Okaloosa, here we come

Destination Montgomery, Alabama.

Bruce has given up on memorising our routes. He’s a bit in love with Siri Google now. So she calls the shots, even stopping Bach mid-note to give the latest instruction. To be sure, to be sure, I add my Siri Google to the mix and we have Siris in duet, dear little Aussie accents on the great big American roads.

And we’re now on the big road watching a car weaving dangerously ahead of us. When cautiously we manage to pass it, we see a driver texting on his phone. We’ve seen a lot of phone use on the highways through this trip. It is very worrying.

Out the window is a KIA assembly plant. We’re now on KIA Boulevard and there’s the huge KIA watertower. The factory is shining silver, massive, huge, huge, huge and windowless. And, oh my, it is right on the state border - because suddenly we’ve crossed into Alabama. And there’s the world biggest fireworks store. So it says. I’m not arguing. It consists of towering bright yellow boxes and I swear the world’s biggest fireworks store also has the world’s biggest No Smoking sign emblazoned on the front.

Passing places with wonderful names - Opelika, Phenix City, Hurtsboro, Tuskegee forest, Notasulga. We now seem to be on the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway. They were a famous unit of black pilots in WWII, says Bruce. Oh, there’s an interesting phone tower. It’s become the roost for vultures. Lots of them. Strange birds, they are. Big and cumbersome, high flying, patient; not the prettiest of birds. Oh, there goes Talahassee. That’s another lovely name. Oh, and what bad drivers inhabit this part of the world. More phone-using, weaving, speeding idiots.

A lot of dead racoons and poor little armadillos line the roads. I guess that explains the vultures. We listen to the radio and are gob-smacked to hear there is a prisoner strike. Who knew there was a 24,000-strong workforce of prisoners out there mowing the verges, making roadsigns and license plates. Working call centres?

Passing more mini storage again. And the tiniest, cramped, humble cemetery so close to the road it is almost on it. And now a huge, stately roadside cemetery.

And here comes the Montgomery burbs along with huge hoardings showing a beaming fellow called Alexander Shunnarah, lawyer. Oh, and another one. And another one. What is it costing this lawyer to promote himself as a roadside star?

Here’s Montgomery. We pull off the road to do the old quickie lunch refresher stop.

A clean loo in McDonalds and a Santa Fe salad. Not such a good McDonalds, this one. Not many customers but a lot of staff, few of them working. They seem to be eating McDonalds. I guess they need lunch breaks, too. Some of them are a bit slobby. Oh, very slobby. I am taking my meal to the car, Bruce. I can’t eat with the sound of that woman sniffing constantly while chomping her way through a huge bag of Doritos. I could be in a pig pen.

I eat as we drive onwards, entertained by the endless Shunnarah hoardings.

Look, he has a double one here.

We’re on the wide open road now. Past turnoffs to Selma, passing Greenville and exits to the town of Pine Apple.

Shunnarah, Shunnarah, Shunnarah - ever beaming at the traffic. I wonder how many stop and seek his services. Siri Google’s little Aussie voice pipes up. Exit left, Alabama highway. Passing scruffy pine forests and fields of weeds which, we presume, once were cotton.

Oh, maybe not. Here are the cotton crops - fields and fields of them with little white cottony blooms. The land opens out into broad agriculture, long-armed irrigation sprinklers, fields of cows.

More cotton.

A mysterious sign recommends Twinkle For President - Fighting for You. None the wiser, we swoosh on by.

Big strip mall. The usual chain retail suspects with added mini storage, medical centre and a Mexican motel. Then back to agriculture and big, big cotton fields separated by the odd humble little settlements. Fallow fields are beaming with yellow wild flowers.

It is surprising some of the odd things one finds out on the open road. Here is a fantastic rusty, dusty car yard. A field of abandoned cars in the middle of somewhere nowhere. We’re in Alabama South driving through Conecuh Forest - an undulating landscape of splaying oak trees and the prettiness of slim, tall pines.

And suddenly, Florida welcomes us. The Sunshine State. Okaloosa County. The surroundings are cotton fields and more humble little homes and caravans. We pass a flyspeck town called Blackman. The Gun Show sign is bigger than the town. Blackwater State Forest surrounds us with more of these very pretty pines.

I am loving this landscape. Abruptly there is a huge mown clearing featuring a massive, fanciful Greco-Roman structure. What on earth. Who on earth? Accountants? Are you kidding. Way out here?

The cotton crops resume on both sides of the road, occasionally interrupted by alfalfa. A farmstand offers watermelon, boiled peanuts and tomatoes. A town called Baker is all churches and Trump signs. We try to look straight ahead.

Palmettos are starting to appear in the landscape. Now we know we’re in Florida. Milligan. Another church and another and another. They’ve built a huge, hideous apartment building here and now, as the land opens out, a vast development of exceptionally ugly new houses. Lots of flags, though.

Another church. And another. A biggie. We’re passing Crestview. Posters advertise local playtime of a Mullet Pageant and a Hobo Festival.

Clouds are massing on the horizon. It’s 91deg F outside, heavy humid Florida heat. The landscape is flat, with low pine scrub. Gator country, says Bruce. A lumbering big-bellied 4-engine cargo plane looms in the sky. The US Special Operations Command headquarters is somewhere near here, says Bruce. Oh, there’s another one. A fat 4-engine prop jet.

We scoot through a big newly-constructed fancy road loop and over a spanking new bridge watching clouds ahead of us casting down arms of rain. And suddenly we are underneath them. Pancake splats of rain hit the windscreen, hard and loud. Spray jets out from the wheels of the cars. Through the deluge we see a sign pointing towards Niceville. We scoff. It’s pretty nasty right now.

And then it’s not. We drive out of the rain as abruptly as we drove in. We’re under a blue sky. A few spiteful drops land on the car just to remind us. Swinging on to Route 8 to Fort Walton Beach, we realise that we just drove into the Central Time Zone. The iPhones are right up with it. The car clock is not.

Here’s big Gulf Coast water - palmettos, rich homes along the waterside and then the inevitable strip mall. Publix supermarket, Denny’s, boat centre, Goofy Golf, Korean restaurant, pizza, nail parlor, Arby’s, Dollar Tree, What-a-burger, liquor store, Thai restaurant, more boats, Ross Dress for Less, tattoo parlor, Mexican food, indoor flea market, gym. We stop at a traffic light. A sign beside us orders No Hand Out Here to Corner. Another says Unlawful To Obstruct Traffic.

Aaah. It is for those pitiful beggars who hold up placards at traffic lights. There are a lot of homeless beggars in this country. We turn into an area of seriously cute gift shops and over a bridge and we are on the Emerald Coast.

This is where we want to be.

We drive down a broad road along a line of towering condos, one after another until one of them is ours. Nautilus Court. On the sugar sand of the Emerald Coast.

Welcoming women in Nautilus reception apologise that they have had to move us from 606 to 604 because 606 had a catastrophic leak from the condo above. But they know we will love 604. Oh, we do. We do. This is what life is all about.