It was late, the wine had been mostly dispatched and the candles had begun to weep crazily across the patio table. It was end-of-the-party conversation, desultory and rambling, about our favorite places. Favorite place in Florida, my husband mused. That's easy, St. George Island. Everyone but me looked at him blankly.
Finishing each other's sentences, we painted the picture: Some of the darkest, most star-filled skies in the continental United States, partly because of nighttime light restrictions to aid the nesting loggerhead sea turtles. Paved bike paths the length of the island, a gorgeous and underpopulated state park beach, flounder fishing off the Bob Sikes Cut.
And then there's the charming historic port of nearby Apalachicola, founded by 19th-century cotton and lumber barons, with its Georgian and Victorian manses and its oyster bars. It was an idle comment: We should all go sometime.
Then the e-mails started. Were we serious? How expensive would it be? Could we find a house big enough for all of us?
Thus, last spring, five families converged with beach essentials. For some this meant kites and sand toys, for others long-deferred paperbacks and quality chocolate. In a house called Afternoon Delight (the Starland Vocal Band hit featuring prominently on our iPod playlists), we spent four unforgettable days on Florida's so-called Forgotten Coast, a stretch of sand that dips into the Gulf of Mexico from Florida's panhandle.
Rolling dunes, miles of white sand dotted with perfect sand dollars and hardly another person in sight define the place. There are no multiplexes or amusement parks, few malls, even fewer fast-food restaurants. It stays cooler here than elsewhere on the Gulf, making it a little nippy in the winter and more than tolerable in the summer.
Before the Forgotten Coast was collectively overlooked (the area got its name when a Florida tourism group forgot to include information on the destination in its brochure), Apalachicola was Big Time. Established in the early 1800s, it initially provided the South's cotton plantations an accessible port. Cotton warehouses were erected to house and bale the Old South's most successful crop. At one point, the town boasted 43 warehouses, making it the third-largest cotton port on the Gulf Coast, behind Mobile and New Orleans.
After that, it was sponge diving, timber and turpentine from slash pines that kept the region afloat, followed by the St. Joe Co. paper mill. St. Joe has turned its attention toward developing its massive landholdings in this area to environmentally conscious residential and resort communities. The indigenous fisherfolk and oystermen don't pay these tourist enticements much nevermind, concentrating instead on their Crassostrea virginica, or eastern oysters, crabs, shrimp and fish.
