Where is Florida? After 100 miles of beachfront shops and motels and condos last night, and another 20 miles today I started to ask myself -- is this all there is? When it isn't the fast food joints and Walmarts it is the giant bases for the Navy and the Air Force. I started to search for things that define Florida as different and special.
I was lucky, because by chance I had set a course that picked up Florida's Big Bend route -- along the edge of the coast around the big bump that pokes south in the middle of the Panhandle. Pretty soon "development" stopped. The towns became old fashioned. State Parks and forests and wildife management preserves took over the landscape. All of a sudden I could see the sea, smell the oysters and the clams and -- yess, the barbecue. I stopped to have lunch alongside some German tourists on the edge of the sand flats at Apalachicola. In the middle distance an island with palm trees. In the far off, another peninsula. Some men fishing for oysters in a flat boat. Grey herons and egrets poised motionless.
Its around here somewhere I thought. Give me a bridge so I can see where I am. In a mile we were on the causeway, then swooping up over the bridge. As I drove up I went eye to eye with an osprey sitting on the wall on the side of the bridge. Not sure who was more startled!
Along the Panhandle to Jacksonville
Friday, January 18, 2013
Jacksonville, Florida, United States
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Comments

2025-02-15
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Harry
2013-01-19
Great photographs Jim.
Harry's Linda
2013-01-19
Every windowless office cubicle should have on it's bulletin board a copy of Resting Place at Apachicola!
Beth
2013-01-19
So you've made it from sea to shining sea.