Somewhere 2 Travel Across the USA - Part 1

somewhere 2 Travel across the

USA

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“An infinite horizon is like a strong current in the sea; it drags you to unknown places... .

Mehmet Murat Ildan

...before you even notice it!”

We joke that our story sounds too cinematic to be true -

meeting at a small school of art in a coastal town called Jupiter, working as artist and model, author and editor, becoming friends under the light of the full moon. That’s not to mention everything that’s followed. But this is not the introduction to a cheesy romance novel - it’s a piece of our lives here in Florida, pre-pandemic, back when we lived the full depth and breadth and quirk of all that this strange state has to offer.

During the pandemic, our world looked very different.

Midnight arepas and outings to the theatre became midnight pints of ice cream and lots and lots of Netflix. And after months of shutting ourselves away in our tiny apartment, we had to get out. We found a way to travel safely, and set off on over 7,000 miles of adventure, from Southeastern Florida to Northwestern Montana, all the way to the border with Canada, and back. We outran three hurricanes, dodged wildfires, and eluded a literal plague to do it, but our month of mountain vistas, UFOs, and escaped carnie squirrels was all worth it.

going north (part 1)

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southdakotawyomingmontanacoloradonewmexicotexasoklahomamississippialabamaflorid

FL

Ocean Boulevard, Art Deco District

Pequeña Habana’s World-Famous Cafés

Wynwood’s World-Famous Murals

Miami

Abandoned Miami Marine Stadium

Biscayne National Park, 1 mile out to sea

Ever since I was a pasty teen spending summers in my room looking up lists of the world’s strange and unique places, I have wanted to go to Stiltsville. I remember being fascinated by the pixelated images of shacks settled out at sea, and when I moved to Florida, I knew that one day, I had to visit.

The story of Stilsville begins in the 1930s, when Crawfish Eddie Walker built the first shack miles off the Miami coast, on the sand banks of Biscayne Bay. Shack by shack began popping up, and by the 50s and 60s, it was the hottest place to see and be seen, with nightclubs, bars, and all sorts of activities of questionable legality, all passing by beyond the watch of the authorities.

Whether a series of hurricanes or its reputation as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah was its downfall, Stiltsville dwindled from a bustling seabound metropolis to only a few dilapidated shacks.

It was eventually incorporated into Biscayne National Park, where its colorful history is now preserved.

Stiltsville

Our closest truly metropolitan city, Miami gives us a well-needed cultural escape and the best dining in the state - we are talking about midnight arepas, of course.

The virus has temporarily taken you away, but we will be back Miami, we miss you.

Yuca, our favorite Cuban restaurant

Mango’s Tropical Cafe

Arepa de queso con platano y aguacate

*All photos pre-pandemic

nothing like the copilot seat

Palm Beach

For all of its artifice, there’s a certain beauty, and a thrilling feeling of trespass, as you sneak through designer boutiques or glide past megamansions to get a glimpse of how the other side of the intracostal lives.

Home

Rescued and lovingly named Justice Ginsburg

Jupiter

the apartment

the studio

Home, sweet little home full of pins and dreams

Probably my favorite photo of Allie

Jupiter Lighthouse inlet viewed from behind a beer at the Square Grouper

Jupiter - the planet of expansion and abundance, of luck.

We were certainly lucky to have both landed here, in the most unexpected of places, to fall deeper in love with each passing full moon.

The Square Grouper Bar - The video for Jimmy Buffett’s “It’s Five o’Clock Somewhere” was filmed here

The horizon, always challenging us from our beach, Juno

The Loxahatchee River meets the ocean. We go across its bridges everyday to go to work in the village of Tequesta

We do live in a beautiful place.

Full moon on the Loxahatchee River Papichulo, best tacos in town - best sign before the hurricane

full moon

At mom’s, in Tequesta

During the pandemic, Juno Beach has beacome our go-to refuge - in the late afternoon and evening when it is all ours

The calm before the storm

Our bags are already packed - we are not staying for this one.

With a hurricane quite literally in our rearview mirror, we threw our backpacks and greasy snacks into the car and hit the road.

The Zero Milestone marks the beginning of the Old Spanish Trail. From St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California, the Old Spanish Trail was an early 20th century auto highway project intended to provide a continuous highway route that would link the southwestern and southern states.

Planning and construction of the Old Spanish Trail highway system began in 1915 and the highway was officially opened for travel in 1929. The highway’s name, the Old Spanish Trail, also pays homage to the Spanish heritage and missions of the southwest and the south.

The highway follows what eventually became known as U.S. Highway 80 in the southwest and U.S. Highway 90 in the south. It once spanned the United States with almost 2,750 miles (4,430 km) of roadway from ocean to ocean. It crossed eight states and 67 counties along the southern border of the United States.

The plan for our roadtrip is to cross diagonally across the United States, driving through 20 states before returning home.

Known as the father of Miami and Palm Beach, Henry Flagler built Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine in 1888. It was not until 1975 that it became Flagler College.

As a college, the Flagler courtyard has seen its share of students running across it - late for class, or cramming for finals. But as a hotel, back in the day, the crowds were once quite different.

The Ponce de Leon Hotel books count a then thirteen-year-old JFK on vacation, a Rudolph Valentino while filming parts of the silent movie Stolen Moments in the courtyard, and the crew of the TV series Route 66 while shooting some of its best episodes at the hotel.

St. Augustine, the oldest city in America, founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, has survived attacks by the French, the English, Timu

Beaches, incredible architecture, great restaurants,

ucuas, pirates, and a hungry beast

...and yes, they make the nastiest, meanest, most delicious veggie-burger ever!

Fernandina Beach

GA

“Mama always said: ‘Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.’”

Forrest Gump while in Savannah

“Eleonor” Apartment on Forsyth Park

For each of the freemen who came to settle the new colony, 50 acres of land were awarded.

This included a house lot in the city of Savannah, a five-acre garden lot outside of the city, and a 45-acre farm lot beyond the garden lots. The colonists usually lived on the city lot, thereby taking advantage of the safety of the city, and they worked their garden and farm lots for food and other resources. Today, twenty-two of the original twenty-four Savannah squares still exist.

Georgia Historical Society

Garden of Fragrance Forsyth Park

Antiques on Bull Street

“Va doky, va doky...”

“I began to doubt that I would ever know the truth of what transpired, or who those people really were.

But all that changed one rainy August afternoon, when I was surprised by a dead man who had answers.”

James Caskey Author of Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City

“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

Abraham Lincoln Abe’s on Lincoln Pub

Big chickens, small pies, and strong piña coladas - Tybee Island

After saying goodbye to Savannah, we visited the Wormsloe oaks, the Bonaventure Cemetery (of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” fame), and drove by ch

hance by the docks of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. However, we were a bit dissapointed to see the boat we found was named after Suzanne and not Jenny.

SC The Medusa Tree Roots, Swamp Rabbit Trail, downtown Greenville

Liberty Bridge

Falls Park on the Reedy, Swamp Rabbit Trail, downtown Greenville

It could be that we were feeling uneasy because of the pandemic - and we plan to visit this gorgeous city again to clear such feelings - but the town somehow felt agressive, unfriendly. Maybe it was because many were not paying much attention to mask-wearing norms as they approached others.

The way we remember it - the moment we took this picture - she was giving all of those people the finger.

Detail of the “Rose Crystal Tower,” by Dale Chihuly, on Falls Park

Storefront, downtown Greenville

Now, there are chicken coops, and there are Chicken Coops!

This is the story of the time I made Fernando drive an hour off route to a tiny town in Transylvania County, North Carolina to sit at a random college campus and go searching for their infamous white squirrels, descended from escaped carnival performers.

So it turns out white squirrels - not albino, but white - are very rare. Rare enough that in 1949, these squirrels were a part of a traveling carnival in Florida - a carnival whose caravan overturned on its way through town, giving two squirrels the chance at sweet, sweet freedom. Unfortunately, that squirrely freedom was cut short when a local Florida man known only as Mr. Black caught the squirrels playing in his pecan grove.

Mr. Black eventually passed the squirrels on to a Brevard, North Carolina resident to breed them. Attempts to breed were unsuccessful, but their second bid at freedom wasn’t, and they lived out their lives in nature as white squirrels should, with many white squirrel babies to carry on their legacy. Today, supposedly one in every three squirrels in town are white, but I’d also heard many stories of people never finding them and calling them only a rumor, so my hopes weren’t high. But I’ll be damned if the third squirrel we found wasn’t white as snow, thereby making me the happiest white squirrel stalker in Transylvania County. I took many, many photos, thoroughly weirded out the white squirrel in question, justified our crazy detour, and we all lived happily ever after.

Allie

NC

If I had stopped at a tavern and had a beer for every time I shot myself on the foot during this trip, I’ll be and a/lcohol-ic.

Sometimes you just want to believe

Ashville Art Museum on Pack Square

Asheville is welcoming and full of little architectural surprises

FOR SALE: Racist Monument - Best Offer!

The Black Lives Matter movement came to a head right before our trip, and as a result, cities throughout the South were finally removing their racist monuments honoring Civil War “heroes.”

Find the rat, the locals tell you

Great Smoky Mountains National Park whispers of pebbles in the river in a million shades of green

TN

Just everywhere!

Beautiful, eye-refreshing green.

And the air...

... the precious air that we take for granted.

We did stop, yet had to be satisfied with just taking a few pics. They were closed.

Out to lunch somewhere else, I guess.

We drove quite late through Nashville’s Broadway Street.

Striking, to see how many people were still out and about without masks - never mind the new addition to their colorful city lights: Wear a mask, it’s the law!

...and that’s what happens when you are trying to take a panoramic photo of a landscape with your phone, and an eighteen wheeler gets in the way.

IL

The intended photo of the landscape is on the previous pages, and the landscape behind me is reflected in the truck. Okawville, Illinois.

Call me crazy, but I find the image beautiful anyway

Metropolis. Wonder if Illinois requires him to wear a mask

Welcome to my childhood stomping grounds, St. Louis.

From touring my old schools and neighborhoods, to crawling around the City Museum, to eating obscene quantities of all the St. Louis classics I’m talking endless toasted raviolis, Imo’s pizza, Silky’s ice cream, and Schnucks’ cookies - we made the most out of our little foray into the Gateway to the West.

MO

When through St. Louis...

...Imo’s?

...or Silky’s?

Both!

IA Miles and miles of corn fields near Percival, IA

Riding along a BNSF Railways freight train bordering Nebraska, near Pacific Junction, Iowa. Always magical.

SD

When you see a billboard advertising a sculpture park with the biggest bull head in the world... you stop.

You just have to be prepared for the other things you’ll find.

Dignity: of Earth & Sky. (Plus the Corn Palace.)

South Dakota awaits.

Midway home-base at Dad’s, in Rapid City, South Dakota

Cold? No, not really, I swear.

Sylvan Lake

With Dad

The Black Hills, South Dakota.

I’ve grown up visiting the hills yearly, if not more, and they still never fail to impress me.

Of course, it could be the excitement of knowing that the great Nicolas Cage once walked these paths before us, in search of our national treasure or to protect Mount Rushmore from self-destructing or whatnot. But I’d like to think it also has to do with the fresh pine sap edging lazily through the air, the rock formations that seem beyond the bounds of nature, or just the peace in knowing you can breathe outside, away from the crowds and constraints of the city. But no, it’s probably just because of Nicolas Cage.

Crazy Horse Memorial, built on private land, in the Black Hills of Custer County, South Dakota

Mount Rushmore National Memorial, also in the Black Hills, less than 20 miles northeast of Crazy Horse Memorial

Stephen Isabelle

Allie

Cathy

yoga goat

neighborhood thief

Koda

with dad

Travis

Allie

Stu

Cathy

Brownie

Brownie’s pet

If you know the right “wrong” people in Rapid City, they take you to the best “allies”, “little-known” f

famous restaurants, and old speakeasies with real tunnels under the city to escape the prohis.

To understand what I really felt driving across the Cheyene River on the way to the Badlands, you have to have read the western masterpieces written by literary legends like Keith Luger and Sylver Kane who made kids like me - who at 10 thought I could draw faster than any of my older brothers (my toy gun, that is) - dream of one day riding my horse across the rugged canyons in search of adventure.

Thankfully, I did find my way into better reading material, and quickly dreamed more of being an indian than a cowboy. Recently I learned that the creators of my childhood literary heroes - both born in Spain - didn’t even use their real names to write their pulp literature (estimated 50 million sold by 2008) because they were ashamed to author the “masterpieces” I loved so much.

I still draw faster than my brothers.

The incredible Badlands

The trip continues.

We are only half-way, going north. We have many states yet to go across to reach the Canadian border. Then we plan to head back south to Florida through a different route. So, we have divided the trip into four books.

Doing a trip like this during a pandemic is not easy, and to ease your worries, we wanted you to know that we wear our masks at all times when we travel, except when taking some of the pictures - and we are always careful to do so away from others.

We keep very much to ourselves, visiting mostly national parks, and we can say that we expose ourselves to the dangers of the virus much less than when we do our groceries in Florida.

Some of the pictures we show when we are at events and with other people and family are prepandemic, and we are adding them just to enhance the story.

Please check the next books there are many more beautiful images to come.