Penny and I, being of sound mind and noticing that it was a beautiful Spring day—perhaps the last that wont be too hot—took the day off from responsibilities, grabbed our cameras and headed off to the East on an explore.
We’ve lived here for 35 years and have never gone to the Port St Joe area (“You don’t know Florida if you don’t know Joe”). Today was a good day to see what we were missing.
It’s a 2 1/2-hour drive over and we didn’t get off until around 9:30, which meant we would stop for lunch along the way. We began looking for a good lunch spot around 11:15 and didn’t stop until about 12:15. Even though a hungry Penny is not a happy Penny, she didn’t get upset. We stopped at what looked like a place for tourists called Toucan’s. It sits right on the beach and it was set up in a similar manner to The Back Porch in Destin. We sat outside and both ordered the oyster, grouper finger basket with Vidalia onion rings. The breeze off the water actually was a little cool. The food came and the potions were huge. Each basket had a dozen fried oysters, half a dozen grouper fingers and a mound of onion rings. We could have ordered one basket and had enough food. The leftovers are now in our fridge.
The drive from the restaurant to Port St Joe Peninsula State Park was picturesque. Bay County has a long stretch of beautiful beach waterfront with nothing but roadside parking and public access. It was refreshing that people other than condo owners had easy access to the beach. The first thing I saw as I turned up the road to the state park was a sign advising the residents to turn off their seaward lights during turtle nesting periods. Further out the road was a gas station charging $3.75 a gallon, about 20 cents higher than on the “mainland”.
We found the park interesting but not overly impressive. It was a little disappointing. I don’t know what I expected but the area didn’t offer much more than we already have close to home. The reason for our explore today was to see if we wanted to carry the kayak over there and spend a couple days. The answer is no. The beach and the bay are beautiful—just not worth the drive for us.
Penny said there was a lighthouse out there but we hadn’t seen it. I had printed out some area information off the Internet and had it in the car. It said the lighthouse was way back at the other end of the peninsula at Cape San Blas. The road out to the lighthouse is marked as an Eglin AFB test site. That’s why we missed it on the way in. On the bottom of the sign in small letters it said “Road is open except when a mission is in progress”. So down the road we went. It ended at a beach. We figured the lighthouse must be up the path that we saw at the end of the road. We got out of the car and Penny told me to turn around. There was the lighthouse right behind us. If it was a snake it would have bit us!
The lighthouse made for a nice end to our visit. It was interesting and the beach in front of it was full of tree stumps in different shapes and states of decay. We both took a bunch of pictures. Here are a few.
On the drive home we stopped at a Piggly Wiggly and bought a couple apples and cheese for our on-the-road apple snack. We got back home a little after 6 PM.
Tomorrow we will check the weather and who knows what we will do. Maybe it will be back to my “do” list—maybe not.
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