Seminole to Aplalachicola

This is another long stretch of river, vegetation, and wildlife.

I believe this is the first part of the river that we past any small boats in. We past quite a few boats on this stretch of river. More than any so far. Some john boats, some ski boats, some bass boats, tug boats, and one large cabin cruiser. The cabin cruiser was by far larger than mine or Randy's boat. It was probably 35-38' with a large glassed in cockpit and an upper fly bridge. It was very nice. I will say one thing, no matter how big or how small the boat, everyone waves when you go by on this part of the river. That's cool.


There were more floating houses too. It made me wonder...If your house is anchored on the river do you have to pay property taxes? Something to make you go Hmmmm.

The banks change from dirt and clay to sand here. Also the pine trees look different than what we are used to in Georgia. They are more short and stocky with larger limbs. This is where you start seeing Cyprus trees too. The shrubs tend to be smaller and flatter to the ground and the blooming shrubs were beautiful.

We past an older, but very well taken care of tugboat that I got a couple of pictures of.

The day was filled with more riding shenanigans, listening to the radio, and watching the scenery go by. We stopped around lunch time and tied the boats together and just let them drift down stream while we fixed sandwiches and chips. After we ate it was back to cruising.

We found a large stretch of sand bank that someone had written "I love you Dan Dan" into in large letters. Randy pulled his boat over and Dana got out and added the A's on the end of Dan Dan, making it Dana, Dana. We took a picture and had a laugh.

We cruised and cruised what seemed like forever and then came to a T in the river. The only one that we had come to so far. Everything else so far had been a straight shot with no other way to go but down river. Turnings left here will take you to Apalachicola, turning right will carry you west on the Inter Coastal Waterway towards Port St Joe and Panama City. If you go through the swinging railroad bridge you are heading towards Apalachicola. We turned left at the T to go to Apalachicola to pick up some fuel as Randy was on about a half a tank with about 90 more miles to go on the ICW to Panama City. We could have made it but felt it was better to go ahead and stop and get gas while we could.

When we got in sight of Apalachicola we started seeing the big boats and the commercial fishing boats tied up on the docks. My boat used to seem big to me. I mean it's not the biggest boat around but at 28 foot it's one of the larger ones on West Point Lake where I usually boat at. After this trip I realize that it is not much more than a row boat compared to some/most of the boats in Florida.

After you go past the swinging railroad bridge you start to see seagulls and you know that the ocean is not far away. About this point you will start to smell the salt in the water too. A couple of miles past the railroad bridge, you will come around a curve and see a long arching highway bridge with nothing but water as far as you can see on the other side of it.

Coming into Apalachicola is an awesome sight after coming this far down the river. Knowing that you have made it all the way to the ocean at last.

On the right side of the waterway here is Apalachicola. Make sure to go down a bit before turning right to cross the waterway past the point. It's very shallow here and the sand point goes out a pretty good piece. If you want to see what I'm talking about go to maps.google.com and put in Apalachicola, Fl and you will be able to see the swinging railroad bridge and the sand point in the satellite view. When you cross ythe sand point you can go back up the water way that all the buildings are on. This is a beautiful old town that looks like it came out of another time, like it should be back in the 50's or 60's but all of the buildings are in good repair with fresh paint. The town just has an old time, nostalgic feel about it. There are old and new boats alike lining the docks. Large and small.

We got here at about 5:05 pm and all of the marinas had closed for the day. Randy needed the gas to go on so we started asking around as to what marina was open. We were sent to a few marinas only to be turned back as the owners were locking up the doors. We found one guy at a commercial dock that was locking up, it was used mostly for filling up commercial boats with diesel fuel. He only had deisel pumps on the dock, but he had a gas truck in the yard that he sold gas to the local gas staions with. He said that we were lucky because he had just gotten in a load of gas as he usually doesn't keep it around. He pulled a hose from the truck and pumped it straight into our boats. The hose was so huge that it pumped 40 gallons of gas in my boat in about 3 minutes. Randy took on about 50 gallons. The guy was very friendly and we talked while he pumped. We thanked him and pointed the boats back up the river heading for the Inter Coastal Waterway

Next are some pictures to this point and I'll pick up the story with the ICW part of the trip