[PHOTOS BY: TYLER WAY]
From Charleston, SC, we continued our way south through Georgia into St. Augustine, FL. We pulled into Anastasia State Park along the Atlantic coast and set-up camp for two nights within a sandy jungle. It’s safe to say that this was our favorite campsite on the tour yet.
Noel agreed. She could spy on birds up-close and even spotted her first little lizard.
Needing a few moments to clean out the truck after a busy few weeks of nonstop travels, we pulled out our 50 States trunk and for the first time were able to admire the growing collection of stickers that have been starting to cover it.
Since we’re limited on space and budget, decals have become our go-to collectors item for each state and place of interest we visit, so this trunk has become our unofficial scrapbook of cross-country journey.
Having just finished our South Carolina project a few days earlier, we were now on “Christmas break,” which was our first stretch of time off since we hit in the road six months earlier. Feeling the warmth of the sun on our backs and being able to walk barefoot in sand for the first time on tour instantly put us in vacation mode. It felt GOOD to finally be in Florida…
The next morning we ventured into St. Augustine that lays claim to being the oldest city in the country. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest European-established settlement within what we now know as the continental United States.
We started our history lesson at the fort that defended it all, the Castillo de San Marcos. It’s the oldest masonry fort that began being constructed in 1672, and after centuries of battles, it now lives an easier life as a National Monument operated by the National Park Service.
With only one day to experience all that St. Augustine had to offer, we opted to explore outside the exterior walls of the fort. We walked within a dried-up moat that was likely inhabited by alligators that roamed the fort’s perimeter as an extra layer of security against intruders. Imagine that!
We passed through the original city gates and into the heart of St. Augustine. Being a tourist town, it had its fair share of touristy shops and themed restaurants, but we were most interested in walking around the oldest streets and oldest neighborhoods in the country, peeking our heads into the oldest gardens and the oldest alleyways we could find.
One of the sites to see in St. Augustine is the Ponce de Leon Hotel, which is now part of Flagler College. The Ponce was built in 1888 and designed by the same architect firm that built the New York Public Library.
Beyond its size, attention to details, and overall luxuriousness of its time, the “fun fact” that stood out to me the most was that this Spanish Renaissance style hotel was one of the first buildings to be built with electricity — its DC generators were installed by none other than Thomas Edison himself!
We don’t eat out often because of our limited personal budget, but when we do, Kendra is sure to make it worth it by researching and selecting the restaurant most worth it. With a beautiful outdoor area, we enjoyed the Floridian not once, but twice. We went in the evening our first night and then back again for brunch the next day — which is unheard of. That’s just how good it was.
Later in the day, we also treated ourselves to gourmet popsicles courtesy of The Hyypo, which earned its popsicle-shaped decal onto the top of our 50 States trunk. Like I said, we were in vacation mode and enjoying every moment of it…
Having experienced a good share of St. Augustine by the late-afternoon, we decided to enjoy our last evening back home at the campground lounging in the hammock together. Thankfully, our Eno hammock can hold us both :)
On our 15-minute drive back to our home we passed a garden and nursery center that drew us in like moths to a flame. Big fans of having plenty of plants around us, we wanted to take a piece of this tropical life with us on the road and found a bonsai tree that we named Auggie after the place we adopted him: St. Augustine.
The next morning we enjoyed our final coffee on the beach before moving on further into the Sunshine State.
Because of time and budgets, we weren’t able to make it home to Michigan to spend Christmas with our families, but Kendra’s parents were able to fly down and spend the holidays with us in sunny Florida.
With the Airstream in-tow, we left from St. Augustine and squeezed into the “Arrivals” lane at the Orlando airport to picked up Ken and Rossi. We squeezed them and their luggage into the back of our Chevy with Noel and continued to our next destination: Lakeland.
As random as this sounds, the campground we stayed at has a lot of special meaning to me. Decades ago, my late grandparents purchased a small winter home within Sanlan Ranch which doubles as an RV park that also has a golf course, nature trails, three pools, shuffleboard courts, and everything else you could ask for.
As kids growing up, our family would road trip from Michigan down here to Florida every few years. Even in my freshman year in college I drove down here with my aunt, uncle and cousins.
Since then both my Grandpa Dawson and Grandma Jo have passed, but three sets of my aunts and uncles have continued the tradition by purchasing my grandparents’ old place along with a couple others just down the street from each other.
They all returned home to Michigan to spend the holidays with their kids and grandkids, but they generously offered a place for Kendra’s parents to stay for the week just a golf cart ride away from our trailer site, which Noel gave her approval after sticking her head out and scanning the area for any lurking alligators.
Some of my most memorable memories were going on adventures in the trails and swamps behind the park. Before we knew it, a caravan of golf carts and scooters would often gather and venture out to look for ‘gators.
Although bittersweet not having the whole family back together, it was a nice moment for me to act as the local guide to Kendra and her parents as I tried to remember my way around the winding trails and recall the interesting tidbits that Grandpa Dawson had passed down.
We enjoyed a quiet and warm Christmas that consisted of a bountiful breakfast of fresh fruit and homemade cinnamon rolls, then cheered on LeBron and the Cavs as they battled against the evil Warriors empire, went on an afternoon bike and golf cart ride around the park that was all capped off by a delicious Mexican food feast for Christmas dinner.
With Lakeland located directly in the center of the state, we were only 90-minutes from St. Petersburg on the west and and hour to Orlando in the east. Even though Kendra did REALLY want to go to Harry Potter World in Orlando, we opted for a day-trip to St. Petersburg instead starting with a visit to the Salvador Dalí Museum that houses the largest collection of his artwork outside of Europe.
Our second stop in St. Petersburg was to Sunken Gardens, a lush botanical garden turned living museum that is now over 100 years old. Started by a plumber in 1903 in a drained out pond 10-feet below sea level, his “sunken” gardens has since become home to over 500 different species of tropical and subtropical plants and flowers that add up to total around 50,000 plants and flowers in all.
Exploring St. Petersburg some more, Kendra and her mom splashed each other with the Fountain of Youth, Kendra found a stray black cat and or course fell in love with it, and we climbed around the trunk of giant Banyan trees. That sentence may sound really weird, but it’s all true, and it all happened in St. Petersburg.
Our final stop before driving back to Lakeland was to the St. Pete Beach, which is the self-proclaimed “Sunset Capital of Florida.” Fittingly, we enjoyed snacks on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful sunset overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.
We visited the campus of Florida Southern College near downtown Lakeland which doesn’t sound like much until you see their campus.
Featuring a dozen buildings designed by one of my all-time favorite architects Frank Lloyd Wright, this 80-acre campus is the largest collection of FLW buildings in one location. In 1938 the president of the university approached Wright to transform the campus from a large orange grove into a “truly American campus’ which took decades to build but has since become one of the most beautiful campuses in the world.
The rose garden is also worth the visit in its own right, even though it wasn’t in its peak season when we visited.
After a great Christmas week with Kendra’s parents, we dropped them off at the Orlando airport for their flight back to Michigan while we continued south towards Miami in preparation for our Florida state project after the New Year.
The Miami Dolphins were playing on New Years Eve and a mentor of mine happened to be in town for the game to support Ndamukong Suh who I had met at his house years earlier when Suh played for the Detroit Lions (a long story for another time). My mentor set aside a couple tickets for Kendra and I, and thankfully we pulled into the RV parking lot just in time for kick-off.
Not only were we able to watch the game, but we were also able to spend some time with my mentor and his family in addition to former NBA All-Star, Rip Hamilton, who I also knew and worked with during his playing days in Detroit (also a long story for another time).
After the game we drove another hour south to our campsite at Miami Everglades RV Resort. We pulled into the campground and immediately heard parties happening all around us ringing in the New Year. The next morning we were pleased to see that our campsite had some nice outdoor green space with a couple of palm trees blanketing our Airstream.
Once settled, our first thing to do was to meet with Rebecca and Meg of AIGA Miami to help us finalize an artist and any remaining details for the project. We met them for lunch at Joey’s in Wynwood Walls district and then explored the area for the rest of the afternoon.
I first heard about Wynwood Walls years ago online, but it wasn’t until being there that I was able to understand the scale of it and the impact it has in the community. Started in 2009 as a bit of an experiment to open up a warehouse district and its blank box-like buildings to a select group of street artists from around the world that included the likes of Shepard Fairey, Futura 2000, AIKO, Kenny Scharf, and many more. It has since become an sprawling area on the outskirts of Miami that has covered over 80,000sq.ft. of wallspace that is now home to boutiques, galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, and more.
We visited South Beach to meet with our Florida project artist, Brittany Ballinger at the The Wolfsonian-FIU where she works as a graphic designer.
After spending some getting to know Brittany, we explored the iconic South Beach strip, experienced the Miami Mountain Hoodoos by artist Ugo Rondinon, visited the Kith Miami shop to see the Daniel Arsham/Snarkitecture designed retail space.
The following day we met with the project Veteran, Darrel Charles for coffee in the Miami Design District, which come to find out is moreso the luxury fashion district with expensive art galleries and high-end restaurants more than anything else. We also found some great streetart and graffiti in the area, but certainly not to the scale of Wynwood.
In her local online research, Kendra heard about Robert Is Here in nearby Homestead, FL. What started off as a simple roadside fruit stand run by a young boy decades ago has gradually grown into its own tourist destination known for its fresh local fruits, vegetables, and ahh-mazing fresh smoothies and milkshakes.
People come from all over by car, truck, four-wheeler, tractor, and RV. Even though it has become a multi-generational family-run business doesn’t mean Robert himself isn’t still checking customers out at the register using old-school math on the back of the paper bags.
With some time yet before our project, we figured this was the closest we might ever be to the Florida Keys so thought it was worth a day trip. Key West was a bit too far for one day, so we made it about halfway down the Keys to Islamorada. We looked up a kayak rental place and mapped directions to it but when we arrived, it was nowhere to be seen.
After walking around for a few minutes making sure we didn’t miss it, we noticed a severely damaged sign with the company’s name on it but there was no building or sign of kayak rentals anywhere to be seen. That’s when we realized that Hurricane Irma got the best of it five months earlier. On our drive down through the Keys we saw piles upon piles of debris along the roadside, but this moment made it more real for us tourists visiting for the day. Just because the news media has moved on to cover the latest current events doesn’t mean the people and places it has moved on from aren’t still dealing with the aftermath. That wasn’t a new revelation to us, but experiencing first-hand like this, even in such an insignificant way as looking for a kayak rental stand, was still impactful and has stayed with us since.
We ended up going to Robbie’s where we were able to kayak through mangrove tunnels and out into the Florida Bay. Although we looked everywhere, we didn’t see any manatees but did see a bathing alligator on the banks along with plenty of pelicans.
Afterwards, we grabbed a pizza and went to a nearby beach. As we were enjoying our margherita pie, storm clouds came rolling in much faster than it seemed and we soon found ourselves running back to the truck in a failed effort to prevent tomorrow’s leftovers from getting wet.
For the last few days at the RV resort we had to relocate to the overflow area of the park. With more room to stretch our legs outside and without other trailers around, Noel got to experience a bit more freedom than she’s normally given. At first we took her around on her leash, but eventually she got so comfortable enough hanging around that we let her explore nearby (with supervision shadowing her every move).
After our Florida project, we drove west through the Everglades where we could see huge gators along the watersedge and up along the western coast of the Florida peninsula to Chiefland, FL.
We made it to Manatee Springs State Park just in time to rent the last kayak for the day which was also our last chance to see manatees in the wild before leaving the state.
Kendra’s dreams came true because we saw dozens of manatees! Her excitement quickly turned to fear as a couple of them came up close and personal to the kayak. Even though they’re nothing more than gentle sea cows, they’re still very large mammals.
Depending on who you ask, one manatee got so close that it hit us from underneath, rocking the kayak but not enough to tip us. Kendra claims that we hit it, but I maintain that it came up from underneath. Even with video evidence on the GoPro camera she was holding, the jury is still out.
2019 journey
Jump ahead 11-months after we left Florida behind as our 15th state and we found ourselves finishing up our 36th state project in Mississippi just before Christmas time. With limited time and money to make it back home to Michigan for the holidays, we felt the next best thing would be to go back to Florida where I had some snowbird relatives living with extra room for both Kendra and my parents to visit us.
On our way there, we stopped half-way in Montgomery, AL for a day to take in some incredibly powerful and heartbreaking Civil Rights history — but we’ll save that for our Alabama journey post later on.
We had a week before Kendra’s parents were arriving so we revisited Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine again since we loved it so much the first time. The struggle for us is that state parks fill up several months in advance, typically much further out than we know where we’ll be. Thankfully, they had one site open one night and another site open the next — both of which happened to be next to where we stayed last year.
Having been going nonstop for the past several months, we were ecstatic to do nothing and go nowhere for a couple days. We read books, journaled in the hammock, enjoyed brunch, took long walks to the beach, brought Noel out for some fresh air, and I even tried to teach myself sashiko stitching from a sewing kit we bought in Arkansas whose instructions were written in Japanese — we apparently do quite a bit in just a couple days living off the grid.
Since there were only those two nights available at Anastasia, we packed up and headed towards the Gulf Coast. We were sad to leave but were intrigued to try a couple days at another Florida state park located right on the water.
Across the bay from Tampa, we stayed at Fort De Soto Park Campground outside of St. Pete. We arrived just after sunset, so the next morning we grabbed our coffee to visit the historic fort along the Gulf.
With construction finished in 1900, Fort De Soto was designed and built as a result of the conflict in Cuba and the Spanish American War. The citizens of Tampa and the U.S. Military recognized the threat and proximity to Cuba, so in response the fort was built within 14-months and became the port of embarkation for troops and supplies heading to the Caribbean war zones.
The fort never saw any combat action and has since been changed several times and for different uses over the years, eventually being refurbished in 1980 and open to the public as a historic park.
After walking through the empty concrete chambers, we strolled along the beach as Kendra pursued her newfound passion for shell hunting. We weren’t there long until a large storm system came rolling in across the Gulf of Mexico, forcing us to run back to the truck and to the campsite just as it started to downpour.
It rained buckets for three days straight along with wind gusts of 40-60MPH and even a couple of tornado warnings for the area — not a great time to be parked along the water! Our Airstream was rocking all day and night and there were a few close calls with branches falling around us, but thankfully no damage was done nor major flooding, although the waves were splashing up a little too close for comfort.
After a few days of hunkering down inside catching up on work, emails and phone calls along with our fair share of Sequence games and Frasier reruns, the weather finally cleared just in time for us to pack up and leave.
Kendra couldn’t bare to leave without seeing the beach one more time since it will likely be our last ocean visit on the tour, so we parked the rig in the back of the parking lot for one last stroll on the beach.
With her parents en route on their final stretch of driving down from Michigan, we made the short drive to Lakeland to settle in to our site at Sanlan once again to spend the holidays. As surreal as it was to be there the first time last year, this Christmas it felt like home to us — we even got our same spot under the large Spanish moss-covered tree.
Following a mellow Christmas where we spent 10-hours on a 1,000 piece puzzle, we were joined by my parents who flew down from Michigan to spend New Years with us all. It was definitely a special time to spend with both sets of our parents while on the tour; certainly one we’ll fondly look back on decades from now.
The majority of the few days we had together were spent golf carting around on the trails, by the pool, and enjoying meals together. When I say trails, I mean miles of wildlife sanctuary trails along alligator-filled canals and lakes filled with birds of all kinds. I couldn’t begin to count the number of gators we stalked but we got pictures of at least a couple dozen of them.
After the New Year, both our parents headed back to Michigan while we were preparing to head to Georgia for our first state project of 2019. Just a couple days before we were set to leave we found out that our initial round of funding that enabled us to start the tour and maintain it the past 18-months had dried up.
It was a heartbreaking blow that overwhelmed us with a range of emotions that took a couple days to really sink in. We’ve put everything we’ve had into this project and have completely dedicated our lives to it, so to have the funding come VERY close to zero like this was a sucker punch to our gut. Like most creatives, there’s always a level of self-doubt and fear of putting yourself and your work out there in the public to judge and criticize, and for us (whether it was valid thought or not) running out of money was enough public feedback to feel like what we were doing didn’t matter.
Once we got over ourselves and could think clearly again, we realized that definitely was not true. We have worked with so many incredible people that have all come together around a Veteran to help them share their stories. We quickly remembered WHY we were doing this and WHO we were doing this for. This project certainly wasn’t about us and it wasn’t even about [HAS HEART], instead, it’s about the people we work with and the meaningful stories we have the opportunity to help them share.
We talked with Sanlan management and shared with them our predicament in which they generously donated a week’s stay to enable us to get our feet back underneath us. We spent the time crunching numbers, putting together fundraising presentations, updating sponsorship decks, sending emails and making calls.
We made the tough decision to pause the tour and all the upcoming projects we had scheduled. We realized our best option was to store our Airstream in Florida for a couple months and drive back to Michigan to stay with family and try to fundraise the amount needed to complete the tour this Spring and Summer.
That meant we needed to leave our tiny tin home for the first time. We researched what we needed to do before we stored it for a long period of time, which was pretty extensive, I’m not going to lie. It took us DAYS to pack and clean and do our best to prevent any issues with leaks, mold, mildew, humidity, bugs, critters, etc. that storing a trailer outside could create.
Thankfully during this time, my aunts and uncles were back from spending their holidays back in Michigan with their kids and grandkids, so we were able to step away from our manic cleaning and fundraising to spend time with them for coffee breaks, card games, and meals together.
It’s amazing what a difference having family and friends around does — that’s something we’ve both come to appreciate more and more from this tour and being away from so many loved ones for long stretches of time. I can’t imagine us having to go through this process if we were by ourselves in an unfamiliar place. But reminders of family, comfort, and peace were all around us keeping us in good spirits. Kendra will attest that being in nice weather also helped.
We finally got everything cleaned out and the trailer ready for storage.
We left at 4AM the next morning and drove 19-hours north to Grand Rapids where we arrived just after 11PM right before the snowstorm hit — we pulled into the driveway as the first flakes were falling. We woke up the next morning to zero degree weather and back to a harsh, cold reality for the next couple of months as we work to raise the final $99K needed to finish the “50 States: Veterans + Artists United” project.
We blogged about all our finances for the project up to now and what we need to finish in the post aptly entitled “Funding Needs to Finish.” If you and/or your company, organization, or foundation are interested in being apart of our mission and [HAS HEART] family, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us or even Donate securely and directly online. And please, share and reshare our blog and Facebook posts to get this in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
As my late Grandpa Dawson would say, “Many hands make light work,” and we appreciate any extra hands willing to help share these Veterans’ stories.
Your support of any amount will help enable [HAS HEART] to pay a small token of appreciation to state project participants (Veteran, Designer, Photographer, Videographer, Writer) from each project in addition to minimal project costs and basic travel logistics.
It can start with something as simple as donating a cup of coffee to a Veteran participant or buying lunch for the six-member project crew — any level of support will go a long way in supporting [HAS HEART] in sharing a Veteran’s story.
[$119,011 RAISED OF OUR $250,000 GOAL]
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