My plan for the day was to set up somewhere along the beach to write and read all day on a picnic bench under a shelter looking out onto the Gulf of Mexico. My location today is called the “Little Hickory Island Beach Park” located in Bonita Springs FL 34134.
The park is a sliver of land with less than thirty parking spaces, two public bathrooms and is a quaint and usually a quiet location.
But it is currently peak snowbird season mixed with spring break college students, gathering daily to sit along the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. They walk along the synthetic boardwalk, offering their cordial greetings of the day, while pulling, pushing and carrying their accouterments for a day at the beach.
With so many congregants interrupting me, as I was conversant, I began considering the two covered picnic tables across the road in an even smaller parking lot as my backup destination if the talkative distractions continued.
Within moments of my decision to move, I was greeted by Paul Polson who is a full-time traveler living in a small van at 75 years of age. He travels mostly between the Western US visiting his three adult children and Southwest Florida where he had lived for thirty plus years after he retired.
I enjoyed our conversation trading stories of the road about the scenic destinations we visited. We both spoke of the novels we read by Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley: In search of America,” that influenced our current travels realities.
After we ended our conversation, I move to a quieter, less traveled location to write and read, but, my conversation with Paul had me reminiscing about my years after high school when I first read those novels and wished and dreamed of taking time off to travel after college.
Today many college graduates take what is called a “gap-year,” upon graduation to tour the world or some part of it. But for me, I’m a grey-nomadic with many decades ahead of gap-year travels. 🙂