Nomadic 2005 ‐ The End Of The Trail

2005-09-27

Just East of Fort Pickens, just West of Pensacola Beach (30.326 N, 87.180 W)This morning I drove down to St. George Island State Park to do some beach walking. The beaches were nice, but everything else was a wreck. Between Dennis and Katrina, the Gulf Coast has definitely seen better days. Every pine tree on St. George Island is dead or dying due to the high tide of Katrina. Well, it's not like Florida doesn't have enough pine trees.

Leaving St. George, I traveled West on an obnoxiously busy Highway 98 through an insane number of traffic lights before arriving in Navarre Beach. From Nivarre Beach, the Florida Trail traces the beaches all the way to Fort Pickens. Normally there's a road there, but it was snowed-in, uh, covered with sand.

Nivarre Beach is just as messed up as any city along the Gulf. The interesting thing here is that instead of cleaning up after a hurricane, it looks like they're digging out after a bizarre blizzard. The sand here is snow-white and drifts like snow. The storm pushed it over the roads, so the residents pushed and plowed it out of the way. Driving on the sand still on the road even feels like driving on hard-packed snow.

I ended up having to take the long way around to Pensacola Beach only to find that the road to Fort Pickens, the official end-point of the Florida Trail, was also closed. I didn't have enough daylight to walk the six and a half miles tonight, and as nice as the beach is here, thirteen miles of it could be kind of mind-numbing. And I don't really feel like coming back tomorrow. And, technically, I've been there before, although it was a good eight years ago.

So this is the end of the Florida Trail as far as I'm concerned. But is it the end of my journey? I think not.