We stayed in St. Joseph Peninsula SP for three nights. We still weren’t getting any cell phone coverage but for some reason our data connection through the cell phone was working. On the first day we did a walk around the two campground loops and in turn did the Bayview Scenic Nature Trail. One of the time appropriate trees we saw was called the “Yaupon”, basically a holly tree and only the female trees have the berries. The Indians boiled the leaves of the Yaupon to make a drink called “Casina”. It seems like we’ve seen deer in almost every State Park we’ve been in so far. In the shot with the fresh water marsh you’ll see lots of white Egrets across the water and if you look all the way to the other side you’ll see the backside of our rig.

The next day we did a bike ride around the entire State Park and walked several miles in on the Wilderness Preserve trail and back along the beautiful white sand empty beach. The Wilderness trail leads to seven different back country campsites but we only saw three of them as the entire trail would have been seven miles and we didn’t have enough time prior to sunset. Along the trail we saw weird round ground green lichens that we hadn’t seen in any other park. The sand dunes were quite spectacular as we made our way out to the beach. We gambled a bit that the beach would lead us back to a side cut to get back to where we had locked up our bikes and luckily the gamble was correct and the connector was well marked. Sharon’s favourite past time on the beach is collecting shells and especially unbroken Sand Dollars when we could find them. We saw this curious crab walking across the beach while looking for shells.

The day we left St. Joseph we stopped in Port St. Joe to see the Cape San Blas Lighthouse. The park and visitor centre were quite well done and they were installing interlocking bricks to make a path around the pond. Sharon liked that they had hung a Christmas wreath on the lighthouse. We found the lighthouse construction interesting (similar to the Crooked River Lighthouse) and they called it a Skeletal Tower. It had 8 cast iron legs supporting the watch room and the lantern at the top of the tower and the legs were bolted in to a concrete foundation. This type of structure offered less resistance to wind and wave action and reduced the weight of the structure on the soft sandy earth. Access to the lantern was up a cast iron plate cylinder with a spiral metal staircase. This version was actually the fifth lighthouse in use as the others were destroyed by storms or by the confederates. By the water the Turkey Vultures were waiting in a tree to air out their wings or watch for a meal. The pond in the centre of the park was giving beautiful reflections. The day we were there the lighthouse wasn’t open for tours but we could walk part way up. They had two lighthouse keeper quarters, one was renovated and the other one was going to be renovated.

Later that day as we pulled in to our campsite at St. Andrews SP and there were three deer feeding in our site. We got setup and then realized our 25’ water hose wasn’t long enough to reach the outlet so we had to jockey the vehicle around to reach. I’ve added to my shopping list to buy another 25’ hose, it always seems like there’s something new to buy for the RV;-)