I couldn’t find a great place to park last night, so I sleepily pulled off the road in Apalachicola National Forest and hoped I was in an acceptable spot. I woke up undisturbed and thankful. I was determined to start pushing down the peninsula, so I drove back to Tallahassee and meandered through the central drag of Florida State University. There weren’t any great places to park, so I unfortunately have no pictures of the prettiest campus I’ve seen so far. The streets were bursting with plants and trees, and the buildings were colorfully and artfully painted. The only eyesores were the banners showing the school’s mascot, a shockingly stereotypical member of the Seminole tribe. I would guess the tribe today isn’t very happy about that.
I rounded the Gulf of Mexico, switching direction from east to south. The western edge of Florida is pleasant, but quite rural. The towns I passed through—Lamont, Perry, Cross City—didn’t have the heft that other Southern towns had. Occasionally I would stumble across a well-developed downtown, all festooned up for Christmas. This deeply disturbed me. Christmas decorations and tropical vegetation do not belong together. I began to understand why the people of Florida are so very strange.
Eventually I turned inland toward Ocala, where suburban sprawl began to pick up. I haven’t seen this much continued development since Colorado. I ate at a Mexican restaurant where every patron was glued to the Brazil-South Korea World Cup match. Brazil was scoring at will, and the announcer was reveling in thirty-second-long cries of “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL”. This is the one facet in which soccer is superior to hockey. My food was pretty good, too.
I soldiered on until I reached the outskirts of Orlando. I will compliment Floridians on their tasteful holiday decorations. With rare exception, lights here are simple and clean. The weather tonight is equally beautiful; the temperature won’t dip below sixty degrees. I might even crack the windows. What a luxury!