Sea to shining sea Part 9

March 21 (Saturday) Back to Carrabelle

We managed to find our way back at Ho Hum, Carrabelle, Fl on the panhandle, but we weren't able to reserve spots facing the Gulf. We do have a view of the water only it’s foggy right now so nothing to see. It’s a good day to do laundry and get some cleaning done in the coach. At least it’s warm even with the fog, unlike our stay in February when it got down to 22° at night. Oh, and all the flowers are blooming. 

Courtesy of Jerre

Dusty likes to take long walks on the beach where he can be off leash. Becker, Cheryl Golden’s chocolate lab, Decker, taught Dusty how to “fish”. He can see the crabs, and whelks with their hermit crabs walking in the water. He puts his face in to try to catch them, but he doesn't like the saltiness.

The storms they've had in this area since we were here before washed lots of shells and sea life ashore. On our long walks on the beach Jerre and I, and Dusty, found lots of interesting things. I picked up a Whelk I was sure was empty. It had an interesting series of exterior "pointy things". I brought it back to the campsite and stuck it in a folded up camp chair. I guess it wasn't so empty after all, because in the morning it had disappeared. It was a long walk back to the water, but it must have made it. I looked all over unsuccessfully.

This one had several bands of rough points

Before we left Camarillo we started the process to refinance the mortgage on the house at a lower interest rate. The process has been following us throughout our travels culminating with finally signing the papers while at Sugarloaf Key. The notary came to us at the campsite, but since he was a Florida notary he wasn’t familiar with California documents. He read each page, well mostly scanned them, but still it took more than three hours to get through it all. Wouldn’t you know, something got missed. Some page didn’t get signed. So another visit with a notary. Sigh! The notary called and told Rob he would meet us at Mangrove Mamas at mile marker 20 in the Keys. Since we were now over 300 miles north of MM 20 a new notary was assigned and we got the document signed while at Ho Hum. The upside was a recommendation from the notary for a restaurant (yes we’re still eating our way home) close by.

3/22

More walks on the beach. Dusty decided he likes romping through the waves chasing the Willets and trying to dig Horseshoe Crabs out of the sand.

Dinner at Seineyards, on the recommendation of our notary. A little pricey, but tasty nonetheless.

Seineyards were fishing camps set up on the beach beginning each Fall and continuing through December. They were staffed by local people who lived in shanties on the beach. One person was assigned to cook and everyone would eat together family style. Another person was assigned to be a “striker”. He was responsible for spotting schools of mullet from a lookout stand, similar to a lifeguard chair. When the “striker” saw the mullet begin to run, oarsmen would take a net and encircle the mullet. The mullet were slowly brought to the beach where they were split, salted down and placed in an icehouse to be sold. Fishing was an important industry in the early development of the area around Carrabelle. Oysters and crabs are also plentiful in the area.

In 1941 a World War II U.S. Army training center was opened in Carrabelle. It served as an amphibious training base housing up 10,000 troops at one time. Nearby barrier islands were used as landing points for exercises.

3/23

Rob and Stan went fishing with a local guide. Jerre and I took Dusty for a walk down the beach and watched as their boat headed out towards Dog Island, one of the barrier islands directly off of the RV park.

While they were fishing Jerre and I caught up on things we had been neglecting in our individual coaches.

The boys were hugely successful bringing home Redfish and Pompano. We had a delicious dinner of fresh fish and we still have some in the freezer.

Redfish too long to keep. This guy went back. Called a Redfish because of the red spot near it's tail.

Pompano - delicious!

Today''s keep-able catch

3/24

Stan and Jerre wanted to go into Apalachicola for lunch. Rob and I chose to do some more local exploring. We loaded Dusty in the back of the car and drove over to St. George Island just to see if had changed from our last visit. Surprise…it hasn’t! St. George is a barrier island 22-miles long and connected to the mainland by a bridge. At one end is a state park with nine miles of undeveloped shoreline, dunes, a bay forest and salt marshes. The rest of the island is a collection of hotels, rental properties and permanent residences. Coming back over the bridge we could see Oystermen raking the bottom of the channel and pulling oysters up to their boat. The channel is no more than 12 feet deep between the mainland and the islands.

After returning from the island we decided to take a drive through Tate’s Hell State Forest. This is a huge forest over 200,000 acres. In the 1960s and 70s the owners developed the area as a commercial pine forest. Rough roads were graded through the forest and drainage ditches were dug to promote the growth of the pine trees. Both the ditches and the roads altered the flow of water through the forest. Water was drained into Apalachicola Bay affecting the salinity and the health of the fishing industry. The drained land was also bad for the native “dwarf” cypress which grows in swampy conditions. In the early 1990’s the state began buying up the land in order to protect Apalachicola Bay. The non-native pines were burned and the native longleaf pines and grassy savannahs were re-established. Dwarf Cypress is beginning to come back thanks to a sustainable ecology program overseen by the Florida State Forest Department.

We plunged into the forest driving along fairly well maintained scraped dirt roads. Not much to look at compared to the forests of the northwest or even Southern California. The pine trees were all burned, but still standing. Palmettos seemed to be taking over. We saw a sign pointing to the "Ralph G. Kendrick Dwarf Cypress Boardwalk" only 4.9 miles away. There wasn't much else of interest so we decided to check it out.   additional signs along the way confirmed that we were headed in the right direction, but it seemed like we had gone far more than 4.9 miles. Anyway, we found it. While we were reading some posted information several vehicles drove in. The State Forest was conducting an audit regarding the sustainability project they were working on. One of the rangers welcomed us to “Hell”. Little did he know how prophetic he was. They were only there a few minutes, but before they left I asked the best way to get back to the highway. We were shown a map (we didn’t think to pick one up) and told to “just stay on the main roads”. 

Well maintained road into the Boardwalk. One of the few we found.

Typical swampy landscape

From the top of the boardwalk we looked out over the tops of a sea of dwarf cypress. They grow best in the swampy water and they seem to be doing well in this part of the forest. 

Dwarf Cypress in the foreground

Creeks ran along both sides of the road leading up to the boardwalk. In the creek we saw a couple of snakes slithering through. 

Water snake

The forest ranger told us they were banded water snakes and not poisonous. Good to know. However, there are also water moccasins in the creeks. Also good to know. Stay away from the creeks. We had seen enough so we decided to go home. The main road to the boardwalk was Dry Bridge Rd. The car’s GPS showed we could continue on it and eventually get back to the highway. So with Rob following the car GPS and me monitoring it on my iPhone we set off. We soon ran out of “main road”, but still following both the GPS and iPhone we turned on some “not-so-main” roads. It seemed like every time we turned a corner the road in front of us was too narrow, or, more often than not, all torn up by "four-wheelers" racing through muddy paths. We turned back several times and tried other possibilities.

Upon closer, more expanded look at Google Maps on my phone we saw we could take a minor road toward the airport. However, my phone did not show a way around the airport and I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be able to drive across the runway. The car GPS seemed to show roads surrounding the airport, so off we went. Well…we found the airport, but a locked gate greeted us. Now we were in a pickle! We could see where the highway was on the GPS, but we couldn’t connect a road to it. We had been slogging through the forest for what seemed like forever. I glanced at the fuel gauge and from my angle it appeared to be less than ¼ tank, plus my phone was dying. We had to back track several times before we found a suitable, (so we thought), way out. This time we were on a “trail”,  definitely not a road. It ran behind some very nice rural residences but there was no way across their properties to the road which we could clearly see on the other side of their expansive lawns. There was a wide gate, however, it was chained and locked. Rob got out to see if he could persuade the owners to unlock it and let us through, but they weren’t home. We were so far into this "trail" Rob had to back out until he could turn around. We had passed some bee hives on this road and reasoned that the bee keepers must have a passable way in and out. Following that logic we looked for roads that seemed to be well-travelled. (I use the term “roads” euphemistically!) We started down one that seemed pretty good, but when we turned a corner we were confronted with depressions filled with water; several of them in a row. We couldn't tell how deep they were or whether we would have solid ground going through them. We decided to chance it keeping the right side wheels as close to the brush as possible. We fishtailed through the first one, but the four-wheel drive got us through the rest with only a few scratches on the car. Finally we were on a pretty decent road when a large black bear darted out of the brush and ran down the road. He disappeared into deep brush before I could grab my camera. Finally,  we saw a speed limit sign, a strange sight to see in the middle of a forest. Then a small truck passed us going in the opposite direction. Civilization was in sight! Just a few hundred more yards we could see the ocean and the highway! We had just been to Hell and back…Tate’s Hell. I wish I had some photos to post, but taking pictures was the last thing on our minds!

Tomorrow we leave for Biloxi.