Homestead after the hurricane.
It was a 1-day drive from my mom's house in South Georgia to Pete's house in Homestead, and I could smell it before I got there. Most electricity had been out for weeks, and every refrigerator, grocery store, and restaurant in the area had tons of food rotting in the kitchens and freezers. There was no water. …None to drink, none to shower, and worst of all, none to flush the toilet.
A large city Park in Homestead was covered in hundreds of tents that spread far beyond the park’s boundaries, with people who had no homes and no place else to stay. Long lines at the gas stations, not lines of cars, but lines of people carrying gas cans or anything they could put a gallon of gas in to keep their home generators running for a few more hours.
I don't know how many of you folks have been to South Florida in the summer, but it's like nothing you've ever experienced in terms of heat and humidity. Remember, the Miami area has the only tropical climate in the United States; plants grow there that are only found in the Amazon jungle, so needless to say, it's very humid and incredibly hot. And amid all that heat and humidity, thousands of people are wandering around who have no air conditioning, no running water, and a tent for shelter, and this is what I'm seeing with my own eyes two weeks after the hurricane.... It looked like a third-world country with thousands of people lined up trying to get food and water.
When I knocked on Pete's door, he answered the door with a shotgun in his hand. Looters and other low-lifes were still visiting Homestead, trying to steal things as if these folks didn't have enough problems. The police were of little use since their police cars ran out of gas a long time ago, or they had their own family they needed to protect, martial law had been declared, and looters could be shot on sight.
South Florida has a lot of retired folks living there, and many of them live in very nice, landscaped trailer parks scattered throughout the Homestead area in their double-wide trailers. I drove past trailer parks that used to have hundreds of trailers in them, and now there was absolutely nothing there except roads, driveways, and hundreds of concrete patios, not a single sign of a trailer or even a piece of a trailer in the entire trailer park; the winds had swept clean any sign anyone had ever lived there.
This blog post has gotten long enough, so hopefully I’ll wrap it up tomorrow…..If you’re lucky!
Theboondork
Sometimes I take pictures of the moon even when it's not full, not sure why, probably just nothing better to do. So I was too lazy to dig out my big lens and set up my tripod to mount it. So I took this picture hand-held with my regular walking-around Canon 24mm x 240mm lens.
It thought about raining last night, but eventually decided not to.
I have officially decided to make this my favorite boondocking spot in Wickenburg, Arizona. Other places feel like I'm just visiting; this place feels like home.