Thursday, October 27th

Four in One

It looked like it had rained overnight. There was still heavy clouds in the east, but ahead, in the west, the skies were clear and blue. A quick stop at the petrol station and I was off.

Near the end of Destin, there was a huge tacky castle, all towers and turrets, arcs and columns, painted in orange and white. It called itself the Harborwalk Village and promised luxury condominiums. The road, meanwhile, continued over, yes, a bridge and onto an island of sand marshes.

Traffic was heavy and the map didn’t promise any relief before Pensacola, the next big city. In order to get into that city, the highway had to cross the bay. A sign warned to “check fuel, long bridge ahead”. It was very long indeed, the perfect setting for an action movie chase scene with subsequent pile-up.

Thereafter, the highway zigg-zagged through Pensacola. Given that the cities here are very new and planned, it is quite a mystery to me, why the main highways have to take so many surprise turns. This is particularly nasty, because these turns are only after signed in the last moment and you have to cross over three lanes in dense traffic.

After Pensacola, it was back on two-land country roads, lined with trees. At the end of yet another long bridge a sign announced “Welcome to Alabama the Beautiful.” I had finally reached the western end of Florida.

Right away the corn and cotton fields started. The landscape became less green and more of a dry brown. Downtown of Foley was a confusing mixture of concrete, trees and grass. A sign informed my that I would have to miss the Gun Show at the Baldwin County Fairgrounds this weekend.

As I rolled on through farmland, I realized that I had missed the opportunity to travel south and skip the city of Mobile looming at the horizon. Even better, this journey would have included a short ferry ride. But I was too far ahead already and didn’t bother to turn around.

Instead, there was a scenic detour along the shores of Mobile Bay. Or, well, it would have been along the shores if there hadn’t been large estates in the way. But this made the road very dreamy which wasn’t a bad thing at all. At a sharp right turn, there was a big resort with its very own swamp with boardwalks. Amidst all those estates, there indeed was a tiny public beach at the entrance to Fairhope. In the distance, one could see the piers of a proper seaside town. Downtown Fairhope was on top of hill though: small shops in white-washed stone buildings.

Given the traffic I encountered in Daphne, a suburb of Mobile, I decided to cross Mobile as quickly as possible on the handily available Interstate 10 motorway. It first crossed Mobile Bay on, guess what, a series of bridges before dunking into a tunnel under downtown Mobile. It then went on south which wasn’t quite what I had planned. Instead I had to return onto a regular city street which turned out to be hugely annoying. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but the lights were not synchronized at all, or rather, they were negatively synchronized and one hat to stop at every single light. In addition, the intersection I wanted to turn right on wasn’t signed and I had to take a detour yet again.

Once finally out of town, the roads became small, nice and empty again. After a while, again crossing a river, it crossed a state line and found itself in Mississippi. Here, the ground was red and the sheriff elections were in full swing. Campaign posters were everywhere over the state.

The community of Lucedale was a regional transportation hub where many highways met. But they did so in a confusing fashion with lots of turns and intersections. This resulted in a pleasantly messy town with residences and businesses all over the place.

The landscape became rather hilly again and the road started out to wind along, up and down, left and right. It crossed a river on a very long bridge and afterwards decided to stop with the winding and just went straight up and down the hills.

I arrived in the town of Wiggins just in time to see all the school buses leave. There must have been twenty of them. For the event, the sheriff came out and stopped traffic, chatting with the waiting drivers. It was this kind of town.

Thereafter, wilderness descended. Normally, you find farms and houses all over the place. But here nothing but forests. Eventually, yet another bridge and yet another state line: Louisiana.

The first town, Bogalusa made a fairly run-down, poor impression. This may have been a left-over from Hurricane Katrina that hit this area in 2005 with winds up to 125 mph. There was leftovers of a torn down building and the wally shell of another, bigger one. The church, meanwhile, was positively huge. But also the residential buildings on the road out of town looked rather poor.

Franklinton next. It was a very compact city with all the business arranged unexpectedly close to the center. One does get used to the normal arrangement of an endless business strip on the way in and out of town, but here, businesses seemed more central. There even was a big factory smack downtown.

The destination for the day was Amite City, though. It was chosen barely on the merit of being next to the Interstate which would indicate a choice of motels. It turned out to be two. That’s still a choice.