Remembering the Forgotten Coast: An extra, extra long weekend gave me the opportunity to head down to Sarasota again, for a quick visit with family, then off to explore more of Florida. I should have the State just about covered by the time I die. This trip I was to head up into the Panhandle -- commonly known as the Redneck Riviera. Photos are on Smugmug.
An el cheapo flight from AirTran got me into Tampa (apropos of nothing, it was one of the final domestic flights that did not charge for checked baggage, which is a rant I have already howled), and to the Hertz check in desk where they didn't have the car I requested. I wanted a mid-sized car with Sirius since I was going to be on the road for a good bit of time. As expected they offered me an upgrade, but not to a full sized car. They offered me a Mustang GT, which counts as an upgrade even though it is stiflingly cramped because, presumably, it is really fast and tasteless bimbos will think you are a player. I really had no interest but the next grade up was a Ford Edge, which would have been fine, but they wouldn't give me that upgrade for free. So if I wanted Sirius, I had to take the cherry red Ford Mustang GT or pay more than I had intended. I took the Mustang and put Hertz on my ever growing list of bastards.
I will say this for the Mustang, it steers very precisely and it is exceedingly quick. The power would have been lost on me but the first time I pulled out on a two lane road to pass a semi and hit the accelerator -- whoa Nellie! You could get whiplash on that downshift.
Anyway, Sarasota remains Sarasota. It is a strikingly beautiful city. And the sun is always shining. And the trip across the bridge to the Longboat Key is worth the price of the trip. The other thing about Sarasota is that there is a ton of stuff to do there. I've spent a huge amount of time there over the years and I still find new experiences. This time it was Mote Aquarium. A great place to spend a couple of hours with the embalmed giant squid, the shark tank, the pool where you can pet the rays, the hands-on crustacean exhibit, educational movies, boat tours into the bay, even the old-time ice cream parlor on the premises. Manned by a volunteer staff (mostly retirees), it's the sort of place Sarasota specializes in: low-key but top quality attractions that don't claim to be anything more than they are.
Family visit over, I aimed the Mustang toward the Forgotten Coast. Generally when one thinks of the Florida Panhandle, one thinks of the spring break madness at Panama City and the massive condo and resort development over into Destin and Pensacola. But the coast between Tampa and Panama City, which is essentially the hard left turn where you shift from peninsular Florida in to the Panhandle proper, remains largely underdeveloped. Traffic arteries move north from Tampa inland to Tallahassee and west towards Gainesville then down into Panama City, bypassing the easternmost panhandle for the most part. As a result the coastal towns in that area have taken to referring to themselves as the Forgotten Coast, which from east to west, includes the towns of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, Port St. Joe, and Mexico City Beach.
Two quick observations about this being the Redneck Riviera: A) It is. B) But it's not what you think.
There are a decreasing number of uniform places in this country. Despite a political class that likes to paint counties and even entire states in red or blue, I doubt you find a state that is more the 55% or so one way or the other. That means if you took a random sample of ten people from the most partisan state you could find you would still only likely get six people who conformed. At the county level maybe you'd get seven once in while. Which is to say you rarely go anywhere in the country and get overwhelmed with the prevailing socio-political sentiment. This being a couple of days before elections, it was pretty clear that the place was majorly McCainiacs, but there were still a healthy number of O-bots to balance them.
The other thing is that these places, like everywhere else you go, are gentrifying. Apalachicola was my first stop, and the social changes of the last decade or so are written all over it. From time immemorial, it had been a fishing village populated with back-slapping bubbas, now suddenly there is a stylish Cuban restaurant on main street and a Starbucks knock off -- which by the way happened to have the very best breakfast sandwich ever; unbelievably fresh and flaky croissants -- where the bubbas now backslap over $4 lattes. Those picture perfect old houses in the historic district are now trophy homes for wealthy northerners with fishing boats. But they all seem to be doing OK with it, from what I could tell. Everyone I happened to make eye contact with was delighted to start up a conversation about anything and everything, usually ending up with a suggestion about what a good place it was to live. Smarmy, small-minded northerners would probably freak-out at the good ol' boy drawl and neighborly familiarity and sneer at the simple rubes, but I sure saw nothing but a lot of decent, freindly folks living lives that urban elites fanaticize about -- which is why they are down here overpaying for all those historic fixer-uppers and opening upscale coffee bars and boutiques.
The big to-do in Apalachicola was the Florida Seafood Festival, a celebration of, well, seafood. Thousands come in to the little town from far and wide. A carnival is set up. Oysters are shucked and beers are poured on every corner. The day starts off at sunrise with the Red Fish Run, a friendly foot race of 5k through the historic district with a whopping 60 or 70 participants, including Yours Truly. What comes next is a lengthy, joyous parade featuring all the usual suspects -- community groups, high school bands and beauty queens, car dealers and politicians, Shriners in their little cars and pirates on their boat floats, all flinging candy to children along the way. When the sun warms up, the gates are open on the festival proper where any local restaurant worth its salt has a food booth set up; there are carnival rides, crab races, oyster eating contests, and live entertainment featuring both Country and Western music. It's generally well done, and everybody seems to have a good time. But I must say this: The folks in the panhandle no doubt are expert fishermen, but they have no clue how to cook what they catch. It is all battered and sauced and spiced beyond recognition. It's as if they took some beautiful fresh catch and made very attempt to make it taste like chicken fried steak.
My big discovery of the Seafood Festival was the music of Jim Morris -- basically a Jimmy Buffett disciple who plays around Florida. He wasn't actually there, there were just playing a collection of his called, appropriately, Seafood Platter over the loudspeakers. It's now on my Amazon wish list.
I wasn't actually staying in Apalachicola, though. The hotels were all booked up for the festival. I was staying further west in Port St. Joe, home of the renown St. Joseph State Park, which the renown Dr. Beach named best beach in the U.S., back in 2002. If you peruse that site a bit, you'll note that the good Dr. has a predilection for Gulf beaches -- not that I disagree, the beach further south in Naples is my benchmark, but I can attest to the total serene beauty of the beach at St. Joseph State Park. Although you would be unlikely to find it as deserted as I did, the fact that it is in a State park, that facilities are sparse and basic, that there is nothing commercial (especially beach bars or t-shirt huts) for miles, and that lodging is limited to campgrounds and rustic cabins, generally means you won't find you big beach partiers here. I think crossed paths with exactly one couple, and everyone else I saw was pretty much a speck in the distance. Nor will you find any discarded cans or bottles or Big Mac wrappers and such. Which is good because anything that would mar the quality of this beach, with its talcum power sand and wholly organic feel, would be criminal.
My final evening I made the hour drive to Panama City Beach just to see what all the fuss was. Panama City is where all the Deep South types go on spring break, so naturally the beach road was lined with bars and crap shops and liquor stores and tacky motels. I pulled into a monster sports bar to catch some of the Sunday games, and actually got a decent muffaletta, but at half-time I decided to duck out and head back to a dockside restaurant at the Port St. Joe Marina because I really wanted to spend my last evening in the open air rather than inhaling the moldy beer smell endemic to virtually every sports bar in existence.
I should have stayed. I snagged a seat at the bar at the marina only to find that they had such a completely basic cable TV package that they didn't even get the broadcast channels, so I couldn't see the Fins game. Then I ordered a beer and it turns out that the city of Port St. Joe is dry on Sunday. Great. So I got a game I didn't want to see and a Diet Coke. Whatever the case, I still got the sunset as the pictures attest.
Drive back was ugly -- I held to the secondary coast roads instead of the freeway. After the turn south into the pneninnsula things go full-on suburban fast and don't stop; an endless row of Home Depots, WalMarts, Targets, Best Buys, Publix, Applebees, Chilis -- for over a hundred miles (literally) (no literally literally). At Clearwater you can turn off down the bay road, but even there the shore is hidden by huge resorts. St. Pete/Clearwater has some very nice aspects and the beaches are stellar, but the bits and pieces of beauty seem rather swamped by concrete. It seems a million miles from sweet Apalachicola.
Here's hoping the Forgotten Coast stays that way.
