Scenes and (a Couple of) Tastes from Cedar Key

Less than 20 hours in Cedar Key: not my ideal, oh what a tease! I’d prefer at least a weekend in this bastion of peace and funk. But as it turned out, after a rainy foray around the Nature Coast hunting for real estate, 20 hours proved an ample pit stop for recovery.

The Nature Coast. That’s the PR moniker. Traditionally it has been called the Big Bend, where Florida segues from south-north to east-west. Others have disparagingly referred to it as Florida’s Armpit. They’re beach-lovers, no doubt, who do not appreciate the region’s Old Florida, out-of-the-spotlight, Southern style.

We were taking a big chance heading out to Cedar Key during its early December Pirate Invasion. Hotel.com and Expedia were showing no available rooms. The relentless rain, however, finally worked in our favor.

We stopped first at the place I most wanted to stay, to show off to my husband – the circa 1829 Island Hotel. Crossing the uneven floorboards past the stuffed manatee at the baby grand piano, I greeted the receptionist with a hopeful smile.

“I don’t suppose you have any vacancies,” I prompted. She hauled out a scrapbook-sized bound book and, with two hands, opened it to the day’s date. Like in an old movie, she scanned the columns with her pointer finger, stopping on a square that had been whited out. My heart skipped. A cancellation, just as we’d hoped. She showed us to room 24, opening the lock with a real key. No computerized reservations system or key cards at Island Hotel. Sigh!

Like Cedar Key as a whole, the Island Hotel is stuck in another era, pre-computers. In fact, the island’s history begins with that most basic of computing instruments: the pencil.

As its name hints, the island was once covered with red cedar trees, eventually decimated by the Eberhardt Faber Pencil Company back in the 19^th century.

Today, the island’s economy depends on tourism and its art scene; and clams and their restaurant scene.

With such a short window, we got only one opportunity to taste those locally farmed clams – at Steamers Clam Bar & Grill on Dock Street, Cedar Key’s famed dining and party strip that draws the Gainesville crowd on weekends.

The good news: Steamers’ New England style clam chowder was the best to cross my taste buds in a lifetime, and that includes what I’ve slurped in Boston and Maine.

Our only other meal came compliments of the Island Hotel. It includes a full, hot breakfast in its rates, and it too was outstanding, both my mushroom and onion quiche and my husband Rob’s (who was by this point duly impressed with the old timey establishment) French toast.

We had planned to make the nightlife scene, at least the lively hotel bar that happened to be right beneath our creaky floors, king four-poster bed, and blessedly private bathroom. Instead, we ended up with a bottle of wine on the hotel’s second-story wrapped balcony on a swinging bench overlooking the Second Street holiday decorations and listening to good cover band tunes wafting from Dock Street on the brisk December sea breeze.

Following breakfast, we walked around the two-square-mile island and watched the costumed pirates awakening for the final day of their invasion. We headed back across Route 24, renewed and relaxed, but wishing we’d had more of Cedar Key, and more we shall have.