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Sunday, February 17, 2002
 We can't legally provide sheets, pillowcases, or towels in a rental of this kind. The beds do have pillows and blankets. We try to leave out enough sheets, and towels for all the beds and guests. These are our own private linens and you are welcome to use them, but you are borrowing them, not renting them. If you do use our linens please wash, dry, fold and return them to their proper place. We cannot guarantee any level of sanitation or cleanliness, but we use these linens. If in doubt bring your own. In our rental agreement we say that linens are not provided and this is because you are not renting them from us. If you are particular about the kind of pillow you use, it might be wise to bring your own.
Handicap access, we have no special handicap accessible features, but the downstairs is all accessible without any steps, so access to the kitchen, living area, 2 bedrooms, and 2 baths is possible without having to climb a single step. We do rent to some older people who have trouble getting around.
Kate's Dream is a large 4/5 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 story slab house. It sits right on the beach, too close for our insurers. With a first floor 6.7 feet above sea level and nothing between the house and the gulf, we are in the highest priced flood insurance category possible. But you don't have to pay for the insurance so just enjoy being on the water. There are two different levels of finish in this house, most everything downstairs is old funny and shows evidence of flood damage and extremely "pink" taste in decorating. Everything upstairs is new (not the furniture) with new walls, floors, etc. The only pink upstairs is the lovely old wicker furniture. Downstairs bedrooms and bathrooms are old and funny, but the upstairs bedrooms are large and nice and the upstairs bath is all new.
 Beds and Bedrooms: Bedrooms: Bedroom 1 has one queen size bed and we call it "Shirley's Room", named after the lady we bought the house from (the one who did all the pink). Bedroom 2 has two double beds and a single bed and we call it the "Dorm Room" for obvious reasons. Bedroom 3 has a queen and a single bed. Bedroom 4 is huge, nearly 30 feet long, and has 14 windows all looking out on the beach. Rob calls this "Rob's Bedroom" and Kate calls it "Kate's Bedroom". Bedrooms 1 and 2 are downstairs and they are old and funky but comfortable. Bedrooms 3 and 4 are upstairs and are nice and new. Bedroom 5 is a small room upstairs with two single beds and no door. We also have a couple of single beds in the downstairs living room. We can't really promise where you will find all the beds.  Even though we discourage it, they get moved around. But the total count is 3 queens, 2 doubles and 6 singles. Our couches are old wicker and not meant to be used as beds. We would appreciate them not being moved. You can comfortably sleep 12 to 14 people in the house. Our rates are based on 12 people. If you want to have more please let us know, as we do charge $50 extra for more adults and kids over 12 (see rates).
Bathrooms: Both of the downstairs baths are old and the plumbing is old and looks funky, but it works. Remember, this is a beach house that has been underwater in several hurricanes, so don't expect fancy. Bathroom 1, off of bedroom 1, is a standard bath with a shower. Bathroom 2, off bedroom 2, is a large, but odd, bathroom with a tub and shower. Bathroom 3 is upstairs and is sparkling new. It has a tub and shower.
Kitchen: We are told we have a "galley kitchen". We think this means long and narrow, which it is. It is adequate for a beach house, and is furnished with good pots, pans, dishes and utensils. It has a coffee maker and microwave. You wont need to bring any kitchen equipment. We may own the only 2 matching pink refrigerators in existence. You will need food, dish soap, paper goods, personal care items, etc. If you are coming down from Tallahassee the best place to stop is the new Winn Dixie in Crawfordville. There is an IGA in Panacea that is not as large, but will have most of what you need (although the selection is limited). The kitchen has a small table at one end that will seat 2 people comfortably, or 4 if you like each other.
 Washer and Dryer: We've got em...all you need is the detergent, fabric softener, etc. These are located upstairs in a small upstairs laundry room.
The Big Room: For lack of a better name we call the upstairs room "the Big Room" and it is! It is an open room almost 30 feet by 30 feet and it is a large living room. It has several couches and chairs, a few tables, and a lovely (out of tune) pink piano.
Living Room/Dining Room: The furniture includes a dining table for 6 to 8, plus couches and chairs. Again, don't expect fancy! Much of the furniture came with the house and is nice antique wicker, painted pink. This is a nice big room with a TV and VCR. We have a collection of about 50 videos (a real mix of kids movies, vintage, adventure, etc.). Movies are also available locally. The closest place is the store at the KOA campground a few miles down the road. We do get cable but don't watch it ourselves so we are not sure what's on it, just basic cable we suppose.
 The Screened in Porch: This is where we spend a lot of time. It is a long porch on the Gulf side of the house, about 10 feet wide by 30 feet long, with a great view of the water. It opens into the kitchen, and bedrooms 1 and 2. It has a picnic table with seating for 6 to 8, and several chairs. We eat most of our meals there.
The Deck: This is a new 12 by 16 foot deck located towards the Gulf out an upstairs door. It is at the second floor level and you get onto it from the Big Room. There are stairs leading down to the beach. It is half covered by the roof and half in the sun and a great place to sit and watch the beach.
 The Gazebo: About half way between the house and the water is a partially covered deck or gazebo that is about 20 feet by 20 feet. It is older and a bit weathered from the last couple of hurricanes, but we like it! There are outdoor chairs and furniture on the gazebo and it is a great place to sit and watch the waves, tend swimming children, or staying out of the direct sun. It has a hose with cool running water where we take about half of our summer showers. A good place for washing off after the beach.
The Air Conditioning plus: The house has central heat and air, up and downstairs, controlled separately, plus a big attic (or whole house) fan. The house has many ceiling fans and these really help. You can close the house off and easily control the temperature, but in warmer weather we prefer to use the fans. There are more than enough to keep you cool most days and we prefer the natural breeze to the AC.
The Telephone: You can receive calls and make local calls toll free. To make a long distance call you will need a credit card or to make a collect call. You can call 800, but not 900 numbers. The phone number at the house is (850) 349-2233.
 The Barbecue: There is not one. They rust out too quickly for us to keep one this close to the salt water. Some guests buy cheap ones and leave them, so the odds are 50/50 that you will find a useable barbecue when you get there. About the barbecues; We have vinyl siding and the heat of a barbecue can melt the siding. This happened to our neighbor next door and he recently replaced a good deal of siding because of this. If you do barbecue, do it at least 8 feet from the house. Also please discard your ash on the beach below the high tide line. Don't dump it in the yard or leave it in the barbecue grill, and don't put it in the trash. When you leave, unless your grill is in really good shape, please throw it away. We don't need a collection of old rusty grills.
The Address is:
1667 Alligator Point Drive (A-19)
Alligator Point, Florida 32346
It's also called house A-19 because we only got street names and numbers a couple of years ago and before that they just used the lot numbers. Before getting street names every street was called County Road 370 and there were no coherent numbers. It made it easy to remember an address, but the address didn't do you much good. Now that we have street numbers nobody local much uses them, but mail delivery is more predictable. If needed, FedEx delivers dependably to the Point. We always use both the street address and the house number in addressing things. If you are trying to find Alligator Point on a map it can be hard. First of all none of the Streets or similar software programs work. Maybe it's the new street names, or maybe Franklin County is keeping the streets a secret. On many larger maps Alligator Point does not even appear. More often you will see Southwest Point, and sometimes South Point or Lighthouse Point (these names are not used locally, only Alligator Point). Alligator Point is a narrow spit of land that extends about 7 miles, and encloses Alligator Harbor. The first 5 miles of Alligator Point is accessible by paved road and the house is almost at the end of that road. The Nature Conservancy owns the last 2 miles of the point and there is no legal access, this begins about 300 yards east of Kate's Dream. To the east of Alligator Point is Bald Point, which extends about 5 miles to the mouth of Ochlockonee Bay. People tend to lump Bald Point and Alligator Point together and locally everything out there is often called Alligator Point; but locals do sometimes use the name Bald Point. This whole thing is actually an island, St. James Island and on older Florida maps when water transportation was more important and bridges rare you can clearly see this. There sometimes is a semi live camera shot of the Alligator Point beach at http://beachview.com/pics/alg640.jpg the camera location moves, so we can't say how close to our house it will be on any given day.
 Alligator Point is on St. James Island. The Ochlockonee River is connected to the New River by the Crooked River. You can travel completely by water around St. James Island. Beginning at Alligator Point you can travel east to Ochlockonee Bay, then north up the bay and up the river just above Sopchoppy and turn more or less west on the Crooked River to the New River then south to Carrabelle out into Apalachicola Bay and west to the north of Dog Island and back to Alligator Point. We have traveled this in pieces, the whole trip would probably be close to 50 miles. The New River is actually an old mouth or distributary of the Ochlockonee and the whole area between the Gulf, Sopchoppy, and inland of Carrabelle is a part of the ancient Ochlockonee delta. (actually looking at topo maps of the area we suspect both the New River and the Ochlockonee mouths are ancient distributaries of the Apalachicola and this is all part of the ancient Apalachicola delta) The Crooked River is now a dead channel and not really a river. Historically it was an important waterway, it connected the Apalachicola to the Ochlockonee via an inland waterway and made commerce possible between Tallahassee and the Apalachicola by a shorter route and smaller boats than the open Gulf. On today's navigation charts it will say that conditions in the Crooked River are unknown for navigation, but we have had no trouble getting a 17 foot boat with an 80 hp motor through, we'd guess you would have a minimum of 3 to 4 feet of controlling depth.
Rental details: We have listed here the 2000 rates, these may be subject to change. These rates may vary a little from what is listed on the Internet; this is because we have not been able to update all listings. Honestly, we probably have 2 or 3 people who want to rent the house for most weeks and more than 10 for some weeks! We could probably raise the price but don't think that's fair. So a couple of things: except for longer term rentals in our slowest season, mid October to December we don't negotiate our rates or rental periods. We only rent by the week Saturday to Saturday; and please don't make a reservation unless you are really sure you want it. If you do we loose money, you loose your deposit, and someone else doesn't get to use the house.
These are house keeping rentals, there is no maid service and you are expected to leave the houses in a "broom clean" condition when you leave. That means you need to plan on a little cleaning time before you leave.
Our rates are $1000 to 2000/week depending on season, rates are highest in the summer and lowest in late fall and early winter. Please refer to the calendar at the end of this website, it shows open weeks and the rates for the open weeks. About our rates:
We have to add Florida sales tax to our rates, currently the rate is 7.5%, you will have to pay the rate in force at the time you occupy the house, Jeb has to get his cut.
Longer rentals: We will discount any rental of 2 weeks or more, in the busier seasons we will take $100 per week off of additional weeks, in the off season we will consider longer term lower priced rentals monthly rentals. For longer rentals we will require a portion of the rent be prepaid at the time the reservation is made and the amount depends on the individual situation. We are open to most any time frame so just e-mail us to let us know what you are interested in and we will give you a quote.
All rates are based on up to 6 adults and 6 children. If you have more than 12 people in the house we charge $50 per person. If you plan to have more than 6 adults or more than 12 people please let us know.
We like to rent to families. If you have a group with more than 6 adults please let us know your relationships to each other. We usually don't rent to large groups of unrelated singles. This is not a party house, it is in a quiet area and we need to keep it that way. This is also no place for spring breakers, Panama City is the spring break scene, 100 miles to the west. We do make exceptions for unrelated groups, for example we once rented to a group of 12, a bicycle team in training. Just tell us a little about yourselves. We are not out to discriminate against single folks, we are just trying to keep things quiet as the neighbors will immediately complain to us if there is a problem. We want to avoid that (and so do you).
Move in/out is on Saturday; check in after 4:00 PM, check out by 10:00 AM. Rent includes all utilities, but on top of all charges we have to add Florida State tax, at the time of this writing, 7.5%
The rent is due in full 45 days before your start date unless you rent for two months or more, and then it depends on the conditions of the rental. Rent and all other payments must be made in cash, or by certified check, unless payment is made more than 45 days in advance; in that case payment can be by check. You can also make payments by credit card through paypal.com. To use paypal.com you have to register with them and that takes a few days. If you want to use a credit card, it is a safe and easy way to pay. We have had to start collecting rent in advance as we were losing money to no shows. We don't understand why someone would pay a deposit, sign a contract, and then just not show up, but it happens. So we collect the rent in advance which gives us time to rerent the house if the rent is not paid. Last year we had no unreserved vacant weeks, but we did have a couple of no shows. That cost us the rent and the renters lost their deposits and deprived others who wanted to rent use of the house.
There is also a deposit required at the time you make a reservation. It will be returned after you leave, providing everything is OK. In 8 years of renting a beach house out to hundreds of renters we have only kept deposits or part of deposits 3 times. We like to think this is because we have good renters and we would be happier if we never had to keep any deposit money. One of these times was when the renter was a no-show without notice, and this was before we started collecting rent in advance. One was a group of college students on spring break who abused the house, caused damage, and left it filthy. The other incident we had was a very unpleasant renter who refused to allow us access to the house and as this resulted in costs and damages to us, we charged the renter for the costs. Anyway, we have had well over a hundred other renters who have been responsible renters and we have fully refunded their deposits. For rentals of $200 or less, the deposit is $400. With longer term rentals the deposit will be proportionally more, but when it is, we will usually apply the amount above $400 to your rent at move in. If you cancel more than 45 days before the rental we will refund $300 of your deposit. After that the refund amount depends on our ability to rent it for the days you reserved it. Unfortunately we have had some no shows and on a long rental, that can really hurt, so we ask for a bit more deposit. Please, if you aren't sure that you want the house, don't make a reservation. We have to turn down a lot more people than we can rent to and a no show or last minute cancellation not only costs money, but it keeps someone else from using the house.
You can find a schudule and rental details here. We try and keep this as up to date as possible, but we do rent on a first come first serve basis, so it can change quickly. Note that all rentals start and end on a Saturday and the date listed is the start date for the week. Please check with us for up to date info. on booking status.
We do not normally allow pets, but we will make case by case exceptions. You need to contact us first, and if we agree to it, we do require a $100 non-refundable pet fee. This is to help cover the cost of extra cleaning and defleaing we are required to do after any pet. We do this no matter how clean or nice your pet is. If we do agree to allow your pet, you are responsible to control it. There is no fence and the pet should not disturb the neighbors. If we get a complaint from the neighbor, we will have to ask you to either make other arrangements for the pet immediately, or to leave the house. This has never happened and we hope that by making this warning, it never will.
No Smoking Policy; We don't allow smoking in the house. There is plenty of outdoor areas where you can smoke, the screened porch, the deck, the gazebo and the beach. Smokers will not be relegated to the "back forty" but we ask that you don't smoke indoors.
All rentals are on a first come first serve basis. Once you decide for sure, we will hold a set of dates for you for 10 days to allow time for a contract to be sent out and returned with your deposit. We ask that you not agree, verbally or by email, to rent unless you are sure and then that you return the contract and deposit quickly. The best way to make a reservation is to send an email making a firm commitment to rent. We need to warn you about the first come first serve; we can hold it for no one without the firm commitment and deposit to follow and we have had some close calls and unhappy people. In 2000 we were booked up a year ahead. Decide if you want it, and if you are 100% sure, make a firm commitment and you will probably be first and get it. If you make a reservation by email you need to clearly state that you want a specific date and that you are committing to the rental. We rent first come first serve and have had a few problems with unclear emails where we did not understand that someone was making a rental commitment, and in the time it took to sort things out we rented the house to someone else. If you say something like "here is our first choice and here are some others", or "we think we want", or "could we get", or something else we will answer you, but we will not hold the house. So if you want it and are making a firm commitment, be clear. We cannot hold the house for anything less than a firm commitment.
If you are interested in making a reservation but concerned about doing business over the internet we understand and we can offer to put you in touch with other people who know us and have rented our house. This can both serve to assure you that we and the house are real and that what we say here is true. To be honest we are surprised how many people are willing to do business over the internet, and we have heard some stories of rental fraud. It seems like it would easy to post a website like this and for a time collect deposits and rent and then dissapear. We don't want to scare anyone off, and you have probably thought about this already but anyway we can provide references if you need. We do ask that you not contact the references unless you have decided to make a reservation and just want confirmation we are real. If you rent from us we will ask you to add your name to our reference list and you can appreciate that we don't want to trouble our references often.
Housekeeping: This is a house keeping rental. We do house cleaning between renters, but this is for major things like washing windows and walls and the like. We expect our renters to keep the house clean while they are in it and to leave it clean when they leave. We try to keep the house equipped with cleaning supplies, a vacuum, brooms, etc. If you need more maid service than we offer let us know and we can help you make arrangements. One important part of housekeeping is the garbage. This is a rural area and we get only once a week garbage service, on Fridays. You will have a large garbage can and you can put additional bags out, but you need to do this on Friday morning so that when you leave on Saturday the garbage can is not full.
 Nesting Turtles: We have them and need you to help us protect them! This is one of the few places left on the US Gulf Coast that gets lots of nesting sea turtles. In 2000, 17 nests were identified on Alligator Point, and 4 on Bald Point, this is only in the developed area of Alligator Point, the observers don't walk the Nature Conservancy beach to the west of the house. Estimates are this resulted in 1200 to 1300 hatchling turtles making it to the Gulf. Unfortunately 2 nests with about 200 hatchlings were lost due to lights in people's houses. The young turtles hatched at night and became disoriented, went the wrong way and died on the beach. Three other nests were lost to predation. Lights are a problem for the turtles, they are disoriented by the lights. Adult turtles have problems finding a suitable beach with lights and when the young hatch they can't find the water. Please don't use lights you don't need and keep light usage on the Gulf side to a minimum. The season is May to October, the turtles can nest most anytime during that period. There are laws requiring this so you could be fined if you have too many lights on. If you have a dog you need to keep an eye on it, the beach is walked almost every day by turtle watch volunteers and the nests are marked so you will know where they are, don't let your dog dig one up. If you walk beyond the jetties to the west onto the Nature Conservancy land you need to keep your dog on a leash. The nests down there may not be marked, and dogs are not allowed on Nature Conservancy land. For more information about the Alligator Point turtles see http://www.apeco.org. You may want to join in the turtle watch when you are down, I think you can make arrangements through this website.
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