FL9

Our visit to Disney World was done, and the consensus was both the adults and the kids had a great time.  Judy and I hit the road back towards Texas at 7:00am eastern time on Saturday morning.  The rest of the family was flying back to Pittsburgh today and would be home tonight, while our drive was planned at three days to cover 1200 miles.  Today our goal was to cover roughly 500 miles to Foley, Alabama for the night so I could pick up my Nathan K5LA and Nathan M5 from the Horn Doctor, Ken Kanne.

We had decided to stay off of I75 and I10 as much as possible, so we planned a route that would follow the coastline westward along the Gulf of Mexico.  Mid-morning found us crossing the Suwanee River, made famous by songwriter Stephen Foster in the 1800’s with his immortal tune that eventually became the state song of Florida.

By lunchtime we had crossed central Florida and were enjoying a view of the open water on our left.  We stopped for fuel in Carrabelle, and found a seafood restaurant directly across the street from the local shrimp boat dock.

It does not get much fresher than that!  After a wonderful lunch, on the way out of town we passed a public beach.  This was the first one we had seen after miles of privately-owned beaches and houses on stilts, so we stopped for a few minutes to get our feet wet.

The outer islands several miles in the distance kept the waves from getting too large here, but it was still fun to watch them expend their energy on the beach sand.

Continuing on west along the coast, it was not long before we arrived in Port St. Joe, home to the Apalachicola Northern shortline.  Their road power was quickly located just off the main highway, but was locked up tight behind a fence with no one around.  Due to the digital advantage I was able to hold the camera over my head and clear the fence, immediately check the results, and then use Photoshop at home to zoom and crop further for these shots.  First up is GP15 #720 in good light.

Drawing back shows the 720 is coupled up to the 722.

Moving down the fence line allowed me to get a 3/4 view of 722.

Once again drawing back shows #721 is parked on the next track over.

The Apalachicola Northern is now one of many shortlines operated by the Genessee and Wyoming, and I’m not sure what other EMD SW units they still have on the roster besides these three GP15’s.  There was no time to explore further, as we still had many miles to cover.  There was no sign of the Bay Line in Pamama City, and that was probably a good thing in terms of temptation.  We rolled into Foley, Alalbama about an hour after dark, and I left Judy to rest up before dinner while I drove to nearby Silverhill to meet up with Ken Kanne.