E42 Defuniak Springs a Fort and a State Forest - a podcast by Paul Sebastian

Episode 2
2/2020
We are in crawfordville Florida. The slide is acting up again. Took a while for us to get it retracted. We will be calling for and setting up an appointment. We are staying in another boondockers welcome location. They were calling for a tornado warning till 8:00 p.m. so our host came out and suggested we move the rig to another part of their property that was away from any big trees. From there we went shopping for groceries and hardware stuff. I bought a new set of windshield wipers from Camping World, excuse my language lol. These were $2 cheaper than the ones we got on amazon. And the ones for Amazon only lasted us 4 months. Our water pump has been vibrating when we run the water so I bought some rubber washers I took off the water pump mounted the washers underneath it and remount the pump. Wow what a difference. That night we got no tornadoes but lots of thunder lightning and rain the next day we drove 3 hours West to the central time zone and arrived at another boondockers welcome location in defuniak springs Florida. We got settled into our site and met our hosts and took a nice ride to chautauque winery and enjoyed a free wine tasting. We bought a bottle of their Chardonnay and then muscadine which is a little sweeter of a white wine. Muscadine is a great that is thick skinned. It's a Florida grape which tends to be a little sweeter. We passed by the nature Coast trail which is a 32 mi section of the Florida greenways and trail system. The next day is 55° and rainy but we went to Britton Hill in Lakewood park. This is Florida's highest point at 345 ft. And you notice it's called a hill right? So I started doing a little research and I found that the highest point in Florida is the panoramic Tower in Miami at 826 ft LOL. We pulled into the parking lot at Britton Hill and we saw a sign very tongue-in-cheek about climbers who climb this "mountain" while training to climb Mount Everest. They had pictures of the climbers with their oxygen and Alpine climbing gear LOL. We walked around looking for the marker that showed we were at the top how the hill. But it could not be found. Because there isn't one lol. So apparently the parking lot is around 2 ft lower than the highest points in Florida. So basically any little rise and elevation of 2 ft would bring it to the highest point. The hiking trail was about 3/4 of a mile so we did it like three times just to get some exercise. We can now add our names to the long list of people who dare to climb the highest point in Florida lol.
We then drove to florala Alabama about 10 mi away. It was our first time being in Alabama. We wanted to walk around the town but there wasn't much of a town to walk in and then the rain started. So we then drove over to the town of DeFuniak springs. MSN had named this city as the best small town in Florida. It has one of the only two round spring lakes in the world. We were there on a Saturday but most of the stores were closed. But we did go to Linda's half and half used book stores and bought a bunch of books and cds. We then walked around the lake and then walked around the streets around the lake again to see the beautiful houses. Apparently they put on a beautiful Christmas light display that is reflected on the lake. We return to the rig grilled or dinner and three other couples that were at this boondockers welcome location got together we built a campfire and we sat for a few hours talking laughing and getting to know one another. The next day we drove to Pensacola Florida and visited fort pickens . When we arrived at the Fort we were confused with the different period buildings that had no explanations. We then took their tour of the fort which is a part of the national park system. On that 45 minute tour we learned that slaves had built it in 1834 that Apaches had been in prison here including geronimo. The fort was then reinforced with the war of 1812. And then redone again for world war I. So this clarified or confusion as to what we're actually looking at. After that we went to the City of Pensacola which has a bunch of high-end shops and restaurants. Most of which are not on the waterfront. The next day I tinkered with the toad. We grounding the light wires. We moved some of the wires out of the way and secured them a little bit better. The next day we went to Henderson Beach State Park to camp for two nights. It's a beautiful campsite and Beach unfortunately it was so foggy we couldn't see more than 40 ft. We drove to harborview boardwalk but a lot of it was closed and the only things that were really open were boat tours fishing trips bars and restaurants. We did stop in at Margaritaville which was the biggest when I had ever seen. It had two floors and it was huge. Now keep in mind we're in Florida where the peak season is the summer. The next day we drove out to point Washington State Forest. We found a Forest road and drove two miles on it with the Jeep until we found a place to park. Then we hiked for 6 miles. Afterwards we stopped at the whale's tail on the beach in Miramar Beach Florida for a drink. We then headed back to the rig for dinner. The next stop Alabama with the rig. Will be at a boondockers welcome for four nights and then we will be heading off to New Orleans for Mardi Gras 2020.


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