The Road Part I

Driving across the US of A in a fine automobile is one of my passions. When I was younger, it was something I did every even numbered year… tooling from Miami to Los Angeles over a three-to-four-week span, first in a Mercedes SL, then a Bentley Azure, next a Phaeton by Volkswagen, and then a Bentley Continental GTC. Now, I am on what will most likely be the last such trip of my life… this time in a BMW 740i.

The BMW is a bit of a step down in class, but it is extremely comfortable, a more than decent driving machine, and not at all bad looking. I know, I know, I have settled. There is nothing like driving the blue lane highways of America in a Bentley with the top down. The emotional and social experience cannot be replicated; although being pulled over for speeding in the Phaeton, and the first question out of the police officer’s mouth was to ask with awe what kind of car it was that I was driving was special… and memorable.

Enough about the past. By now most of you know what is meant by “the blue lane highways,” and why it takes me at least three to four weeks to make a drive that professionals do in three to five days.

On the trip, my idea of exercise is to enter a town via main street, drive to the end of the strip, park, walk back the length of the road to the diner I saw on entering, have lunch, then walk back to the car, climb aboard and drive on. Each trip is different, mostly these drives have been in the month of August, but this last adventure is an October surprise, and as such has some weather implications that have heretofore not impacted my plans.

Hurricane Helene flooded a lot of the back roads I had hoped to take on the western coast of Florida. Now that I have managed all of that with me and The Beamer in Rosemary Beach on the western end of the Florida Panhandle, Hurricane Milton has me rerouting northward. It is hard to take a hurricane with a name like Milton seriously… but I will.

My oldest grandchild will be proud when she learns I have decided to retrace some of the places she and I did together on our second road trip when she was a Black studies major at Oberlin College and leading me through Montgomery and Birmingham in Alabama.

That will get me out of harm’s way but also far from New Orleans and any chance of dropping in on pals in Houston, Round Top, Dallas, or San Antonio. More on that future stuff when it is in my past. For now, a brief report on where I have been.

To appreciate all of what follows you must understand that on any trip from Miami to Los Angeles the absolute worst part of the drive is the part involving getting out of the State of Florida.

I love my adopted home, but it has its flaws. A general lack of topography is one of them. Florida is flat and the routes in and out are long and boring. It doesn’t help that the worst drivers in the US have Florida license plates on their automobiles. The temptation is to stay close to the coasts, but those eastern coastal towns can really be tacky, traffic-y and generally an eyesore.

Once Hurricane Helene ravaged the Florida West Coast, I resolved to stay inland… to see the farms of Florida no matter how flat, and to finally get a look at Lake Okeechobee, the largest body of water in my home state and the second largest in the contiguous US.

I got to the lake and couldn’t see it. I mean, c’mon, it is reportedly huge. I could not see it, and the reason was that nearly a hundred years ago, there was a storm which created enormous flooding resulting in hundreds of fatalities. Better late than never, a berm was built around the lake’s perimeter all but eliminating any danger from the lake to surrounding communities.

Good for them, bad for the view. I took the better part of a day driving around that enormous thing determined to see some of that massive fresh water supply, and finally, via a small, unmarked road that took me to an honest to God observation deck, was able to do so. There… as far as the eye could see…. was Florida’s finest freshwater lake.

Exhausted I opted to spend the night at a hotel in Orlando. Boring, but theme parks are not part of my dream. I moved on…. drove in and around The Villages to see what all the fuss is about.

The Villages is Florida famous. A created community in the middle of nowhere, conceived and built by a genius entrepreneur of a developer. There are multiple Golf courses, polo fields, softball diamonds, tennis courts, pickle ball, manicured lawns, beautiful homes…. some bigger and more beautiful than others, but everyone impressive or semi-so in its own way. It is an authentic and popular adult community with a notorious social life and supposedly the highest rate of venereal disease in the country. I looked around, but only exited my car to buy gasoline.

Then on to horse country, Ocala, Florida. Reminiscent of the blue grass estates I have driven past in Kentucky… every bit as opulent and beautiful… even without hills. The next day I drove into Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle. Charming. A town that used to be the oyster capital of the Stare that has all but died because of pollutants in their Bay is trying a comeback. The 19^th century homes and neighborhoods are lovely. I could live among em… there was even an occasional Harris/Walz sign.

I write you now from Rosemary Beach… one of my primary Florida destinations. A manufactured town in the western most part of the State that is Disneyland for grownups. I really like it, even if it is a movie set without the cameras. I first visited here maybe twenty years ago and thought seriously about buying then when it was only a fledgling community. Now it has fulfilled its promise.  

Northward bound tomorrow. More to come as the road provides.

 

Barney Rosenzweig