Wanderung 1

Key West or Bust

Holts Take Time in Toyota Truck to Tramp Together in Tepid Temperatures!

January-February 2003

Sunday, February 16, 2003
When we peeked outside the tent, we saw the truck standing in a couple of inches of water and everything covered by wet green goo. That was depressing enough that we decided to go out for breakfast. We remembered a Denny’s in a Best Western on the beach near the Alabama starting point where we were going to walk anyway, so we drove over that way for breakfast.

The food was what we expected and we had a nice view of the beach while we ate. It could have been a pleasant meal but this Denny’s charged much more for each entrée than normal and bombarded us with Sunday morning sermons on the radio station. That was not, I think, accidental because this Denny’s also had the 10 commandments posted on the door and fundamentalist religious themes were featured on the marquee outside. Having that “old time religion” shoved down our throat with an overpriced breakfast left a bad taste in our mouth, and we certainly would not go back.

On the positive side, we chatted with two Volksmarchers who were in the middle of their first walk of the day, and they were fun. We discussed the different routes available so that when we signed up after breakfast we really knew which one we wanted. The route we chose lead west along the beachside road and returned along the beach. Walking west we noticed that the commercial development stopped at the next crossroad, after which we had residential buildings on both sides of the street, mostly single family homes and duplexes. These beach homes were quite diverse architecturally speaking, and we enjoyed the creativity shown by the owners in naming their houses—many were atrocious puns.

The walk back was slowly due to walking on the sand, but the rain during the night had compacted the upper layer of sand so it wasn’t too bad. We also had that wind at our back for this stretch, which helped. One thing I noticed was the extensive beach erosion in a couple of places. In fact, some homes had hay bales piled around their support pilings, apparently to prevent the sand washing away completely. A couple of homes were so close to the water that at high tide the people could step off their deck directly into the water, which I think is too close for comfort!

After finishing the Alabama walk we had lunch at Arbys and took a short nap before attempting the final walk on the Florida side. This time we decided on walk number 5 which led east along the Perdido Key beach. We were getting quite tired, so we adopted a variation where we would go out on the road that led into the National Seashore at the end of the island and then come back on the beach. We figured that way if the beach walking was too strenuous we could bail out and come back on the street. That turned out to be a wise decision.

It was turning cooler as the afternoon wore on, and soon after we started the walk we both realized we were rather under dressed. We both had just t-shirts on, and as the temperature fell into the low 50s and the winds kicked up, we were getting colder and colder. That was not a good sign because we had the wind at our backs on the way out, which is a lot warmer than the wind in your face. We were tired and chilled enough to call it quits at the 5 kilometer turnaround point rather than attempt the full 10 km.

As it was, when we walked over to the beach and started back west we were caught by the wind roaring off the ocean and chilled to the bone, as well as blowing sand in our faces. As in the previous walk on this beach, the sand was very soft and the traction was quite difficult. It felt very much like “2 steps forward, 1 step back”, and we did not relish the thought of another hour or so of that kind of slog, so we decided to take the next cross walk back to the road and finish our 5 kilometers that way.

All in all, though, we felt like we got our money’s worth for the Floribama weekend with 6 different walks for total of 65 kilometers. Next time we will take some of the “inland” walk routes and bring our bikes for the Volksbike events. We also might do the Volkswim events at the pool in the hotel where the Alabama walks started. We returned to our camp for the last evening fire of the trip and had a simple dinner of Gumbob before turning in for the night.

Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt
Prolog
January 2003
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February 2003
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