Lulu and Olustee, the first Columbia-side stops on the two roads we drive in on

Two roads, two hamlets

Cook’s reaches Lake City from Palm Coast by one of two routes, and each passes through one of these places.

The southern route is SR 100, which begins in our home county on the coast and runs west across the state through farm towns until it reaches Lake City. About ten and a half miles before it gets there, it passes through Lulu, a crossroads that was once a stop on the railroad and is now a scatter of farms, acreage homesteads and a few churches along the highway.

The northern route is I-10 to US 90, which comes out of the Osceola National Forest and passes the Olustee Battlefield before reaching Watertown and town. Olustee itself is a hamlet of a few hundred people in Baker County, a dozen or so miles east of Lake City, with the forest on one side and the battlefield park on the other.

Both are the first Columbia-side stops on their roads. For us that means a Lulu or Olustee address is reached a few minutes before downtown, not after it.

What lives out here

The housing on both roads is rural. Farmhouses from every decade since the 1920s, double-wides and single-wides on cleared acreage, a few newer site-built homes on former pasture, and the outbuildings that come with land: barns with a small office, workshops, a mother-in-law cottage. Almost all of it is on a well and a septic tank. Power comes from Clay Electric on most Columbia County parcels and from the co-op or utility that serves the Baker County side at Olustee [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]].

Equipment follows the housing. Package units on the ground beside manufactured homes, older split systems with air handlers in closets or sheds, wall furnaces and window units in the oldest farmhouses, and an increasing number of mini-splits in workshops and converted garages.

The forest’s two gifts

The Osceola National Forest is beautiful and it is hard on outdoor equipment. Longleaf and slash pine drop straw and pollen onto condenser coils for months; a unit that is not rinsed in late spring goes into July with a blanket on its fins. And the forest is open ground under a summer sky, which means lightning. Afternoon thunderstorms are a daily event here from June into September, and a surge coming in on a long rural line is the most common reason we replace a control board or a capacitor on an Olustee address.

Both are cheap to prevent. A hose on the coil twice a year and surge protection mounted by the disconnect cost a fraction of the parts they save.

February, when the heat matters

The Battle of Olustee reenactment fills the park and every spare room in the area for a weekend in February. It also tends to land in the coldest stretch of the year. A heat pump that has only been asked to cool since the previous March gets its one real test on a 25-degree morning with a house full of guests. Fall maintenance is when the defrost board, the reversing valve and the strip heaters get checked; we would rather do it in November than on reenactment Saturday.

The hazards list for both roads

Distance, told straight

Lulu is a little over two hours by SR 100 from Cook’s doorstep on Fairmont Lane, Palm Coast; Olustee is about two hours and ten minutes by I-10 and US 90. Both are shorter than the drive to downtown Lake City, because both are on the way. Someone picks up day and night, the night rate matches the day rate, new systems are Lennox and repairs are whatever brand you own.