The Emerald Coast

Backing up a bit and picking up where we left off in Florida….

After swimming with the manatees, we drove up the coast and stayed on Saint George Island. A forgettable town, but they have a state park.  Then, we drove west along the coast through Apalachicola. Great name and a nice little town on the ocean. While driving through, we picked up some country radio and coincidentally the chorus of the song at that moment was constructed around Apalachicola. Tough to rhyme. It had to be some serious work to write that song, so it must be a great town.

You really can’t get better than driving to white sand beaches on a sunny day in November, can you?  Jason found a beach bar/restaurant on Google Maps in Mexico Beach, Florida that looked interesting, so we found it along our way and decided to give it a try .

It had a playground on the beach, service in the sand, college football on 10 TV’s and fried pickles. All of us were happy. It was a nice day and we were feeling pretty lazy, so we stayed here most of the afternoon.  Long enough to hear from one of the employees who just got fired – but was still expected to work the rest of the day. Not smart.

This guy went around and spewed venom about the owners all afternoon, telling other employees where to set a match to the thatched roof if they wanted to burn the place down (seemed pretty accurate) and telling us about how the owners are laundering drug money.  Apparently, all the bills being deposited into the local bank are over 10 years old – something that just doesn’t happen since U.S. money is taken out of circulation fairly regularly. Anyway, his dad heard all this from the local banker, who was alerted by the FBI. All of this from a jilted employee making the rounds on his final afternoon. Check, please.

We stayed a little further down the road at Saint Andrews State Park. There was a playground at the campsite and lots of kids, so we were pretty much set for entertainment. This was also a bit of a local surf spot. The problem was (as I saw it) that the break was right on the beach. You had to hop off your board before you were stuck in sand. If you wipe out, you’re in 1 foot of water. Not much effort to paddle out, I suppose, so you take the good with the bad.