Abandon in Place: Cape Canaveral, August 2010
Page 1 - A Day at the Beach
So ok, so we went out to the Cape.
Some kinda new deal.
I used to work out there, for ten years, back in the 80's, and when I did, I tended to kinda drive around looking for neato places, out of the way, off the beaten path, maybe legal to access, maybe not, but since nobody ever specifically instructed me not to, I figured it was ok. More or less.
I like shit like that. Sneaky little places that most folks neither think about, nor ever take the time to go and have a look at, just to see what's there.
And back in those bye gone days, there was no access for anybody out on the beach, anywhere, except for the security folks who regularly patrolled it then, and continue to do so to this very day.
On top of all of that I also surf, and for surfers the tip of the Cape is like some forbidden fruit, and it exerts a very strong pull on them.
They think there's this fabled wave out there that reels down the south side of the Cape, going left, like some kind of Boca Barranca or something.
There's not, but that doesn't seem to matter.
I checked that sonofabitch repeatedly, under every imaginable type of swell, tide, and wind setup, no matter how big, no matter how small, and it NEVER produced anything more than thigh-high slurpage coming around that corner at the tip of the Cape, breaking right onto the sand more or less, and most definitely not peeling down the beach, without any kind of makeable shape whatsoever.
At one point I even worked the old Atlas Centaur pads at Complex 36 A & B, and from up in the upper levels of those towers, you could see fairly well. And no, there was never anything, EVER, that broke along that worthless stretch of shoreline. Farther out, on the shoals, well maybe. But not on the beach. Nope. Not gonna happen.
As far as the beach is concerned, the shoals kill it, and that's that.
But surfers being surfers, of course, the more you tell them this sort of thing, the more it makes them think you're actually hiding some kind of mysterioso fabled point wave, and the more it makes them think you're lying through your teeth at them.
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| Original Florida scrub with Delta II pads in the distance |
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| They store fireworks inside of those bunkers |
Ok.
Fine.
Whatever.
Out we go, down Beach Road, turn right at Pier Road, and roll northeast toward the end of the Cape.
Past the Delta II pads, 17 A & B
Past all those bunkers and the EOD area.
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| Headed for the beach, on a one-lane asphalt road, that has, over the decades, seen more than its share of flaming metal come falling out of the sky now and then |
Past the east end of the skid strip, where once upon a time, bizarre air-breathing creatures like the Never-go Navajo were supposed to come in for remote-controlled landings.
And Camera Road 'A' is open for business.
Let's go there, shall we?
We shall.
And it's a by-god, public-access motherfucking beach!
Whoa!
My years of dealing with security out here have imprinted on my brain that this is not somewhere that we should be allowed to go. Not that it ever kept me from going here myself back then, but I always knew I was pushing things a little.
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| A Day at the Beach: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station |
So being out here today is just fucking WEIRD, ok? Don't feel right. But who cares?
We're here, and that's that.
A Day at the Beach.
And it's the last substantial piece of the entire east coast of Florida that hasn't been wrecked by fucking developers, condos, 7-Elevens, traffic lights, bars, concrete, and all the rest of that sorry litany of "progress" that those self-interested assholes who promote and "develop" this shit can't ever seem to get enough of as they single-mindedly seek to line their pockets short and middle term, without the slightest thought of what they're fucking up long-term.
Die developer scum, DIE DIE DIE!
But of course they won't, and they'll look at you with that poisonous blend of fatuousness and self righteousness, and condescend to you about how you just "don't get it" and how it's "better for the economy" and all the rest of that tired, overused litany of lies they justify their bullshit with.
Fuck YOU.
/end rant
Meanwhile, the ocean and the dunes both abide. And they also know that, given enough time, they will prevail.
But dammit, I don't have that kind of time, and the shit that's already been thrown up along this shore will outlast me, and I do not wish to see so much as one more cinderblock of it laid down into the yielding sand thank you very much.
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| It's all about what's NOT here | |||
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Sigh.
But the beach. Ahh, the glorious beach of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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| Whoa! Point surf! Yeah, sure thing |
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| It's why we live here |
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| Couple of people behind us, nobody at all ahead of us | ||
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| But whenever you look over your shoulder out here, you will always see things lurking just beyond the edge of the scrub which serve to remind you that this is very much not just another ho-hum tourist beach in Florida |
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| It's been very nice, but now we must leave this place |
But eventually, we have to leave this idyllic stretch of beach.
There are other things to see.
Other places to be.
Mysteries and marvels await us elsewhere, so we reluctantly depart.
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| Back we go, down Camera Road 'A' | This is the way everything looked when I was a little kid |
We roll through the nothing back down Camera Road A, and rejoin Lighthouse Road and take a right turn.
Camera Road 'B' is also fair game for going down to the beach, and we would have liked to check it out, but today there's a sign that says CLOSED, and we decide that perhaps we'd best not try to push our luck too hard, and we continue up the coast, heading north...
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