On January 12th we rented an Enterprise Car, left 11 inches of snow in Ohio and headed back South to The Panhandle searching for warmer weather and no snow! We stopped in Nashville at Cheri’s cousin, Jim’s B & B for dinner and an overnight. We have so enjoyed seeing Jim and catching up with him all during our Huntsville segment. We would stop in, catch up and have a quick dinner with Jim before proceeding the rest of the way to Huntsville. Jim is an excellent pianist and we enjoyed listening to him play for us.
We arrived in Panama City on Monday, the 13th of January. We were pretty tired from the 2 long days of driving but we got unpacked and settled in to watch and wait for a good weather window. We discussed going later that week, but the weather didn’t seem to be holding. We decided to explore some more around the area and have some fun. We rode our bikes out to the beach one day. We went to a restaurant called Firefly and the food was fantastic! We went to a touristy restaurant that wasn’t busy as it wasn’t high season yet and there were only a few of us in there. And then we truly played tourist and visited the local Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! LOL! On Thursday we ended up having dinner with Lee and his sister Janice. We had met Lee when we were coming down the rivers together.
We left Panama City on Friday and headed to Port St. Joe which would put us closer to our jumping off point for doing The Crossing. We walked into town for dinners most nights and we even watched the Ohio State Game at a local restaurant. On Tuesday the weather tuned very cold and miserable and East of us at Orange Beach they had 7 inches of snow!! We remained on the ragged edge of the weather system the entire time. Even so icicles on our boat and 4 inches of freezing rain piled up by our wing door had us fooled that we were in Florida!!
Saturday we headed over to Carrabelle to be ready to do The Crossing as the weather was looking favorable for Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, there was some dredging going on and we were unable to pass by it soon enough to reach our destination. We retreated and ended up in Apalachicola instead. Sunday we left early and reached Carrabelle which is known for having the smallest Police Station.
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