Florida – Riveted

Leaving Florida Panhandle’s Gulf Coast (and a slight mishap)

Laura Domela — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:34:40 +0000

As long as we've been on the road, we're still occasionally finding places that we think "I could stay much longer in this place." The Florida Panhandle is one of those places. I thought I'd show you a few of the houses here on the gulf coast, in case you aren't from around here.

Here's a little info I found about a specific homebuilder who claims "Hurricane-Proof Homes" that might be interesting/informative.

And here are a couple shots from our drive today:

Okay we drove past this place a couple times and I didn't call because we had a great spot already, but the location where this sign was looked amazing, and I think someone needs to call them and go stay there, because HOW GREAT! Waterfront RV spot on the gulf with full hookups! The location was killer…between the peninsula, and the Indian Pass Raw Bar.

We drove through Ocala, FL today, and holy moly there are a TON of horse farms (really nice ones) there. I did a little Googling and learned that Ocala is the Horse Capital of the World. I know!! It is, though…really!

So today, we had an "incident." It was one of those things that you think could happen at some point based on what you know, but you hope you remember the checklist items so that it doesn't happen. Today, we forgot that one checklist item: Pump=Off.

Note: Do not try to "remember" your checklist items. That's why you have a checklist. It's an object. Not a memory.

As you might remember, we replaced our factory kitchen faucet with a much better one. We learned that there was one downside to this faucet: the on/off handle is a little heavy, and if you're going down a bumpy road, it can occasionally vibrate itself down into the "on" position. Now, the freshwater tank holds 39 gallons, and the gray water tank holds 39 gallons, so if you emptied the whole contents of the fresh water tank into an empty gray water tank, then no problem. 39 = 39. Cool. However, if:

(1) you stay at a place with water and no sewer, such as St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, and
(2) already have the fresh water tank full, and
(3) have a half-full gray water tank that you decide not to dump between one place and the next, AND
(4) forget to turn off the water pump before traveling as it CLEARLY states on the checklist, and
(5) the faucet vibrates to "on" going down the road, and
(6) you drive a couple hours before you pull into a shopping center parking lot for lunch and notice water dripping from the bottom of the trailer ("It's runoff from that rainstorm we just drove through, right?") but then you go in and the entire floor is wet, the rugs are soaked, and it smells a little like last night's fish dinner.

Oops. For those of you who are wondering, when your gray water tank overflows, it overflows first into the bottom of the shower. This is a nice feature, because the bottom of the shower can hold quite a bit of water (several gallons!) before it gets so full that it overflows then sploshes out the shower door and onto your Airstream floor. Tip: use a bucket or large bowl to bail water out of the shower and into the toilet, so that you can drive to the nearest dump station without sloshing more water out onto your floor.

We used many towels, rugs, etc. to mop up the water, and when we got to our stop for the night, we happily learned there was a laundry room and managed to wash and dry all of our rugs/towels/that pile of clothes on my side of the bed that had gotten soaked during our mishap. Now, all is well.

We're camped out for the night at Lake Marian RV "Paradise". It's nice, and kinda rustic and quaint, but are there really this many mosquitoes in "paradise"?

We cooked the fresh gulf shrimp that we picked up the other day (scampi style, with a salad) and they were delicious.

Tomorrow: Miami.

St. Joseph Peninsula State Park Wilderness Area

Laura Domela — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:57:06 +0000

This afternoon we went for a nice hike up in the wilderness area of St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. (You do need a permit to get into this area, but they just give 'em out at the park office free.) We parked and took the path over to the bay side of the peninsula and hiked up the bay a bit. Lots of hermit crabs, sea urchin shells, horseshoe crab shells, and herons. No people.

We walked for a while and eventually found a place where we could cross over to the gulf side of the peninsula, and we climbed a few pretty big (white) dunes to get there. It rained kinda heavy for about two minutes, so we were nice and wet for the last half of our walk. No big.

There are a ton of shells up this way on the gulf side:

And little birds:

And still, no people.

I love these ghost crabs! They blend in so well with the white sand, don't they? Here's a little one (little bigger than an inch across maybe):

And here's a little larger one:

The teeny ones are what make these little white sand tufts all over the place. There was a whole giant stretch of beach that was covered in them…it looked like an abstract chenille beadspread my grandma would have had:

Oh yeah, and parts of (big) sand dollars all over the place as well…

For dinner we grilled up the fresh red snapper we bought at the fish market. We marinated it in a mixture of lime/lemon juice, olive oil, coriander, cayenne, garlic, pepper, oregano, and achiote seeds for a few hours in the fridge first. Delicious.

In the morning we head for Miami (the fast, boring route, because we need to be there by Friday), but we could easily spend a week or more here.

St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in Port St. Joe, FL

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:52:05 +0000

Here's where we are now: St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in Port St. Joe, Florida.

Our campsite is rough and tropical (but completely level!) and has a ton of space and privacy. Not all the spots in this campground are like that, but this one is. Love it. The beach is just over the dunes from us (we haven't explored yet, will do here shortly). We drove from our non-spot at the Grayton Beach boat launch parking lot to Port St. Joe, taking the scenic route the whole way. Here's last night's spot in front of the white sand dunes (waves crashing on the other side…you can't hear 'em, but I'm telling you they're right there):

And a few pics from the drive:

Many of the houses along this route that are across the street from the Gulf build up these view spots on top of their homes so they can see over the houses right on the beach:

This is out on the St. Joseph Peninsula, before you get to the state park. There are so many gorgeous beach houses out here, and a TON of them for sale:

We parked and got set up and did some more work for a bit (nice to get a two hour head start here on Central Time!), then went out to grab some lunch at the Indian Pass Raw Bar. (Thanks Doug, for the great tip!) We tried both the raw and baked oysters, a cup of gumbo, and some crab-stuffed gulf shrimp. It was ALL good. The place is super casual and friendly…you walk in and help yourself to drinks in the coolers, order up some food, then when you're done, you tell the cashier what you had and pay up.

After lunch we headed back to Port St. Joe and picked up some fresh red snapper, grouper, and gulf shrimp for our meals for the two nights we're here.

Now we're back at the Airstream working and will probably head out later to take a walk on the beach and explore a little more.

Here's another shot of our sweet campsite office:

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:10:10 +0000

We drove from New Orleans through Mississippi (Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Pascagoula), then Alabama (Mobile, that's about it), and into Florida (Pensacola, Gulf Breeze, Fort Walton Beach, Destin) and ended up at Grayton Beach.

Some photos from the drive:

Kevin tried to snap a quick shot of this castle-like building out the moving car window. It didn't quite work, but the mood is cool anyway. You can still sorta see the castle-like building:

Downtown Mobile, Alabama:

Underwater tunnel:

Live bait, Battleship Park:

We decided earlier today that we'd stop at Grayton Beach State Park for one night (maybe two) and we left early enough to make it just fine. I'd miscalculated the time though, because I didn't account for the two one-hour stops we made for two conference calls Kevin had scheduled for the day, so by the time we arrived at Grayton Beach it was dark (just after 7pm). We pulled in and as we approached the little registration booth, we noticed that there was one of those striped "don't pass" arms blocking the road. Kevin got out and looked around for a phone number or instructions, and there was nothing. Nothing but a sign that said "Hours: Something or Other until Sundown."

I pulled out my iPhone and found a number to call, that then gave me another number to call for people arriving late who HAD reservations. We thought we'd try that, but then my cell service went away. Awesome. At some point as we were sitting there at the gate, another camper drove up behind us and told us the code, so we went in. We drove around a loop and there were plenty of unoccupied spots, but nowhere was there any indication of a "register/pay here" booth, or a camp host, or anything. And it was pitch dark.

We kept trying to call that number and finally got through and the guy said he didn't get the call from the reservation center to give him the occupied spots stats so he had to assume they were full for the night. He said as long as were self-contained we could go park in the parking lot by the boat ramp for the night, and go back to the booth in the morning. (We neglected to tell him "Hey, we got through your fancy gate and we're driving around the campground and there are PLENTY of empty spots!" for fear he'd tell us to move on down the road.)

We thanked him, headed to the boat ramp parking, and it's just fine and right by the beach. The wind is warm and we can hear the waves. I think it'll be gorgeous in the morning.

We unhitched and headed into town to grab some dinner at The Red Bar. Fresh fish (blackened grouper and mahi mahi) with big salads…a martini, live music…great atmosphere and very good food. We'll have to go explore a little bit during the day tomorrow.

After we got back to trailer we walked out toward the beach with our flashlight. There are boardwalk walkways because you're not supposed to walk on the dunes. (The sand is super fine, powdery, white white white.) We stopped at the end and watched the waves crash for a few minutes, and then my flashlight caught something in the sand. It was this cool little crab, about four inches wide, with a little headless fish in its claws.

Here he is:

And here are the grassy dunes in front of our car with the headlights on:

Arty, huh?