18th Mar – 5th Apr 2022
Think Florida? Think Disney, Everglades, Keys, retirement communities, suburban sprawl, traffic, developed beach resorts. The Forgotten Coast bucks all these norms, mainly because it has been just that: forgotten. As the crowds have poured into Southern Florida, to live and holiday in the tropical winterless climate, the slightly cooler coast of the Florida panhandle remains a gorgeous gem that seems to have become lodged in the years somewhere between 1950 and 1985. The long term locals and holiday-makers of yore would lament that it too has been a victim of progress and that development has altered its charm, but to our eyes, it was a complete retro delight.
Our day of out-running the storm brought us through Pensacola, Panama City, Mexico City and Port St Joe, with each conurbation getting progressively smaller and less developed. Mexico City and Port St Joe had had their own weather nemesis in the form of hurricaine Michael in 2018, but the rebuild efforts looked mostly complete. Our journey took us beyond civilisation to, quite literally, the end of the road and a small settlement called Indian Pass. Here a quiet 3 mile stretch road ran down a narrow penninsula with a swampy inland lagoon on one side and a long white sandy beach on the other. There are a variety of well spaced out beach houses that are mostly vacation homes but with a scattering of full time residents. At the top of the road is a small grocery store and ‘raw bar’, the only businesses within 12 miles and at the end of the road was a boat ramp, a turnaround and our camp. This was truely ‘getting away from it all’.
Camp was a real ‘sand between your toes’ sort of place that looked like it hadn’t seen any real maintenance for several decades. None of the sandy pitches were very level or had any sort of hardstanding and they were all higgledy-piggledy, slotted between the large old trees. The power and water hookups were placed in random locations, often on the wrong side of the sites, so that it was difficult to get hoses and leads to reach their plug ins. There were no sewer hook-ups and the single dump station for the whole camp was situated in the main thoroughfare. It was also located on the brow of a small hillock so that any tank discharge had to navigate a moderate contra-gravity route. (Physics need not apply here.) There was also no TV reception, no Wifi and the bathroom block, situated in a portacabin, was tired and dated. It was perfect.
(Soon after we had arrived I noticed that what looked like pale mud splatters all along the passenger-side of Big Dave was actually paint, still a bit wet, but drying fast. We had no idea when we had picked it up, but it was super-sticky and probably road-marking paint. Removing it was a labour of love and over the following weeks it took many hours, much elbow grease, several pints of rubbing alcohol and considerable swearing to get rid of it. It was mostly removed from the paintwork by the end of our trip but the wheel arches are a lost cause. I will just over-spray these dark grey when he needs a pre-sale tarting up.)
We had booked nine nights, and in order to stay so long at the short notice that we had given, this meant a moving sites again during our stay. Despite all its short comings this was a very popular little campsite and many people have been coming here for decades. Nobody that we spoke to wanted it to change one iota. The beach was only a hop and a skip away from most of the sites and the comings and goings at the boat ramp made us very whistful for our past boat ownership days and our paddleboaords at home.
Just off Indian Pass point there is a largish uninhabited island called St Vincents Island and a deep channel with strong currents separates it from the mainland. This attracts lots of fish which is what brings most people here, for the fishing. It also, for the same reasons, apparently brings a lot of sharks to the channel, making it one of the most shark infested stretches of water in the world, or the USA, or Florida. I can’t quite remember what my source of this information actually said, but it certainly put us off swimming even more than the brisk water temperatures. During our stay we only saw one small shark but there was pod of dolphins that hung about most days, obviously grazing on the all-you-can-eat-fish-buffet. Very scenic.
Having avoided one storm to get here we copped a second one soon after arriving. There was much thunder and lightening; it rained and rained and rained; stopped for a bit, then rained again. With the aide of a large umbrella we managed a brief spell on the beach for a ‘sundowner’ and were unsuprisingly out there by ourselves. All the other sensible people were chased inside by the imminant danger of death-by-lightning-strike and eventually we lost our bottle too. Just in the nick of time as the next strike sounded pretty much overhead.
It rained all night, but cleared up the next day again allowing us to cycle the 3 miles back to the raw bar for a late lunch. This place is brilliant. The ‘raw’ refers to the oysters on the menu and this is essentially a very simple seafood bar. On arrival you are given two pieces of paper: a booze tick-sheet to record the drinks that you take from the ‘honesty fridges’, and the menu tick-sheet to order your food and drop off at the counter. Then you pay at the end. It has been here for donkey’s years in various guises, and although been modestly extended in recent decades, it has been doing the same thing in the same way for a long time. The oysters are all from this area and fresher than a fresh thing from freshville.
I think my face says all you need to know about the glorious pairing of a tray of baked oysters covered in an unexpectedly good melted cheese and topped with toasted breadcrumbs and a tray of stuffed prawns having their last swim in a lake of liquid butter served with a slab of absorbant bread. No other words needed.
The rest of the week was a bit of a blur of hot sunny days, a few more rainy days, long walks on the beach, sitting in the sun, reading, chatting to camping neighbours, having evening fires on the beach and finally feeling like we were ‘on holiday’. I know that sounds a bit rich, as our current existance is mostly one big fat holiday, but this place was something special.
One day we took a shuttle boat over the channel to St Vincents Island with our bikes. The island is uninhabited, has no power or running water and criss-crossed by several rough tracks. The cost of the 90 second transfer was a bit steep, but there was no way that we could leave Indian Pass without a visit. In the 1940s the island, which is about 9 miles long and 4 miles wide was originally a privately owned hunting retreat, stocked with many exotic game species like zebra, sambar deer, eland and black buck. In 1968 the island was bought by the Nature Conservancy who removed all the exotic game except the sambar deer, creating a wildlife refuge. These deer are a type of Asian elk and are enormous, as big as a medium sized horse. The island is now also home to many alligators, wolves, eagles and numerous migratory birds. Our boat shuttle only gave us 2.5 hours on the island and we set off on our bikes down the main track, unlikely to have time to make it to the end of the island before we had to turn around. It was beautiful and deserted but very heavy going due to all the recent rain. The brisk breeze was at our backs initially, then compounded the work of our return trip an we saw none of the alleged wildlife except one very small turtle. It turned out to be quite an expensive bike ride through a forest. Yer live and learn.
During our time here we got to know a colourful local couple called (Mr) Lynn and Barb who owned one of the very few permenant trailers on the camp. They had had it for years, and despite also having a proper home in the nearby town of Port St Joe, they spent most of their time here. King and Queen of the ‘sundowner’, which commenced long before the sun was anywhere near the horizon, they held court every later afternoon outside their pad, spending hours chatting to friends old and new who were either passing by or who sat to join them. There was always a cooler full of beer, always a pile of empties, always a couple of tame squirrels who came to be fed monkey nuts, always an endless supply of interesting tales and always the sound of Lynn’s laughter filling the air. They were priceless. Lynn, a renowned artist specializing in reptiles and flora, became louder as the cooler got emptier and then could always be found round the back of their trailer having a wee in a bush at regular intervals. As our pitch was right next to their trailer we found it impossible to resist drawing up a chair and sharing a drink or two as long as the no-see-ums allowed…..
Which brings me to no-see-ums. Biting gnats. Little tiny, flying jaws of menace. Mercilous, miniture bugs that were the only downside of our time spent on this coast. They are about the size of a UK midge, are very interested in procuring human blood, and stalk their prey at all hours, especially dawn and dusk. On the upside, they can’t fly in windy conditions, on the downside, they are smaller than the mesh on our window screens which consequently offer no protection so we weren’t even safe inside. On the upside, they are repelled by slathering yourself in 40% DEET products. On the downside, you have to slather yourself in 40% DEET products. It was the rough to the Forgotten Coast smooth.
Eventually our extended stay here came to an end, which was very sad. We bade our farewells to Lynn and Barb and continued onwards. Our next stay was a single night stop-gap in a far fancier sort of place, Carabelle Beach RV resort. It was just across the road from a very lovely beach (clue’s in the name) and a whole 45 minute drive away from Indian Pass. Life ‘on the road’ was being spent less and less actually on the road these days. We arrived, checked in and were directed to our site which was one of those fabulous enormous and perfectly flat and level concrete slabs. No wiggling backwards and forwards, left and right to find the flattest spot. No arguing about whether we needed to get the levelling blocks out and how many we needed under which wheels to achieve some semblence of horizontal. (This is not only important for the efficient functioning of the fridge-freezer, but makes sleeping more comfortable-any head up or head down is disconcerting, cooking less sporting- think fluid levels, and means the doors on cupboards and the bathroom don’t fly open or slam shut all the time.) Anyway, we just pulled up and it was perfect. The sandy shabbiness of Indian Pass had been absolutely charming, but you have to love 100 sqm of perfect pad and patio. It was hot and breezy, so no no-see-ums, we sat by the pool, we read, we walked over to the beach, it was all rather civilised.
Our next stop after this was another epic 30 minute drive away. We may be paying more for our campsites the further into Florida we go, but at least our fuel costs have decreased considerably. We were booked for the next eight days into another waterside park called Holiday Campground (another clue in the name)on the Ochlockonee Bay which was near a town called Panacea. In the late 1800s the town was originally called Smithville due to the large number of people of that surname that lived in the town. The town was the site of numerous hot sulphurous mineral springs and as the medical tourism industry started to boom in the country, Smithville confidently renamed itself ‘Smith Springs’ and waited for the tourists to flock in. No-one came. Before the turn of the century the town and its springs were bought by a group of Bostonian property developers, who renamed it Panacea and came up with an inspired marketing campaign. Each different spring was touted as benefiting and healing different ailments. A pavilion complex was built around the springs and suddenly Panacea was a popular destination. Unfortunately the boom didn’t last. A destructive hurricaine in 1928 was followed closely by the Great Depression and then the springs inexplicably dried up. Panacea had had its day. It is still a quiet backwater, attracting mainly tourists who come for the amazing fishing.
Camp was very pictureseque with half the pitches backing onto the beautiful Bay with great views of the water and fantastic sunsets. This offset the slight lack of space between the pitches and no pretence of anything being flat. Out with the levelling blocks again… Luckily our neighbours were quiet and neat which couldn’t be said of everyone. There’s something about being on vacation that turns up the volume on an American voice. That ‘something’ is proabably afternoon drinking, I think.
Panacea itself was about 5 miles down the road and we had no need to go there. Locally to camp was a shop, a couple of restaurants and nearby was a nice beach. Despite this area being apparently a bit down at heel it had been singled out to have an enormous amount of money spent on building cycle paths. $35million allegedly. The process was well underway and we were very happy to take full advantage of this luxury. One path went the 3 miles down to the beach which we visisted a couple of times, one path was in progress to link the town of Panacea with the beach area and then extended a further 10-15 miles inland beyond the town (to where, I don’t know) and then another path followed the tranquil road 10 miles through the forest to the neighbouring town of Sopchoppy.
Sopchoppy gets its name from a native Indian word for ‘long and twisted river’ and is a small settlement of less than 500 people. I’m not quite sure why a lot of money was spent to build a dedicated cycle path alongside a very quiet road to link a very small town to a smaller bayside settlement, but they did, and we took advantage of it. There’s not much in Sopchoppy: a gas station, a hardware store, a grocery store and……a microbrewery! Hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it…Double hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it that had a visiting food truck scheduled to be in attendance…Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!! Of course we had to go. So one sunny afternoon we saddled up and set off. Ten miles is quite a long way to cycle for a beer and dinner, but we are nothing if not committed to supporting local business and very time rich. The calorie burn would also offset the beer and burger fiesta we had planned. Win, win.
It was a delightful hour’s spin through the forest on our almost personal bike path, because you know that there was pretty much no one else using it. We arrived a bit hot and sweaty but nothing that a few cold pints of good beer didn’t sort out pretty quickly.
One important thing that you should know about Sopchoppy is that it is the location for an Annual Worm Grunting Festival. This is a competion to lure the most earthworms out of the ground by creating vibrations made by rubbing a piece of metal along a ribbed wooden stake. This grunting noise apparently sound just like the approach of the arch nemesis of an earthworm – a mole. So they all try and escape to the soil surface, where they are collected to be used for fishing bait. Genius and bonkers. This would usually be exactly the sort of event that we would attend and we were very disappointed to find out that we were only going to miss it bay a week.
After several pints we realised that the plan for a food truck dinner in a few hours was not going to be compatible with retaining the level of sobriety and athletic ability required to make the return 10 mile journey enjoyably. We sensibly decided to head back early and went to one of the seafood restaurants close to camp to continue our evening. This was a good decision.
We managed to fill our time here with walks on the beach, sitting on the beach, lying on the beach, working on removing the paint from Big Dave bit by bit, having camp fires, watching many beautiful sunsets and eating and drinking. You know, the usual. What I obviously wasn’t doing was writing the blog as I sit here back in the UK struggling to finish this penultimate post on the 3rd June, more than two months down the line.
