Road Trips A Coming

Spring time and my thoughts are definitely turning to road trip! I'm thinking about taking a couple of days of vacation from work and heading down to the Texas Hill Country which in spring is just about the prettiest place on God's green earth. Kerrville and Fredericksburg sound good. A visit to Utopia.
For a while yet, I'll have to content myself with shorter trips like this. But once I retire in the not too distant future hopefully, the following eight multi-week road trips are planned.

8.  Atlantic Coast - I've got this one at number 8 simply because I've never been thrilled with the east coast. I'm sure that's due to my limited exposure to that side of our country and because I somehow have never had a good experience the few times I've been. Let's see - Navy boot camp in Orlando in July/August (boot camp was bad enough, but the heat, humidity and those damn love bugs were intolerable!), Boston (the most obnoxious, loud, rude people I've ever run across), New York City (the only people more obnoxious, loud, and rude than Boston - I saw with my own eyes an ambulance stopped to pick up an elderly woman ( I saw her on the gurney) and people were driving by screaming obscenities and giving the EMT guys the one-finger-salute because they were blocking one lane of the road - unbelievable.), New Jersey (nice people, but everything looked grimy and dirty), Philly (my 2nd best experience on the east coast), Buffalo (spent a long, cold winter there one week), and driving through Maine (nice folks, pretty, and without a doubt the best experience I've had in the east). I may never find the time to take this trip, but if I do, I'm hoping to see a whole different world from my previous experiences. From funky and fun Key West, FL. up through Miami, West Palm Beach, Daytona, Fountain of Youth, Savannah, Charleston, Roanoke Island, Fort Sumter, Kitty Hawk, Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, and on up to the Statue of Liberty. It will be a long, but hopefully very pleasant and informative trip.

7. U.S. Hwy 80 - This is number 7 on my list just because it's shorter, I've seen some of this route previously and it essentially terminates in Dallas very close to where I grew up and ran around as a teenager and young adult. I love my road trips because they take me places where I've never been, but I haven't been end to end on this one and some sections sound pretty interesting. U.S. 80 is an east–west highway, which mostly was once part of the Dixie Overland Highway. The "0" in the route number indicates it was originally a cross-country route, from the east coast to the west coast, but the western section past Dallas has been decommissioned with various interstates taking it's place. You can still see US 80 on some maps and see US 80 signs past Dallas, but it will be the same road as the interstate. The starting point in the east is in Tybee Island, GA at the Atlantic Ocean. It terminates with it's intersection with Interstate 30 at the city limits of Dallas and Mesquite.

6. U.S. Route 2 - another east-west route traveling 2,579 miles across the tippy top of the USA as well as some miles across the tippy bottom of Canada. It's the northern most east-west route in America. The eastern terminus is at it's intersection with I-95 in Houlton, Maine and travels through Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It goes into Canada at it's intersection with US 11 in Rouses Point, NY and re-enters the US in St. Ignace, Michigan. It remains in America the rest of the way to the west coast, traveling through Ashland, Wisconsin (where my son did his Freshman year of college & couldn't wait to get back to Texas where it was warm!), Minnesota, North Dakota, through some of the most beautiful land in the state of Montana - through three Indian reservations and along the southern border of Glacier National Park, into Idaho and finally terminates in Everett, Washington. This route was originally known when it was under construction in 1919 as the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway and was intended to link Portland, Maine with Portland, Oregon. It was first commissioned in 1926.

I believe that's enough for today. Top 5 coming up next time!

Pensacola Then & Then

The original inhabitants of Pensacola Bay was a tribe of Native Americans known as Pensacola. Recorded history begins for the area when the first European explorers arrived in 1528 with the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez and the 1539 expedition of Hernando de Soto. The first attempt at settlement came in 1559, but ended in disaster due to a hurricane, famine, and Indian attacks. The survivors deemed the site too dangerous to live there and returned to Mexico, leaving the area to the Indians for the next 139 years.

In 1698, the Spanish sent an expedition which built a presidio, Fort San Carlos de Austria (located a little east of present day site of Fort Barrancas). In 1722, another Spanish expedition came and built Presidio Isla de Santa Rosa (close to the current site of Fort Pickens). And in 1754, the 3rd and last settlement, Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola, was built where the current downtown historic district is located.

Sailboat in Pensacola Bay

For the next 217 years, other boring historical stuff happened, but then in 1971, the United States Navy sent me to live in Pensacola! White sand beaches to relax and play on every weekend, plenty of night life to be shared with friends, watching the Navy's Blue Angels practicing in the sky overhead while sitting on a patch of grass eating lunch several days each week, attending the Naval School of Photography (which I actually enjoyed), spending too little time with my wife and baby son and too much time carousing with my buddies. Lots of memories, lots of them good along with some regrets earned while growing up. I was young, full of energy, doing and seeing things I had never experienced before and so dumb I didn't know I was dumb. It was a sad day when I had to leave a year after arriving, but when you are a sailor and the Navy says go, you go.

Twenty years later and no longer married, my girlfriend and future new wife and I made a trip back. We didn't take the time to visit all the places of my memories. The beaches were still just as white and beautiful, the night life with attendant adult beverages was just as plentiful, and we were too busy making more good memories.

Flash forward to 1999 and once again I was in Pensacola, this time along with a wife and toddler daughter. As always, the beaches were still beautiful, the water was clear, and we had a very good time - different, but still good. There were sand castles to teach my youngest daughter to build, sea gulls to teach her to feed, sea shells to teach her to find. The strolls on the beach were much more leisurely due to waiting on tiny legs to walk or, most often, a squirming, laughing little girl to carry in Daddy's arms. And the rowdy night life and adult beverages were replaced with sitting on the dark, quiet beach watching the moon on the water.

Of course a lot of things had changed about Pensacola too. Time doesn't stand still. The population had doubled. There were many more hotels on the beach fronts and a lot more tall buildings in the city. Places I remembered as open fields were filled with homes. The trailer park with the single-wides for rent where I lived with my little family those many years ago was gone, replaced by an already aging used car lot, pawn shop, bail bond service, and a fast-food chicken place. None of the numerous bars and billiard places where I misspent some youth was still in business. The navy base now had a McDonalds and the old WWII wooden barracks my buddies had called home had been replaced with a modern, brick dormitory. One excellent change was the building of the Naval Air Museum on base, a most enjoyable and interesting addition.

Naval Air Museum

I was surprised by how much had changed over the years; so much change that I had a hard time recognizing much of anything. I didn't expect everything to be the same and we still had a great time even though it kind of bothered me to see such big changes. But then, I had changed a lot myself.