Month: October 2016

October 14 to October 21, 2016—Key Largo and Bahia Honda.

I had planned on staying in Flamingo, FL in the Everglades National Park. After some review we ditched that plan. The mosquitoes are still very much in season there (next month would have been better) and thanks to the hurricane some spots opened up in the state parks in the Keys.

We booked three nights in John Pennekamp Park in Key Largo. The camp is a very small part of what is a vast marine preserve of one the US’s largest coral reefs. A few miles north of the park you start to see those patches of emerald and blue water that you don’t  see elsewhere in the US. The keys, the thin islands that stretch from the end of mainland Florida to Key West, are unique environments not just in the US but in the world. Subtropical plants and animals mix with temperate climate species in a variety of habitats that are constructed on fossilized coral reefs, some of which are old enough to have developed something like soil. So you have two foot long emerald green iguanas not far from the only endangered pine forests in North America. (The iguanas were a frequent sighting but not so frequent that we could look away from them.)

We  bicycled mostly, as the water was uninviting—very turbulent with wind and filled with icky vegetation. We spent a few hours at Dabney Johnson Nature Preserve which had very well-thought-out signage with information about the peculiar flora of the area. The preserve is home to many national champion trees because this is the only place in the US where these Caribbean species will grow.) Looked forward to snorkeling, which I had only done once before (with Lucy in Puerto Rico) and found otherwordly, but the tours were canceled because of high winds. Ate Stone Crab claws, the crab from which the fishermen only harvest one claw and return the crab to the sea to grow another. Talk about a sustainable harvest. An excellent crab, make no mistake, but for the price, myeh.

Perhaps you heard of the Screwworm outbreak here? Our visit coincided with the beginning and hopefully the height of the disease outbreak. It is an aggressive fly-born disease thought to have been eradicated forty years ago. I’ll spare you the details of the screwworm biology but its main effect here is to threaten the 1,000 remaining individuals of the Key Deer population—a diminutive deer that roam some of the keys, strolling comfortably among humans without looking for a handout. We had to pull over at an agriculture department barricade, exiting the keys, because we had pets with us.

Took a day trip to the Everglades National Park, an amazing place. I guess I’ve been told my whole life that the Everglades is a vast, slow-moving river but it never registered. I thought it was a swamp. Really it is a Serengeti of water, fifty miles wide, flowing perceptibly slowly through a sea of grass and cypress islands. At one overlook the other visitor was an African, a Nigerian by my guess, and he was excited about the resemblance to the plains of his country,  saying he wouldn’t be surprised to see an elephant walking in the distance. In fact an elephant could walk on it as it flows only a few inches deep over a solid limestone base. This is also the only home of the American crocodile, living with the more common alligator. All kinds of cool environmental stuff going on here. Makes you want to blow up the Tamiami Canal, the Everglades Highway and the dike around Okeechobee. Of course then you could only get to the Everglades by boat.

 

 

 

We decided to push further down into the keys, as there were now openings at Bahia Honda state park. This is another ninety miles, maybe, south, and the now the water is really turning gem-like colors. Good swimming in crystal blue water, but not deep. Another place that made us glad we bought bikes (although we barely have room for them, having to store them in the trailer itself when we move) which made some remote beaches accessible to us. Saw a guy reel in a three foot shark on hook and line. Swam in waters only a few feet from pelicans. Snorkeling dives canceled here, too, because of winds. Drat.

Back in Pennekamp park in Key Largo we had gotten friendly with a couple who’s traveling situation was like ours. From Michigan, in their forties, they decided to take some time traveling the country in a small fiberglass egg-shaped trailer. In their case it was a Trillium, a product of a defunct Canadian company, very much like a Scamp. They had started in December, planning on doing a year’s travel, but were thinking of carrying on past December because things were going so well—he was able to continue contributing to the business he half-owns and he and his wife hadn’t murdered one another. There were very much like us. They differed in their younger age and their habit of doing strenuous exercise routines in the morning, but I try not to hold the conditions of people’s birth or their religious practices against them. We might  see them again in Albuquerque in December.

If I have one reservation about Florida it is that I am uncomfortable doing nothing here. Elsewhere I have no trouble sitting in a chair staring at what’s in front of me or reclining to look at the night sky. Here it seems somehow wrong. The environment here foments lassitude; when I am busy doing nothing I want to feel like I’ve earned the time or stolen it, not that it seems like the natural thing to do. Perhaps a bigger part of it is this: at home, a day of perfect temperature with a crystal blue sky and a warm gentle breeze is a day to savor; you take your time to enjoy doing whatever it is you are doing and feel like you have received a gift. In Florida almost every day is like this and feeling that you have received a special gift every day can tire you out after a week. There is an angst latitude somewhere north of Savannah, Georgia where I belong.

October 8 to October 14, 2016—South St. Lucie Lock, Stuart, Florida

We finished out our stay at the ACE lock facility here, after the hurricane hegira. A nice camp—small (nine sites), friendly and helpful staff, top notch infrastructure, interesting to watch the lock operations with pleasure yachts of all description flowing back to the Atlantic from their west coast hurricane refuges, and friendly neighbors.

 

Wildlife

Manatees enter the locks with boats. Several of them in front of our canalside residence one day, for hours . Big, fat, docile creatures, hippo-like. They loll around underwater slurping up food, not showing much ambition.  Brenda says the manatee is my spirit animal. You see their nostrils sticking up out of the water, or their broad backsides, or sometimes their rounded tailfin.

(the swirl of water is a manitee, you’ll have to trust me, and the boat is George’s.)

 

Exotic birds of every description are all about–ibises, spoonbills, egrets, herons of all varieties. They come streaming out of the mangrove forest in the early morning.

A dead alligator washed up. An eight-foot long, white, belly-up carcass, stinking to the heavens. The stench drove some boaters away from their boats until Park ranger Art came to tow it out into a cul de sac of the mangrove forest across the canal.

A number of small and large parks with trails within a few minutes drive. Atlantic Ridge Nature Preserve was a vast network that we sampled a few miles of. Their claim to fame is the periodic prescribed burning they do to mimic what would have happened in the area through the pre-human millennia. I think they might be overdoing it a bit. We did see some bobcat tracks but the preserve seemed rather devoid of life. We actually got locked in this park—the exit gate was padlocked when we tried to leave and had to make some phone calls to find someone to let us out. Still not sure why that happened. (Now that I think about it I am not sure they want people in this preserve. Besides being locked out, there were no signs, and the only available map was an indecipherable tangle of lines worse than the map of the Hudson River island I complained of in a previous post. Now that I think on it more,  I like the idea of a piece of land kept in its most natural state that would even go so far as to discourage humans from visiting it. If someone wants to bring a compass and supplies and climb a gate, they could come in.)

 

Bikes

We bought a couple  of single gear bikes off Craigslist, $30 each. We used them a lot exploring the area in two directions along the canal and surrounding farms. We’ll keep them at least until New Orleans next month, altho Brenda’s is a cute paisley-decorated orange Huffy that she is growing fond of. Huffy is a Chinese word meaning “sloppy welds,” I believe.

 

One place we biked to was on a shell trail east along the canal that ended after a few miles under the Florida turnpike. We found ourselves standing under massive concrete arches supporting a highway maybe seventy feet above. It started to rain and we were protected under the highway. Water running off from the highway bridge high above started pouring out of spouts located about every ten feet along each side of the bridge. It was an engineering and architectural marvel, water pouring down in even intervals amidst these soaring concrete columns, some falling onto the ground, most falling into the canal or the surrounding swampy area. It was an operatic setting, a Seven Wonders of the World setting.  One of my favorite places of the trip.

Neighbors

There are four boat slips for rent at the lock. George was at one in the catamaran he has called home for eleven years. He entered the canal the day before the hurricane was due to hit here, planning on getting further west, but a fuel pump went out before he got to the lock. He poled the boat into a mangrove swamp, put out four anchors, took the dinghy into a marina and sought shelter on land. He had slim hopes of seeing his boat again, unless it was to find it tossed up into the mengrove forest, but the storm took a favorable turn and his boat was intact. Took him five hours, he said, to get the anchors untangled from the mangrove roots and up and he broke a toe in the process.

Extremely nice guy, George. In his mid sixties, squeaking by on social security, leading a peripatetic life. He and his then-wife had built a trimaran in San Francisco when he worked there in the early 1970s. He sailed it east through the Panama Canal after the marriage. Just a few months ago he found the boat still afloat and being used by a family on the west coast of Florida. He was in Stuart picking up his traveling companion, Happy, for a repeat of their years-ago trip to the Bahamas. Brenda and Happy had a nice walk together and Brenda looked forward to spending time with her but she had to decamp to attend to some family matters. Happy was a real 1960s San Francisco free spirit, raising two kids in a van for many years until one of the kids said, “Mom, when people ask where we’re from what do we say?”  When I told George we were planning on going to Baja Mexico he made me a gift of a nice hardbound book of the Baja peninsula, with detailed coastal maps and histories of all the little towns along the way. A generous gift to an appreciative recipient.

We had drinks several evenings with Janice and Steve. They had a portable icemaker, the device which I most covet. A cold drink is a treat for us. They live on a twenty two foot motorboat and a 40 foot motor home. They don’t own a home on land, haven’t for six years. Somehow they have coordinated the movements of these two vessels to cover the country several times, mooring one or storing the other for extended periods, or taking them both somewhere. They coming project is “the Great Loop” by boat—up the intracoastal from Florida, up the Hudson, across the Erie Canal, across the Great Lakes to the Mississippi (via the Ohio?), around the Gulf back to the beginning. Their boat is a sharp-looking affair, fiberglass made to look like lapped wood, lots of teak.

 

(the rare two-headed Florida Sandhill Crane.)

 

 

 

 

 

October 3 to October 8, 2016—Gimme Shelter

 

So we made a fairly long drive down highway A1A to Stuart, Florida, which is just outside of Port St. Lucie on the maps. I had reserved two weeks at this campsite back in April because it was cheap, $15/night. It was cheap because it is a federal facility and comes under the national parks senior pass. South St. Lucie Lock is a flood control lock system run by the Army Corps of Engineers, built to control the height of water at Lake Okechobee about thirty miles west. It has nine really nice campsites, with concrete pads, covered picnic tables, fire rings, grill boxes, and water and electric connections at each site; nice bath house, everything super clean. We got one of the canalside spots and watch the yachts queuing up to enter the lock which lowers them to ocean level, five to twelve feet, depending on the lake depth. (Lake Okechobee itself is surrounded on three sides by a 143 mile long earthen dam which is rated as the second-most vulnerable water control structure in the US.)

We arrived on Monday, early afternoon. That night the National Hurricane Center revised its predictions to put us in the path of Hurricane Matthew. The Scamp could probably handle 40+ mph winds with some prudent lashing but we were facing the possibility of 150 mph winds arriving Thursday afternoon. As park ranger Art said, “Your trailer would be like a bowling ball.” The forecasters were holding out hope of a westerly turn of the storm, taking us out of the most dangerous zone but Matthew was being billed as a real monster with a wide reach. The other issue was traffic—the longer we waited for a more definite prediction the greater the risk that we would be caught up in a mass migration and be exposed to high winds stuck on a highway. We decided to bail on Tuesday, fewer than 24 hours after arriving. I talked to Art Robertson the park ranger and he made arrangements for us to transfer our stay to their Franklin lock facility on the other side of Lake Okechobee for three nights, no extra charge to us. On Tuesday we drove 150 miles around the Lake to Franklin Lock, about fifteen miles from the Gulf Coast near Ft. Myers.

On Wednesday the Hurricane Center predicted possible tropical storm force winds (50 mph) for the Franklin Lock area. I went to Tractor Supply and bought some cargo straps. Unfortunately the nearest sturdy object to lash to was about 18 feet away. I attached to a steel-in-concrete structure and tied the other end to the west side of the trailer frame which is where the strongest winds were expected to come from.  I hooked the trailer to the truck and moved the truck forward to pull the straps taught. The long distance of the strap made it less than ideal but I figured it might keep the Scamp from rising more than a foot off the ground on that side, or at least keep it from rolling into the canal  a few feet away (and where we had seen a humongous gator earlier in the day).

In the end the storm was late arriving Thursday night and where we were it packed a weak punch—maybe 30 mph gusts that made the cargo strap vibrate like a tuning fork but did not cause us concern.

The next day, Friday, dawned calm and beautiful and we talked with all the other refugees that had come in on Wednesday and Thursday, congratulating ourselves on weathering the typhoon. The storm had arrived later than expected and was moving slower than expected, so our return to st. Lucie lock had to be delayed another day. We drove the few miles to Pine island in the gulf and rented a space at an rv park there. We spent the afternoon a few miles away at the Randall Research Center. It is an archeological park encompassing what was once an Indian city the likes of which I never imagined existed in North America. The aboriginal inhabitants, the Calusa, built mounds of shell and sand thirty feet high and residences on top to escape the mosquitoes and catch the breeze. They built a similar mound on the outskirts of the city in which they buried their dead, and that mound had a terraced spiral around it–the Calusa would walk that trail to commune with their dead ancestors and seek advice. The Calusa built impressive canals throughout their city here, four feet deep and sixteen feet across. The artist rendering based on the accounts of early Spanish explorers suggests a large urban area looking like a cross between an Aztec city and Venice. The chief’s house was two stories tall and could house 2,000 people! The Calusa dominated a large part of Florida for a thousand years, and the site at Randall is thought to be their capital. The Calusa believed a person had three souls—the pupil of the eye was one, the person’s shadow and their reflection the other two. They made masks and carved decorative wooden objects that look to me like the work of northwestern tribes or inuit. Can you guess what happened to the Calusa? Weakened by European diseases their native American rivals, armed with rifles furnished by the British, finished them off in the 1700s. A group was said to have escaped to Cuba.

The Calusa were the first natives encountered by Ponce de Leon when he “discovered” “le florida.” The Calusa met them in the Gulf firing arrows from their canoes and drove de Leon’s ships away. Another conquistador named Hernando something came back a year later and they drove him off too. Then de Leon returned for a rematch. He lost again, with the Calusa not only driving his army away but fatally wounding de Leon himself—a poisoned arrow in the thigh. They took the Ponce to Puerto Rico where he succumbed to his wounds.

I mentioned the Ribault Club in Talbot Island. Just outside the Randall Center was a similar establishment dating to the 1920s, another playground for the rich of the era, the Tarpon Club. This one was still in business and serving gin and tonics, god bless them. We sat at a tiny bar with another couple in the late afternoon while the bartender told us the history of the place. The fellow next to us had just returned from Leonardtown MD of all places, doing some kind of hospital management work for Medstar. Worse than that when we returned to Pine Island KOA rv park, the employee I struck up a conversation with said he had lived in Country Lakes in Chaptico for ten years. AND he said that there was a couple in the park who winter there every year from LEONARDTOWN! Saints preserve us.

We went into St. James City for a restaurant meal, a rarity for us. I had what was described as a “crab cake” with sweet potato fries and Brenda had a fish taco. The place needs to change the grease in their fryers is all I can say. We sat outside and watched a manatee play with her pup.

September 28 to October 3, 2016—Tomoka

I hadn’t made a reservation anywhere for these few days because I was hoping to take Brenda to a hotel for her birthday. But the place I had in mind, an old hotel on the water in Jacksonville Beach, didn’t accept pets. Originally we thought that staying in hotels periodically would be a treat but it doesn’t really appeal to us now—would probably discombobulate the cats and a  hotel stay doesn’t really offer anything we don’t already have, at least not enough to justify the expense. Can’t remember what I did actually get for her birthday but whatever it was, or wasn’t, I’m sure she remembers.

Instead of the Casa Marina in Jax Beach we stayed a few days in Tomoka state park outside of Daytona Beach. Pretty much the same as the previously described camps—tropical jungle sea islands. We met some folks who had a troupe of dancing tropical birds (not with them) that had earned them an appearance on the TV show America’s Got Talent.

Below is a local artist’s homage to the Tomoka people, hidden deep in the park.

 

We drove to a couple of nearby attractions. One was what was said to be the largest live oak (“live oak” is the species name; it is the one you see Spanish moss hanging from) in Florida, 500 years old.

 

The other was the ruins of Bulow Plantation, a vast sugarcane plantation and sugar-making operation in the early 1800s. The operation was the largest and richest in northeast Florida—hundreds of acres of sugarcane, now grown over in native plants, and a major factory operation for crushing, reducing and solidifying the sugar. The young Jon Bulow that inherited the plantation while in his early twenties was lucky that he had a lot of African slaves nearby to help him keep it going. They chipped in with the cutting of the cane (and also the cultivation of his rice fields) and the decidedly arduous work of boiling it down to make sugar and molasses. Fortunately for young Bulow there were 200 such slaves living right nearby to help him establish and maintain one of the most celebrated plantation houses in the region. We’ve seen scores of magnificent plantation houses on our travels. My first impression used to be, “wow, what cool buildings with those massive columns and vast porches.” Now all I can see is plantation owners sitting on those verandas sipping cold drinks watching bandanna’d heads going up and down in the cotton or cane or tobacco fields, and all I can hear is the snap of a whip. Has someone written a book about all the impressive structures that never would have been built without slave labor?

In this region, southern coastal Georgia and very northeast coastal Florida, a favored building material, and road material, of early settlers was “tabby,” made by burning oyster shells to make lime and mixing it with sand, water, crushed oyster shell and ash. It is a basic concrete and some buildings constructed from it in the 18^th century still stand as historical sites. The name Tybee Island is thought to derive from a corruption of the word tabby. Bulow’s sugar factory was built from a similar material called cochina. It is basically a type of tabby that forms naturally in the ground over centuries. It can be cut from the ground in blocks which harden as they cure above ground.

Bulow, like his father, had decent relations with the local Seminole Indians. When the federal government waged war on the Seminoles in the 1830s, for failing to act submissive like the other Indians, the army arrived at Bulow plantation to make it a base for pursuing the Seminole. Bulow resisted the attempt, even firing a cannon at the approaching army, for which he was imprisoned for a short time in his own home. His reasoning was that if his plantation was militarized the Seminoles would destroy it. Sure enough, when the army left the Seminoles did just that, burning the wooden plantation house and surrounding slave quarters, and the sugar works. The cochina stone walls of the factory remain intact, as do some of the cochina foundation of some slave cabins.

(remains of Bulow sugar factory.)

I think I am correct in saying that the Seminoles were the only native people who were not beaten into submission by the US government, fighting a guerilla war from the everglades. The army lost thousands of soldiers trying to roust them out, failing. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition of New Orleans, where social clubs construct and parade in elaborate indian costumes, is said to derive from slaves who escaped Louisiana into the everglades and joined the Seminoles. There defiant anthems, with refrains like “we won’t bow down/not on the ground,” celebrate that association. If you have seen the tv series “Treme” that tradition is depicted. Years ago the Paribellos and I toured the museum of Mardi Gras indian costumes, in a modest  house in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Go out now and buy the Wild Tchoupitalous album of 1976, one of the greatest records of all time.

September 23 to September 28, 2016—Northeast Florida coast, Jekyll Island to Little Talbot

 

Another postscript regarding Jekyll Island. Before we left we made acquaintance with Jan and Mac, a really nice couple who invited us into their luxurious motor coach. (It had a refrigerator better than the one in my house.) We enjoyed talking with them, comparing notes about our lives and travels. They were one of many folks who winter over in Jekyll, October to spring. I’ll talk later about our adventures with hurricane Matthew but Jekyll Island came under mandatory evacuation orders during the storm, temporarily scattering the whole camp.

After Jekyll (which, in yet another postscript, is where the design of the Federal Reserve System was hashed out between government reps and the nation’s gazillionaires in a secret meeting) we made a series of short hops down the coast. Each place was interesting or strikingly beautiful in its own way.

First stop was just south of Cumberland Island National Seashore, on Amelia Island, Fort Frederick State Park. Amelia Island is a popular destination for people, with beaches, shopping, and the little town of Fernandina Beach. Fernandina Beach has Florida’s oldest bar which we couldn’t not visit. Had gin and tonics and a banana which we bought from a little guy who hangs around the bar playing harmonica and selling bananas. He played “Oh Susanna” and “Camptown Races.”

A freight train crept through the little town and had some kind of problem which caused it to have to back up and inch forward many times over the course of half an hour blocking traffic right in the center of town. It was kind of comical, people displaying different degrees of agitation or resignation.

One of Amelia Island’s claims is the only place to have flown under eight different flags. Even tho at least two of the flags were not actual countries (a pirate navy allied with the Mexican Government; an American militia) each flag had to be forcibly removed by the next guy with a different flag which I think makes each one valid as a legitimate occupation.

We toured Fort Frederick, a star-shaped affair; a massive brick castle, with thick walls and interesting architectural features found only in forts—crenellations and ramparts, giant gates, etc.

 

There was a uniformed Union army interpreter. He refused to get out of character so you had to pose your questions as if you were in the 1860s. He called General Sherman “Uncle Billy.” He was mildly informative but every time you asked a question he had a canned recitation that started somewhere far away from the point of inquiry and took a long time to get around to it. (“Where do you go the bathroom?” “My day starts at 6am as I rise from my canvas and rope bed, put on my workday uniform made of wool from….”) Press ‘start’ to hear narration again.

The waters from Cumberland inlet meet the ocean here and the currents are strong and treacherous. I went into the water a little ways to cool off and, floating, started drifting at a fast clip. I found a coprolite on the shore. That’s fossilized poop to you.

When we were in Acadia NP in Maine, I called Brenda to look at a weird phenomenon—just after sunset bright little points of light were scattered in the nearby trees. I thought it was some kind of lightning bug that didn’t blink. Turned out to be some asshole with a laser light contraption attached to his monster RV that scattered pinpoints of bright green light all over the freaking place. He was very pleased that he had tricked us and laughed with this high “tee-hee” at every opportunity. He said he saw this contraption somewhere and “just had to have one.” Nature isn’t good enough by itself for some people. Anyway, the guy next to our campsite in Fort Frederick had the same bloody light gizmo and I swear he had the same pervert laugh. People kept stopping by his site expressing wonder and admiration at the obnoxious display. Get me out of here.

A little southern Gothic scene occurred at Florida’s oldest bar. A guy in his late thirties wearing the white linens of a restaurant cook comes into the bar and orders a double shot of tequila, downs it looking over his shoulder. Suddenly asks the bartender, sotto voce, for a non-alcoholic drink to go, “a soda or something.” Bartender serves it up as an older woman (his mother?) comes over to the guy in white and says, “what are you doing here?” “Just getting a cold drink to go.” They leave, the woman returns thirty seconds later and asks the bartender “what did he have?” Bartender answers truthfully, “a tequila and a coke.” Woman nods, looks around the bar thoughtfully and leaves. Several possible interpretations.

After a few days here we moved an hour down the coast to Talbot Island State Park. I had reserved a site on the edge of the camp that looked out over the grassy estuary that flooded twice daily with the tide. When I booked the site the description warned that this particular site was vulnerable to flooding if the tide was particularly high but it never rose that much and made for a beautiful place to camp.

 

 

We did all the trails, walked miles on the beach, rented bikes for a day and visited nearby inlets and rode on the beach. At one point a storm threatened and even tho it didn’t hit us a single bolt of lightning struck close and unexpectedly, so close that we could smell burning in the air for minutes. Brenda was outside and I was inside at the time. I came out half-expecting to find her on the ground. She was shaken but okay and thought I took too long to come out to investigate. The debate over exactly how much time transpired will go on forever, I fear. I might have taken a moment to gather my thoughts on what emergency actions might be called for, seconds at most. It isn’t like I continued making sandwiches.

Exotic birds of all kinds, always one within sight. Palms of various kinds and heights dominate the woods interspersed with towering pines.

We spent part of a day at the Ribault Club, a few miles down the road. It was a club, an exclusive Jekyll Island type resort in the 1920s that didn’t survive the Great Crash. After several changes of hands it became state property and a historical park with miles of trails, which is why we went. The original clubowner, some northern industrialist, had built and maintained a large golf course. The sand traps were already there, all he had to do was clear a bunch of palms and pipe water all over the damn place to keep up the greens. Money was no object. You can still detect the outlines of the course and the waterworks. The park hosts a large colony of gopher tortoises, the Florida state reptile.

Interesting fellows, the size and shape of a GI helmet, they excavate and live in deep burrows with many side passages. Something like 300 other species (insects, rabbits, snakes, squirrels, other reptiles) make use of these burrows for their own purposes–storing food, I imagine, getting out of the weather, trysts.

 

The original occupants of northeast Florida, the Timucua, had a principle village where the Ribault Club stands. By accounts they were statuesque, peaceable, into decoration and dancing. The only thing missing was Christianity, apparently. The Spanish bought them diseases which reduced their numbers over the course of the 16^th century from 200,000 to 50,000. By 1700 there were a thousand Timucua and then there were none. Everywhere we have traveled there is a similar demoralizing tale to be told. The decimation of the first peoples seems to be the common thread running through our trip, I’m sorry to say.