02/28/2025 ICW Day 59 : Pachamama

We woke extra early so we could ride the tide for as long as possible. Last nights camp had been good, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on with those erratic flashing lights in the parking lot. I closed my eyes to sleep, but could see the lights through my eyelids.

Then I heard the thunder. Within moments, the sky unfurled a tempest, and we were grateful that we had elected to sleep on land instead of our floating lightning rod. Could you imagine lying prone over the hot seat adjacent to the conductive black pole pointed skyward?

The tent proved its worth, deflecting the short but heavy bout of rainfall. And here is a bit of irony for you: the next morning, we woke to a DRY tent. We have only had a dry tent a few nights this trip. Normally, it is saturated with 8 pounds of water… funny that the night we get rained on, the tent was dry. Everything else in life was also more comfortable as a result. I’ll tell you that having damp clothes most of the time isn’t really a joy, and in rainy climates, I’m almost always drier than I am here in the South without a rain.

So here is another surprise from today. I heard the whine of a jet boat traveling at upwards of 60 mph coming towards us. It’s the first we have seen as I assume these kinds of speed are illegal on the ICW. The irony is that this boat produced no wake! The hull of the vessel barely deigning to touch the water like a skipping stone. So once again, we find that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

We were really going up a river today. For the majority of this trip, we have been traveling the brackish waters of the ocean, but today we ventured further and further away from the sea. The tall trees obscured any views and funneled the wind in swirling and frustrating gusts, making it extremely difficult to harness. The area had a sort of “deliverance” feel to it. For many miles, it was just us and the narrow waterway again.

We had picked out a couple marinas as possible places to spend the night. We have been having good luck, but we don’t exactly fit the marina criteria because we are not super enthusiastic about sleeping on our boat. It’s a decent amount of effort to set up the tent aboard, so when I saw the first patch of sand in 9 hours, we steered the boat to shore and set up camp next to a pile of beer can trash and an abandoned smoke cooker.

Maybe it was seeing all the beer cans, but I mentioned to Janet, “gee, I kind of wish we had a beer tonight to reward us for our efforts.” It was a whimsical longing, but then I got the idea that maybe there was an unopened beer in this large pile of empty cans.

Of course there wouldn’t be one.

But sometimes I check for the extremely unlikely scenario… JUST IN CASE. Well, I’ll be darned. There, sitting as if it were a gift to Pachamama was one unopened Miller Lite.

I reveled in the improbability, “Janet! can you believe it? It’s like I summoned a beer. I think they left this, like a gift for the person who comes to clean up this pile of cans!”

Janet was more pragmatic, “I think they just forgot it.”

Well, regardless of whether this was a gift for the gods, or a bygone omission, Janet and I shared the Miller Lite under the watchful indifference of the trees, and it was good. 🍻