764 April 1-2, 2022 You do You
Friday morning, we took the time to complete our morning routines. We then went to the sanitation station and while we were there, refilled our tires with air…no more beach driving. We were on the road by 10am. Tim drove all day. At one point we came to an area of nearly stopped traffic. Other drivers were exiting to detour around the traffic obstacle. We followed. We ended up on a dirt farm road bumping along until we made our way back to the highway. We saw a group of pronghorns on our little offroad expedition. We aren’t sure how much time we saved but we weren’t sitting still!
We had debated stopping before Houston but then decided to go on through. We stayed Friday night at Winnie-Sowell County Park. We have stayed there on other cross-country trips. It is a little further from the highway and it was nice and quiet. Tim took my bike for a ride just to move a little and I took an evening walk.
Saturday morning, I walked in the town of Winnie. The grass is green here, the wildflowers are blooming and the trees are budding with tiny green leaves.
When I got back, Tim was talking to a young man, Isaiah, who had camped in a tent. Tim offered him food and coffee both of which he politely declined. Tim is so much better about talking with people and learning their stories. Isaiah left Utah last May to walk across the country. He walked to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state and then to Montana and then to Texas and now he is on his was to Louisiana. From there he plans to walk to Maine and then to Florida. He is doing this because he wants to! He has a series of YouTube videos where he talks about his journey. I have only listened to a couple but he is quite compelling. He speaks about how he feels so connected to the Earth since he started his adventure. He observes that we have become so adept at controlling our environment with temperatures carefully controlled by air-conditioning and heat and we stay dry and we stay inside! Tim and I have always said that one of the best parts of what we do is how much time we get to spend outside in nature. It is grounding. We both feel that food is more enjoyable when we picnic outside. Don’t get us wrong…a nice restaurant meal with a glass of wine is really super nice too…we just don’t want to be limited to only that. It’s not always heathy and we become complacent and think about how much we would miss!
Many of the things that Isaiah talks about resonate with us. He says that many people sit inside doing a job they dislike and that they believe that they could never just leave to do something different. He believes that you can…because you can choose. He says that there are definitely consequences to every choice you make but that once you take the first step…everything else becomes solvable. If you want to hear him speak, check out his videos at YouTube You Do You.
Tim drove again today. We were looking for a place off the highway to camp overnight. We passed a bunch of crawfish farms. Crawfish are harvested in the same flooded fields where rice is planted.
I may have chosen something a little too far off the beaten path. It was a long ride on narrow roads to get to Palmetto Island State Park in Abbeville, Louisiana.
We both got out to see the park, Tim on the bike and I walked. We packed dinner and took it to the picnic area along the Vermillion River.
The sign says not to feed the alligators. We looked but didn’t see any…except for the large likeness outside the park gate.
