A Tornado And A Blizzard

Why wouldn’t there be a tornado and a blizzard on our first trip?

The first time he saw snow he ran from window to window looking out. He and I went out in this snow and he sunk to his shoulders. It was a short walk.

In January 2024 we traveled to Pensacola, Florida to get out of the Northern cold.

Floridians have named the people who do this “Snowbirds”.

Kind of a cool image.

If you search on the phrase “A snowbird is a person who migrates from the colder northern parts of North America to warmer southern locales, typically during the winter”.

Pensacola is loaded with things to do if you love military stuff. There’s the Naval Air Force base, the Navy Blue Angels, the National Aviation museum, the Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime museum.

Pensacola also has some pretty spectacular shoreline, it modestly wears some of The Gulf Islands National Seashore.

There’s not a lot of fanfare, it’s a gate and a big long beautiful drive.

Pensacola to Santa Rosa Island and Fort Walton beach.

The Gulf Islands National Seashore is a strip of beach that spans the length of the panhandle in Florida to Mississippi southern shores. It offers plenty of water activities and preserves many natural and historic sites along the Gulf of Mexico barrier islands of Florida and Mississippi.

In 2022, it was the eighth-most visited of the National Park Service.

But if the scenery wasn’t enough, Pensacola also has some pretty epic seafood, if that’s your thing. At Joe Patti’s I learned about Amberjack, which is quite delicious pan fried on the grill. It’s not a glamorous fish, a humble one packed with flavor.

At Peg Leg Pete’s I discovered grouper can be stuffed with crabmeat and topped with Crawfish Julie (a Cajun Steak Diane sauce (perhaps a “Cooking for Two post?)).

Things I didn’t know or missed in my younger years.

But I also learned that Florida has a personality all its own.

Generous.

Perhaps from years of hosting Snowbirds?

Hurricane experience?

When there’s going to be a bad weather event, they tell you.

Announcement pinned to the main gate of the park:

“Please stop at the gatehouse to hear about bad weather coming”.

There they tell you to head to the bath house if you feel threatened by the weather.

Emails declare if you need to leave they will refund your remaining nights fees.

Texts saying the same thing.

Rangers present for the event, appeared frequently. They packed up the tent guys, those that stayed, and secured them in the bath house.

We were at Big Lagoon State Park, Pensacola, Florida when a tornado hopped over Pensacola and nailed Panama City in January, 2024.

There was devastation in Panama city.

We didn’t take any pictures because there wasn’t any destruction to the park. And besides, it’s ghoulish to take those sorts of photos, in my humble opinion.

After all the horrific issues we addressed with the camper over the summer, we had nicknamed the RV, the cursed camper.

The Black Water Tank Fell Off

Why wouldn’t there be a tornado on our first trip?

The cursed camper fared beautifully.

We’re traveling with four cats the biggest one being about 20lbs (part Maine coon).

They’re great companions until they aren’t.

After about four weeks, they go from being our precious fur babies to little monsters.

They are everywhere.

They are usually pretty good travelers, but at about four weeks, at night, they develop the zoomies (where they run furiously around, bouncing off the walls(literally)) at 4AM, making them monsters for us.

This is a new development, they don’t do this at home.

We’ve introduced a 9PM play session while traveling and that delays the zoomies to 6AM which is a little more tolerable.

Getting them outside more helps as well. Amazing what fresh sea air will do.

It’s also at four weeks we take the kitties home to the farm for some unsupervised playtime outdoors.

Indoor/outdoor cats need to roam as they like, not on a leash, like a dog.

So, heading home in January we stopped in Tennessee.

Left Edgar Evins, right Tims Ford

We had reservations at Edgar Evins State Park but a previous stay (earlier in the month) told us that even a hint of snow would be a problem, so we canceled that and got a spot at Tims Ford State Park. Both parks are in Tennessee near Nashville.

We don’t really believe weather reports anymore.

They rarely get it right, but took the precaution to maybe avoid snow.

Not to be out done by Florida, Tennessee presented us with a pretty unique blizzard.

A once in one hundred years event according to local news channels.

Except they didn’t warn us like Florida did.

The cursed camper.

Why wouldn’t there be a tornado and a blizzard on our first trip?

In fact, we had to extend our stay two nights at Tims Ford and they charged us a reservation fee and camping fee for each extended night.

They didn’t seem to care that we were stranded there.

There were no rangers present.

In fact after a while we started to wonder if Tennessee only had one - if that - snow plow, because they sure didn’t have the resources to take care of the park.

Or the roads out of there.

Or the freeway.

The freeway was bad, icy and there were good-weather-only drivers sliding everywhere. We took backroads all the way to Kentucky where things seemed more in control with the roads.

Even though our liquid tanks have heating elements on them, the black and gray water tanks froze solid.

Took a week to get them to thaw out at home.

We were lucky they didn’t split.

---

All Photos Credit: Collette Greystone.