Traversing the Florida Panhandle got me to thinking about time travel. The area of the panhandle where we are straddles Eastern and Central Time zones. We’re in Port St. Joe, which is Eastern Time. Drive a few minutes west to Mexico Beach and you find yourself in the Central Time zone. The line that divides time …
Tag: Florida
Widows
We spend the worst of Ohio winter (January - March) in Port St Joe Florida in our favorite RV park. Each week those of us who are seasonal campers go through the regular exchange of neighbors who stay for a few days to a week, depending on their need to return home or move on …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Mexico Beach
We decided we should see Mexico Beach, a few miles west of Port St. Joe. To get there you cross over a bridge and a short causeway on Hwy 98. The Gulf is a few hundred yards to the south. For those of you who have never been, Mexico Beach is a quintessential Florida beach …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Good Paddling: Dead Lakes, Wewahitchka Florida
Along the coast of the Florida panhandle there are slivers of barrier island that protect the shoreline that create small bays. We spend our winters hanging out at the bays of St. Joseph and Apalachicola. Paddling in the bays is fun, but not the only attraction. There are many interesting places to paddle just up …
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RedDog on Wheels 