Ho Hum Campground (Friday)

Surprisingly, Joe woke up early this morning (7:30) so we had an early start to what turned out to be a busy day.  And he is my HERO because he found the frog!!!!  He thought it was dead, but when I had him stretch it out for a picture, it seemed to have some life, so he then put it outside.

Then he decided it was probably dehydrated, so he retrieved it and put in the little creek right beside our parking spot (he found a little snake in the same little creek!).  It seemed to be moving a little, so we think he saved it.  But then, when we got ready to leave a few minutes later, there was a big old sea bird of some kind eating something out of the little creek, and I really thought I saw legs go into its mouth, so I'm thinking the frog was breakfast for that sea bird.

We drove into and around Apalachicola, then over to St. George Island, which is 22 miles long (and probably less than a mile wide).  We had camped on this Island way back in 1982, so we checked out the campground, which looked totally different than we remembered.  The campground opened in 1980 (we talked to the ranger) and were told it had always been at the same place, so it has just been developed a lot more since we were here.  As has the entire island.  We remembered it being pretty desolate, few structures of any kind.  Now it has businesses and lots of residences lining the coastline, some huge, but some just tall and skinny.  We walked down to the beach, but it had a lot of seaweed on it (they have had so much bad weather here in the Panhandle that most of the beaches are not very nice right now), so we didn't get in the water.  We had lunch in town, walked through a gift shop, then headed back to the mainland.

 We checked out another gift shop, then decided we should try our hand at fishing so spent the next two hours trying to buy fishing licenses.  We finally found the one place in Carabelle that sells them (at the courthouse annex), 5 minutes before they closed, but the Fish & Wildlife computer was down and they were unable to get them for us.  They sent us back to the next town (about 14 miles) to a sporting goods/baitshop, but they also had been unable to get online to get the licenses.  Joe asked them to check one more time, and lo and behold, the system worked and they were able to get us licensed up!

We finally got back to our campground and fishing pier, armed with fishing licenses and frozen shrimp for bait.  Joe worked on our fishing poles to get what we hoped was the right hooks on, and off we went.  Our shrimp didn't stay on our lines very good, and we ran out of bait after about an hour.  We got a few bites, and I actually caught one little fish.  But it was fun, and we intend to go back tomorrow (we have 3-day licenses).  We went to town for dinner and got more fishing information from the guy at the next table, so of course we have to go back to buy more tackle (I don't even know why we bring a tackle box, you always have to buy something different from local recommendations), and we are supposed to try to catch our own bait (pin fish).  We'll see how that goes.  I'm thinking we better buy some more shrimp in case Plan A doesn't work out.

But I can sleep better tonight because Hero Joe has removed the frog from the motorhome!