Remembering Bernie

      Bernie was born on July 5, 1998 and died February 21, 2011.  He was a cocker spaniel with many of the problems associated with cockers; poor vision, bad teeth, and later on, poor hearing.    He lived his first year and 1/2 with an elderly woman in a wheelchair and when she died, they weren't discovered for awhile, so he was very sick when they were discovered.  He was taken to one shelter which nursed him back to health and then transferred to another shelter when the time the first shelter could keep him had run out.  The second shelter nursed him some more and neutered him.  This shelter contacted the breeder who took him back and then sold him to us.  I was not impressed with the facility of that breeder; I think it qualified as a puppy mill.  When Mike's father first met Bernie, his comment was, "you paid $200 for that?"

      We took Bernie home to our two story home and he was completely puzzled by the stairs.  But he soon learned to bounce up and down the steps at will.  His first afternoon as he was exploring the back yard, he walked right into the fish pond and was quite startled (and embarrassed) as he swam out of the pond.  Poor Bernie.

       Bernie was my constant shadow.  When Mike and I first moved in together, we rented a house (neutral territory) for the first year.  We looked and looked for a rental that would accept a dog as Mike had adopted a dog a few months before we met.  He sacrificed his love of his dog to live with me, and found another good home for the dog.  So, when a year later we bought a house, we got Bernie for Mike.  But Bernie had other ideas.  He was a woman's dog and nothing was going to change that. Don't get me wrong, Mike and Bernie were very close, but if I was home, Bernie was beside me.  Once when we were fishing on a river, Mike had Bernie with him and I went upstream.  Bernie saw me an eighth of a mile upstream and jumped in the water to swim to me.  Luckily, Mike had a firm hold on Bernie's leash and could pull him back as the river took him away.

     We blamed Bernie for everything.  If the food was too hot, Bernie did it.  If something disappeared, Bernie did it.  And he never complained as we gave him responsibility for many wrong things.  If we asked Bernie to do something he didn't want to do, he hung his head like Eeyore and did whatever the unwanted deed required.  Anything just to please us!

     Bernie never went to sleep without making a bed in the grass.  Never mind that he always had a soft bed just for him nearby.  He would go round in round in circles scratching the imaginary grass into the perfect position before laying down. 

    We took Bernie on our boat a few times, but it really wasn't his favorite.  Once, we had Eileen (Mike's sister) and Mike's cousin on the boat.  Eileen had brought homemade muffins for breakfast, and then we docked in the Edmonds Marina and went to get lunch.  We left Bernie in the boat and left an opening in the camping enclosure that closed the decks of the boat on the water side, believing that Bernie would never jump in the water.  Wrong!  He did, right after he ate the remaining muffins.  Someone had found him swimming in the marina and rescued him.  When we returned, we looked everywhere for him and were very panicked.  Then the harbormaster found us.  He had Bernie and he made sure that we knew we were the worst dog owners on the planet.  We felt very bad!  But Bernie forgave us.

     

     Bernie was quite the traveler!  Always ready to get in the truck and go as long as you never made him look out the window.  He just wanted to ride near us.  Where ever we arrived, he was ready  to explore.  Whenever he was on a leash he was ready to protect us.  He would bark viciously at any other dogs while hiding behind our legs.

      We wanted Bernie to live longer for our own selfish desires, but in the end, Bernie couldn't walk and was shaking constantly from the pain he was in. We wanted to get him home, but he couldn't make it past Gulf Shores, Alabama.   We couldn't ask him to continue in that condition.  Bernie died with both Mike and I holding him and I am sure that he was relieved to be free of the pain.  If there is a dog heaven, he deserves to be there.  We will bury his ashes at home and plant a tomato plant on his grave.  He was an artist at stealing ripening tomatoes a day before I was going to pick them.  He can have all he wants!

       Bernie taught me how to love a dog.  He gave me the gift of his love for many years.  I have joked about, "God grant me the ability to be the person my dog thinks I am", however, I do actually mean it.  I don't think I will ever deserve the love Bernie gave me.  I will miss him forever.

St. Joseph's Peninsula, Grayton Beach and the CIA

We left Cedar Key prepared to tackle the mountains of Florida and travel north and west along the gulf coast.  The corners were deadly!  Seriously, there were actual signs warning of dangerous curves on the two corners we went around.  And the hills so steep we took the following picture:

 Could a driver from Florida actually handle a hill?  I don't know!  But I am sure that there would be warning signs.

 We passed a non-descript building with a parking lot in front that had enough room to park the truck and trailer.  We pulled into the parking lot to park and make a sandwich.  Not twenty seconds later, a truck pulled up with two men demanding to know what we were doing.  As we explained that we were merely making a sandwich, we noticed that the facilities were surrounded by military type barb wire and the vehicles in the lot had federal government license plates.  They advised us to please leave when we finished making our sandwich.  The building had a sign that said "General Engineering", but none of the trucks said "General Engineering" and I don't believe that we would have been investigated so quickly if the people inside were only designing a new federal bridge.  It is pretty obvious to me; we found a CIA outpost.  But then we noticed non-descript vehicles following us all day.  These cars and trucks looked ordinary, but we knew better.  They followed us through Apalachicola and all the way to St. Joseph's Peninsula State Park where we camped for a few days.  We tried to act normal, but that is particularly hard for us!

Apalachicola

                                                  

St. Joseph's Peninsula Beach

Dunes.  Walk on them and you will get a ticket!

Fishing Fleet in Apalachicola

Salt marsh at St. Joseph's

     The very northern part of the Peninsula is the State Park.  It sits between the Gulf of Mexico and the bay between the Peninsula and the mainland.  In the middle, a salt march flows through.  There are two campgrounds in the park, and one appeared to have suffered a forest fire.  We asked when, and learned that it had experienced a "prescribed burn".  We saw several other such burns in the distance while we were there.  The beach is a spectacular white crystalline ribbon draping the edge of  large dunes.  It runs for miles down the peninsula. Outside of the park there are many houses being built and other fairly new houses.  While the place appears to be growing fast, it is nothing like the other mass developments we saw in Florida.  If I had the money, I think I would be buying one of the houses.  We walked on the beach and on several trails in the park.  We had a wonderful Valentine's Day meal in Apalachicola and fantasised about opening an art gallery in town.  Maybe in my next life!  We did however, have to ask one partying group to quiet down at night.  I think they were actually CIA agents acting like noisy revelers.

We drove northwest along the Gulf of Mexico through Panama City and on to Grayton Beach State Park.  Most of the coastline is fronted by tall condos and hotels.  Grayton Beach is another very long white beach with a coastal dune lake behind the dunes and campground on the lake.  (There are only two places in the world with coastal dune lakes; Florida and South Africa.  You never know what you will learn in a day!)  The towns near Grayton Beach are made up of only new looking buildings, streets and houses.  All the lawns are green.  All the boulevards have flowers.  Even the cars all seem new.    While walking in the park, I saw two women in their sixties fishing in the lake, and then was quite surprised to hear a police-type radio talking and the ladies replying.  I knew it!  The agents were still following us!  Really, we only made a sandwich!

Mike enjoying the beach

Only a few people even used the beach.

       The beaches of the Gulf are the most beautiful I have ever seen.  The temperature was in the high 60s and low 70s and the skies were clear and sunny.  What more could you want?  Thank you Florida!

Key Largo to Cedar Key

       We left the Everglades and drove further south to Key Largo  which is the most northern of the Florida Keys.  The weather was gorgeous, clear and in the 80s, but I am not sure that I could take the humidity for long.  Every thing is wet; you, your neighbor, your clothes, your furniture, your food, your husband, your pets, etc., etc., etc.  I learned that the geography of the Keys really does not create many beaches.  The islands are actually old exposed coral reefs that used to be under water.  This creates a white sandy base for everything, but when I think of sand, I think of sifting, movable stuff.  This was actually quite hard.  You can't scoot around in it while you are sitting to create a comfy hole any more than you can get a board to shift its composition.  I also learned that really everything in Florida is not human friendly.  You can't swim in fresh water because of the alligators.  You can't swim in salt water because of the Portuguese Man-of-Wars, unless you swim behind some sort of barrier.  When you walk on the land, you must beware of the snakes.  AND even some of the trees are poisonous.  There are poisonwood trees which have bark and leaves that are toxic to skin and similar to poison ivy.  If you stand under one in the rain, even the run off water is poisonous.  There is also a bush called a manzeneel which is so toxic it can kill you! If you walk in the grass, you get painful burrs in your toes and clothing.  Maybe we should give Florida back to the Spanish.  Key Largo is fairly crowded with lots of escaping northerners.  RV parks are generally so jam packed together than you feel like a small child in a huge crowd.  Out our back window, 3 feet away is another rig.  Out the side windows, three feet away are two more rigs, and out the front, 3 feet away is a road.  Everybody has a dog or two or three (including us) and one is always barking. (And I won't even address the flea situation!) Not my cup of tea!   The Keys are so narrow that there is only one main road to goes the entire distance and that road is also the location of most commercial activity.  Addresses not only include a number, but also a mile marker number, and frankly, the mile marker numbers are what make it easy to locate them.    We stayed at a State Park which wasn't quite as crowded as the private parks.  We did have a picnic table and almost 4 feet between sites.  The Keys are beautiful and I am not suggesting that one should not see them.  Just don't expect to see me there.



The beaches LOOK inviting!

                                                   

We didn't come prepared with beach chairs.  See the barrier out there so you can swim?

More barrier.

Manatees can't come inside the barriers however!

Lurking.  Waiting for the unsuspecting swimmer.

Really, who would be stupid enough to molest an alligator?

Bridge to Key Largo.

We left Key Largo and drove across Florida to the Gulf Coast.  We crossed by following the northern border of the Everglades National Park and then passed through the Big Cypress National Preserve.  The drive was beautiful and the swamps fascinating as long as we didn't put a toe in the water.  And we never got higher than 3 feet above sea level as we traveled in a very straight line!   The southern gulf coast is made up of a lot of islands and again, not too many sandy beaches.

    We traveled to a small funky little town named Cedar Keys.  It is located on some islands and about 30 miles from the main highway.  We are staying at a funky little motel and RV park, named the Low Key Hide-a-Way, that has 4 RV sites and all of them back up to the water.  There is one other large RV park in town, and several condos and motels, but none of them are the big grandiose resorts one would find in much of Florida.  Cedar Key used to be a major port with much shipping between New Orleans (and the Mississippi)  and Cedar Key.  There was a railroad that then took products inland and north.  Faber pencils had a factory here until they decimated the red cedar trees, and there were some broom and brush manufacturers that used palm fiber at one time.  Now the only industries appear to be aquaculture and tourism.
    The operators of the "resort" we are in spent three years traveling in a trailer much like ours and have then been in Cedar Key for a year.  They also kept a blog about their travels entitled "everymilesamemory.com".    I took the dogs on a nature trail that follows the old train right-of-way.  The trail goes for one-half mile and then ends where there is a pile of oyster shells deep enough to stay dry on top of lots of mud-flat silt.  I sat down and then first, Bernie began barking and growling at some old pilings standing in the water, sure that they were going to attack and eat us all.  Then Louie, unsure of what was so dangerous but having no doubt that something was extremely dangerous or Bernie wouldn't be barking that way, jumped into my lap and tried to get even closer than that!  Then, right when I got Bernie calmed down and I was distracted, Louie went and jumped, as only a puppy can, into the silt.  He sunk a good six inches and stopped like a statute.  He looked at me like, "now what do I do?" and I was really dreading having to go in after him!  But he did manage to drag himself out.  Louie is normally white, but when he got out, he was black on the lower six inches and white above that with a pencil sharp line between the colors.  I so wish I had my camera with me.  He was quite the sight!

View from our camp site.

Tiki bar.

Cats sunning in the morning.

What the locals call "the honeymoon cottage".  Apparently, before it achieved its current state of disrepair, it was a cottage that one could rent.

We endured one day of deluge.  Pouring rain  is wet and cold regardless of where you are.

Sunset at Low Key Hide-a-Way

Old door in town.

Fish ready to take the bait.

Fisherman offering the bait.

We are only 2974 miles from Seattle!

Back of the tiki bar.  I love the reused building products!

Old building in town.

A little Muir history.

Mike by the salt kettle.  It looks to me like a cannibal's cooking pot!

Old Whitman House build in the 1890s.

Most of the buildings in Cedar Key are pretty modest including the houses.  There are only a handful of large homes built by people like us, seeking warmer climates after retirement.   People do not gravel their driveways and roads, but instead cover them with shell fragments.   I do recommend a visit to Cedar Key.  It is very picturesque!