RANDOM PHOTO OF SHRIMP BOATS IN APALACHICOLA, FLORIDA

An old photo taken over 10 years ago when driving through Apalachicola.

It was a flying visit as we were heading south. In those days dear other half still had his full-time job (retirement came the following year), and we were on a time schedule, needing to get back for work commitments. We were determined to see as much of the state as we could in the time that we had.  

Apalachicola's name is a Native American

 word interpreted as a ridge of earth produced by sweeping the ground in preparation for a council or peace fire. 

It was fun looking around the shrimp boats docked on Water Street. 

Oysters were Apalachicola's first seafood industry and were sold locally as far back as 1836, harvested in much the same way as they are today.  From what I remember back then, it was a lovely town.

Here are 10 interesting facts.

Apalachicola is one of the most productive oyster beds in the United States, historically provided 90% of Florida's oysters and 10% of the nation's total.

Established in 1831, it was once the third-largest port on the Gulf, bringing wealth and a diverse population to the area.

Apalachicola is part of Florida's 'Forgotten Coast." It got its name "because it is the last remaining stretch of unspoiled, pristine Gulf Coast beaches that haven't been overrun by high rises and strip malls. There are 200 miles of coastline, 5 islands and nearly 100 historic sites, and it is a part of the Big Bend geographic region.”

The original plan of Apalachicola, with its wide streets and squares, was modeled after Philadelphia and remains largely intact today.

The city is home to the John Gorrie Museum, which features a scale model of the world's first ice-making machine, invented by Dr. John Gorrie.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the sponge trade was a major industry in Apalachicola, largely driven by Greek immigrants who introduced advanced deep-sea diving and boat-building skills, dramatically increasing sponge harvesting efficiency and creating an extremely lucrative fishery in the Gulf.

The Apalachicola River and Bay form one of the most ecologically rich and biodiverse ecosystems in the United States, supporting diverse marine life and providing critical habitat for many species.

The annual Florida Seafood Festival, held in Apalachicola, is the state's oldest seafood festival, celebrating the region's rich maritime culture.

The city maintains a working waterfront, with active fleets of oyster harvesters and shrimpers, reflecting its continuing connection to the seafood industry.

Apalachicola has many historical landmarks, including the 1838 Orman House Historic State Park and the historic Chestnut Street Cemetery, the city's oldest burial site.

Two maps showing location.

“Again in Florida 

I float on transparent lakes

I float on the Okeechobee

I cross the hummock land

Or through pleasant openings

Or dense forests

I see the parrots in the woods

I see the papaw tree and 

the blossoming titi.”

    from Longings for Home 

By

Walt Whitman

Thanks for stopping by and

have a great day!

PLAYTIME!

 I am a bit slow putting my latest post together from the park, so I thought I would share a real simple graphic I did tonight.  It didn't take long.   I have a wonderful free graphics place I go to - pixabay.com -  and I always thank Sandra at Mad Snapper as she told us about it in a post a long time ago.  You have heard me mention it before as I go to it often.  Today I got a 'tube' of a young couple sitting on a bench in the rain.  I wasn't looking for it in particular, but it popped up and I took a liking to it.  It looks like this when it arrives and after putting it into Paint Shop Pro, it has no background.  Below is a screen shot I took so is not a transparent background png. file, but a regular jpg. file and I shared it just so that you can see the difference.  I also found a separate graphic from the same place for today's signature.

In my Paint Shop Pro I add an extra layer to the above, and filled that layer with a dark blue. As the street lamp looked illuminated, I chose my color to make it look like nighttime, and it turned out like this.  The rain was already included in the original tube, which is hard to see when it is transparent.

And then you can add a message.  I chose this one.

It jogged a memory.  On our first date I packed a picnic, picked Gregg up from his ship and drove him to Dartmoor.  Dartmoor was, and still is, my all time favorite place.  Well, actually, it's a toss-up between Yellowstone and Dartmoor, but for nostaligia purposes let's say it's Dartmoor today.  They are on a par.  We both enjoyed a good walk even back then, and it was a lovely day with not even a breeze.  Except, that when we were within a couple of hundred yards of getting back to my mini, the heavens opened up.  It was a torrential downpour and rain pelted down.  We didn't have a brolly between us, and it certainly wasn't the romantic scene that we see above. All the time I took to pick the perfect casual outfit for our date, and with not a hair on top of my head out of place, his nicely pressed shirt and khaki's, well...it ended up with us both looking like a couple of drowned lettuce leaves.  I didn't know about waterproof makeup in those days, if it was even available.  Can we say streaks?  We nose-dived into the car, took a good look at each other and laughed our socks off.  We didn't care what either of us looked like and 46 years later, we still think about our first date and have a good chortle.

If you have any first date stories to tell, care to share?  I would love to read them.

SNOW DAY.

This is how it looked when we got up last Monday (January 3rd).  The weather has been mild for this time of the year, and we have been able to keep the windows open.  It was 50 degrees F. the day before.  I am looking at the weather through the screens.

We still have the Christmas trees up.  I enjoy them for as long as I can and traditionally take them down on 12th night.  

I have had that little artificial tree for more years than I can remember.  I keep saying we should replace it, but I'm rather attached.  Sentimentality may play a part.

Anyhow, according to our local weather people, we had more than 14 inches in some areas.  Ours was more like ten.  

It started snowing around 3.00 a.m., dropping three to four inches each hour, and stopping in the afternoon at approximately 3.00 p.m. 

That is when the skies began to clear, and the sun started shining.  

It certainly was more snow than we have had in over two years.  Ten years ago, my dear other half was driving home (this being long before his retirement), and it took him 11 hours to drive 12 miles.  On Monday people were stuck on the roads again and it took some almost 15 hours to get home.  

Another time we had visited family at Christmas and, hoping to get home before the expected snow, it took us by surprise.  We couldn't even get off the freeway to find a hotel overnight.  Many of the exits had cars stuck on them, and there were a few trucks that had jackknifed with their cargo. We also passed several cars in ditches. We were at a crawl, driving ten miles an hour down the freeway.  Thank goodness the windscreen wipers kept going, even though they were having a hard time keeping the front window clear.  

 I remember it vividly.  The journey was a nightmare!  On reflection we should have stayed down south one more night.  Foresight is a good thing!  Foresight was missing obviously, and we were hoping the roads would have been kept clear.  But it took everyone by surprise, and we were young.  It took over ten hours to reach our home.  Do you have any snow stories you would like to share?

During and after this snowstorm, half a million people were without electricity.  This was on Monday (1-3-22).  We were fortunate but are still keeping our fingers crossed.  It was 19 degrees F. last night, 15 degrees F. tonight.  We are being told to stay off the roads as it is not going to melt for a while, and roads will be icy.  

Added note: I just read a story about a trucker on I-95 who offered a hot bowl of food and a drink to a man in his car with his mother.  He had brought a three-day supply of his own food to eat on the road, and what he gave away was his 2nd day meal, a Jimmy Dean bacon, egg and cheese breakfast bowl that he heated up in his microwave, and a cup of fruit punch.  At that point he and these people in the other lane ahead of him, had been stuck in place for 7 hours.  Does the heart good to hear stories like that.  There are good people out there.

A Dark-eyed Junco took me by surprise.  As sometimes happens when I look on a larger screen after downloading to my laptop, there it was.  I also noticed this morning when I went outside, another Junco stayed at the feeding station.  They usually fly away but this one's head turned in my direction and he continued to eat for several minutes.  It didn't leave until several minutes after I had gone inside.  The other species of birds fly away immediately. 

As usually happens I have more photos, but I will put them in a separate post.  

My last photo is of a few of my teddy bears. Only part of my collection, they come out every year at this time.  The throw rug and pillow were a gift from my son and daughter-in-law a few years' ago. I love them, not only for the fact that they are pretty and festive, and have wonderful sentiments, but more because of who gave them to me.   

Safe travels to those who have no other choice but to be on the road, and I hope our family, friends and blogging friends are safe out there.  

OUR FIRST WALK IN A WHILE...

to a quiet part of the Manassas National Battlefield Park last Sunday.  We tend to avoid crowds these days, but we went to an area where we thought it would be very quiet, and get some exercise at the same time.  When we got to this particular parking lot it was full of cars, with only one or two spaces left.  We decided to turn around and go back the way we came.  

On the way down the hill we looked to our right and saw the shell of one of the homes built on this land.  A little further down a sign, also on our right, telling of an old family cemetery.  No people!  When we stopped and I got out of the car, in my peripheral vision I saw something and looked down in front of my feet.  I think it must have been a lizard scurrying faster than my eyes could focus, and the grass covered its body.  It disappeared into the undergrowth in seconds.  My only inkling that it was a lizard, was the way the grass moved, weaving from side to side in a flurry of movement.  My eyes could not pick up any shape.  It was bigger than a frog and a frog would jump anyhow.  Recollecting the way lizards move when I see them scurry in the desert - on nature shows - this is where my mind went to.  

Just as we parked on the side of the road (no proper parking spot but safe enough), another car pulled up behind us.  A couple got out and we all put our masks on and we waited for them to pass, putting plenty of space between.  We were too busy avoiding each other's space to even think of saying hello, very unlike me but I was nervous.  A new norm?  I hope not!  I will make more of an effort to at least acknowledge people I come into contact with next time.  We stayed apart by a whole lot more than the recommended six feet, so it made casual conversation impossible.  None of us got close enough to say one word.  This Pandemic is having more of an effect than I realized, as I truly have not been around a lot of people since this all started, and that was several months ago.  I immediately went back into my introverted shell.  Oh well!

They were maybe ten years younger than us, and we let them look around before we entered the small cemetery (there was only one gravestone in those walls that we could see). They didn't stay long and walked back to their car soon after.  

It gave us a chance to take our time.  The day was glorious and we didn't want to miss a minute of this lovely weather.  Hardly any humidity.  It is as though September has flipped a switch.

I asked Gregg to smile and he jokingly said, "How would you know?"  He had a point!

Our car is the one on the right.  As you can see, pathways had been mowed for visitors.  The grass at each side was well over waist high and it looked beautiful!

This area is called Chinn Ridge, and that solitary grave belongs to Bernard Hooe Senior, as you'll see below.

We found the following on the Manassas Battlefield Trust Facebook page, dated January 22nd, 2015.

"Captain Bernard Hooe (pronounced Hoe) Sr was born in 1740 and was a member of an old prominent Virginia family.  Three generations of Hooe were patriots in the American Revolution.  Captain Hooe's grave is located within the National Park.

"Bernard's father, Howson Hooe, served on the Committee of Correspondence and Safety in 1776.  Howson Hooe married Anne Francis Harris in 1724.  Her father, Nathaniel Harris, obtained the land in 1717.  Howson and Ann then deeded the land to Bernard who built a large two story home in 1809 and called it "Mayfield".  Then in 1853 a descendant of the Hooes, William T. Downman sold the property to Benjamin Chinn.  Today we know this land as Chinn Ridge or the Chinn Farm."

Gregg reminded me that those wispy clouds are called Cirrus.  It certainly was a lovely sky that day.  

These signs mark all the graves of the 1775 Patriots.  Whenever we come to these places we can't help but realize how much we owe to our Veterans, for the sacrifices they made for us and still make for us.  We will always be eternally grateful.

I found a poem called "Grass" by

Joyce Sidman

I grow in places

others can't,

where wind is high 

and water scant.

I drink the rain,

I eat the sun;

before the prairie winds

I run.

I see, I sprout,

I grow and creep

and in the ice

and snow, I sleep.

On steppe or veld 

or pampas dry,

beneath the grand

enormous sky,

I make my humble

bladed bed.

And where there's level ground,

I spread.

Lovely, both poem and grass.

We were coming out of the cemetery and as I started making my way up the hill to another area, Gregg called me back and pointed to this little guy.

Thank you Gregg!  

What fascinated me about this Praying Mantis, its eyes, its head turned in my direction, definitely keeping an eye on me.  I can count on one hand how many times I have seen any in many, many years, so I was delighted when Gregg found this one.

Yes indeed, totally fascinated and mesmerized, as you can see by all these photos!

The other thing that amazes me is when I take photos with my cell phone and they come out better than any other point-and-shoot camera I have ever had.  I cropped a few for a closer look.  

The photos below were taken with our larger camera with the zoom lens and are Gregg's.   

 I cropped a few of these also to get an even closer study.

Again, truly amazing creatures.

Back to the cell phone now.  This is the view while still in the small cemetery, and that was the hill we wanted to climb, which would have led us to other areas where homes had originally been built, the shells of homes at least.  

As we walked up the hill there were grasshoppers jumping everywhere, and dragonflies flying over our heads.  We were all enjoying the sunshine.

When we heard the sounds of laughter from several children just over the hill, out of sight but on our path, eventually seeing a large family heading our way, we decided to walk back to the car.   

We also remembered we would have been heading to a more crowded area, which we were trying to avoid.  The family of happy youngsters was a sign, and they certainly deserved to be out in this beautiful weather, except that the old fogies ran for cover, and yes I am joking just in case you thought I was serious.  We didn't run, we just walked very quickly.  Yes I am still smiling and yes I am still joking but with point made.

We had a wonderful time and look forward to other walks.  It will be quieter during the week and we will come back.