Indeed I Do

I was strolling through the campground with Ryder when she ran up to me. “Are you Pam,” she asked. I told her yes and she asked if I remembered her. Of course. Olivia. Her family camped near us last year and she fell in love with the Red Dogs. Her brother Aidan also liked our …

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Happy Yappy Hour

Gumbo and Ryder say "where our people at?" In these strange pandemic times, it's hard to get to know your fellow travelers. As we walked through our RV park, people usually waved hello. Beyond that, things got weird. If you approached someone it was clear when you'd reached a personal boundary because the would take …

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Cat 5 Quilter

We typically leave Ohio in February but this year a change in our usual circumstances meant we were able to leave home earlier. The Florida campground we stay in had no vacancies in January, so I started looking elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico and found Buccaneer Bay State Park in Waveland Mississippi. Waveland is …

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Domestic and Foreign Aid

We’ve been wintering in our usual haunts of Port St Joe  and Apalachicola Florida. Winters in Northern Florida are nothing like sunny Southern Florida, but it’s usually lovely. This season weather has followed two patterns—sunny and windy (I’m talking sustained 12 mph with 20 mph gusts) or rainy and dreary. I’m not complaining, because it’s …

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Saving Port St. Joe

We love the Florida Panhandle. The tourism industry has lots of labels for it: “The Forgotten Coast”, “Old Florida,” “Florida as it Was,” and so on. The panhandle is populated by generations of oystermen and shrimpers, ship builders, fishing charters and shopkeepers who live in small costal towns, among them Mexico Beach and Port St. …

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Good Paddling: Wakulla River, Florida

As with all my hobbies involving any athleticism I started paddling seriously later in life. When I was in college I spent time on the Youghiogheny and New rivers rafting and kayaking in these inflatable kayaks they called “duckies.” Once I started working I only hit the water a few times on canoe trips or rafting …

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Good Paddling: Saint Joseph Bay, Florida.

In February we stayed at a campground called Presnell’s in the town of Port Saint Joe, located on St. Joseph Bay. The bay is beautiful and protected by a spit of island called Cape San Blas. If you come to Port Saint Joe looking for what Ben calls “trinkets and trash,” there are one or …

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