The Forgotten Coast

We're in the "Big Bend" of Florida now, driving towards the Panhandle. If you picture Florida as a handgun, we are at the trigger. 

Not in Texas yet

Temperatures are a lot more moderate than Key West. The 90/90 weather there was too much for me: 90˚F and 90% relative humidity. While walking around a community in the Keys in 90/90 weather, a group of seniors, wearing long pants, enclosed shoes with socks, long sleeves, and bright green safety vests biked by. I was told only the tourists wear shorts and short sleeved shirts.

In this part of Florida you tell tourists from locals by the flags. Trump and Confederate flags are embarrassingly common. We get to our campground road by turning right at the Confederate battle flag. How appropriate.

We are staying at a campground in Tate's Hell State Forest. That's its real name. A  local legend is that a farmer in 1875 named Cebe Tate, with a shotgun and his hunting dogs, journeyed into the swamp searching for a panther that was killing his livestock. Tate got lost in the swamp for seven days and nights, was bitten by a snake, and drank funky swamp water to curb his thirst. Finally he got to a clearing near Carrabelle, living only long enough to murmur the words, "My name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell."

I tried to write a review of our campground in "RVLife", a good online source for campsites. Pulled up the page for Tate's Hell, and started writing some tips. My comments could not be saved because profanity is not allowed in comments! (The page header had Tate's Hell in large letters). I changed my comments to Tate's H3ll to get around the mechanical censor. 

No longer a dismal swamp, much of the 200,000 acres were drained and planted with slash pine in straight rows for pulpwood. The ensuing pollution from excess nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer made a mess of the rivers and bay, so Florida started acquiring the land in 1994. The forestry service is rejuvenating the forest, diversifying the natural habitats, and returning some of the natural water flows. An important part of rejuvenation is frequent controlled burns, and many trees show signs of low intensity fires. This is just the opposite of Smoky the Bear and the massive uncontrolled wildfires devastating California. We saw similar controlled burns in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, too.

One really feels "off the map" out here. This campground has only four sites. Google Maps is absurdly wrong in this wilderness. We tried to find the entrance; Google took us to a HQ building many miles away from any campgrounds, which was closed on weekends so we couldn't even ask for directions. More searching and Google routed us 20 miles away (from where we came from), but that didn't look right, and it wasn't.  Careful reading the instructions and ignoring Google maps, we eventually found our site down 15 miles of dirt roads. 

Weirdly, even in many other parts of the woods the electronic mapping was wrong. We would plot a route, could see the road on the satellite view, but the path would be maybe 100 yards off the actual road. We came to a T in the road which Google wanted us to continue straight. (Impossible). We guessed right, and found our way. Other times, the verbal directions ("turn left onto Bridge Road") were reversed, we actually had to turn right (there was no left turn possible). 

One part of the Hell moniker was when we asked the camp host about a hike indicated on a (paper) map. "Nice hike, but I wouldn't go there unless you wear blaze orange." It is hunting season, and all the other campsites are full of hunters. We didn't have any blaze orange clothing with us. We looked at some other maps, and saw a hike far away we thought might be safe. "I wouldn't go there even with blaze. Too many hunters." Sorta puts a damper on the great outdoors; it is getting as dangerous as a public school with all the shootings. The host mentioned she had lost a friend to an accidental hunting incident.

Barbara above the dwarf cypress 

"Knees" of cypress trees. They never grow to be full trees.  (this photo is not from the dwarf forest)

There was one very short hike on an elevated boardwalk which she considered safe. The short little trees (about 15' high) are dwarf cypress that are 150 years old. (Many of the cypress we have seen in other areas are huge, 75+ feet high and 5 to 10 foot girths). Cypress are deciduous, and lose their leaves annually, so these are not dead. I don't know if these trees are dwarf because of lack of nutrients or because they are a different species. This doesn't help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_cypress

Cypress like to have their roots flooded for much of the year. Funny looking "knees" stick up. While they never grow into trees, science does not have a definitive understanding of what they do. Some thought they allow the roots to breathe when flooded, but many scientists disagree now. 

Cypress was a very important wood, and the vast majority were harvested all over Florida. Cypress wood is highly rot-resistant and strong. They are very slow growers, and it will be generations before there will be big stands again. The only stands that survived were in particularly inhospitable flooded areas, such as the Everglades and Okefenokee swamps.

This part of Florida calls itself "the Forgotten Coast" because it does not have the high rise condos and towers of other parts of Florida. Somewhere is a joke about it was forgotten to be mapped, too.

In Carrabelle is the world's smallest police station

Yep, the phone booth

The little town of Carrabelle in the 1950s didn't have a real police station, just a cop in a car. They installed a telephone booth so residents could call the cop, who would get out of his car and answer the phone. The old phone was mounted on the outside wall of the town hall, which was uncomfortable when it was raining. Often the cop wouldn't answer the phone when it was raining, so they installed the phone booth. Carrabelle now has a regular police station.

Our trip to Apalachicola was like time travel. It does have a an active Chamber of Commerce, with half a dozen locals hanging out, but, umm, nothing in the town.The town was quite an important port just before the Civil War (so they claimed in a letter sent to Congress.) very important  Seemed like most people had moved.

Raney House.  Note the rotting columns and no-so-temporary 4x4s holding the roof up. The columns are hollow wood with significant woodpecker (and therefore termite) damage.  

The historical society is proud of the legend that the ladies of town sewed a/"The" Confederate flag in this building, the Raney house. Not much has happened since. Looking at the closed sign, they must have wild Saturday night parties.

I hope there is a new Fire Department

Their moment of glory just before the Civil War

The 20-block "downtown" seemed to cater to a nearly non-existent tourist trade. Several "antique" stores looked like just heavily picked over flea markets with a small amount of rustic "yard art". One store sold locally produced Tupelo honey. 

The town is very proud of its oystering and commercial fishing background. I hoped to find some oysters for lunch.  Monday we walked about looking for lunch. "Closed Mondays". "Closed Mondays and Tuesdays". "Closed for renovations". A lunch truck behind a locked chain link fence had an Open sign. None of these were high-falutin' joints, just local eateries. As far as oysters go, one of the closed restaurant's menu had a fried oysters appetizer, but nothing else from the sea. Certainly did not seem like anything local.

Note the plywood patch at the waterline

The only locals catching fish here were the pelicans. The boat had a very "rustic" patch of thin plywood glued on with what looked like Home Depot house insulation foam. None of booms had any fish gear rigged, either. 

This was probably the most happening joint in town. 

Too bad Samantha broke her hand so the joint was closed 12/7

Curious contrast department: There weren't any national brands  -  no Starbucks, Mcdonalds, Walgreens,  Ace Hardware, Winn-dixie, etc. Mostly just faded wooden storefronts, seemingly uncared for since the 20th century. I haven't been in such a town for a loooong time. The curious contrast was there were three EV charging locations. Sadly, none seemed to work. 

At least we didn't have to wear blaze orange while walking the streets.

Onward to Fort Pickens, part of the Gulf Island National Seashore, near Pensacola. But first we had a another Trivial Achievement - we summited Florida's highest peak: Britton Hill. Hold your applause until the end. Our next lowest accomplishment will be Washington DC's high point, Fort Reno, up at 409 feet.

You read it right, a whopping 345 feet above sea level: Lowest high point in USA

To get to Britton Hill, we recharged in DeFuniak Springs, a pretty town with a historical houses around a small spring-fed round lake. In 1964, the town council closed the lake to swimming due to "civil rights issues". We can guess what that meant in those days. The lake only reopened for swimming in August 2021.  https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/local/2021/08/27/lake-defuniak-after-civl-rights-era-closure/5599173001/ 

Our final Trivial Achievement of this post was "doing" the Florida Trail.  Similar to the Appalachian Trail, it is a 1400 mile hike from the trailhead in Big Cypress National Preserve. Coincidently two weeks ago were were at the southern terminus of the trail. (no picture, sorry).

 

The tourist who snapped this picture for us had also just driven to both endpoints and was even more out of shape than we are.

At Fort Pickens we met a guy who actually had hiked the Florida Trail, three times. His last hike was a bit longer, starting at Mile Zero in Key West, up 200+ miles to the southern terminus, the whole Florida Trail (1400 miles), then other trails to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain, Georgia, then to the top of Mt Katahdin in Maine (2,190+ miles,), then onwards on the International AT to New Brunswick, Canada and onward to Sidney. Wow, and all in one trek, 10.5 months, solo.  He said he got cabin fever during covid, so wanted to walk. Maybe like Forrest Gump? Total length is something over 4,000 miles. Definitely NOT a Trivial Achievement. 

More on the wonderful, beautiful, and delightful National Seashores later.

Happy Trails,

Krem and Barbara