This is the tiny beach town on the edge of Tate’s Hell State Forest, and we played sight-seers on our final day there.
World’s Smallest Police Station
When Carrabelle was founded, the police force (two guys) had a telephone, but it wasn’t in their building, and it kept getting used by the public for non-official business. Long story short: they saved town money by locating the station and the phone in the same spot.
As Tracy says, “It’s still not small enough.”
Bottle House
An art professor retired in Carrabelle, and, “he woke up one morning, kissed his wife, and said, ‘I’m going to build a bottle house.”
See the hands at the roof line? Everything used to build the house and the random art items in the garden around it is recycled.
Odd art is scattered throughout the garden. The sign says it’s open 24/7; just don’t let the dogs out.
Wish we’d gone by at night when lights shine on the glass!
Dwarf Cypress Swamp
In the 1950s a private company tried to drain this land so pine could be cultivated for timber. Of course that screwed up the ecosystem here and in the Gulf, so in the ‘90s the Forest Service bought the land and is restoring it..
This boardwalk is on the site of an old lumber road. It’s elevated so you’re looking across a vast natural swamp of dwarf cypress trees.
I couldn’t photograph them to do them justice. Eerie and beautiful.
Cypress Stumps on the Beach
Our final stop, saying goodbye to the Gulf beach. Natural and lovely.
Thank you for giving me an excuse to do something on election night!
omg I LOVE the bottle house!!! – it reminds me of the little hand-built house in the Rockies where I couch-surfed for a day or two the first time I visited Boulder. Less glass and more decorative rocks, though. There was a leaping whale outlined in white stones inlaid in the shower wall (made of grey stones).
That sounds lovely!