Paths of the Nomads

My lovely wife and I are busy planning our fall/winter trip. There are a number of things we are watching out for. We've been planning on heading to East Texas at the end of November to visit family. Now we are not sure if they will even be in Texas by then. That all depends on how the flooding affected their house. That information won't come to us for a few days yet.

Of course, the hurricane season isn't done. There's a category 3 spinning around in the Atlantic right now. Behind that is yet another potential storm.

Hurricane damage is not repaired overnight. My lovely wife and I were looking at some places to camp while were in Texas. Those places have been hit with heavy flooding. We no longer plan on going to them. They may not reopen by the time we are in the area, or will be open but still recovering. It's just as easy to go somewhere else.

I remember years back when we stumble across an interesting little campground in Mississippi. It was a great base from which to visit area attractions. That place was scrubbed clean off the map by a hurricane. It was never rebuilt.

It's not just storm damage that we avoid. My lungs were damaged when I was a firefighter. Places with bad air pollution are no go areas for me. That's one more reason for me to avoid a lot of big industrial cities.

It's not only urban areas that have problems. Toxic algae blooms create some nasty air conditions. In the past we've changed sailing destinations to avoid red tide. Also, cyano algae from Lake Okeechobee can pollute both the west and east coast of Florida. We pay close attention to the conditions in the lake. Too much winter rain can be an environmental disaster. Agricultural run off feeds the toxic algae.

My lovely wife and I have avoided areas with wild fires. Once we hurriedly pulled up stakes to get out of an area with a high tornado threat. As luck would have it, that area we left was badly hit less than 12 hours later.

The thing about being foot loose and fancy free is that we have options.

-Sixbears