Our First Day in Florida

It was Christmas Day when we woke up to our first full day in Florida. Birds were already singing in the old mature yard trees. It was cold – around freezing – but the sky was blue and the sun had just begun its wandering across the southern sky. Molly and I took a walk down to the water’s edge. It’s called the Choctawachee Bay. Pelicans are plentiful down here and I decided that the dock here would be one of my favorite places to spend time reading a book. It was an overall very peaceful morning and I headed back in for some hot coffee, The day progressed with us being very lazy, we felt simply worn out after our odyssey down south. The last day of traveling had gone very smooth though, we had been crossing Alabama and discovered that every Alabama rest area had a dump station, That would be a real blessing for RVers. It was now obvious that we had gotten ourselves into the Deep South into Dixie. The forests had showed mighty trees where “Spanish Moss” was hanging off the branches.  The latin name for this moss is Tillandsia usneoides, an herb in the pineapple family. It has slender, gray moss-like stems covered with tiny leaves and inconspicuous flowers. Its long strands that hang gracefully from the branches of large trees, especially oaks like the Southern live oak, are a characteristic feature of the landscape. Most rural homes were low-slung buildings on rather large properties. There was a lot of water standing everywhere, so we figured that major rains had graced this area.   Freeport is a small town we will have to write about at another time. On this last day of travel we just cam off Hwy331 and turned west onto State Hwy 20, so we didn’t see much of the town. We were invited for a wonderful Christmas dinner with our hosts family so we all piled into their Honda Fit and drove off. It was turkey and ham and I guess most of us ate way too much. We didn’t really manage to stay up late that day. No, we were too tired and went to bed early. We need a couple of days for pure relaxation before we can even think of starting to explore the area. Thanks for stopping by!