Monday, February 10, 2003
When we woke up it wasn’t raining at the moment but the sky was threatening. We decided to break camp and pack away the tent first before having breakfast, which turned out to be the right idea. Right after we got the tent packed into the car top carrier and we were pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, the skies opened up with yet another deluge. We quickly chucked the rest of the stuff in the back, gobbled our cereal sitting in the truck cab, and drove off hoping for clearer skies to the north.

It continued to rain intermittently for the first two hours of the drive but let up when we stopped for lunch in Perry, Florida, where we had to make a left turn. Miraculously, it had completely cleared by the end of lunch and remained bright and sunny thereafter. The drive north to Perry and then west to the Tallahassee area was remarkable because of how deserted the area was. It was almost purely pine forests on the left and right with a very occasional home—sometimes we saw no human signs at all for 20 miles at a stretch. Given that we are in Florida and rather near the Gulf Coast, that surprised us. In fact, during the entire day’s drive we only saw development in a short strip along the Suwanee River, which really exists, by the way.

Our camp was once again right beside a river leading to the Gulf, and we wished we had brought a canoe or kayak along to explore it. The day had turned warm and sunny, so we took the opportunity to air out the sleeping bags and wash down the tent before we relaxed and sat in the sun a while. We debated sleeping without the rain fly so we could see the stars at night. Altho rain was very unlikely, the range told us the temperatures were dropping into the 30s, so we decided to put the rain fly on and have the heater going to take off the chill.

The moon that evening was waxing toward full, and during the night we were treated to the marvelous sight of a pattern of bare tree branches brightly illuminated against the rain fly right above our heads. It was a fascinating pattern to watch as it would move slightly as the wind moved the tree branches. So we could listen to the wind sighing in the trees and watch the pattern change in harmony with the sound, which was altogether very restful. In the old days folks used to harvest crops by the light of a full moon, and we certainly enjoyed our treat of “nature’s night light”.