Highway 98 back to Apalachicola
This is a beautiful drive, it never gets old.
My friends have fishing camps and hunting camps; some of the fishing camps you can fish from the porch, just like the fishing camps along the Dordogne and the Gironne in France. I think some of the hunting camps double as venues for poker games and some serious drinking.
When I was a little girl in Alaska, bear were serious business, and every Alaskan child learned early to make noise, not to run and never never never to get between a mama bear and her cubs. I can imagine a Florida bear is a nuisance, getting into garbage and tormenting the dogs, but I haven’t heard of a human being having a problem with a Florida bear, other than hitting them on the highways.
All along this route we see some serious money going in. Some is Florida people, building their dream home in a beautiful, if dangerous (hurricane) location. Others are people sick of the snow and ice and cold of the north, building their more modest retirement homes or sheltering in trailer (caravan) villages. This very pretty little village is Carabelle, just east of Tate’s Hell State forest. (I just love that name, LOL)
Hamaknockers and We Exercise Bad Judgement
Have you ever noticed bad judgement happens in bunches? Like you can be really good for a long long time and once you let loose, even just a little, your self-discipline just goes to hell?
It’s all Hamaknocker’s fault.
So for the third time, we are choosing to eat inside a restaurant where not everybody is wearing masks, and how can you wear a mask while you are eating? We do manage to sit apart from the other customers dining in.
Now . . . more bad judgement.
We ordered platters. I ordered the chicken, and it was a lot. I also ordered applesauce, because I don’t see that on the menu often, and it was really, really delicious. I think it must have had a LOT of sugar in it.
AdventureMan ordered the pork, and there was a lot of pork, too.
So this was the really really bad part. We had a refrigerator back at our hotel, and it is a cold day. We COULD safely take extra food back to the hotel and enjoy it later.
We did not.
We ate the whole thing.
Hamaknockers is what we call Michelin Red R cuisine – really good local food at reasonable prices.
Thousands of Ducks in Saint Marks National Wildlife Refuge
It’s an easy drive from Apalachicola, and we also have an agenda; we remember a particularly good barbecue restaurant not far from Saint Marks.
The drive is beautiful. It is still early, but getting toward mid-morning, so it is warming up. We are dressed for the cold; it is also windy so the chill just goes right through your clothes. You have to have a lot of clothes, in layers, or you are too cold to walk.
We stop on the way so I can take a photo.
As I step out of the car, and start walking on the grassy roadside toward the bulkhead, I suddenly step into a deep hole. The grass is just a cover, and the ground underneath is eroding. I managed to stay upright, but it was awkward.
That’s where I stepped.
Saint Marks had a couple heron, an egret here and there, a couple pelican, the St. Mark’s lighthouse, and a million ducks. If you have never read Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Book Series, this is the area and lighthouse I picture when we first enter the alternate world in Annihilation.
We walked a couple miles around the various ponds, and it is hard to envision just how many ducks there are in this protected area.
We found gardens of these empty oyster shells; they were beautiful.
We are happy with our walk, but we are cold, and we are getting hungry! On the way into the park, we passed the BBQ restaurant and it is open. Off we go.
Early Morning Walk in Apalachicola
We’ve been married almost 48 years, so AdventureMan and I know how to travel together with minimal friction. We are not alike, but we are flexible (unless, of course, we are tired, or hungry, or need a nap, and then all bets are off.)
We are on holiday. AdventureMan likes to sleep in. I am an early morning creature; I don’t even need an alarm, I just wake up. I can see the fragile pink of the early morning sky and I can’t wait to get outside and take a walk.
Have I told you lately how much I like pelikans? These ancient birds remind me of pterodactyls, beaky, angular, survivalists.
Colonial mansion, we toured it once.
A beautiful sunrise, and bringing a cold but clear and sunny day, great for heading to Saint Mark’s Wildlife Refuge near Wakulla Springs.
Sometimes my camera captures something spectacular and I am humbly in awe; I didn’t make this happen, it just happened.
Time for my coffee 🙂
Settling In to Apalachicola
Prior to Hurricane Michael, Apalachicola had a long history as home to some of the most delicious oysters in the world. Mountains of oyster shells like this were iconic Apalachicola scenes.
Apalachicola is a great little town for walking. There is a downtown with cute shops, there is a grocery store, there are several good restaurants, and lots of parking. We check in to our hotel, we take a long walk, we decide to eat early. Yes, another restaurant, but it is early and nearly empty. We find another isolated table.
The focus is definitely on drinks.
The food was OK.
We left as more people started coming in.
You can rent these houseboats for an Apalachicola stay right on the water.
I am losing the light when we come across a large pick-up full over the brim with duck decoys. The next morning, I could hear shots going off all over the estuary as hunters brought down the migrating ducks.
En Route to Apalachicola
We’ve been so good. We haven’t traveled. We haven’t gathered with our friends, with our book clubs, with our church, well, not very much. We stay masked, most of the time, even with our grandchildren. We’ve had zero colds and zero flu this year, while trying to avoid COVID.
And we needed a break.
How can we do it safely, we asked ourselves. If you are reading this blog, which is a resource for travelers, I am imagining you ask the same questions. How do responsible people travel in this time of COVID?
First, I have to be frank. We are not entirely responsible. I swim at the Y three days a week. If I walk in and there are too many people, especially young people, in there, breathing, I turn around and walk out. I’ve only had to do it twice. Most days I feel safe, and another truth is, I really need to swim for my physical and mental health.
We are also risk takers, always have been, but we try to calculate our risks. So, you’ve been warned, we are not entirely safe all the time. We calculate our risks. We balance our risks.
We really needed a getaway, and we have recently sold a house so we needed a getaway and a celebration.
We usually go to Apalachicola once a year, but we haven’t been for three years now. Apalachicola has a very low rate of transmission, on the COVID map, and the place we stay is more like a residence, and very clean. I call our visits pilgrimages, because we “worship” at the nature parks of St. Marks, St. George Island, and St. Vincent. (I am making a little joke, here.)
We love Panama City beach, and I have a yen for a schnitzle, but when we get to the German restaurant, it has become a seafood restaurant. We decide we want grilled oysters, and we know another really good restaurant, but when we get there it is closed for renovations.
So we stop here:
My husband went in to ask if we can eat there if we are not bikers, and if they have grilled oysters. The very kind waiter said we could eat there, but he would recommend our going to another nearby place if we want oysters.
Dat Cajun Place is near the little Mom-and-Pop hotel we love, the Sunset Inn, but we’ve never eaten there. Today is the day. Another first for us, we are eating in a restaurant . . .
It’a big inside, so although no one is wearing a mask – NO one – we find an isolated table.
Our waiter did wear a mask. He was very kind, very gracious.
We decided to share a dozen grilled oysters. I adore grilled oysters, and they are so rich that six is always mre than enough for me. AdventureMan could eat more, but he defers to me for his own good health. I barely remembered to take the photo before they were all gone.
I had two sides; the Cajun Potato Salad and the greens. O M G those greens. Maybe it was really grilled bacon with greens . . . they were spicy and a little vinegar-y and full of bacon and with the oysters and potato salad, my life was complete.
We thought we had asked for jalepenos as a side for the oysters, but we got a big platter of deep fried jalepenos. I would NEVER order deep friend jalepenos, and they were fabulous, served with remoulade, oh heaven.
AdventureMan found his own bliss with a gorgeous Oyster Poor Boy, one of the best ever, he claims.
This was a great stop.
Thank you, Dr. Martin Luther King
I love that Google does these special doodles to honor men and women who make a difference. This is their doodle for today, to honor a man who knew how to incite for all the right reasons, and to keep it peaceful. He had a vision. He had the patience to watch his vision unfold. I wish he could be here long enough to see Joe Biden’s cabinet. We’re not there, but we are learning to practice what we say we believe.
“Do You Want to Reserve for Friday night?”
I was so excited. We are headed out, our first trip since February when we took our grandchildren back to New Orleans, as we so often did until March and the advent of COVID. We’ve sold our big house, are comfortably settled in our smaller house, and I am SO ready to resume a more normal life.
I had just finished telling AdventureMan about a restaurant in a hotel we have visited several times, but we’ve never stayed in nor eaten in. The menu looks fabulous! (The Franklin in the Gibson Inn, Apalachicola). He looked at me over his reader glasses, lovingly – and sadly.
“”So do you think everyone will be masked and socially distanced?” he asked me.
“Oh,” I responded. Deflated. Sometimes, for a short while, I can totally forget the new reality of masks and social distancing, and not eating in restaurants.
We decided that as we will be staying in a lovely place with condo conveniences, we can order out. It won’t be the same, but the food will be good, we can store our leftovers in a refrigerator, and we can be safe.
Sigh.
I’m still excited. Apalachicola is beautiful, and the hotel where we stay (The Water Street Hotel) is right on the estuary. There are screened balconies where, even in this chilly weather, we can sit out and watch the heron, and fishing birds, and watch the boats stream by. We can head out to St. Marks, famous for the large flights of migratory birds at this time of the year.
It will be cold. It will also be beautiful, and it will be relatively deserted, safe from those globs of corona virus floating around where human beings breathe. We can walk to our hearts content. I can take pictures.
We like birds. We are enthralled with their beauty. It gives me a happy jolt every time I see, from my little house, a pelican, or a stork, or an eagle, or a red shouldered hawk. No, we are not birders. We like birders, but cannot begin to generate their endless enthusiasm and capability for detailed observation. We just sit back and enjoy the moment.
Apalachicola is a very old Florida town, once famous for it’s timber, and once famous for it’s oysters. The recent hurricane activity has wiped out the tasty Apalachicola oysters, at least for the next few years, and has greatly wiped out the economy of Apalachicola. We look forward to lifting that economy, as best we can, with our visit, and we encourage you to do the same.
Prepping Dinner, Prepping My Week
We were waiting for our pick-up order at Gulf Coast Seafood when I turned to AdventureMan and said “I’ll be right back; I want to pick up some crab.”
I love this place. Not only do I get really good blackened salmon, just the way this Alaska girl likes it , or some of Pensacola’s best fried oysters on the rare day when I can’t resist temptation, they also have really good hush puppies, and they give me steamed broccoli to dip in my baked beans. On top of all this good food, Gulf Coast Seafood is a Patti restaurant, and has a seafood store in the same building as the restaurant.
And they have crab. They have fresh salmon. They have bags of oysters, fresh every day. I pick up a pound of crab for Sunday dinner, thinking a garlicy cream crab sauce over angel hair pasta.
Today, after church, Adventureman asks if I want to go with him to Craft Bakery for a croissant or pain au chocolat, and wouldn’t you know, there is a beautiful gorgeous foccacio bread and my previous idea went out the window and now I am thinking crab salad and smoked gruyere baked in pockets of this gorgeous bread.
On a roll, I decided to go ahead and make a big batch of my oatmeal cereal – oatmeal flakes, raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts or pecans, cinnamon, clove. Just add milk. I could make hot oatmeal, but I don’t like it much, so I don’t. I just eat it with milk and fresh blueberries.
And noticing that I have some cilantro that needs to be used up, I made a salad that I’ve only found in one restaurant ever, Cilantro and chopped peanuts with a soy sauce and rice vinegar dressing. It was from a Chinese restaurant in Doha, Qatar, which no longer exists, but a very famous restaurant.
Doha was not the Doha it is today; it was a sleepy little town on the verge of massive development. Street addresses were almost non-existent, and those that existed didn’t make any sense at all, like there was no continuity or rationality to house addresses because of the idiosyncratic development as Doha expanded.
So this restaurant, which I think was called something like Lucky Chinese, was famous because they had a book, a very large book, that told how to get to houses all over Doha. It would be unthinkable now, but Doha was a safe little village then. The first time you ordered, you had to go in person and draw a map to your house in the book. As you thumbed through, you could see the location of almost every Chinese-food-loving expat living in Doha. Those were the days when the Ambassador held an open house (LOL open bar) every Friday and all Americans were welcome. There weren’t that many Americans.
The salad is simple and delicous: chopped cilantro, chopped peanuts, rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey, water (just a little) and olive oil.
Now, I suppose (sigh) I need to go for a n(ice) cold walk.
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 