I’m leaving Florida behind. After nine long weeks in the Sunshine State, I’m finally moving on.
Nine weeks is a long time for state residency in a van – especially when it’s unintended. I spent nine weeks exploring Maine this summer, but I knew I wanted to spend two months there. When I arrived in Florida, I wasn’t quite sure when I’d be leaving. Between Christmas in the Everglades, on the southernmost part of the contiguous east coast, to nearly four weeks in Kissimmee waiting on van repairs, to my travels in recent weeks up the west side of the state, I’ve seen all I wanted to of Florida. It’s a big state when you travel around the outside.
Florida is a catch-22 of a state. On one hand, you’ve got some of the most beautiful coastlines and natural wilderness anywhere in the country. On the other hand, you’ve got Florida residents, both human and reptile. It’s the only place in America to have crocodiles, invasive and poisonous snakes are everywhere, and as for the humans – well, you’ve seen the headlines.
I’ve watched a miracle of nature as a turtle laid eggs in the sand feet away from me and seen a man toss garbage over the roof of his car into protected wetlands. There have been stunning sunsets and raging storms, old trees dripping with Spanish moss, and clear-cut fields prepping for construction. Evidence of the early conquest of the state is everywhere in St. Augustine and racism still pervades in places like Chieftown and teams like the Florida State Seminoles. But there is a sense of freedom too, in places like Easton and the stories of freed people towns in the swamps. I read South to America by Imani Perry in January and learned this side of Florida as I traveled to the panhandle.
In Apalachicola National Forest, ancestral home of the Appalachee people, I had the most stereotypical Floridian experience in all of my time here. Gun shots rang out from the moment I parked the van at a dispersed campsite and continued into the night. They resumed early in the morning on Saturday and continued until I left on Sunday. My northern friends inquired to the hunting season, but clay pigeon season is year-round. There was a steady stream of traffic even five miles down the dirt road: every type of off-road vehicle you can imagine and a few passenger vehicles too. Dirt bikes, ATVs, UTVs, pickup trucks – it was paradise for country folk looking to go for a rip. I scored a prime campsite and was rewarded with a steady stream of traffic all weekend. Saturday morning, two ATVs ripped through my camp on their way down to the lake. A woman riding on the back of one raised her glass of dark liquid to me as she passed – happy hour starts early in the woods.
I’ve been around guns before. I’ve used a shotgun and traveled through the South for months. It’s not uncommon to hear gunshots during the weekend anywhere rural – but this was the most frequent and the closest. The three that passed by on ATVs started shooting the minute they reached the lakeshore and continued all the way around, just a few hundred yards from my camps. While they clearly knew which was to shoot, it was still nerve-wracking.
After I left, I crossed time zones without realizing, forgetting that Florida takes up so much of the Gulf Coast that it crosses into CST under Alabama. This was a surprise to me because it was so unexpected. An hour isn’t a big difference, but it threw me off mentally for a few days and I had to contend when feeling “behind” even when I wasn’t.
The panhandle of Florida is the most stereotypically southern, the least “Floridian.” It is composed of small towns and country highways, dirt roads and no trespassing signs. I have reached Destin, my last stop in the state. This weekend I will make the jump to Alabama, a state I have never been to before. I’m looking forward to it, but expect to quickly pass through their paltry 60 miles of coastline. (Florida has over 1,300 miles of coastline, for comparison.)
So I bid farewell to the Sunshine State. Although I did not intend to spend this much time here and felt very stuck for a few weeks, it lived up to its name and provided milder temperatures while most of the country was under freezing temps – good enough for me.
