[On the road to Lake Talquin State Forest]

Meg: [driving] Turn here?

Liz: [looking at map on phone with GPS] Yes…No…Yes…No

Meg: This one?

Liz: No…Yes…No…Yes…No. Yes.

[Meg turns]

Liz: No, that wasn’t it.

[They drive past a dilapidated church, two dirty mobile homes that were missing windows or had peeling siding, and a clean mobile home with 3 kids playing outside next to a minivan sitting in the yard with a completely flat tire. A stray dog ran in front of the car.]

Thank goodness we only had a 22-foot van to turn around.

We planned to spend the night at Lake Talquin State Forest midway between Ocean Pond in Osceola State Forest and Santa Rosa Beach near Pensacola. We planned a lot of nice things for the day.

After a foggy night, we awoke to everything slightly damp in the van from the humidity. Not deterred, Liz prepared a lovely breakfast spread.

We decided that Ocean Pond, while full of lovely friendly people with a private campsite for only $8/night, was a bit too depressing in the rain and mist. Since we’re headed to Santa Rosa Beach for the 30a Songwriter’s Festival for the weekend, we planned to drive 2 hours and make it halfway there. We found another cheap campground in a different state forest for $10/night. All seemed well.

Things started going off the rails when we decided to do some laundry. We pulled into the Love’s Truck Stop only to find out they didn’t have laundry. What truck stop doesn’t have laundry? The place across the street did, though both the washer and dryer were overpriced for being outside and next to the smokers’ bench. We did our wash as a downpour blew through, dumping buckets multiple times. Luckily, we were off the road and dry.

We continued on to Lake Talquin. Liz called to verify that the road to the campground was paved. After a strained conversation and a consultation with another phone agent, Liz was assured that the road leading to the campground was the only paved road in the place. All seemed well.

We exited the highway and tried to find our way to the campground. Which is when the above dialog occurred. After turning around, the drive just got weirder.

We passed nice-looking, rather spacious homes that were just off somehow. A smidge too close together. Oddly-designed drainage ditches. A little like the community in Edward Scissorhands, but on a thoroughfare. It seemed like a HUD project of single-family homes. It tried to be nice, but just couldn’t quite get there.

As we continued toward the birding trail and campground, there was the oddest mixture of larger, well-kept homes next to abandoned trailers with broken windows. Then a set of 4 homes with one for rent while the end unit was burned out and should have been condemned. There were also a few too many houses with 3-5 people mulling outside on an ugly day. Or with 6 cars in the driveway of a single trailer.

We continued onward and there was a man at the end of his driveway wearing earbuds. Liz waved, as we are accustomed to do in campgrounds. He didn’t acknowledge her and Liz noticed he was drinking a 40 of beer. And then the road turned to dirt.

We turned around at a slightly-less rundown church with an unpaved driveway. As we passed our friend on the street again, he smile and waved enthusiastically. I increased our speed slightly. Two more stray dogs crossed our path.

We decided to get a bit closer to Santa Rosa Beach by heading to the trusty Walmart in Panama City Beach. It looked on the map to be surrounded by golf courses. We hoped we’d be able to take Rubi for a walk on the manicured grounds.

We pulled in at night and found this instead of the golf course:

The pond was a nice surprise and we had a pleasant walk, but the fog combined with Ripley’s Believe It or Not bizarre architecture and the rundown beach vibe similar to Virginia Beach was not what we expected.

On the bright side, Rubi met her first tiny frog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQrg1YNXWE

The Walmart parking lot had a few other RVs, which was comforting. The hippy kids who decided to continue painting their RV with flowers and rainbows while standing in a shopping cart until midnight were not.

I guess at least it was free and we did sleep through the night without incident. In the future, we’ll be sure to do a bit more research about the towns in coastal Florida before pulling in for the night.