Northwest Panhandle of Florida Guide

WEB RESOURCES

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Saturday morning we are on our way to the more remote areas of the panhandle. We'll be heading southeast to our ultimate destination: Apalachicola. But we have some important stops along the way. First, we need to understand the local fishing industries and we stop at Greg Abrams Seafood Inc., in a town called Port St. Joseph. St. Joseph, founded in 1835, briefly became the largest community in the state. St. Joseph is situated directly on the shores in one of the finest harbors on the Gulf of Mexico. Two railroads connected St. Joseph with the Apalachicola River to enhance commerce including cotton and lumber industries surrounding Apalachicola. Today, there are no visible lumber operations as the mill shut down during the last decade and cotton is no longer king.

After an hour and a half drive from WaterColor, we reach Greg Abrams and find a place to rest. A little downtime while we wait for the fishing boats to bring in the catch. The fishing here isn't what it used to be and Chris explains the problems with over-fishing and species depletion. While the local fishermen once targeted the slow-growing grouper and snapper, thanks to heavy harvesting their stocks are depleted and suddenly tilefish and tripletail are hitting the menus. Local fishermen have had to change their tactics to survive in a changing world.

Just a short drive down the road is our lunch spot on the bayou – Buddy Ward's 13 Mile oyster business. Now run by his son Tommy, the spit of land reaches out from the timberland into a world untouched by development. It is an oyster lease they have had almost a century and it supports most of his entire family. You can hear him tell the story.

Tommy does an excellent job articulating the region for us, even though he is a man of few words. "Eat as much as you want," he says. "Drink all the beer you would like, and act like this is your home."

There is a tent set up just for us with about a thousand fresh oysters in coolers, hundreds of pounds of shrimp, and more beer and soda than we can possibly drink. Not much to eat if you aren't into oysters, shrimp, and beer, but thankfully, most of us don't have that problem! The shuckers keep on shucking some of the best tasting oysters in the world. Without excessively over-personalizing, I think I ate 3-dozen raw oysters, and half a dozen that Tommy's friend barbecued.

Ever wonder how oystermen harvest these delicious bivalves? During our feast, Tommy's brother George ferries small groups of us out to see multi-generational oysterman Kendall Schoelles in his lonely but peaceful world of oyster tonging.

We climb on board and take a shot at gathering oysters from the muddy bottom six feet below, using primitive instruments called "tongs" that haven't changed much in hundreds of years. Simply plunge the tongs to the bottom, open and then squeeze them until you feel the baskets are full, and then lift, hand over hand, the 30 pounds of oysters over the side of the boat, and drop the spoils onto the sorting platform in the bow. Nothing to it, really; all you need is incredible strength and technique coupled with a surgeon's patience and you too could do it all day like Kendall. Five days a week, rain or shine, 8 hours a day. Lisa Poirot, a freelance journalist from Atlanta, demonstrates proper form.

Kendall shows Tom Flynn how to separate the tiny oysters from the big one, another mind-numbing task that makes you appreciate the oysterman a little more. But now it's time to say goodbye to all of Tommy's relativesat Buddy Ward's and head on down the coast to our last stop, Apalachicola.

The landscape shifts from rural to small town America in about an hour's drive. We arrive at the Coombs House Inn, a converted private Victorian home owned by the late Mr. Coombs (buried across the street), a wealthy timber man from Maine who first discovered the region battling confederate soldiers in 1862 during the American Civil War. He returned after the end of the war to make his fortune using his Yankee ingenuity and knowledge of the timber trade.

The large, meticulously restored, and antique-filled Victorian inn feels welcoming and comfortable, and the staff is friendly and helpful. The Coombs House is very different from the WaterColor Inn, but equally attentive to the details that make a pleasant stay. Clean, spacious and quality assured. It is within walking distance of the quaint retail, restaurant and harbor section of town and set amidst similar period homes.

After a chance to relax, we head downtown to check out the nice mix of junk, antiques, art and retail shops, while we meet and experience the local vibe. It doesn't take long for me to find someone to sum up how the locals feel about Apalachicola. A man resembling Ernest Hemingway, and owner of an eclectic shop, leans over his counter and says, "I drive over that bridge every time I leave this town and I feel like WOW! I can't believe how lucky I am to even visit this place ... AND I GET TO LIVE HERE!" He has more to say but he says it better than I can.

By now, we are moving about as slow as swinging southern trees but hungry again. Dining is our purpose now and we accomplish this at David and Ryanne Carrier's Avenue Sea restaurant in the Gibson Inn. Both veterans of The French Laundry Restaurant, these two know how to cook. We find the old Inn House to be spacious and gracious and the food delicate and delicious. Hard to say we are not having a great time with this kind of fare.

Now we separate the men from the boys. Those of us who can brave the night air and the inherent risks of small boating at night are going flounder gigging. Here in the Panhandle they don't allow netting of the flounder anymore. Because of fish depletion and politics (turbulent legal debates rage over water resources as the river is interrupted by sister state Georgia's dam building and water allocation) the flounder stocks are overwhelmed. But now we are here to take the flounder one at a time, the way the old timers did: with a spear.

We arrive at the boats owned by Captain Dwayne, a local fisherman who also earns a living from booking night flounder excursions and fishing trips. We are about to enter the water at night, armed with a flounder gig to cruise like predators in the wilds of northwestern Florida. We are there for fun and understanding. But not Captain Dwayne. This is his living. Fishing is all he has ever known. It is in his blood, passed down through the generations by his father, his grandfather.

We cast off amidst a canopy of blackness punctuated only by stars. The water is dead calm and we cruise the darkness with a solitary light in the stern. I can see no markers, none needed by captain Dwayne. We are across the water in 20 minutes. At St. George's Island, we slow to gigging speed, the motor at idle as we bump along at walking speed in 8 inches of water in this special flat-bottomed boat. Captain Dwayne flips a switch and the water near the bow is illuminated. He climbs to the front and stands above us on his perch, holding a long pole, fending off rocks and shallows. The hunters grab spears with 8-foot handles and take to the gunnels; it's reminiscent of the Nantucket whalers of the 18th century. The hunt has begun.

But the flounder are evasive. We study the water below reedy and nearly empty of life. Yet in another month, the captain tells us, when the warming sun awakens them, it will be chock-full of big gators and teaming with fish. We are early, but told to keep our eyes open, to strike decisively, aiming at the rear of the fish so that the undersized can swim off without mortal wounds. Suddenly we see the imprint of a keeper flounder submerged in the mud, blending perfectly into the surrounding pattern. "OK! There he is! Get him!" I see him. I am ready and raise the spear. He's on my side of the boat.

I am a stranger to this place; far away from home and I am here for adventure. I am in the flounder's kitchen. The fish is motionless. "Strike ‘im! Git ‘im!" The animal is hiding, and clearly, disadvantaged. The boat inches closer and the opportunity is now. I raise the spear higher. "Get him now or he'll be gone!" I glance from the fish to the captain standing on the platform. His eyes I can't see but for the first time in the evening he didn't end his address with "sir". It's my turn, and it's too late to turn back now. I thrust.

And miss. The fish swims off.

"YOU MISSED ‘IM!!!! You CAN'T WAIT so LONG!" I failed my captain. But achieved my goal. "Doesn't matter. He won't go far. We'll get him". Captain Dwayne circles the boat and tells us to keep looking in the mud. "We'll find him." I look. And I see a trail in the mud. An impression of the fish in flight. I can feel his terror. It's just him and me now, on this search for his life.

He appears again off my side. "There he IS!!!!" He had his chance and he blew it. Sometimes in life you just get one.

"Don't have to hit him so hard, won't be nothing left to eat!" The flounder flops into the boat, right next to the big painted flounder on the deck. "Like that one? My wife painted it! Said this way, I would never come back to port without a nice keeper!" He speaks of his wife many times during the night. And calls her a few times. "Sometimes I fish with her. She's my best friend and we love it out here. She can handle the boat as well as I can". I can hear his smile and suddenly this office under the stars doesn't seem so lonely.

And so the night went on and we got a couple more fish in the boat. Not a big night but an interesting one. One I won't forget.

Back at the Coombs House for our last night the trip and then to see where Tupelo honey comes from.

The Apalachicola River is famous for its tupelo honey, a high-quality, monofloral honey, which is produced wherever the Tupelo trees bloom in the southeastern United States, but the purest and most expensive version (which is certified by pollen analysis) is produced mainly in this basin and, to a lesser extent, in other panhandle river basins. In a good harvest year, the value of the tupelo honey crop produced by a group of specialized Florida beekeepers approaches US$1,000,000. According to the folks at Wikipedia. And after a good night's sleep in the Coombs house, we are onto the final leg of this journey – The Apalachicola Research Reserve Greenhouse.

Here we meet George Watkins and his brother, bee keepers extraordinaire. Tupelo honey ain't easy to make. "Making honey is slow, sticky, heavy and frustrating!" Says George. George and his brother pack up 150 apiaries onto a barge every spring and move them 20 miles up the river to the Tupelo trees. The bees are handled carefully, first subdued by a few puffs of smoke passed over the hives with a watering jug-like smoker containing a few embers. Then, the entire hive is netted with a cloth and placed onto the barge for the journey north. There they will live for six to eight weeks, circulating in a two-mile radius, gathering pollen for honey production. The hives are strategically placed but the strategy doesn't always work. Often sprayers, birds, etc kill the bees. Luckily the bears don't get them on the barge.

We travel from Apalachicola on Chris's plane back to the Fort Walton airport and check out the region from the air. We fly over vast, undeveloped forests: hallowed ground, the remaining forested acres of a pillaged Florida. Hopefully St. Joe's Company will continue to braid nature and luxury into a comfortable union as it has with WaterColor Inn and WaterSound.

Florida has been plundered for years. First by the American bird hunters who discovered the plumage birds, snuffing out millions of pink flamingos and egrets leaving rookeries of all sorts and their chicks to be attacked by crows. Even Audubon; while he loved the birds of Florida, he loved to shoot them as well. Next, by drainage experts like Diston and Broward and by a railroad man named Flagler. And finally by strip malls, monstrous housing developments and skyscrapers, all reaching into the last pieces of the piney forests. The everglades, almost always viewed as a worthless mucky swamp has only recently been heralded for its inherent beauty and life giving singularity.

Drive west from West Palm Beach to Lake Okeechobee to the town of Pahokee and you might see only the ghosts of animals that once owned the everglades and tree islands and roamed the now vast emptiness of the monoculture sugar field industry. But you will not see much of anything else living.

And yet, a visit to the WaterColor Inn and Resort in the forgotten coast of Florida, lifts the guilt of Florida man's original sin and lays you down on a white sand beach to be pampered. Pampered by the sounds of the gentle waves; by the dreamy colors of sunrises and sunsets; by the doting, smiling and genuinely unhurried and expert staff. Lush amenities, free BMW rides, quiet adult pools and child-friendly family pools, clever architecture which weaves nostalgic Southern homes with Key West and beyond. A land use project seemingly designed for your enjoyment.

Each room at the WaterColor Inn has high-speed Internet access, cable television, business desk, electronic safes and coffeemaker. Rates range from $290 to $530. WaterColor Inn: 34 Goldenrod Circle, Seagrove Beach; tel.: (866) 426-2656. WaterColor has complimentary bikes for guests to use. The Timpoochee Trail runs alongside 30-A. The terrain is nice and easy and multiple paths intertwine throughout the property.

(Click here to join Chris Hastings on an upcoming Foraging Tour of the Forgotten Coast. Tours go for about $1600.00 per person).

International Recreation Expert. Francis J. DiScala (Frankie D) was born to do it differently. On his first camping trip at 10 years old he was sequestered from his group for talking and forced to sleep in an open field away from the safety of the tents. He immediately realized that the moon was much clearer out under the stars and has been "out there" ever since. Never one to say no, Frank has been to Mountains of Montana, Idaho, Arizona bow hunting and sleeping outdoors, fishing off-shore amongst the whales for giant tuna, skiing and snowboarding almost every major mountain in North America, racing motorcycles on international racetracks in New Hampshire, and scuba diving reefs from Australia to the Red Sea in Jordan. fun and games are often interrupted and trips cut short by his need to return to his beautiful wife and to his legal career. He hasn't stopped talking and often can be seen and heard giving strange opinions on television shows including CNN'S Headline News/Nancy Grace and Court TV. Despite a hectic schedule, Frank has also found time to travel and write and in recent years has become an enthusiastic contributor to JohnnyJet.com, one of the most comprehensive travel resources online.

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Note: This trip was sponsored by the St. Joe Company.

Pictures From The Trip