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A Long Drive

I finished and turned in my latest book on Tuesday. Yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny but cool, so my guy and I decided to get out of the house and take a long drive. The roads were virtually deserted until we got into the city, but we didn't plan to get out or stop anywhere. We just drove east until we hit the ocean. This is Ormond Beach, a little north of Daytona:

Ormond is more of a locals' beach, but still, I've never seen it so deserted on a nice day. There are usually hundreds of people at this beach. I kept looking at these two chairs and wondering if I was in the Twilight Zone.

We then drove back home the long way, via a scenic highway route we like to take through the marshes and woods.

My guy spotted something we'd never noticed before -- an old pair of brick smoke stacks in the woods, so he decided to stop there to check it out. That was how we found this:

We love old buildings, so we walked back to have a look.

Colonel Dummitt is better known for his citrus groves, which he cultivated south of here in Brevard County, but evidently this is where he set up his slave-run sugar mill to make rum (he did that in Barbados before the English abolished slavery there, and forced him to go.)

Seeing the remains of a 195-year-old mill was a bit surreal. The whole site is surrounded by a tall fence (through which I shot most of my pics.)

Another lady was there with her husband taking pictures; their car had Alabama plates so I imagine they were on vacation. We waved to each other and smiled, but stayed too far away to talk. In front of the ruins was a field of weeds and wild flowers filled with butterflies.

I'm glad we went, even if the experience was a bit sobering. We've decided that (unless gas has to be rationed or shelter-in-place orders are issued) that we'll go on a long drive once a week, just to get out of the house for a bit.

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nightsmusic said…
What's left of those stacks is pretty awesome though it's a shame that no one can seem to leave anything alone (graffiti.) The pictures on the beach are what I'd like to see when I've been to Florida, rather than the crowds I can't stand being in anymore.

I'd take a drive every day if the weather was better and my Mustang was out of storage. But it's not, and I hate the everyday vehicle I have now (my choice got poo-poo'ed) and don't like driving it so I'm only going where I have to. The plus side of this though, if you can call it a plus, is that our road, which better than tripled in traffic after it was paved, has quieted down to almost no traffic at all. It's nice for a change.
March 19, 2020 at 8:02 AM
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