My wife and I returned last Sunday from a week in sunny Florida. This was the trip that we had to postpone due to my wife's surgery in April. It had been a while since we were in Florida that late in the year but overall I think it was a pretty good time to go. It was far from crowded and most of the restaurants were still open to tourists like ourselves.
We started off our trip on Friday. We drove to Meridian, MS to spend the night in a newly opened Drury Inn. If you have not stayed in one, don't laugh at the name. They are a mid tier franchise that is pet friendly. That is one of the primary reasons we keep going back.
When we arrived, it was raining. Texas had been soggy for a couple of weeks and we were hoping to move out of the rainy area for a while. Well, I guess we brought some of the rain with us so we did not go out that night. I had hoped to do a little geocaching then but that was not in the cards. I had to wait until the next morning (not really having enough time do do any "serious" caching since we had to check out at 11:00 AM and it was not light out until 7:30 AM, and we still needed to eat, get cleaned up and pack up the van) to do my caching and while it was not an expedition like I am used to, I did manage to get several before we left.
We hit the road around 10:30 or so and made pretty good time to the beach house in Cape San Blas. We had used this house last year and mostly liked it. A couple of downers were no Internet or mobile phone service and some maintenance issues (broken patio door and the overall cleanliness of the place) but those were mostly fixed this year. The owner now has wireless broadband and he fixed the broken patio door handle. The house in places was still not as clean as we would like, but overall it was better than last time.
One of the first things we noticed when we pulled in was a lot of standing water by the main road (SR-30E) and at the end of the cul de sac on which the house resides. The boardwalk was cut off from the homes by a large (make that huge) and deep pool of standing water. There were two sump pumps running 24x7 to pump the water out of the low spots but they had been running for over a week and the water never seemed to go down. We later learned that the last named storm that came through the area dumped a ton of water and it had yet to dissipate.
We got out of the van and were immediately attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. We were not pleased and wondered if our vacation was going to be ruined. Flooding, mosquitoes, and a long drive to pretty much any food, store or attraction did not sit well with us. My wife was visibly upset.
We were both tired and after we unpacked and made a well meaning, but futile attempt at getting to the beach, we turned in for hopefully a good night's sleep.
We awoke the next morning and I took our dog out to do her thing (after I slathered all natural bug juice on me). I walked over to the next cul de sac via the secondary boardwalk and noticed that it was flooded as well. I also noticed that the empty lot next to that cul de sac had not been improved upon since we were here 18 months ago. A local informed me that the developers went bankrupt and the bank has been looking for buyers for a long time. Not only did they go bankrupt, but the developers also had most of the tress cut down (some were not even theirs, but other property owners) removing a natural wind break that contributed to the damage from the last storm. The boardwalk that the developers were supposed to build that allowed access to the beach was never built so with this new flooding, everyone suffered with no quick way to the beach.
After speaking to a couple of locals and getting the low down on things (including the location of public access that was not flooded just about a mile away) I went back in the house to grab some breakfast. I filled my wife in on my findings and after breakfast we headed down to the public access.
We we arrived (with our dog), we noticed the park area was flooded as well...actually pretty bad. I have some pics I can post when I get more time. We were beginning to think that the locals were wrong about the access here but then I spotted a path leading to another part of the park and some additional parking and that area was 90% clear. We headed over and found that we could get to the beach from this location. Problem solved. While not ideal, it would work for a week.
Now that we had a way to the beach, we used that every morning and every evening to take 2-3 mile walks each time. Our dog (an older Golden Retriever mix) joined us about half the time. We would have taken her more but the walks were hard on her and the sand burrs were plentiful.
Each day my wife and I would pick a direction and drive to some small town to eat lunch and see the sights. The old coast has a lot of them to chose from and we decided to go to the closest ones on this trip. Things did not always go as planned but we did have a pretty good time and I was able to do some geocaching on our outings.
Our outings included trips to Apalachicola (known as Apalach to the locals), Port St. Joe, Wewahitchka (known as Wewa to the locals), St. George Island (known as SGI to the locals), and Carrabelle. Out of the six trips to little towns, we ended up eating in Apalach four times. The food there is really good. Wewa did not have much and neither did Carrabelle. SGI may have had some places that were okay but on that day we had decided to eat in Apalach so we did not look. Overall we had seafood for lunch each day and we cooked dinner that evening at home. It helped on the budget to do that.
By the time we left the beach to return home to Texas, the water had gone down enough that we could walk to the boardwalk from the rental but the water on the other side of the dunes was still forming a swamp so we could not take that route in concern for snakes.
Our trip back to Texas was uneventful. The rain followed us to MS again so that evening was a soggy mess. I did manage to get out the next morning to geocache a little, but I only got three. Once we hit the road it was smooth sailing all the way back to Dallas.
I took some pics, many which are on my Facebook page and a few I may post here. We enjoyed the stay despite the fact that the ground was soggy and flooded in places. It was not the best vacation, but it was not bad. Like all vacations, it went by too quickly but at least when I went back to work I was not on call. That pleasure comes next week.
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