Across The Bay Stay

09/20/2026

09/11/2026

Love this piece of paradise, its friendly people and its tasty seafood.

Between Apalachicola and Port St. Joe there are stretches of Gulf beach where you can stand and see no building in any direction, and that is not an accident of timing. 🌅

They call it the Forgotten Coast, a name a local tourism group came up with in the 1990s after the area kept getting left off the state's promotional maps. The joke turned into the identity, and the identity turned into the reason people go.

What makes it look the way it does is that the development wave that reshaped both Florida coasts largely skipped this stretch of the Panhandle. Franklin and Gulf counties are thinly populated. Enormous portions of the shoreline sit inside state parks and protected land, so the dunes are still dunes instead of foundations. The sand is that blinding quartz white the Panhandle is known for, the Gulf comes in as long pale green bands, and the sea oats on the ridge are doing an actual structural job holding the dune together, which is why you stay off them.

The other half of it is the working coast. Apalachicola Bay produced a huge share of the state's oysters for generations, harvested by hand from small boats with long wooden tongs. The wild harvest was suspended in 2020 to let the bay recover, which is a hard thing for a town whose whole economy grew out of it.

So it is quiet, and the quiet is fragile. Hurricane Michael came through in 2018 and changed a lot of what was standing.

Have you spent time on the Forgotten Coast, and which stretch would you send someone to first?

09/02/2026

Family oriented home still available for this Labor Day Weekend.

08/01/2026

Wondering if this is your next rental?

We thank our guests for wonderful reviews. Hope to have many more.

Thank you for visiting. Please come again.

07/05/2026

Hope everyone had a spectacular 4th of July weekend.

06/28/2026

05/27/2026

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