Day 4: The Road to Titusville, Part 2

Well even with the good nights sleep in the hotel we got off to a late start.

I did learn a few things today:

• Don't eat a Chocolate Shake when you are hot and sweaty, no matter how good it sounds.
• Florida has some BIG ass flying bugs. (Full face helmets are a MUST).
• Florida is HOT and STICKY. (Camping in best done in the winter, not the summer, dummy)
• You can just skip everything from on the pan handle coast from Pensacola to Panama City Its all just a tourist trap.
• Especially skip Panama City!

After some really nice highway miles through some pretty pine forest, we suddenly arrived in San Diego...well it looked just like San Diego, same wide streets with half brown grass at the sides, same kind of plants. Same kind of feel. It was really one of the small highways leading into Destin, but it could have been any street in Southern California. For some reason I was really disappointed. I had traveled 800 miles to see something new, and what I get is the city I grew up in. Fortunately not all of Gulf Coastal Florida is like that.

We decided to stop at Destin for lunch. We found a burger chain that I had never been to, and I said, "Mmmmm a shake sounds good." Big mistake. It made the next hours ride extra miserable.

Nate really wanted to go to Destin because he had been there as a kid and wanted to find the area he remembered. So we decided to try and take the coastal road US98 through that area. This whole section of Florida although pretty in parts (beautiful blue water, white sand), is basically one big tourist trap. It was hot and traffic was slow. Every park we tried to stop at just to take a picture was either military or charged money. We did finally find the "Public" beach and the spot that Nate thought could be the place from his childhood, but it had been completely developed around, so it was a bust.

We pressed on out of Destin and went from "San Diego" to "Tijuana" or better know as Panama City. This place was a pit. It was dirty and smelly, traffic was bad. At this point I was at my peak of feeling crappy because of my poor choice in lunch time beverage. We were just about ready to give up and take the fastest route to the interstate to get the hell out of town, when we stopped at a seedy gas station to recoupe and check the map for our escape route. After a Gatoraid and a few minuets off of the bikes we decided to press on with US98. This ended up being a great decision.

Once past Panama City the traffic evaporated, the temperature dropped a bit with a nice breeze of of the gulf and our spirits rose. We motored on and went through a little town with a great vibe, Mexico Beach. For some reason this little beach town reminded me of all the things I liked about beach living. It was just nice. It recharged us.
It was at this point I realized something interesting about how our surrounding really affected our morale and that our morale really affects our energy level. This may sound obvious, but it was absolutely amazing to see us go from "we want to find a place to stop" to "we can push on for hours" over a mater of minuets and a change in scenery and the "vibe" of a place.

After making up some major miles on nearly empty coastal roads we decided that we need to find a place to stay. we called up all the camp grounds that we could google and they we all full. Eventually we found a RV Park that had spaces open for camping. Nate said that he got a weird feeling from the guy on the phone, but we decided to check it out anyway. Well it looked more like a Trailer Park, then an RV Campground and the place did not have a good "vibe" about it. So we moved on.
We rode on, until about dusk. We found a RV Park that had a bunch of open spots less then 100yds from the beach. This was perfect. We staked our claim and prepared dinner, discussing the merits of my "Jet Boil" stove to Nate's mini camp stove. Both boil water well.
One pack of freeze dried mashed potatoes and a pack of chili mac later we were fed and ready to explore.

We walked the beach and found a whole bunch of 3 to 6 inch crabs out hunting for food. It was cool to watch them run.