Dispatches from Jupiter

With apologies to Richard Grant, whose book, Dispatches from Pluto, is a brilliant evocation of life and love in the Mississippi Delta. If you want to understand the south and issues of race in America, this is the ticket and it’s a damn fine read. I loved it.

So, on Monday we departed St. Augustine with mixed feelings and began a journey down the east coast of Florida. We used Routes 1, 1A and A1A successfully avoiding the interstate. It was a long, slow trip and, in truth, I did not take many images, mostly as we left St Augustine at the lighthouse and somewhere around Indian River when we stopped to have a picnic lunch.

And this is what happens when you blindly rely on auto-focus

As we approached the space coast I thought it might be fun to see the Kennedy Space Center, but we did not have time for a full-blown tour and you really cannot approach the place unless you are taking a tour. I got chased by a couple of guards when I tried to stop and take pictures.

As we drove we were struck by the ways in which the entire coast was built up with random, unplanned resorts everywhere. We are much more used to the more controlled development of the western states. We were also struck with how the landscape moved from what we were used to in the south, lushly forested, to the tropical. I regret not having taken a few more images but it’s hard on travel days.

That would be less so the case on Tuesday when we drove through Miami Beach on our way to the keys. But that would be another day.