Seafood Express
Seafood Express
Close encounters of the best kind at a dock in Townsend, Georgia
Heading back to Pennsylvania after two weeks in South Florida we made a detour off I-95 to check out Sapelo Island. The undeveloped island is home to the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve and a marine sanctuary. The state of Georgia owns 97% of the 16,500-acre island and the remaining 3% of the island is owned by the descendants of slaves who worked the cotton fields on the island from 1802 until after the Civil War. Those residents live in a settlement called Hog Hammock, home to about 70 of the saltwater Gullah Geechee descendants.
We made a reservation for the $15 four-hour guided tour of the island by calling the Sapelo Island Visitors Center and paid before we boarded the ferry. We had the great fortune to be driven around the 11-mile-long and 4-mile-wide island by Yvonne Grovner, who lives there with her husband. Their grown children have moved to the mainland, but often come for visits and sometimes for church on Sunday.
Mrs. Grovner showed us the research center and the marine biology labs of the University of Georgia, as well as Behavior Cemetery, and the beach. She offered the eight of us on the tour a 77-step climb to the top of the lighthouse, as well as a view of the grand South End House aka the Reynolds Mansion modeled on Jefferson’s Monticello. A popular event venue, Mrs. Grovner recalled the front pool filled with floating candles the night of her daughter’s wedding
We had reserved bikes for the afternoon but a pounding rainstorm the night before had turned the rutted roads into stretches of puddles. Instead, we took the noon ferry back to the mainland and pointed the car north. Wanting to take some shrimp home with us, I googled “shrimp seafood market” and up popped Sapelo Shrimp Company
On the way, we saw billboards for the Fish Dock restaurant and wound up there first. The well-worn establishment was quiet on a Monday afternoon, with just a few tables in the bar area. We sat out on a screened-in porch with a view over the salt marsh and enjoyed the most delicious clams, a flounder sandwich, and a shrimp po’boy. What matched the extraordinary food was the serenity. Absolute silence; no motors, no tv or radio. The only sound was the sea birds calling and splashing in the waters for their lunch.
Afterward, I found the source of the clams we had enjoyed at the Phillips Seafood Company next door. It’s not a fancy place. I was led into the walk-in cooler to choose a bag of 100-count clams tagged with the place of origin and that day’s date.
We watched as a boat docked and bags of clams were offloaded to a dolly and hauled over to the cleaning station. Joey, the clam farmer who had been a lobsterman in Maine before he opted for warmer weather, explained the process of farming clams in the surrounding waters. He seemed happy to chat with outsiders and mentioned the upcoming Blessing of the Fleet festival which is the area’s big to-do.
The Sapelo Shrimp Company was just up the dock and the shrimp fisherman reclining after a morning on the water leaped up from his couch when I inquired about purchasing. “No order too big or too small!” We happily took home four pounds of large shrimp for $28.
When we got back on the road our little cooler was filled with shrimp, clams, and ice and it was time to make haste while it all had a sweet and salty air to it. We will be back with a bigger cooler next time.
Thanks for stopping in Naples. Just too quick a visit. Your food adventures always make me Hungry. Let’s smoke some Pennsylvania Trout and Lion Country partridge when all us snowbirds return to Happy Valley.
See you soon.
Buck and Janine