October 4 : Panama City, Florida – Apalachicola,
Florida (93 miles)
We traveled 8 hours on intercostal
waters. We crossed two lakes and motored
through 2 rivers. After we crossed East
Bay Lake google maps no longer showed us on water. I'm wondering...does this show/support global warming is real? (Personally, I think the poles may be shifting)
People around these parts call it the “ditch”. It was a pretty smooth ride; the kids slept
most of the time. One of the lakes was
only 7 feet deep yet the river was 25. During the crossing of the first river it
sound like we hit something. EEKS! I think it was a branch that was in the
water. The boat carried along fine so we
weren’t too worried. Jacob stayed up on
the fly bridge the whole 8 hour trip.
Not able to move to use the restroom or eat. Not having auto pilot is complicated with
only one captain. He is definitely
earning his Captain’s stripes on this trip!
We were cruising along
fine that we didn’t even notice we were passing Apalachicola. We had to turn around. In doing so, we unknowingly were slightly off
the channel. All of sudden a group of
mariners started hollering at us waving their arms in the air. We really didn’t know what they were saying
until the transducer and engines went out.
We hit land!!! A jetty at least 50 feet from land covered by about 2.5
feet of muddy river water. One of the
fellas hollering at us hopped in his boat with his broom stick and stuck it in
the water revealing just how shallow the area was. I am surprised it wasn’t marked better. Jacob put the boat in reverse as the nice
gentleman guided us with his broomstick.
Luckily, we were going slow enough and the ground was muddy, not rocky,
so we were easily able to reverse out of the mud. Once we made it back to the channel we
continued through the narrow shallow harbor our marina, Scipio Creek , was tucked
in.
The Marina was huge, but nearly vacant,
with only a few boats docked. After
tying up we sent the kids to go explore, Jacob needed a moment of silence to
relax from the drive and hitting land.
We walked through a
musty abandoned Oyster Bar and restaurant searching for the marina shop. The boys both got chills walking through later in the night and are convinced it’s haunted. When we came to the marine shop we found a
woman and a partially stocked marina. The
shelves were closer to being empty than full.
This place looked like it was really cool at one point, but not
anymore!
The stop sign isn't even red anymore!
Apalachicola was a huge
oyster town, but now like so many places humans have over taken. One oystermen told me that it would take at
least 10 years for the oysters in this area to reproduce to acceptable levels. Most oysters you eat here nowadays are shipped
in. We, loving oysters, ate some at the Tap Room, bartender said they were local.
We also had also had a couple of locally brewed Apalachicola beers. I really liked the IPA and Jacob the brown ale.
We also had also had a couple of locally brewed Apalachicola beers. I really liked the IPA and Jacob the brown ale.
The full moon began to light the sky and the sun left us with a beautiful sunset
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