Scott Fillmer » florida

Heat of Apalachicola and St George Island :: Friday Feet

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:13:25 +0000

Today we had a very last minute invite to St George Island, right across the bay from Apalachicola. This had to be our fastest trip ever down to the coast, no wait, second fastest… we once drove down to our Orange Beach marina for Thanksgiving in 2007 only to find out their wifi was not working and then made the 4-5 hour drive right back. We were there for about 60 minutes. This time we were down there for about 20 hours. It was plenty long enough to bake in the blasting heat, read another chapter in the Bonhoeffer biography (which is incredible), take a few pics for today’s Friday Feet, and make it back home.

Hard to believe how long it has been since Deb and I have been down to the gulf. We use to go down there about once a month but it’s been almost two years since we made the drive down there. I was instantly reminded why we use to go down there in December through February. The 100% humidity and 100*F weather going on right now was enough to make you run for cover.

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God, Wind, Surfers, and Some Photography

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:45:00 +0000

There is nothing quite like the power of God as seen through an incoming storm on the ocean. This week we planned on spending a few days in-between our two fall semesters down at the gulf, and of course there was a strong remnant of a hurricane from the Pacific on its way over right to our little spot. The ocean is even limited in our mind by as far as we can see, and only from the tiny little spot on the sand we can stand. But it changes every day. I have been to the Pacific, Atlantic, and of course the Gulf and it never looks the same, the ocean, even from our small perspective. The surfers were quite thrilled to see the 35-40mph winds down there today, and I took a few shots of the local surfers.

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Long Ride to Florida and Key West by Motorcycle

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:30:19 +0000

It usually gets to be about this time of year when I start dreaming about being some place warmer where the days are not 50-60* and gloomy (yes I know if you live anywhere farther north than the deep south 50 is not cold, but it is to us). One of our favorite spots to go this time of year is the Florida Keys. We have made more than a dozen trips down there over the years but a few years ago we did something different and road our motorcycles from Auburn Alabama to Key West Florida.

You may be saying big deal, who cares, but if you have never ridden a bike, or haven’t ridden more than about 50 miles at a time on a bike, it was a pretty big deal to us. It is about 850 miles from here to there, and by car, usually takes us two days if we stop in Orlando. That means long driving time in short light, and cold. It was a great trip, and goal achieved, but one of the best and most memorable trips we have taken down to the keys (other than this one). We didn’t make it all the way to Orlando the first night, and we only made it to Islamorada the second night, so it was a whole lot of very sore riding by the time we made it to Key West, but a memory I wouldn’t trade for anything.

So there are a few shots done with a point-n-shoot a few years ago, one while I was riding next to Deb while she was on her Honda Shadow VLX 600. I was riding a Honda Nighthawk 750 at the time and loved to take pics of Deb while she was riding (of course). We took many trips on these two motorcycles but this one trip to the Florida Keys was one of our favorite, and in one of our favorite spots in the country.

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Limpkin Invades Wakulla Springs State Park

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:08:34 +0000

I have over the years learned to really appreciate the wildlife photographers that specialize in photographing birds. It is no easy task when they are usually so skidish of any movement. This guy was shot from a small floating boat in the swamp, he must be use to crazy photographers.

Wakulla Springs State Park in Florida has an unbelievable number of species to be able to photograph, and you don’t have to have a real high dollar setup to get some good shots here. This photo is a Limpkin (Aramus guarauna), which are somewhat related to the cranes.

They are a pretty good sized bird, this one is protecting his nest as we go quietly by in our non-motorized boat, although he doesn’t look all that happy about our presence.

Image Specifics

Body – Nikon n90s
Lens – Nikon 75-300mm @ 300mm
Film – Kodak 100S

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Sunset Photography at Saint Marks National Wildlife Refuge

Scott Fillmer — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:35:11 +0000

Starting off the day with a sunset. This image was taken looking west, of course, over the bay waters in Saint Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida at sunset. The pieces rising up are a broken pier that leads out into the waters.

Sunset at Saint Marks NWR – Image of the Day

This is an interesting place (also see Paddling Access at Wakulla Beach / St. Marks NWR, she has posted some good wildlife images of the park) where the sunsets are beautiful and the wildlife is amazing.

Image Specifics

Body – Nikon n90s
Lens – Nikon 75-300mm
Subject – St Marks NWR, FL

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Thunderstorms on Perdido Key and Bearpoint Marina

Scott's Misc — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:07:58 +0000

Friday morning we left for the boat for a long relaxing anniversary weekend on the boat. Scott’s parents had rented a condo for the week in Perdido Key, so when we arrived in Orange Beach we unloaded the boat stuff and headed over to the condo to visit. Scott and his parents went for a swim while I watched from the beach. They all headed out of the water when something kept stinging or biting the guys. The stings weren’t terribly painful, something like ant bites, but they couldn’t tell what the culprit was so they opted to depart the waves for a shower in the condo and dinner.

We dropped them off back at the condo after a good, but odd dinner at Doc’s Seafood Shack, Orange Beach and went for a walk on the beach before returning to the boat. If you haven’t been to Doc’s, you are missing quite an experience. The restaurant is an interesting little place to say the least. It is truly a shack in every sense of the word. Structurally sound, it is not. Driving by the place one has a sense that the food must be very good because the parking lot is always full. Upon closer inspection it is revealed that the parking lot is just woefully inadequate. This is not a reflection on the food, just poor planning.

This planning runs over into the construction of the shack itself. A building that should have been condemned many years ago, the restaurant consists of three to four rooms that seem to have been added one at a time to the initial existing structure, accommodating the increase in patronage through the years. Hence the lack of parking space. The walls are buckled in all the rooms from years of leaky air conditioning ducts, salt filled air and humidity.

There is a sign out front that reads “Local Food, Local Atmosphere”. Inside the entryway is a gum ball/game machine that we have personally witnessed several kids and more than one adult loose quarter after quarter in because they could not make the suction cup stick to a gigantic gum ball, which is the objective of the game. Even Scott’s father gave two quarters to his mom so she could try her luck. In another corner sits another game machine.

This one filled with water and a couple of pathetic looking lobsters. A claw hangs from above and for $3 you can try your hand at catching one of the lobsters with the claw. If you are lucky(?) enough to capture one of these creatures the restaurant will cook it for you for free. The place is quirky indeed, but the food is local seafood and the price is very reasonable.

The remainder of our weekend was spent listening to NOAA weather radio and watching the skies. The “showers and thunderstorms” that the NOAA voice reported to be imminent were and we enjoyed watching them roll in and over the boat. We were even treated to a rainbow while Scott tried his hand at fishing again. Dinner’s out were at the Oyster Bar in Perdido Key, FL and the Jolly Roger at the marina. Here are the photos, enjoy.

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Delivery Captain Sails From Tampa To Orange Beach

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:37:37 +0000

LAUGHALOT arrived today in her new home in Alabama. Captain Bill and Captain Vicki sailed her up from her port in New Port Richey, Florida to a port here in Alabama where she will be much closer to us. We went down to meet with the Captains and give them a lift to the airport where they could pick up their car rental for their return trip.

We were a little nervous about having her delivered and I was more than a little jealous about not being able to bring her up here ourselves. She was in capable hands though and now she is here and all ours. We are very excited about having LAUGHALOT close by where we can visit more often and we love the gulf coast.

Now the fun/work begins…

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Bought a Morgan Out Island 33 Sailboat Called LAUGHALOT

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:33:01 +0000

There is a lot in a name. We found this boat about three weeks ago and it was exactly the make, model and condition we were looking for. The only problem was we had to wait two weeks to get free to go down to Florida to see her. Luckily, we put a contract on her right away, subject to inspection, so we would be the first in line to buy her, if we liked her.

I am so glad we acted when we did. There were at least three other VERY serious buyers that we were able to beat to the deal. One of those buyers showed up at the boat last Saturday night to try and get a look at her and we had to inform him that she had been sold *TO US*! I couldn’t believe how sad he looked. This will be our third sailboat together and hopefully we will have a little bit more luck with this one than the last two.

Anyway, Laughalot is ours now and we have already started the process of bringing her into the 21st century. There is so much to do to her. She is in great condition to sail right now, but we want to update the electronics, work on the engine, electrical systems, rigging, and plumbing. Updates on her restoration progress will be posted here.

She did come with loads of extras that we weren’t even expecting. She has a gimbaled stove/oven, hot water heater, refrigerator, brand new stereo system, wind generator, water maker, dinghy, life raft, epirb, bimini with dodger, and even an air conditioning/heating unit that works perfectly. Unbelievable!!! We were truly “laughing a lot” at our good fortune when we made the deal and she was all ours. Enjoy the photos.

The marina where she is located is at the end of a long channel that leads out to the Gulf of Mexico. There used to be a restaurant in the big building you see in the photos, but it burned on the inside and never reopened. As you can see from the photos we are in the last slip on the dock and it is so private and peaceful there. When you are looking at the building from the channel Laughalot is to the right, tucked back in the corner.

Our first weekend we spent on Laughalot was last weekend and we were surprised and excited to see all kinds of birds. We saw white herons, gray storks (or herons, not sure about that one), pelicans, seagulls, and one bird of prey who apparently is a local.

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We Decided to Go Book Hunting in Miami Florida

Scott's Misc — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:03:27 +0000

To celebrate St. Valentines day this year we combined business with pleasure, as usual, and took a much needed escape (I mean trip) to Miami. We found a book distributor (NOT – more about this later) in Ft. Lauderdale who sold books by the pallet. We decided to go down and check them out to see if the books were worth our time. On the way down we stayed in Orlando and went to Universal Studios for dinner. We didn’t care much about going to the theme parks, but just outside the entrance to the theme park is the Universal Studios Mall.

It is an open air mall with about 20+ restaurants. The largest two restaurants there, in size and name, are the Hard Rock Cafe and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, where we ate. The atmosphere at Margaritaville was fun and of course laid back. They had a solo guitarist who was loads of fun with his crowd interaction. After dinner we decided to go play a round of putt-putt at a course across the street from our hotel. I won the putt-putt game, even after landing in the ruff, but Scott beat me at the air hockey table in the game room afterward. These first photos were taken with a cell phone so the size is pretty small.

Hard Rock Universal Studios

Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Universal Studios

My expert golfing landed me here.

The Nascar Budweiser Car at Universal Studios

On To Ft Lauderdale to the Book Distributor

The next day we headed for Ft. Lauderdale and the so called book distributor. I say “so called” because we were expecting a warehouse with stacked pallets of books and what was actually there when we arrived was a 30′ x 100′ “warehouse” full of mostly made in Taiwan items. He had books in the back of the unit, but most had either fallen off their pallets, been crushed, or been subjected to so much humidity they were coated with mildew. We opted out of taking a pallet home and decided to continue looking elsewhere. This meant that the utility trailer that we had taken with us to bring back a pallet was still empty and that we now had room to take home a few plants from the wholesale nurseries in Miami. Yipee!!

Miami was packed with traffic congestion everywhere we went, but we managed to make it to the hotel and to dinner on South Beach. The water and sand was wonderful, but we have ruled this out as one of our spots to frequent because of the shear number of non-tourist people everywhere.

Beats the 40 degrees back home!!

The Hotel

Scott on the beach outside our hotel.

The temp may be 84, but the water is still cold!!

Walking with sand between your toes, what could be better?

Cleveland’s Miami Beach

We took the Hwy 997 route back home where we picked up some fabulous plants for our new house and a Key Lime tree just for the fun of it. Across the Everglades and up through Sarasota. The weather was changing as we were on our way back up north. The wind picked up and the temprature dropped from a cold front that was blowing through. We went to the beach anyway. Our last evening we ate at Boston Market (one of my favorite places) and stayed at a Comfort Inn Suites in Ocala that had been open about 2 weeks. It was probably the nicest, cleanest, and best smelling hotel we have ever stayed in. Then it was back to the house and back to searching for more suppliers for books.

Bird on Sarasota Beach

Me, cold again….

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Weekend Mortorcycle Riding in Panama City Beach Florida

Scott's Misc — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:44:00 +0000

About a month ago, August 18-20, we rode our bikes down to Panama City Beach for the weekend. We were originally going to ride down with a group of riders from Hog Heaven, in Columbus, GA for the Ride to the Beach, an annual bikers trip to raise money for the March of Dimes. We found out about the ride a little to late to garner sponsors this year so we just decided to make the trip ourselves for the fun and sun.

Along the way we took time to do a little geocaching.

We arrived at our hotel just as it began to rain. Since afternoon showers are common here we hung around in the room enjoying the view for a while until the storm subsided.

Once there was a break in the storm we headed out to dinner and to observe the nightlife of Panama City Beach. We decided to eat at a place called Pineapple Willy’s. This place is supposedly famous for it’s ribs that were featured in a Visa commercial some time back. The ribs were average, but the dinner was quite memorable. We arrived at Pineapple Willy’s just before it started to storm again. We were seated out on the far end of the gazebo pier and enjoyed our dinner while it rained heavily, complete with simultaneous lightning and thunder. Apparently we are braver than most because all the other tables in the gazebo cleared out as people finished their dinners and no one else wanted to sit out there in the storms. Eventually we had the entire end of the pier to ourselves. Magnificant!!

Saturday we spent the day exploring the city, marinas, and geocaching. We had lunch at a great little spot called Lime’s that was tucked away and was a bit of a challenge to find. Dinner that night was even more fabulous as we enjoyed the boat traffic and the sunset from the upstairs open air dining area of a place called the Boatyard.

We made our way back home on Sunday taking a few detours here and there to investigate some of the backroads of Alabama. Although the trip was very short it was a lot of fun and we were able to get a feel for how far we can travel comfortably on our bikes in one day (and how much stuff we can take along).