Visits to FSU, Carrabelle Beach, St. George Island And Apalachicola

Temperature High: High 60's - Low 40:  Today's post will cover two days of exploring Northcentral Florida. 

Yesterday, we took a 120 mile round trip from our campground at Carrabelle Beach to Tallahassee where we made our first visit ever to the campus of Florida State University.

The FSU campus is lovely, plenty of trees and while you're there it's easy to forget you're in a state's capitol city. 

After a bit of exploring, we found beautiful Doak Campbell Stadium where the Seminoles play football. We parked at Moore Athletic Center and strolled around, taking a few pictures.

I especially liked this "Sportsmanship" statue, so I posed Wayne and the furkids for a photo.

This larger than life statue of former Seminoles Coach, Bobby Bowden was placed here in 2004.
In 2013 a statue of Coach Bowden will be erected in Birmingham.  He and his wife are from Birmingham.  

 

Then this morning, we took Lexie and Ozzie across the street for a walk on the beach.  Dogs are welcomed on the beach here, though leashes are required.

Carrabelle Beach is the only Florida beach that I know of that allows dogs. Yay!

An exhausted Ozzie after running up and down the beach.

After a little while, we let Ozzie off the leash so he could run in the sand...and he did. He's such a funny little guy. He runs like an antelope and makes quick stops and starts, kicks sand and spins around.

Lexie can't be released as we're afraid she won't let us pick her up if a threat occurred. 

It is a public beach after all.

Only one person passed us on the beach during the hour we were there. An older woman strolling the beach in a heavy overcoat. 

Yep, it was a little cool. 

My hero.

From the beach we took the pups back to the coach to brush the sand from them. Both had managed to get sand all over their faces, legs and tummies.





Once the dogs were cleaned a bit and Ozzie had time to finish his breakfast leftovers, we loaded into the car for a short ride to Apalachicola for oysters.

Time to go now. 

It took about a half hour to reach Apalachicola from Carrabelle Beach.  Wayne has been waiting in happy anticipation to have oysters. Having given up raw oysters many years ago, he's reduced to eating only cooked ones these days.

We read some good reviews on Papa Joe's Oyster Bar and Grill. It is a dumpy place, right on the water.
Wayne's fried oysters and my shrimp were terrific. 

Papa Joe's is certainly not a fancy, or even a nice, restaurant.  It's a waterside "dive" for oyster eaters. Molded plastic tables and chairs, cheap paneling and dirty windows adorn the "patio" dining area. It's one of those places where you don't really want to touch anything except the food and you just try not to think of how the kitchen must look.

Wayne's is ready to jump into his basket of fried oysters.  I'll clean up that shrimp basket in short order too.
Ohhhh yes, a cholesterol-filled feast -- but it was good!

I took this Bubba Gump-ish shrimp boat picture through the very dirty window by our table.

The town of Apalachicola is as nautical as I'd dared hope it would be. Because today is Tuesday, the day after Veteran's Day, and it is cool and overcast, there are really no crowds.  We spent a couple of hours exploring the town made famous by the lowly oyster.

This is a "Three Soldiers" statue. This particular one is a detailed cast from the original molds of 
The Three Soldiers statue at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC, erected in 1984.
The sculptor, Frederick Hart, died in 1999. His family collaborated with the local people to create this one in 2008.
 

A typical house in Apalachicola

Downtown, we came upon a cute little shop called PETunia... for pets and their owners. That's where I found this terrific door mat.  There were three really funny ones. It was hard to choose...



Those are my feet... not a picture on the mat.

Returning to Carrabelle Beach we took the short detour across the bridge to St George Island where we were found the St. George Lighthouse.    


St. George Lighthouse

St George's Island was a really pleasant place.  It's a long, narrow barrier island with nice little beach houses.

I've been seeing these signs. Never thought about bears being here. Looks funny to see a "bear warning" sign alongside a beach....

These bear crossing signs look so strange along the seashore. 

Our time at Carrabelle Beach is winding down. In a few days we'll be moving along.