Paw & Order: A Detective Whiskers Cat Cozy Mystery by Chris Abernathy | Author Guest Post

My wife and I discovered the area through some friends and fell in love with it. The beach is beautiful, the water is clear, the natural life is abundant. But what really sets the area apart is that it hasn’t been gobbled up by major developers building large condominiums and hotels. On the island you’ll find just a couple of two story hotels, a few restaurants, and some small shops near the bridge. The rest of the island is almost exclusively single unit houses, except the eastern end which is protected as Saint George Island State Park. You can truly enjoy quiet, uncrowded beaches there.

Another things that we love about the area is that it is pet friendly. It’s one of the few places in Florida where your dog can walk on the beach with you. Many of the businesses welcome pets, too. If you hate leaving your furry family members at home or locked up in the vacation rental while you play, the Forgotten Coast of Saint George Island and Apalachicola is for you.

Along with giant condos blocking the view and crowding the beaches, another thing you won’t find is a lot of national chains. The nearest Wal-Mart is an hour away in Port St. Joe. You can’t get a Big Mac but you can find some made-from-scratch dinners created by chefs who are true culinary artists in small restaurants that feel more like a place to gather with friends than a generic setting designed to be recreated in a hundred other locations.

Looking for local craft beers? You’ll be happy. Sweet treats? More than you can eat. Delicious coffee in the morning? You won’t miss Starbucks, I promise.

You don’t arrive on an island without crossing some water. To get to Saint George Island you will cross the 3rd longest bridge in Florida, a 4 mile bridge from Eastpoint. The current bridge was opened in 2004 and replaced two shorter bridges that had fallen into disrepair. Part of the old bridges are still standing and are open for pedestrians and fishermen to enjoy.

One thing to remember before you drive over — be sure to gas up. You can get gas on the island. There is one pump. Not one gas station, one pump. They don’t gouge you with ridiculous prices but you may have to wait and there’s not a great place to line up. Driving a diesel? You’re out of luck. You will need to drive back across the bridge for fuel.

You may have seen Apalachicola mentioned on the menu of your favorite seafood restaurant back home. Apalachicola Bay is the oyster capital of the world. How popular is the oyster around here? Tune your car radio to the most popular local station, Oyster Radio, and you’ll start to get the picture. 90 percent of Florida’s oysters come from the Apalachicola Bay and many of them are served up in local restaurants just hours after being harvested. Back home you may pay twice or three times the price for oysters that could never live up to what you are about to enjoy. You can have oysters for every meal of the day and you still won’t have tried all the different recipes available in town. Well, that’s just a good reason to come back then, isn’t it?

If you like cozy mystery books featuring cats and dogs then you are likely an animal lover and will appreciate the local wildlife. Staying on St. George Island is very different from staying at a Motel 6 in many ways but the number one difference is “we won’t leave the light on for ya.” Lights out is a theme on the island as a way of protecting loggerhead, leatherback and green sea turtles. You’ll notice taped off squares in the sand where mother turtles have laid their eggs. Allowing the eggs to hatch unharmed is step one in protecting them but step two is making sure the baby turtles head off in the right direction after hatching. Lights from a house attract the youngsters who are looking for the moon to find the ocean. This is more than a polite request, by the way. An ordinance passed in 1998 sets some guidelines for lighting on the island and there are patrols to make sure the rules are followed from May 1st through October 31st. Another hazard is beach chairs, tents, umbrellas, kayaks and trash left in the sand along with holes dug in the sand. Clearing your beach space before the end of the day is appreciated by turtles and other humans and keeps you in line with the “Leave No Trace” ordinance passed in 2015. This may all seem like a little bit of an inconvenience but if you get lucky and spot a mother or her babies you’ll forget about the small effort very quickly. Just please stay back, let them find their own way and enjoy the sight quietly from a distance.

I bet you’re ready to plan a vacation right now. I know I am! But if you can’t make it to Apalachicola and Saint George Island at this moment, do the next best thing. Visit Paradise Cove by diving into the Detective Whiskers series of Cat Cozy Mysteries, starting with Paw and Order!