Florida - Day 23 - Apalachicola and Panama City

St. Andrews State Park, Panama City

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

today's route

I'd barely gotten on the road this morning when I heard on the radio that Florida "lawmakers meet this week to pass legislation prioritized by Gov. Ron DeSantis."  I was interested because I'd have thought in the usual functioning of democracy, a legislative body would meet to "consider" or "debate" some proposed legislation.  

The way Florida's government is set up right now, the Legislature appears to be little more than a rubber stamp for the governor.  I'm guessing it's because he won reelection with a 19% margin over Charlie Crist.  The Leg apparently figures what Ron wants is what Floridians want and they go along with everything he says.  This situation seems much like the way the Republican-majority Congress functioned 2016-2018, pretty much doing anything Pres. Trump asked because of his enormous popularity with Republican voters.  

In my own opinion, a legislative body acquiescing to everything a governor or president wants doesn't do any favors for the leg, for the gov or pres, or for the voters/citizens.  Our system of government was set up specifically with checks and balances in mind.  And though the process is time-consuming and often incredibly frustrating, when it works properly then it works for everyone.  

End of public opinion announcement.

Gasoline in Perry cost $3.36/gallon.

I was heading west on US-98 through the Big Bend area (see the bend on the map above?).  I passed tree farms, farm land and mixed woods.  I passed swampy areas and the trees with the branched roots - maybe cypress - that you see so often in swamps.

I crossed quite a few rivers: Econfina River, Aucilla River, St. Marks River, Wakulla River.  Also the Bull Sink, the Tobacco Sink.  (Sinks are apparently a Florida name for "lakes.")

A road sign told me I was on the Big Bend Scenic Byway.  I gotta say it looks nothing at all like the Big Bend area in Texas.  The specific area here that's designated Big Bend isn't the chunk of land pooching out south into the Gulf (which is the Big Bend in Texas) but instead the northward pooching in of the Gulf up into Florida.

I passed the town of Panacea and the Panacea Mineral Springs.  The town was named by Bostonians (it figures) in 1893 after the goddess of universal remedy (for the springs).

The road finally began skirting the waters of the Gulf.  I passed the FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory.

I heard on the radio that manatees in 2021 experienced 1,100 deaths - about one-seventh of their population.  These deaths have been primarily attributed to water pollution that's killing sea grass, which is mostly what manatees eat.

I passed several warning signs for bears.

By 10:00 we'd been driving for a couple of hours and all wanted a break.  I finally found a small roadside park called Island View Park.  Dext and I walked around a little and I took some photos.

I guess that land you can just see across the water is Dog Island,
which is what they say is the island that gets views from Island View Park.

The top part of the photo is captioned:
"The bay flats at low tide show wave and wind influence on the coast."
The bottom part of the photo is captioned:
"Aerial View of Dog Island."
Clearly I couldn't get either of those views when I was there,
having neither the tides nor the altitude required.

These photos are labeled, clockwise from upper left:
"Upper Hammock," "Pine Flatwoods,"
"Scrubby Flatwoods," "Shoreline Marsh."
I think these lands are all included in this park.

We continued along the road through Carrabelle, across the Carrabelle River, past Carrabelle Beach, and into Tate's Hell State Forest.  Okay, I was curious about that name, and I guess I got what I deserved: local myth.  Here's the link to a Historical Marker about it:  https://www.hmdb.org/tates-hell

And as you can sort of see on the map, this state forest is right next door to the Apalachicola National Forest.  I passed the town of Eastpoint and crossed a very long bridge over Apalachicola Bay to the town of Apalachicola.  I got conflicting answers on just how long that bridge is: either 2.6 miles or 4 miles.  Or maybe somewhere in between.  The point for me is that I managed to cross a bridge that long without freaking out and I'm very proud of that.

Apalachicola calls itself the Oyster Capital of the World.  And I guess they sort of were, up until the state told them to stop harvesting because drought and pollution were adversely affecting the oyster quality.

I passed the Gibson Inn, built in 1907, that was really attractive - as you can sort of see in this internet photo, though I don't think the photo does it justice.

Gibson Inn

And I passed the Franklin County Courthouse, which I didn't take a photo of and am now sorry I didn't because none of the ones online are clear enough to show the stone carving.

I'd wanted to see the town of Apalachicola ever since I'd crossed the Apalachicola River when I was driving east along the northern side of the Panhandle before Christmas.  The river begins at Georgia and runs down to the Gulf here.

Farther along the road I came to Port St. Joe, which is apparently its full name.  I've always assumed it was short for St. Joseph, just as St. Petersburg over by Tampa is often called St. Pete.  But the name seems to be St. Joe.  It must just be a regular town, nothing fancy.

But hah! Wikipedia says that it did used to be known as St. Joseph and was the site for a salt works.  A Union ship commander during the Civil War ordered that they cease production, they refused, so the ship went into St. Joseph Bay and sent in troops that destroyed the salt works. Some 50 years later, the railroad came through, a new town was founded nearby, and the name Port St. Joe was adopted officially.  

But while it was still St. Joseph, it was selected over Tallahassee to be the site of the first state constitutional convention in 1838.  Thus, it now calls itself Florida's Constitution City, and hosts the Constitution Convention State Park.

We were all tired again and ready for lunch, so I stopped along the street at the First Methodist Church.

Not the church - see text below.

The church was directly across the street from the Gulf.  The area around it seemed mixed: across the street on the other side from the Gulf was this house (above) that was obviously built to deal with rising water from hurricanes and such, while others farther along were mostly 1 story and much farther down the economic scale; on the church's side of the street were mostly vacant lots, making me think there'd been a lot of damage from one hurricane or another that they hadn't rebuilt from.  I saw lots of large fishing boats at the docks as I drove farther into town, but I couldn't see any particular storm damage in town.

I crossed into the Central Time Zone at the town of Mexico Beach, where I saw many many beach type houses and a bear warning sign.

By the time I was wandering around in Panama City (Google having once again given me convoluted directions) I stumbled on a dog park where several other big dogs were playing.  But by the time I got us turned around and back over to the park, those dogs had packed up and left - such a shame for Dext.  But another couple was just arriving with a smallish dog that they put in a separate fenced area.  But our dogs met through the fence and did well enough that we put them together.  At which point Dext immediately stopped paying attention to the other dog and just wandered around sniffing.  Don't know why he's started doing this, but he's been fairly consistent.

We stopped at a grocery store and then went to tonight's campground, which turned out to be on a peninsula out in the Gulf.  And our campsite was the nicest one in the campground because of having a sideways view right on the water.

I walked Dext, poured a glass of wine, and the kittens went out of control chasing Lily around the RV and got on the table (where I've told them all 17 times a day not to go) and knocked over my wine.  I made them all wait for their dinner until I'd not only poured another glass but also sat down and drank it.  I was tired and peeved and trying to adjust to a new time zone, even though we'll only be on it for 3 days or so.

But at least the weather was nice.  And it was a really good campsite.