Playmate for Ellis (Mickey) & St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Florida

5/21-5/22 We left St. Andrews State Park and continued south and east down the last park of the Panhandle to St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in Port St. Joe’s. The drive was about 70 miles and took us longer than expected because we did stop for gas and another Wal-Mart to get supplies. The state park that we are going to is way out in no man’s land and you need to have everything with you. We drove again right through another Air Force Base and it went on for miles with pine trees lining up on both sides of the road. This area is definitely not a resort area of Florida. So many houses for sale along the coast. Yet, some of the houses near the State Park were going for $800,000. George said they had to be crazy! We enjoyed our stay at this park it was not as busy as St. Andrews SP and we had the closest walk to the ocean of all the parks we have stayed at. The roads are great for bike riding. The host from Ohio next to us had a Maltese Poodle; black like Justine’s named Mickey and only ten months old. Nice personality to the dog, really cute so I included two shots of him in the pictures I uploaded. He would have been a great playmate for Justine’s Ellis! The loggerhead turtles are laying their eggs now so we were not allowed to walk the beaches at dark and were warned to watch where we step on the sand.
St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Port St. Joe, Florida Water, electricity and 120 campsites. $24 plus tax
This campground is located in what they call the “forgotten coast of the Florida Panhandle”. There are two loops Gulf Breeze and Shady Pine. We stayed in the Gulf Breeze loop because it is closer to the Gulf and a little cooler but Shady Pine is a prettier loop with the tall pines. They both have two bathhouses within walking distance on boardwalks to the beaches on the Gulf. The walk is a little shorter from the Gulf Breeze loop. The beaches have that white quartz sand of the Panhandle but not the Caribbean blue water even though they claim that they do. Nice park but bring everything you need because it is a long drive out there. One can swim in the Gulf or in the Bay. Fishing, boating and snorkeling, swimming, hiking, bike riding and bird watching are all available. The park has 2516 acres surrounded on two sides by the ocean and Bay. It is on the Florida Bird Watching trail and 243 species have been seen here especially in the fall when the park becomes a stopover for the migration of birds on their way south. There are even birding and wildflower tours offered at this time. We saw beautiful sunsets and sun rises from the beach. Make sure you make reservations because it was full when we camped there in May and it seems to be a place that the “snowbirds” like to stay during the winter. We would return to camp at this state park.