Carrabelle, FL – Far from ‘Ho-Hum’!!

When I heard the RV park name ‘Ho-Hum’ my reaction was ‘mediocre’? – not sure this is where we want to be!  However, I think ‘Wow’ is a much better response than ‘Ho Hum’.

While the park itself is not much more than a big gravel/sand parking lot with full hookups, it’s the view that is the ‘it’ factor.

I have a real difficult time here moving out of one of these lounge chairs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              While the sites overlooking the gulf are close, there’s still all the room you need. All of the folks on the front sites sit their chairs in front of the rig around happy hour and enjoy the view together.

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s about that same time that the horseshoe crabs come up on the beach to mate. Definitely something you don’t see every day!

 

 

 

     Ditka found it necessary to be on constant watch at the main gate of our castle since there was no end to the kinds of interesting new creatures happening by.

 

 

 

 

 

Once we were settled in to Ho-Hum, we had no interest in leaving, so I threw a couple of batches of wash in at their laundry room and we lounged outside reading through some of the brochures we had of things to see in the area, trying to get up motivation to be anywhere else but right here. 

On Tuesday morning, we tore ourselves away from the shore long for a drive in to the small town of Carrabelle.  Our major objective was a grocery stop at the local IGA but we also knew there would be plenty of meandering to explore those roads we hadn’t travelled yet.

                                                                                         

The Crooked River Lighthouse saw many a mariner home in its 100 years of use between 1895 and 1995.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carabelle also posts the World’s Smallest Police Station as seen in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. In the 1960’s, without a true building to work out of, this booth was used by the local sheriff, Curly Messer, for a place out of the elements to conduct phone calls.

 

And, of course, we love to find small town restaurants to try.  Again, by following the locals, this time to a place called ‘Two Al’s at the Beach’, we were in for a treat.

 

 

 

Al’s  is not a place that looks enticing from the outside, EXCEPT that it was lunchtime and there wasn’t a single place to park anywhere near the place.

The little piece of ‘sculpture’ shown at right notes this as ‘Two Al’s International Headquarters’.  Ken and I had grouper sandwiches which put normal fish sandwiches to shame and a Paul Newman award-winning seafood gumbo recipe that deserved its accolades.  The other really neat part of the experience was that, because the place was so packed, we chose to share a table with a local gentleman dining on his own.  It turns out that this man was a retired contractor who had moved to Carrabelle several years ago when building some beach homes.  He’d then had a stroke and he and his wife decided to make this their permanent home.  He can no longer drive as a result of the stroke but said the ‘city fathers’ look the other way to allow him to drive around town in his golf cart.  This gentleman was obviously well-educated, a Florida State grad,  but with short-term memory loss due to the stroke.  It was a bit like watching ‘50 First Dates’ as we talked to him but we truly enjoyed it.  This will go down as one of the truly memorable episodes in our adventure.

There are many public access points to the beach along the highway in and out of Carrabelle.  We stopped at one of these to walk off a bit of the lunch.

Once again, we seemed to have miles of beach almost totally to ourselves.  Ken has decided that this area is his new favorite place for beaches with the soft white sand.  Because of the number of islands off the coast, you don’t seem to take such a direct hit from the surf and wind. I guess we are glad that this coast is called ‘forgotten’ since it makes it all the more attractive to us.

And, speaking of forgotten, since we were doing a grocery run and planned to stop for lunch, this was not a  trip where the furkids got to travel along.  That means we confine them to the back bedroom where we close the windows and blinds and turn on the back A/C so they have minimal distractions to set them to barking. 

I’ll leave you with a picture of what we see when we come back to the dogs after we’ve left them forlorn and forgotten for the day!

Ho-Hum, Sox, we’ll just take you back out for another walk on the beach, and all will be right with the world.

Hugs, C