The Behemoth Gas Station That's Too Big For Florida

This place shouldn’t exist in Florida. It does, and its amazing, but it shouldn’t exist.

Yea, Bucees should not be in Florida. I am fully prepared for the angry backlash but I have a reasoning behind my feelings towards the behemoth posing as a gas station.

Bucees isn’t a convenience store, it’s an adventure disguised as a store with many potential paths to traverse and decisions to make. If there’s any brand that looks, sounds, smells, and behaves like Texas, it’s the bigger-is-always-better mannerisms of Bucees. It has it all, an entire array of fresh and packaged beef jerky, a section where they are constantly cutting brisket and turning them into sandwiches, a giant array of store-exclusive sodas and drinks, a massive clothing/gift section, snacks for weeks on end, and of course a heavy arsenal of gas pumps to choose from.

This place is what happens if you stack a Speedway, a WaWas, a 7/11, and a 1990s-esque Wal-Mart Neighborhood Store on top of each other. The “travel center” stores average around 50,000 square feet, the equivalent of a supermarket. It’s a place full of surprises and shocking revelations.

But this can’t exist in Florida.

Texas is the size of the entire nation of Germany, therefore it can afford to have these giant spaces, and to be honest in a car-centric nation they are essential in those giant drives you have to engage in within the state. 800 miles from north Texas to the southern end, from east to west its at least a 10-hour drive. So Texas, especially with a lack of a high-speed rail and a greedy airline industry taking advantage, needs their Bucees to keep the drivers engaged, full, and satisfied while traversing. Texas can be absolutely punishing with its hundreds of miles of desert and plains between cities and towns big and small. Bucee’s is a necessary evil in those parts.

But Florida is different.

Florida is indeed a mecca for tourism and travel. But its also an environmentally-sensitive state that is mostly swampland, 20% of the land mass being water, and it’s less than a quarter of the size of Texas. It’s also a state with extreme housing problems and a growing homelessness ordeal. The state has a few of the most congested and deadly highway stretches in the entire country. Florida is going to be one of the most-damaged states within the next century thanks to climate change, rising tides, and ongoing environmental deterioration, especially under the constant nonsense related to the Florida Republicans.

I know this feels like a giant deviation from the original topic related to a giant gas station, but bear with me.

Yes, the experience was nice, the food was good, the service was excellent. But as I approached my car, there were legions of disoriented bugs bouncing all over the place. Of course the St. Augustine Bucees needed a spot away from town to actually build their behemoth, so they picked an area that’s next to a large swamp with waters linked to the St. John’s River. So, the massive massive lights were driving the bugs crazy, and of course the convenience store is 24 hours so those lights never actually turn off.  

It’s actually 15 miles away from the area we all know as the actual St. Augustine, the beaches and historic downtown. Was Bucees the only spot there? No, but the last thing we need to see next to a giant golf course is even more water getting drained from the area---especially as we continue not utilizing land to building more affordable housing for everyone that needs it. Worst of all, we haven’t made enough strides to take advantage of Florida’s unique conditions to double-down on renewable energy to power the Sunshine State.

We Floridians have to be more responsible and reasonable with the unique circumstances of the land we live on. The waters from the St. John’s River connect all the way to Okeechobee, which means hundreds of miles of environmental moving parts, and if we’re going to continue allowing the gas station behemoths to continue popping up in Florida, we have to also make sure the environment isn’t being affected.

I admit, the brisket sandwich was delicious. But the hundreds of obviously-confused bugs crashing against the pavement outside the store was also worrying.