Viewing entries tagged
Hurricane

This Week on the Road - February 19th-25th

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This Week on the Road - February 19th-25th

It’s been a cold week out here in southern Utah and the snow which came down on Thursday and Friday has decided to stick around for a while. Despite the cold and wind, the skies have been sunny most of the week and it’s really hard to complain about that. I hung around St. George, avoiding the worst of the snow and then made my way out to Kanab for the Balloons and Tunes Festival. From there I cruised out to Coral Pink Sands State Park and then north to the cute little historic town of Panguitch, where I am writing this post from today. I know it’s only Monday, but I don’t think there’s going to be much opportunity to jump on the internet for the next few days so I thought I would just finish this up today and then next week will just pick up where I leave off.

When I left you last week, I was in the library in St. George. After I finished up with my newsletter for the week, I headed up the road to the old opera house to catch a local performance of the musical Kiss Me Kate. I love the fact that St. George is supporting local theater and even though there were probably only 30 people there on a Wednesday night, the show did go on. There were some parts of this show that are particularly dated, but it was a great performance and all of the actors seemed as though they were really having fun out there. The building itself dates back to the early days of St. George, having been built in 1864 as a wine cellar. It was sold in the 1870s and became a social hall and performance center, and later an opera house in 1886. During the Great Depression the building was used to process sugar beets and wouldn’t be restored to its earlier function as an opera house until 1988. It’s a cool building and I was happy to see the inside of it and I also really enjoyed the performance.

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The Forgotten Coast

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The Forgotten Coast

Beach on the Florida panhandle and devastated the entire region. As I drove through the area, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the wreckage I saw driving around New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. While there is a ton of work going on along the coast, and construction crews are keeping busy, it is still a tragic place to see with a long road ahead. The whole time I was in the area, I couldn’t help but think that since Hurricane Michael filtered out of our news feed, it also filtered out of our minds and hearts. I hear politicians every day from both parties talking about their very different “America first” policies, but both seem to be talking about hypothetical Americans in hypothetical situations. Yet out in the Florida panhandle are real Americans with real problems, and nobody seems very concerned about them or their very real struggle to reclaim their lives and rebuild their homes and businesses. This region has been referred to as The Forgotten Coast, but probably rarely has that nickname had more meaning than it does right now. Here are some photos from my visit to The Forgotten Coast, mostly taken around Port St. Joe just southeast of Mexico Beach. Always remember that tragedies may only last a few days in our news feed, but they last considerably longer for those affected.

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