Heading West to Panama City
Amberisle2
Valt & Sandy
Tue 4 Jun 2013 20:11
June 3, 2013
Leaving our dock at Apalachicola at 7:00am we headed up the river to hop on the ICW. The Gulf was kicking up a bit with the tropical disturbance in Mexico. The trip was like running the Tenn-Tom waterway. The water was flat calm. The sun threw a reflection of the trees and tall marsh grasses lining the water, making a mirror image. The result was a dizzying maze-like feeling. Where was the next turn?
Sitting outside on the bow with our autopilot remote, we guessed that the possibilities of seeing an alligator here were slim, the water having a high salt content. About that time, an alligator swam by, as if on cue. This sparked the desire to see more. Each moving ripple was examined for those knobby eyes. But we did not see another all trip. A stick standing up in the channel caught our eye. But before we could lurch up to put the engines in neutral thinking it might be a stump ,it dropped into the water. It was a snake! We watched baby osprey sitting in their nests cheeping hungrily. Dolphins breached at the bow. Birdsong. Cicadas. It was a riot of nature.
Soon we were in Panama City. We diverted from our usual anchorage this time to go into Parker's Bayou. Friends we'd met in Exuma repeated invited us to stop by when we came to town. Their dock was occupied, so we anchored in the bay. Launching the dink, we went ashore to say hi.
We'd met these folks in Georgetown. A second couple we knew from there was passing through and stopped for a few days. Yet another Georgetown winter resident had just purchased a condo here. So we had a Georgetown reunion on their dock. It would not be a dock party without food and soon the table was covered with BBQ wings, sausage, steamed shrimp,all sorts of salad and more. A homemade key lime pie was the dessert. The conversation was good, reliving old times, looking toward new. They offered to take us shopping or anywhere we needed to go. We would be sad to leave these kindred spirits. So we decided not to. Instead we thawed enough mahi for the eight of us and enjoyed an evening aboard Amber Isle.
Trees mirrored on flat water Tree covered with Spanish Moss
Memories of hurricanes past.
