Day 12 - St Joseph’s Peninsula State Park & the Panhandle, FL

12 days in and we only have a couple of days left in Florida before we start to explore some of the other states. We have never visited the panhandle before so we decided to spend a couple of days exploring the coast line and some of the cities in this area.

We decided to take the scenic Route 98 to St Joseph’s Peninsula State Park rather than using the Interstate; it took longer but was worth the drive just to see the diversity in the landscape and the culture. The route went through very rural areas of Florida where there were lots of ranches, farms and more churches than houses. Then we hit the smaller coastal towns where we saw small Oyster shacks sitting next door to marinas and holiday homes. We even found the smallest police station in the world!

We stopped off at a couple of beaches along the way, many set up with BBQs, picnic tables and boat launches. It was so easy to pull in off the road, jump out the car and immediately you are in this very pretty, secluded beach.

Our final destination was the campground at the state park which was a lovely campground with great facilities, including electric hook ups, and awesome neighbours! The beach was a 5-minute walk away from our pitch, over the sand dunes. The beach was very quiet, only a few campers and a couple of birds trying to find worms or sand flies. The sand was like play sand: soft, white and so clean. The sea itself was a little rough but the water was warm on our feet.

We watched the sunset on the beach and whilst there were a few clouds in the sky, the colours were spectacular. We've made a video of our time on the beach:

Back at our campsite, we had a firepit and a grill so Lee couldn’t resist cooking our burgers on these rather than the propane (man make fire!). We bought some wood from a shop nearby but we could not get it to catch. After about a hour of trying, Lee cheated and chucked on a load of charcoal so that we could cook dinner before sunrise. I’m sure at this point Lee would want me to say that it wasn’t his fire skills: everyone was having problems with the wood and the family next to us gave up and went to get pizza.

The beach is a turtle nesting area so at night there is no light pollution as the lights confuse the turtles who rely on the moon for direction. We took the fly sheet off our tent and slept under the stars (with the bug protector keeping the mosquitoes off us!). Lee took a couple of pictures when he went for a wee in the early hours of the morning.

We were fed up with how uncomfortable our camp beds are so decided to sleep on the ground which we thought was sandy. Turns out there were a lot of rocks in that sand and no matter which way I turned, one jabbed into me. We both agreed that our camp beds are actually fairly comfortable when you compare them to sleeping on the floor!