Sun Coast to Forgotten Coast
We’re Off!
In true roadtrip fashion, we leave tampa today 2 hours late, and get our early morning start at the crack of 9:30. The general plan is to head up the SunCoast Highway, then get onto rt 19 to rt 98 until we hit Apalachicola. We are in absolutely no rush.
The day is cloudless and gorgeous, hot and dry, and the drive is easy. The windows are down, and NPR is on the radio; Click and Clack discussing replacing a clutch. 19 is a small highway, dotted on each side by little towns, aged reminants of a bygone era before the coming of the interstate. The Florida coastal jungle is big here, pines and undergrowth so thick, both Rob and I were individually wondering what it must have been like for the explorers in the day who landed here looking for gold. Daunting enough, that I imagine had they not just spent a month or so on a ship, they’d have just said, ‘to heck with it, the beach looks just fine’. Between malaria, alligators and lack of fresh water, I imagine there are lots of explorer bones out there.
There are wildflowers everywhere, and little rotting shacks off the side of the road, most unlived in for years, but a few, in similar condition, with some parts on the porch and the signs of life emanating from within. It is oddly, not florida. Or anything you’d associate with the state whose real estate boom has left most of Florida with homes worth only 60% of their value a year ago. The boom never hit here, it is rural, and poor, in an almost romantic nostalgic way. The shacks are quaint, the few still operating 50s style roadside motels remind me of the kid my dad must have been. It does look like the last time this entire stretch of coast had an industry was then, when the newly minted travelers with their family cars headed down to the coast with their beachballs and buckets, leaving behind their suburban lives for a week or two. All romance aside, which mostly likely is only romantic because I’m passing by, I debate with myself if the locals are happy people who enjoy the simple life and pleasures, or they wile away days in quiet desperation, trapped by lack of opportunity and a decaying homeland. It is nice to see a place not occupied by strip malls and general highway uglies though. And this is only a few miles from the coast. Its sort of unreal.
Nearing Apalachicola, as we veer west onto 98, the ruralness takes on a slightly less destitute quality, and as the coast goes from 2 miles away to 1 miles away, to just beyond that clump of trees, the signs of modern America start peaking through, in the forms of recently built housing of the road overlooking the green blue ocean. The real estate bubble is apparent too though, as many lots are cleared, and unbuilt, have foundatations, which will never be built, or houses which stand 80% constructed by empty. Every house is for sale. But still, on the whole, there is very little in the way of development in comparison to any other “non-state land” coast I’ve ever been on in the USA. Its nickname “the Forgotten Coast” is appropriate.
Tags: Apalachicola, Deep South USA, Florida, Panhandle, Roadtrip, Tampa, USA, Tag Index
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