2005/03 Deep South trip - Mill Pond |
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Friday March 11th
Friday was going to be a driving day. I wanted to get along the Gulf Coast to a state park by early afternoon, as the forecast was for a wonderful weekend and many locals would be heading for the beaches. I knew the state parks in Mississippi and Alabama had been badly damaged by last fall’s Hurricane Ivan, so we had to drive all the way into Florida. Even so, we saw quite few wrecked buildings along Florida’s coast. Last November it was hard to buy plywood as the country’s whole supply was sent to Florida, the “Plywood State”.
We had a fast drive across Lake Pontchartrain, then past Biloxi, Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama, but then a long drag in heavy six-lane traffic along the Florida coast from Pensacola to the park on Henderson Beach. The sign at the park said “full” and then we found out that just about every campground on the coast was full, and so were most of Florida’s state parks, even those inland. The local commercial campgrounds charged $50-$100 for a site, and even they were full.
After some futile phone calls, we drove a hundred miles to Florida Caverns state park near Marianna, thinking that no one would want go down caves on a nice weekend. But, we arrived well after dark and the park’s gates were closed. There were a couple of commercial campgrounds near the park and we eventually found the Arrowhead campground after a lot of wrong turns. That was also closed up but the manager came out of his trailer to offer us a cheap, cash-only, no-receipt deal. After 12 hours of traveling we were just happy to stop.
Saturday March 12th
Well, we were very lucky with our last-chance campground. It was located on Mill Pond, a good-sized lake, and surrounded by woods, mainly tall cypress trees. The cypress trees are the ones you often see sitting in murky water in pictures of murky southern swamps, with belled-out bases and aerial roots. However, this lake is spring-fed and it’s amazingly clear for warm water. This was just as well as there were trees even in the middle of the lake, and their aerial roots or “knees” were definitely a navigational hazard, with some lurking just below the surface.
We took the kayak down from the roof pod and spent the day exploring the lake, especially the backwaters. We saw herons, cormorants, ospreys, kingfishers, and some large bulbous turtles. It was a cloudless day, in the mid-70s, and the only snag was a very strong wind blowing down the lake. On the way out we could just let the wind carry us a few miles down the lake while we concentrated on zigzagging between trees and stumps and knees. On the way back of course we were battling into the whitecaps, with the spray flying. The Spanish Moss, hanging from the trees, was flying out horizontally like flags.