{"id":861,"date":"2016-02-27T04:17:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T04:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/?p=861"},"modified":"2016-03-07T14:44:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T14:44:21","slug":"oysters-and-sooo-much-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/2016\/02\/27\/oysters-and-sooo-much-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Oysters! And Sooo Much More!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

(As usual I’m posting this after the fact, so don’t get confused! I didn’t realize Huck was publishing the posts from this week already :))<\/p>\n

Todays agenda: Tate’s Hell State Forest, Oysters and the Free Nature Center AND Apalachicola<\/p>\n

Boy we packed a LOT into this day! At the end I’ll post Huck’s flikr album so you can see more of\u00a0the pics.<\/p>\n

The museum director told us that Lynn’s was the best place to get oysters. We decided to go there for lunch the next day. On our way we drove to the board walk in Tate’s Hell State Forest. There are acres of dwarf cypress trees. It is a mystery they haven’t solved. If you take a seed from one of these trees and plant them elsewhere the tree will be full sized. But not here. They are only about about 8 feet tall. And it is odd as we had driven through miles of pine forest and you can see the cypress are surrounded by pine forest. (Later someone told me there used to be a lot more cypress around until they got cut down.) There are supposed to be a lot of alligators in the waters under the board walk, but it must have been too cold for them as we didn’t see a sign of one anywhere. And we looked long and hard!<\/p>\n

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I do wonder what the counter guy At Lynn’s thought of us! All the staff\u00a0were super\u00a0nice and I explained we are from CO which is why we have sooo many\u00a0questions and know so little about oysters. He was patient and even demonstrated for the kids how to eat a crawfish they sold there since we missed that\u00a0experience\u00a0in NOLA. We asked if the oysters they sold were local oysters and he said, “yes ma’am. Just a week ago allowed to start harvesting them again. Right over there on this side of the bridge.” (the bridge\u00a0that goes over to St. George Island.)<\/p>\n

We had raw oysters, Rockefeller oysters, and another version that was steamed and had cheese, cream cheese and jalape\u00f1os. It’s more accurate to say Dacen and Brielle attempted to eat the raw. They didn’t technically\u00a0consume them. They did go on to try at least one other version each. We also had shrimp dip and crackers and we tried a tomato based version of gumbo. I felt like we needed to try another version of gumbo since we didn’t love the one in NOLA. I’m so glad we did! This one was much better! I think the kids even ate the okra in it.<\/p>\n

It was fun to watch the pelicans and other birds while we ate. It was so gorgeous and peaceful and fun out on the back deck. I was trying to get a pic of the boat and the pelicans with their throats expanded when this bird photobombed us at the right time!<\/p>\n

\"Waiting<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0