incredibly short during the winter, and the nights incredibly long – well you would be mistaken. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have not ventured into the cold white north, although the lack of any blog posts for a while, might have you wondering if we had fallen off the face of the earth. We have not.
However, apologies are certainly warranted for any of you who were following our blog and have been wondering what the hell happened. Well, I am definitely sorry, as I have not been holding up my end of the bargain. While my wife continues to happily snap away with her camera at all the amazing sights we have seen, and has been faithfully posting them in the Photo Gallery section of our blog, I have become very irresponsible when it comes to keeping you up to date. There are no real excuses, no good excuses and certainly no real good excuses. They are all bad ones.
So, once again, what happened, Caleb? Well, I’ll tell you. I got hit with a serious case of The South. That’s right, all the stories you’ve heard about the Deep South are true. Even in the winter – slow, warm and lazy days, coupled with lots of great adventures and a cocktail now and then, can lead to a certain sort of “I’ll get that done tomorrow” approach to life. Not that people in the South take that approach. Not at all. Sure, things seem to take their own sweet time to get done down here, but there are plenty of people working their butts off. But, for a Northern California boy hitting Florida for two months in the middle of winter, it was just too easy to knock off for a bit.
The days go by, you strike camp and make another move to another place… and then another – and suddenly a couple of months have passed. That nagging feeling comes and goes. “I should be blogging” turns into “Jeez, I need to blog something soon”, and then finally it becomes, “Sheesh, will I ever blog again?”
What started as a couple of semi-inebriated days at Mardi Gras, suddenly becomes a few days in Biloxi, and then a few days outside of Tallahassee, and then, next thing you know, you hit the warmth and the sun of Florida and every day seems like a vacation. And why not, right? Because, after all, the beach is all about slowing down, and Florida has plenty of beach. And unlike California, (where our East Coast is Nevada), Florida has both an East Coast and a West Coast. So, it seems like everywhere you go, there is sand, sun and something to see.
Atlantic Beach turned into Jensen Beach where I was able to spend several days with my friend Barb, the woman who first hired me when we moved to San Diego back in the 80’s. I hadn’t seen her in about fourteen years. Jensen Beach turned into Hollywood, Florida, and that turned into the Everglades and then that turned into the Key West. And if you’ve ever been down to the Keys, it is pretty easy to not get anything done there.
So, as we left there I thought, “Great! We’ve done the East Coast. I’ve taken a little break. (A month) And now we’ll head up the West Coast of Florida and I’ll get back to it.” But noooo! Suddenly we were catching Spring Training games in Florida’s Grapefruit League. We hung out with our Ottawa friend (and ex-Adobeite) Karen Gauthier and her family in Rotonda and caught the Tampa Bay Rays games and had a day on the beach. And then a week with our Philly friends, Earle and Jenn to catch a bunch of Phillies’ games in Clearwater (and a day at the beach). And as we all know, there is something about beer and baseball that just makes you slow down. Smell the grass. Eat a dog. The blog could wait a little while longer, right?
And in between all that, we managed to hit Orlando twice – so a couple of days at Harry Potter World and Epcot Center. A day at Kennedy Space Center. Then back up the East Coast to St. Augustine, Savannah and Charleston.
So, as you can imagine, that’s a lot of water under the bridge since my last blog which featured the untimely end of a Biloxi squirrel on a wicked cold day. I just had to leave winter behind us for a while. Our trip just keeps getting better, and we now find ourselves spending a week on Roanoke Island and enjoying North Carolina’s Outer Banks. We are eating even more good seafood and climbing up old light houses. And yes, we will probably get to the beach in the next couple of days.
So, I am renewing my pledge to chronicle more of our adventures, and I plan on going back in time to catch you up on some of the places we’ve already been to, that deserve some mention. I’m going to try and make the entries shorter and sweeter – but get back on a more regular set of posts.
And hopefully, we can put the last eleven weeks of blogging darkness behind us. Stay tuned if I haven’t completely lost you.