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.