Florida Panhandle - November 2002
First, a Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope that you are able to enjoy the holiday with your loved ones. Reach out and mend some fences if necessary. May joy be in your lives and may the tough times pass. I'm thankful for all of you readers who make this column possible. Thanks for being there! Hug the ones you love and Turkey up!
Last week I told you about my visit to New Orleans. After spending a few fun days there, it was off to the Panhandle. This section of Florida has been called many things, the Miracle Strip, the Forgotten Coast, and of course, the Redneck Riviera. But most recently it's being touted as The Emerald Coast, in a move by the Chamber of Commerce to improve the image. Whatever you call it, the area is worth exploring. Sure there's a lot of typical Florida overdevelopment, with high-rise after high-rise lining the shore, with strip mall after strip mall leaving you visually numb and bored. But then there are the small pockets of nature, or planned development that are a breath of fresh air. For instance, the pastel village of Seaside is where they filmed the Truman Show movie and it invites you to linger. The beaches in this area are some of the finest I've ever visited, with dazzling white sand offsetting emerald waters. And the food, oh the food. If you're a seafood lover this is the area for you.
We started our journey in Fort Walton Beach, a very developed section of the coast. The Sheraton there is right on the beach, an easy walk to a picturesque fishing pier that is perfect for strolling. This is a fishing town and everywhere you go you see boats and fishermen. At sunset a cannon is fired announcing the end of the day. From our balcony room in the Sheraton we watched beautiful sunsets into the Gulf, and we could peek into the Gulfarium next door, where dolphins frolicked, and ducks and birds swam happily.
On Saturday night we hit the dog track in Pensacola. On my way to the bathroom what did I spy but yards and yards of duct tape on the floor, taping a seam in the carpet, and hiding some electrical wire. The dogs were beautiful to watch, racing around the track after mechanical "Swifty" a floppy tail that looks like a rabbit.
We made our way through the coast stopping off in Apalachicola for the last day of their seafood fest. This commercial fishing town is ideal for strolling, filled with cute shops, right on the water. Mountains of oyster shells line some of the streets. Apalach, as the locals call it, is proud to be the supplier of ten per cent of US oysters. And are they ever in abundance! At Boss Oyster you can have them 17 different ways. We tried them baked with parmesan, and baked with crab, then went on to order them roasted. They roast 36 oysters and bring them out to you in a huge tray, hand you a knife and some drawn butter, a hand towel, and you go to town. Our friendly waitress showed us how to pop them open from the back, then move the knife on up to the "eye" to loosen the shell. The last time I'd shucked oysters was during a visit to Wellfleet, Mass. where I learned to shuck with a can opener. The Appalach oyster knife was a lot easier to handle. At the seafood festival they shuck em into a big beer cup for you, charge $4 and you enjoy. I'm not a raw oyster eater, but I was clearly outnumbered. They also serve shrimp, and the blue claw crab claws are not to be forgotten either.
Apalach also has the home of John Gorrie, the father of modern air-conditioning. Gorrie, a doctor, invented an ice machine to lower the temperature of his yellow fever victims.
A short drive from Apalach is St. George Island which houses a gated community on one side, and a state park on the other. Like much of the coast in the Panhandle, the park is filled with spectacular sugary white sand beaches that look like frosting when they get wet. The craggy dunes were beautiful and not something I've ever associated with Florida.
Just as pretty is the St. Joseph Peninsula State Park where you can rent a beach-side air conditioned cabin. There isn't much to do out there, but it's a wonderful way to get away from it all. And if you like birds, this is bird-lover-paradise, with over 200 species of birds having been spotted.
We enjoyed ourselves immensely in this area, and the people were some of the nicest I've ever met anywhere. When we said we were from New York, I was amazed at the outpouring of support and sympathy that we encountered. Definitely nice people. In fact, at a craft booth at the Apalach seafood festival I met a woman named Dot who offered to let us stay at her home. It turned out Dot was from a town called Niceville!
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