THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 2.18

IT’S ALL JUST PEACHY…

Traveling under sunny skies we leave the Sunshine State and cross the border into Georgia.  First stop the Walkabout Camp and RV Park in Woodbine.  Our Aussie host greets us with a “G’day” and enthusiastically tells us about area attractions.  We ask about a seafood place that we passed on our way in and he tells us that it’s the absolutely best place in the area for fresh local oysters, clams and shrimp.

So as soon as we get un-hitched and set up we head over to WhiteHouse Seafood to procure some local delicacies. The place is about as low key as you can get. It’s clean and quaint.  Large plastic coolers filled with shrimp, cod and scallops, a couple of glass front refrigerators and lots of fishing gear on the walls.  Karen Sharpe owns this place with her husband Richard; he does the harvesting of oysters and clams in the near-by intertidal salt marshes, she sells them.  We check out the shrimp in the cooler and decide to pick up a couple of pounds.  Then Karen asks if we’ve ever tried Georgia oysters.  Since we’ve never had this variety, she promptly heads to the walk in cooler and returns with a hand full, which she quickly shucks. She warns us that they are much saltier than other varieties. While we slurp the briny bi-valves Karen shares how the wild oysters grow in vertical mounds, shells forming on top of each other with thin shells that are sometimes difficult to shuck. Yep they’re salty, but delicious! So we pick up a bag of oysters and add a cod fillet to our order.  Back at Dimples we mix up some tempura batter and feast on fresh tempura shrimp, oysters & cod.  Doesn’t get much better than this!

Blue Goose

Charming

Coastal wet lands

Shoreline

The next morning we head over to St. Marys. Once home to pirates, smugglers, it is now the gateway to the Cumberland Island NationalSeashore.  

Alas, we’re too late to catch the ferry to the island (this gives us a reason to return.) After checking out the visitor center and National Seashore Museum, we walk across the street to the Submarine Museum.  This is a sad little museum and we don’t tarry.  But this is a charming town with a capital CHARMING!  We stroll along the Spanish moss draped tree lined streets and notice that nobody is in a hurry. In our wanderings, the Blue Goose Wine and Coffee Shop calls to us… a chai latte sounds good, oh… and maybe one of those lemon cupcakes....  Great drinks and super hospitality!  I

n the late afternoon we walk along the shore, it’s low tide and we can see where the local manatees feed in the creek. (They’ll be back at high tide after we leave.)  We are entertained by the tiny fiddler crabs scurrying about aggressively defending their holes along the shore there are oysters growing vertically in clumps in the sand bank, the water is a strange brown color… it looks like a red tide that we are familiar with in California, but no obnoxious odor. (The color is caused by decaying plant life and is normal and healthy for this eco-system.) 

  

Fiddler Crabs

It’s a perfect spring day and we sit on a bench relaxing and marveling at the scenery. Children are laughing and squealing in the background as an elderly gentleman rides by on his bicycle.  He promptly returns to us,  “Ugg… kids! Have to get away from them.”  (Hmmm… should we be concerned? Is there a restraining order somewhere?) Then he introduces himself and proceeds to share lots of corny but cute jokes and stories about the area.  He appears to be the perfect Southern Gentleman (Aside from his peculiar distain of children.)  He offers to give us a tour of the area next time we’re in town.  (Perhaps, if we don’t loose his card, and don’t have any children about, we may take him up on his offer, next time we’re here.)

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THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 2.17

HOW WE SPENT OUR FLORIDA VACATION…

Suwannee River

From New Iberia we jam eastward through Mississippi and spend the night just east of Mobile at the Riverside RV Resort in Robertsdale, Alabama.  When we check in we are advised that the laundry room is safe and to head inside if the weather gets violent.  We’re not interested in experiencing even a tornado watch so we get up early the next day and continue on.

Our next stop is Old Town Florida.  This tiny hamlet is on the Suwannee River made famous by Stephen Foster’s song Old Folks At Home (The Florida State Song.)  Even though the song was originally about the Pedee River in Arkansas, but changed it to Swanee at the suggestion of a friend.  Weather permits only one day to check out the area and pick up supplies. 

Here's a little something to entertain you… or not...

Piles of Shells

walkway over Turtle Mound

Continuing eastward we cross Florida and land just south of Daytona in New Smyrna Beach. Can’t go any further east so we’ll hang here for a bit till the storm passes.  We park at the Sugar Mills Ruins Travel Park.  We have a couple of sunny days before the rains and we spend them walking the beaches and visiting the Canaveral NationalSeashore, the longest expanse of pristine shore in Florida.  We hike around and over Turtle Mound, a fifty-foot midden of oyster shells left by the earliest inhabitants of the area.  It’s fun to imagine the folks sitting around the campfire, shucking oysters. “Hey pass the Tabasco… oh yeah it hasn’t been invented yet…”

After viewing all these discarded shells, WE NEED OYSTERS… so… we check our urban spoon app and head over to Off The Hook Raw Bar and Grill.  We start off with cocktails and a half dozen Louisiana oysters on the half shell.  They are fresh plump and tasty.  From the Specials menu we select the BBQ fried oysters with blue cheese.  Batter is crispy, oyster succulent and the sauces zesty.  Then the blackened Cajun oysters, no batter just tasty with lots of seasoning lightly seared.  We finish off with the Grouper bites, lightly seasoned and flash fried.  We are in Oyster seafood heaven!

After one full day of steady rain the storm finally passes (whew) and we are ready to head north…

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 2.16

A QUICK STOP IN CAJUN COUNTRY

View from the Ferry

As storm clouds gather we hop on the Galveston to PortBolivar Ferry this 2.5 mile 20 minute crossing shaves a lot of miles off our trip and the best part is it’s absolutely FREE!  Once we land in Port Bolivar we head up to the I-10 and continue east into Louisiana.

Since the storm is building in the west we can only spend one full day in the Cajun heartland.  We choose New Iberia since it is basically on our route and home to the McIlhenny Tabasco Company and Jungle Gardens on Avery Island.

We stay at the KOC Kampground, which is just down the road from Avery Island. The campground is a large field with gravel spaces around the perimeter.  Nothing really noteworthy here, other than being near our route and close to Avery Island.

bottling hot sauce

The McIlhenny family still owns Avery Island and charges $1.00 for access to the island.   This island is actually a salt dome with the volume of salt estimated to be larger than Mt Everest.  This is the source for the salt used to make their famous hot sauce.  The tour of the factory is free.  It starts with a short film about the history of the Island, Edmund McIlhenny the creator of Tabasco hot sauce and the process used to make the sauce.  Then we view the bottling plant and make a quick stop in the huge gift shop to replenish our tobacco products.

Bird City

In addition to the Tabasco plant the McIlhenny family operates the Jungle Garden. There is a small fee to visit the gardens but it’s well worth it. These gardens are the Legacy of Edmund’s son; Edward Avery McIlhenny who founded a bird colony known as Bird City here around 1895.   In the late 1800’s plume hunters slaughtered egrets by the thousands, to provide feathers for ladies hats. Edward gathered eight young egrets, raised them by hand and released them in the fall to migrate to Mexico.  The following spring, they returned along with a few friends and the flock continues to expand to this day. 

Jungle Gardens

Edward was also an avid horticulturalist.  He introduced varieties of azaleas, camellias, papyrus sedge and other rare and exotic plants to the island.  The result is a beautiful landscape with towering oaks draped in Spanish moss surrounded by bayou. 

We spend most of the afternoon exploring the gardens, the azaleas are blooming and alligators watch us from the comfort of their ponds.  What a great introduction to this part of the country.  Wish we could stay longer but that nasty storm is closing fast…

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THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 2.15