Travel: Oil and the Florida Panhandle

Greetings fellow travelers!

We just got back to Tampa from our trip to the Panhandle. We wanted to eat some delicious Apalachicola oysters before the beds got slicked up and oiled over. We are happy to report that the beds are fine in Apalach and as of Friday the Panama City Beach waters and sands were devoid of oil slicks or tar balls. That probably will not be the case for long, but it is good news for now.

We stayed at the Ambassador Family Resort while at the beach. Their web site looked good and the rates seemed like a real bargain, so we booked a cabana room just steps away from the white sands and blue-green waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico. I can highly recommend that you avoid the Ambassador like the plague. It is a freaking dump of the worst kind. There was no tiki hut, I had to make my own repairs to the vertical blinds for privacy, and I had to fix their toilet to keep the whole room from flooding. The office staff (?) was either non-existent or non-coherent depending on when you stopped by. There were a few families with small children, but the college crowd turned the place into something too disgusting for children or sane adults to have to endure.

At the beach the beer and oysters are cold, the barfing buffoons from Georgia Tech are re-coating the parking lots with last night's dinner, and business is booming. Life is good!

Help our neighbors to the north. Plan your Panhandle vacation soon and enjoy these beautiful beaches. Just watch where you step in the parking lots.