Can we have hushpuppies with that?

After seven nights in Tampa visiting our friends, we flushed the holding tanks and headed north. That was right before taking a sharp left in the Florida Panhandle and heading west where all the forward thinkers, dreamers and adventurers and mostly smart people migrated a century ago. Call it the "left coast" if you will, but there's no humidity, no mosquitoes, gnats, biting black flies. Just rattlesnakes, scorpions, and great white sharks (if you overshoot your destination). So up the Sunshine Tollway we went, encountering our first major storm on the trip. Near the gulf coast community of Chiefland, a storm cell rolled through, damn near rolling the Lance-A-Less. Two inches of rain in twenty minutes. 

Pulled into the northern Florida town of Perry to stay the night again at the Elks Lodge. First thing you see in town is this bumper sticker which proclaims the political sentiment in these parts. So we knew the cable offerings would have no MSNBC. But not only did it not have the pro-Obama MSNBC, it didn't even have CNBC or NBC. But plenty of Fox stations including Fox News, shopping channels galore and ungodly amounts of TV preachers beggin' for your bucks. We really believe that God is going to get these clowns in the long run. Amen to that.

You park on the Elks' spacious lawn and ain't that exciting.

We were told never to call it a "club".  It's a "lodge". Oh well.

We had dinner at the Elks. You realize these places are sort of stuck in the '50s and '60s. Dark lounges and meeting rooms. Something we feel disuades a younger membership. Paul's an old fart. He's still stuck in the '40s but at 37, I (Corita) like to see what's at that salad bar. Or what's fallen into that salad bar. And of course, as I noted before, I like old Tracy/Hepburn movies, long walks on moonlit beaches, cozy nights by the fire, and lots of cheap red wine.

We wanted to show you our elegant setting at the table. Knife, fork and paper placemat. It's the Elks.

I was grabbing blind at the salad bar because it was so damn dark that I dipped into a bowl filled with ants and didn't notice that I had done so until I got back to the table. Oh quit! It's actually a pretty nice, fresh salad albeit iceberg lettuce with bacon bits. Not ants. It's the Elks.

Here's a shot from our table into the lounge. The only light being from the flash on our camera.

But the dinner was accompanied by plenty of that cheap red wine that I like so much. Go Elks!

And homemade desserts made by the waitress/cook and pastry chef Mary. Let me say the people you meet at the Elks couldn't be nicer, more accommodating and quite frankly, any more interesting. It's a fine organization, does good works, and provides inexpensive RV parking. And when you're paying $4 plus for a gallon of gas, every penny counts.

This is Mary. Mother of....desserts.

We both ordered the seafood platters. Mary asked, "Would you like that grilled or deep-fried?"  "Hell," we told her. "We's in the south. We want it deep-fried." So you get a kind of whitefish, shrimp, scallops, hushpuppies, okra, and Lord knows what else. All of it rolled in pancake batter and dropped into a fryer. Sounds terrible. Tastes great.

Here's yours truly enjoying southern sweet 'tater fries, a vegetable. Mmmm.....

And here's Paul, wrapping up the evening with his to-go box, heading back to the Lance-A-Less with leftovers for Daisy. So went our big night in Perry, Florida.

Next day we took a sharp left and head due west with a stop at the Elks lodges in Pensacola, Florida and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, then went onto Natchez on the mighty Mississippi. And that is where we had one of the wildest nights in a long time. Has nothing to do with what went on under the covers but about a storm system that unfortunately killed at least ten people. That's next.

Gotta go. Peace on 'ya.