Florida’s Panhandle a forgotten destination in the winter

APALACHICOLA, Fla.?— They call this part of the Florida Panhandle the Forgotten Coast, and on a cool winter day, it’s easy to see why.

Miles of dazzling white beaches stand deserted except for an occasional beachcomber. Hotel rooms are easily available at bargain rates. Restaurateurs look gratefully at those who don’t have reservations when they walk in the door.

There is a reason for this, of course. It’s cold here, compared to the beaches of Miami or Sanibel Island in southern Florida. There, winter is high season, with full hotels, crowded restaurants and jammed highways. Here, summer is the tourist season, and winter means quiet and solitude.

We hit this part of Florida during a cold snap last February, so despite the brilliant sun, the temperatures reached only the high 50s, and lows were around 40. The severe cold was the first thing the locals mentioned, followed quickly by apologies.

Of course, if your home is in the Far North (we live in Montana), there’s a word for weather like this — spring! We needed no apologies. We were too busy enjoying ourselves.

We had not set out to make this our destination. We had been visiting relatives near Pensacola and decided to drive U.S. 98 along the Gulf Coast. We arrived in Apalachicola, in the belly of Florida’s Panhandle, in late afternoon, and found ourselves transported back a century.

Beautiful old houses, with broad porches for relaxing in the days before air conditioning, line the city streets. A park established in 1832 beckoned, its grounds filled with live oaks, their branches draped with Spanish moss.

We wandered the park, admiring its gazebo and grounds, then explored nearby neighborhoods and their gracious Victorian homes. Nearby was the Chestnut Street Cemetery, which dates to 1831. It is slowly decaying, but still legible are the headstones of Confederate soldiers and sailors who defended Apalachicola from a Union blockade in the Civil War, as well as those of townspeople and visitors who died decades before the war began.

The hotel we chose, the century-old Gibson Inn, echoed the Victorian graces of the neighborhood; rocking chairs lined its first floor porch. Only a block from Apalachicola’s historic waterfront, it was built in 1907 and underwent a three-year restoration in the early 1980s, earning a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Apalachicola began as a seaport in the early 19th century, shipping cotton from inland plantations to New England and Europe. It quickly became the third largest port on the Gulf Coast.

The Union blockade during the Civil War and the postwar decline of cotton effectively ended that chapter of local history. After the war, the focus shifted to lumber from the area’s lush cypress forests, and then to seafood - particularly the harvest from the area’s oyster beds.

Oysters aren’t quite as plentiful this year as in the past, due to a drought in the Southeast that has affected the salinity of the water, but in a typical year, state fisheries officials say the county’s 7,600 acres of oyster bars produce 10 percent of the nation’s oysters.

Small boats still dot the water in the morning as oystermen use long tongs to bring the shellfish to the surface of local bays, and on our visit last winter to nearby St. George Island State Park, an oyster boat was on display. When we asked a park volunteer working on the display how difficult it was to find oysters, he smiled, walked to water’s edge, and plucked a huge oyster from the shallows.

It was then we realized the long rocky bar exposed by low tide just offshore was not covered by rocks at all—but by oysters.

Dinner took us to Boss Oyster, a ramshackle-looking restaurant on the Apalachicola waterfront that gathers its own oysters fresh from the bay and serves them in intriguing combinations. Try, for example, Oyster St. George, baked oysters topped with asparagus, garlic, shallots and Colby cheese, or Oyster Greektown, with garlic, parsley, feta cheese and Greek olives.

Not far from Apalachicola itself is St. George Island, a 28-mile-long barrier island that invites beachgoers. The sand of Gulf Coast beaches here is a dazzling white powder that demands sunglasses, and during the summer it draws visitors from across the South for sunning, swimming and fishing.

The easternmost nine miles of the island are state park bounded by broad, undeveloped beaches. The park was almost washed away by Hurricane Dennis in 2005, but new facilities eventually opened for public use. But the new bathhouses, picnic shelters and boardwalks were empty for our visit; at times, our car was the only one in a vast parking lot.

We wandered the beach for hours, meeting only a handful of people, as we sought the perfect seashell, filling plastic grocery bags with candidates. Back home in Montana, they would fill our planters and flowerbeds and ensure that the Forgotten Coast never would be.

If You Go ...

GETTING THERE: Apalachicola is on the Gulf Coast 80 miles southwest of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle. Commercial air service is available through Tallahassee or Panama City.

ACCOMMODATIONS: Gibson Inn, 51 Ave. C; http://www.gibsoninn.com or 850-653-2191, rooms $90-$200. Coombs House Inn (bed and breakfast), 80 Sixth St.; http://www.coombshouseinn.com or 850-653-9199, rooms $89-$229.

DINING: Boss Oyster (123 Water St., http://www.apalachicolariverinn.com/boss.html or 850-653-9364) was chosen by Coastal Living magazine in 2004 as one of the nation’s top 10 oyster bars. Papa Joe’s Oyster Bar and Grill (301-B Market St., http://papajoesoysterbar.com/ or 850-653-1189) is a favorite of many local fishermen.

NEARBY ATTRACTIONS: St. George Island State Park: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/ or 850-927-2111. If coming from Tallahassee, a short detour off U.S. 319 will take you to Wakulla Springs State Park - http://www.floridastateparks.org/wakullasprings/ or 850-926-0700.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Apalachicola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, http://www.apalachicolabay.org or 850-653-9419.

William Kronholm was the AP’s Western regional news editor before retiring. He lives in Helena, Mont.