I didn’t want to stop and was anxious to see more although I quickly saw that seeing a place during the day was completely different from seeing it at night. Evidently people in these smaller towns don’t believe in staying open for business past 5 o’clock. And they don’t believe in staying awake after dark since this town looked like it was completely deserted. I got into a conversation with one of the few locals I could find and asked him about a bar and he told me the closet one was over 100 miles away. I think he was either lying or dead wrong but those aren’t the kind of conversations I needed to be having with people after dark here. As it was, I was just happy they kept their street lights on at night since this place would be totally dark otherwise. There really wasn’t much to see here but I still tried to enjoy it for what it was. After all, essentially deserted or not there was no other place in the world exactly like this. Of course, that could either be a good thing or a bad thing but I reminded myself that no matter what it could be worse. I could be in New Jersey. The only thing that seemed to be open was the grocery store so I went in and experienced the nightlife of northern Florida. And…well…it was a grocery store. It wasn’t especially memorable but it was certainly distinctive. Never in my life had I envisioned the highlight of my
night would be walking down the cereal aisle. But it truly was. Just one of the many wonders you get to experience when you’re drifting to see what there is to explore and discover. As I came up Florida I had the temptation to head back north to visit Phil and see what I thought of his city when I wasn’t in a crappy mood but I was much more anxious to go places I had never been and see things I had never seen. And since I had never been to Alabama, I thought I should check it out. The physical differences between the top of Florida and Alabama are negligible as the greenness and swampiness of both places blends together to give you a distinct impression of the entire area. Although I had some trouble really seeing that since the rain was so unrelenting. I liked the rain and had always liked looking out the window
of my house or apartment when there was a big thunderstorm but driving through it like this was not nearly as fun or pleasant. But I guess you can’t have it both ways. Nonetheless, I was determined not to let the rain or anything else ruin this for me. Not too far north was the state capitol and it was going to be the first place where I had actually looked up things to see and activities to do. I had missed out on a lot and I was determined not to miss out on anything else so I was anxious to get up there and check out what this area was about. Well, unless that grocery store was what this area was about. If that was the case I guess I already knew.