A Sand Paean

Everybody has heard of the National Parks and National Monuments. Gorgeous, but often overcrowded. The National Seashore? I wasn't really aware of them until last year.

Beaches. I’ve never been a huge fan of beaches, even though my privileged life has gotten me on beaches from Zanzibar to New Jersey. I get to a beach, ok, fifteen minutes later, what do I do now? Too hot, too glaring to read a book or screen, already went swimming and now caked with salt.  I know I'm an insignificant, non-legally protected minority. 

My first brush with the National Seashore was last year, tooling down the outer Banks of North Carolina: Kitty Hawk, miles of ticky-tack, condos and shopping, ferries, and then Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Wow. Sand dunes drifting across the road, miles of clean sand without a single umbrella, and only a countable number of folks within eyesight. We didn't have much time then, so a few brief walks and we had to mosey on to catch our next scheduled ferry.

A friend from Atlanta had said I gotta get to Cumberland National Seashore. As previously written, fantastic.

The Gulf Islands National Seashore is a 100+ mile stretch of barrier islands off the Florida panhandle. We explored just three of many; several are not accessible via vehicle but only via seasonal ferries.

St. George Island is half developed and half National Seashore. Sightly more developed, there were pavilions for folks to picnic in the shade.

From the top of  a WW I  battery

Most of the Pavilions were actually well-maintained, not like this (pic below)

We stayed at Fort Dickens on Santa Rosa Island across the harbor of Pensacola for four nights. Accessible only by a delightfully undeveloped 25 mph MAX road winding around natural dunes and native growths. Widely spaced parking lots allow limited day visitors to enjoy the park on the ocean side, most of the bay side is very empty.

Fort Pickens has been defending Pensacola Bay for nearly 200 years. Pensacola Bay was said, in the 1700s, to be big enough to shelter all the world's navies simultaneously, if they ever got along.

Upper left - State of the Art 1840

Upper right - Arches of original fort

Lower left - Installed for WW I, was manned during WW II. Sorta looks like a submarine conning tower.  This battery was right next to our campground.

The USA built System Three forts for coastal protection after the War of 1812. About two dozen were built before the Civil War, but not all were completed. Most forts were in the South since their rich ports that needed defense exported huge amounts of enslaved-produced cotton. The USA was exporting something like 70% of the world's cotton, the financing of which (cotton and enslaved people) dominated Wall Street's business flow.

Four Southern forts stayed in Union control during the war: Forts Pickens and Jefferson both flew the Union Jack during the war. 

Like most coastal forts, Pickens was essentially abandoned after the Civil War, although it has a curious piece of fame as the prison of Geronimo, the strong-headed Indian chief. The local town boosters thought that his imprisoned presence would increase tourism. Somehow, I don't think that's what the blindfolded Lady Justice had in mind.

World War I re-energized the fort. The early guns could only shoot cannon balls about three miles; the new rifled guns could shoot explosive shells over 10 miles. Fear of German submarines in the Gulf of Mexico caused part of the old fort to be torn down and replaced with the new armaments. Instead of all the weapons being closely packed together in a single fort, batteries were spread out over ten miles of shore. Even though fixed coastal forts were essentially obsolete by WW II,  the batteries were re-manned during WW II.  Who knows, maybe U-boats would attack Pensacola? The new guns never fired a shot in anger in either war. Almost all the old guns have been remelted into something else now.

All are open to the public to wander around in. All coastal forts are completely obsolete now, and are in decrepitude or are museums. That is a lot of abandoned tools for war all over the country, never to be used again.

To get to Pensacola and Fort Dickens, we had to drive around Eglin Air Force Base, 400,000+ acres of waterfront. I thought Tate's Hell, the largest state forest in Florida, was big at 200,000 acres.


Laissez le bon temps rouler

Next stop N'Awlins, for some of the best food in the States. We ate out almost every meal, in contrast to the previous 762 days when I cooked dinner. Just joking, but we very rarely eat out, and we almost always cook together. After four nights at a fun campground walking distance to the French Quarter we still weren't ready to leave, but we did anyhow.

Beignets are health food, right?

Basically all our meals were pescatarian, except for one with bacon. 

Barbequed Shrimp from Mr B's Bistro

I'll stop talking now about food to keep down the jealous types.  

A Bayou Swamp Christmas

So after five days of urban intensity, we went to Lake Fausse Pointe State Park to rejuvenate and maybe eat less. See if you can find it on a map. By the way, the park's name seems to be pronounced the same as the USA Chief Medical Officer. 

This is a quiet part of Louisiana. The campground is very nice and spacious. The nearest Internet connection is a 48 mile round trip to the top of a distant levee, which is where I am as I write. The nearest gas station is about the same distance away, too.

We are lake/swamp front, with a private dock. The signs warn to not dangle one's feet off the dock and keeps dogs leashed because  ...  alligators.  Barbara kept hoping to see an alligator at our dock, no luck, but we found lots while canoeing, including a 12 footer just across the creek from our dock.

Where, o where, are the gators? - Dockside

Notice the Xmasy red and green mini-tabasco bottles, three empties.

The campground is "outside" the levee. I drove to the levee (not in a Chevy,  and the levee was not dry in most areas). It is single lane gravel road, dropping off 20 to 30 feet on both sides. One has to be really careful with oncoming traffic. Especially with local Stand Your Ground laws.

The "inside" of the levee has a surprising amount of stuff,  camps, houseboats, some old houses, boat launch areas. One town, Butte de Rose, had a store. Barbara's Xmas present to me was a town t-shirt bragging it was the World's Alligator Capital. I always thought "butte" was a high igneous intrusion in the Southwest, not a pile of mud five feet above sea level, but that shows how little I know.

Some folks in Cambridge will appreciate 

this Blue and Black dog sculpture, in New Iberia. 

We have seen several of these Blue Dogs

 around Louisiana.

This was the entrance to our campground. Louisiana seems to be the most Xmas-decorated state I've been in recently.

Happy Holidays to All, and may the ReinGators bring you what you want!