Apalachicola

Papa Joe's, Apalachicola

At Eastertime in 2002, I took my family on their first American trip. 

Starting from Atlanta, we headed down to Florida. I had booked three nights in the "Best Western" hotel in Apalachicola. It is a sleepy coastal town of some 2,400 people, famed for its oysters.  It boasted just one set of traffic lights. We loved being there.

On the first evening we walked half a mile from our hotel to what is now called "The Up To No Good Tavern" though it wasn't called that then. I recall the friendly proprietor appearing gobsmacked when I told her that we had not driven from the "Best Western" to dine - we had  simply walked down. The crazy English!

Up To No Good Tavern, Apalachicola

The next day we headed out to one of the offshore islands. There's a causeway across to St George Island which is sandy and low-lying - a thin sliver of land that reaches about  twenty five miles across Apalachicola Bay. We headed to the state park at the far east of the island where we hung out on the beach and played in the sea for less than two hours. Remember we were still in the month of March but both Ian and I absorbed too much sunshine that day.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped off at the "Piggly Wiggly" supermarket for a large hot pizza and cold drinks. I guess that it was only when we got back to our room that the effects of the afternoon sunshine properly began to kick in. Ian and I were both zonked out and woozy but Shirley and Frances had spent much of their time in the shade so they were okay.

"The Best Western", Apalachicola

The next day we visited Cape San Blas and Panama City and that night we paid a special visit to Papa Joe's Oyster Bar on the edge of our adopted town. Sadly it is now permanently closed but that night we enjoyed fresh and simply prepared cooked oysters with fries, salad and beer. I remember a huge pile of oyster shells outside the kitchen door - like a model of Mount Fuji.

I loved Apalachicola - even though we were only there for a little while. It seemed like a place where land and sea merged together and it was so peaceful - right out there on the edge of things. People have sometimes asked me what my favourite place in America is and I nearly always say "Apalachicola". I guess that if I had experienced the town in the very height of a sweltering Florida summer, I might have thought differently.

From Apalachicola we headed on down to Orlando and Disneyworld but that's another story. The last three images were snipped from Google Streetview. Little seems to have changed in the past twenty two years.

St George Island beach


from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/Ei35sO8

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