Oh Ozello

One of my favorite places in Florida is the road to Ozello. It’s a long twisty two lane road where the speed limits rarely get up to 30mph. Around each curve a new view opens up to expansive sawgrass marshes with islands dotted with palms and cedars. The road ends at a boat ramp and park. At the park you’ll see remnants of the old Pirate Cove Hotel that once stood here before a hurricane damaged it beyond repair.

Just recently another Hurricane – Hermine rolled up the gulf coast and the storm surge rolled into Ozello. As we drove this past weekend, we saw dozens of homes with piles of mattresses and old wet furniture along the roadside for pickup. The winds weren’t very strong and the homes seemed in good shape other than the water damage.

Rick fished the shoreline near the boat ramp and I decided to paint the view of the water past an old cedar tree. While I painted a pair of dolphins were swirling and swashing around in the water rounding up fish to eat. They were quite a sight in the shallow water!  I posted a video below. (While I was painting I didn’t even notice the cicadas were so loud!)

We usually cap off our trip to Ozello with a lunch at Peck’s, but they were still busy cleaning up from the storm surge and weren’t open yet. We were bummed, but they said they’d be open soon. Later that day I saw that they opened just an hour after we left:-(

 

Marsh vista

Driftwood Shore

The fishing dock

The road to the end

Downtown