First Leg, Part 1

Having spent the past few months by the pool in Naples recharging our batteries, Wife and I decided that we were rested enough to easily conquer the 9-hour distance from Naples to Panama City Beach in one day. If you've never been to PCB, think the sophistication of Centerline, Michigan but with a sunburn...a blistering, infected sunburn. On second thought, it's probably best not to think about it at all. So why'd we go? Well, why does anyone subject themselves to armpit vacation destinations?

Family. 

(As a matter of fact, family is going to be a major theme of this entire trip, so this may quickly devolve into a horror blog. Proceed with caution.)

The trip from Naples to Panama is a long, hot, damp and mostly flat affair. When I was a Michigan kid, the entire state of Florida equaled Disney World, plain and simple. After high school, I equated Florida with Daytona Beach and spring break (still basically Disney World, but for my liver). The reality, however, is that Florida is just another very large state in the deep south, and unless you are lucky enough to live along one of its high-income and Walgreen's dotted coastlines or insulated in one of the resorts run by the anthropomorphic mouse, the bulk of it is culturally and socio-economically equivalent to rural Mississippi. In short, it's a nice place to drive fast through.

On the advice of our sister, Rita, we decided to stop and stretch our legs somewhere in Florida's vast interior in a little town named Micanopy. I don't know how to pronounce that exactly, but we decided on something like 'My can of pee,' mostly because it also describes the smell of the musty, antique-shop driven economy there. As a bonus, the highway exit for Micanopy was also shared with another Florida cultural gem that we were introduced to through its many billboards en-route.

The Cafe Risque, as proudly stated on their website, is like a "Denny's or a Waffle House, but with a twist!" (Way to set the bar high!) The twist, of course, being that the waitresses are completely nude. Titillation aside, I can't help but consider the unsettling connotation this brings to the phrase, "Excuse me, miss, but there's a hair in my soup," I also have to question exactly what caliber of nude bodies are being employed from the depressed, rural surroundings that undoubtedly place high on teenage pregnancy lists. On the other hand, beauty knows no specific archetype, and I guess the argument could be made that a Caesar salad is way more authentic when served by someone with a visible, sagging Cesarean scar.

Needless to say, Wife decided we weren't stopping there, and we ate snacks from our cooler instead.