dare2go

Florida's Panhandle


Continuation from < Page 1 < !

Somewhere we had read that Cedar Key was a quaint and unspoilt town on the coast, so we drove out to take a look. It was indeed quaint and relatively unspoilt, and it looked like a nice place to live, but there wasn't all that much to see, and there was an exceedingly cold wind blowing which didn't encourage one to leave the truck cabin for long! We then headed north to Manatee Springs State Park, where one is supposed to be able to see manatees, which swim up the Suwannee River in winter to the warmer waters of the springs. It is a pretty park and we wondered if we might take a campground and stay a night. We thought we would go along the boardwalk to see if we could spot manatees first and then decide. Juergen only made it part way down the boardwalk and then decided it was far too cold to keep going. He went back to the truck. I can walk quite a bit faster, as he is still having some knee problems, so I walked to the end and did indeed spot 3 manatees in the water. They were about 50 metres from the boardwalk and under water, so it wasn't that amazing, except when one of them poked its head out of the water to take a breath. The one we had seen in the Everglades was certainly clearer and closer. The weather gave us no doubt that we should drive on. It was still relatively early in the day and we figured it would save on the propane we would have to use if we spent the afternoon in the camper in the campground.
We ended up driving another 170 miles before stopping for the night at St George Island State Park, which is just off the coast to the south-west of Tallahassee. To reach St George Island you drive a 4 mile bridge and to reach the state park you drive another 5 miles through over developed sand dune estates to reach the park entrance. But it is worth it. The parks existence has saved the eastern end of the island from the fate of the rest of it. It has 9 miles of beaches and dunes which are largely unspoilt and now protected. It was an exceedingly cold night but the weather seemed to have improved slightly the next day.
We continued to drive the 98 on Wednesday, which roughly follows the coast all the way to Pensacola. We stopped at Grayton Beach State Park that night and travelled on to Pensacola the next morning. We had thought to stay around Pensacola, but didn't find it very interesting, so we got onto the interstate 10 and drove into Alabama.
Overall, western Florida didn't provide much that was interesting to us. The coastline seems to be overdeveloped and we found ourselves wondering if there was need for all the vacation houses and condos that were either standing or in the process of being built. Throughout Florida we have been very grateful for the oases provided by the state park system. They have given us pleasant places to overnight, and also encouragement that at least some of this beautiful environment will be left for future generations to see - they may indeed be able to see what a sand dune really looks like because of the state park system!
The 70 or so miles drive through Alabama was uninspiring! We actually drove through downtown Mobile looking for some of the southern magic we had found in Charleston (we can't help it; every place gets compared back to that southern gem!). Many of the places we have passed through since South Carolina provide the settings for John Grisham's books, but as outsiders just travelling through it seems a little difficult to grasp the "Southern Magic" descibed in these great novels. There was no feasible alternate route to the interstate and it passed through endless pine forests, that we have already seen enough of. Since leaving the Everglades there have been only small patches of landscape that have impressed us at all, and without exception they have been inside a state or county park.
We left Alabama less than 2 hours after entering it and Mississippi is a story that deserves to be told on its own - the experience of it touched me so profoundly that I wrote it before writing this diary.