Just before Thanksgiving, we made the seven hour trek up to Cape San Blas. We'd
rented a cabin inside the park for the week. We stumbled into an open block and
seized it. Getting reservations up there is always a trick. We hadn't been on a
vacation away from home in over a year.
This was our third time staying up there. Since our last visit, they had
added some counter space and a dishwasher to the kitchen, expanded the upstairs,
removed a skylight and converted the fireplace over to gas. The cabins are a
two-story, loft arrangement that sleep seven (as long as you're friendly), maybe
700 sq. feet total, with a screened in porch, a full kitchen and a short
boardwalk down to the bay. They are away from pretty much everything, right next
to miles of wilderness area that extends to the point of the peninsula.
In the cabins there is no television, no telephone, no internet, no wi-fi
and only spotty cell phone coverage at best. I think that's what we like about
it. It forces us to slow down and disconnect. Hiking, reading, walking the
beach, watching sunset and cooking become the highlights of our day. In four
days, we hiked just over twenty miles. The fifth day was pretty much wind and
rain. In our five full days up there, I finished three books (including the
Night Circus) plus Beowulf. I sometimes forget how fast I can read when I allow
myself blocks of uninterrupted time. We had a fire every evening. We listened to
football games on AM radio (we couldn't even pull in NPR). In the past, we've
played games.
The park encompasses some of the best natural coastal complexes I've seen
in Florida with white sand beaches backed by 20-30 foot dunes covered with a
variety of native vegetation, including tons of sea oats. In late November, that
also meant colorful fields of wildflowers in yellow (woody goldenrod?), white
(salt myrtle), lavender (Texas sage? a native mint?) and red (holly berries).
The wilderness area, which you now need to register with the rangers to enter,
has a trail that runs seven and half miles out to the point. That's pretty much
a full day. I think we've only ever made it four. For more ambitious people,
there are wilderness campsites along the trail (the picture above is the view of
the bay from wilderness campsite 3). The sunsets over the Gulf can be
spectacular. On previous visits we've seen green flashes. And the nights are
dark, dark, dark. As dark as either of us has seen with the exception of being
at sea. With no real light pollution, the constellations and the Milky Way pop
right out.
On the fauna side, we saw deer, bald eagles, hawks, osprey, herons, egrets,
rays, and dolphin. We heard an owl hooting a couple nights in the nearby woods.
On one of the windier days, we saw several herons and egrets perched high up in
the pines. On our way to sunset one evening, we stumbled across a bobcat on the
dunes, only the second I've ever seen in the wild. He quickly disappeared. We
saw a kingfisher sitting on a wire overlooking the bay and a salt marsh. We've
seen either him or his ancestors in that same spot each time we've visited. On
the boardwalk by the bay, we watched several bald eagles calling, and one pair
fighting. Another turned his head and banked to check us out more closely when
he heard Karen's camera. I've never seen one do that. On the trail, we saw
bobcat tracks and what we later learned were coyote tracks. On our last morning,
I heard five deer chuffing a warning at a stand of trees beyond the porch. When
we walked down to the beach, we saw more coyote tracks deerstalking. I assume he
was the object of their ire.
We drove home on Thanksgiving Eve, relaxed and detoxed in a way only
slowing down and immersing ourselves in nature can for us. Unfortunately, we
didn't encounter any roadside honey stands. On the last trip, we picked up two
quarts of tupelo very cheap. The drive takes us through some of the poorest
counties in Florida (including the poorest school district with only a single
K-12 school). I think seeing so many burned-out, abandoned buildings is
sometimes the most depressing part of the trip. There are days I dream of living
in a more rural area that has more green to get some distance from our
neighbors. Then I remember what the day-to-day reality of that looks like and
think, maybe home is not so bad.
Find more of Karen's pictures on Flickr (she plans to add more as she gets
time).
© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III
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