5/9 T.H. Stone Memorial State Park

I visited here about ten years ago and remember arriving in a woodsy area in a driving rain with thunder and lightning.  It was even more difficult to back in because it was dark, and I very seldom drive in the dark, but I did manage among all the trees. 

Other than the beautiful white sand beach, on this current trip, I could not recognize anything at all.  The campground and the road into the campground were brand new and completely different.  It felt really strange to be somewhere you had been before, but not recognizing anything.  Mostly, instead of a heavily wooded campground, with dirt camping spots and electric only spots.  Now, there is a new road into the place, and the camp sites are full hookup, paved, and in a grassy area with no shrubbery or trees to block your view.  In other words, you can seethe entire campground from wherever you are standing.  

Nice new sign and good paved road, at least.  Not a chuck hole to be seen since the state park has only been open for a few months!

Along with the rest of the peninsula, the standing dead trees make things look pretty stark.  However, they will not remove any of the trees unless they are in the way of something because they provide homes for a lot of birds.

 

 

The next two photos show my large campsite and the east half of the campground.  Pretty base, but in a few years it will look like Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Jupiter, FL, which also suffered hurricane about 15 years ago.  Now, there are tall shrubs between sites that provide privacy there.  

 

Actually, I like the openness because it makes for good satellite service and also enables snooping on fellow campers. 

 

 

One interesting thing they have included in this brand new campground is a tenting shack.  Basically, it is a screened in little building where you can pitch a tent inside and be protected from the amazing number of bugs Florida is known for!  There were two of these, and I expect they will become popular with tenters once people find out about them.  

The campground is on the edge of the dunes that are protecting the land from future hurricanes, and is true with all Florida beaches, you cannot walk on dunes, so they build boardwalks over them. 

 

 

This is a nice sign that describes how the peninsula is recovering from the hurricane.  

More photos of the boardwalk.

When I took this photo, the sun was very bright and I could not tell if anything was living in this hole on the dunes.  Now that I have enlarged it, you can tell it is the home of a crab.

Looking back at my rig in the campground.

Good view from the higher part of the boardwalk.

This is a beautiful beach, especially at low tide.  The sand is incredibly white and soft on your feet.  Lots of people fishing and others just enjoying the view.  Can get sunburned fast here, so lots of people had sunshades of some sort.

 

 

A lot of state parks are putting in cabins of some sort.  Most of the time, these are small, one-room structures or tents with beds in them.  The cabins in this state park are two-story houses, and rent for $100 per night plus a $7 electric fee and taxes.  They each sleep 6 and have full kitchens and even come with sheets, towels, blankets, etc.  Plus, they are very private.  Most overlook the bay, but the peninsula is so narrow that they are also only maybe 500 feet from the Gulf. 

That's all, but I think I might come back here in a couple of years, however, it was HOT here so next time I will come earlier in the year when it is in the low 70s instead of upper 80s!!!

 

5/2 Drive to T.H. Stone Memorial State Park

If you have ever been in a situation where you had to decide whether to evacuate during a hurricane or not, this state park can give you a good example of potential damage.  First, about of information where this state park is located.  It is on the panhandle of Florida, about 30 miles as the crow flies southeast of Panama City Beach.

 

 

In reality, it is about a 50 mile drive from Panama City Beach because it is near the tip of a long peninsula, and you have to drive southeast, then west, and finally north along the peninsula to get to the state park.

 

 

 

After driving about 100 miles through rural farmland from Grayton Beach, hitting Panama City Beach was a bit of a shock with its high rise hotels and attractions like this Ripley's Believe It or Not ship and tilted museum!    

 

 

 

If you look very carefully at this photo taken from Panama City Beach, you can barely see a peninsula way out in the Gulf of Mexico.  That is the St. Joseph Peninsula. 

 

 

 

I was here about 10 years ago, and remember this peninsula as being heavily forested.  Leaving the mainland and heading north on the peninsula, this is what most of it looks like now. 

 

 

in 2018, Hurricane Michael was a Category 5 hurricane, and it completely cut off the peninsula from the mainland. If you click on this site, you can see the before and after:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Michael#/media/ 

It took the state over two years to rebuild this chunk of the peninsula and rebuild the roadway.  The section of roadway that was replaced is now protected by about half a mile of big rocks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other odd thing about this peninsula is that almost every building on it is brand new, with a lot of construction continuing.  Also, most of the homes are now on stilts, preparing them to survive the next hurricane.  

 

 

And there are still a LOT of dead standing trees which makes the place look terribly bare. 

There have been a lot of trees and vegetation planted, but it will take several years for enough trees to grow back to provide any shade.  It will also take several years to replace restaurants and shops here.  There is one small market and a handful of restaurants, but if you go here, you really need to bring everything you need with you, especially if you are camping. 

The entrance to the state park is about halfway down the peninsula.  

 

5/2 Grayton Beach SP, FL -- Placeholder

I am setting up this posting as a temporary placeholder because I like my postings to be in order, and I cannot post right now for the two weeks I spent at this state park because I cannot view those photos. 

The problem is that I have a new camera, or at least a relatively new camera.  I have gone through three cameras in the 12 years I have been living full-time in my motorhome.  Basically, I dropped the first two cameras and am on my third, which is very similar to the other two, but is a slightly newer and more "improved" than the other two.  "Improved" means that the user manual is now 511 pages long in the online version, which is the only one I can read because the type is too small in the hard copy that came with my camera.  Anyway, I have been working periodically through parts of this manual and am learning a lot, but frankly 511 pages is ridiculous!!  (It took me two months just to figure out how to set the camera from manual focus to automatic focus.)

However, when I started taking photos of this state park, somehow my finger slipped and I turned on the menu function and then somehow changed the File Format setting for still photos from JPGs to RAW images.  I took 54 photos in RAW format, which meant that I could not view them when I downloaded them.  (Apparently, RAW format is used by professional photographers who want to heavily edit photos.)  The software I've looked at to convert these is more complicated than I need.  Basically, I need some easy software to just convert these images so I can view and post them, but have been a little hesitant in which to download and use.  

I just found the recommended software on page 106 of the Sony Help Guide, so am going to continue to work on that, so stay tuned. 

In the meantime, I am going to post some photos and comments tomorrow on T.H. Stone State Park on the Florida Panhandle where I am right now.  

4/14 Sebastian Inlet State Park

This is an extremely nice state park--not because the sites are fantastic, but because it is alongside an inlet to the intercoastal waterway, and by walking under a highway bridge, you can get easily to a pier and the Atlantic Ocean Beach.  

However, this park in the past has caused me problems.  A few years ago, I got terribly bitten by mosquitos as I was walking a friend to her car at dusk.  Normally, I do not go out at dusk because I am very sensitive to mosquito bites, but I was being polite that time, and ignored my rule.  

Another time, I was camped in a spot next to the swampy woods along the back of the campground and in the early morning hours when it was still dark, I heard a lot of thumping and bumping in one of the underneath storage area under my bedroom area.  I waited until dawn and went out armed with a senior grabber and a flashlight.  As I suspected, a raccoon had started to set up housekeeping, but she was easily evicted, though not after tearing up half a role of paper towel into tiny bits.  

This time, it was mosquitos that got me again and required a trip to urgent care on my way out!!!  Anyway, I enjoyed the week I spent here, though it would have been more enjoyable if I had not accumulated 30+ bites that blistered and kept me up the last couple of nights! 

I had a good campsite this time, well away from the swamp and closer to the inlet where there was a beautiful breeze every day.  I also had a good view for people and boat watching. 

The campground is along the inlet, shown here.  There are a couple of fishing piers and boats seem to like to anchor nearby for fishing.  In the distance, you can see the highway bridge and the day use area across the river.

This is a view looking into the wide intercoastal waterway. 

This is a redhead African agama, which is an invasive species and has been eating butterflies and other native insects.  I have seen a lot of these in state parks, but there does not seem to be much effort in catching and destroying them.  Here is an article:  https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/12/11/red-headed-invasive-lizard-with-butterfly-appetite-spreads-in-florida/

Across the inlet is a protected beach area.  Not supposed to be any alligators hanging around here because of the current and salt water.

Not sure what this lizard is, but it looks a lot like the orange-headed one, except without the coloring.

 

 

This is the highway bridge that goes over the inlet.  It has two big fishing piers underneath it, but unfortunately they are both closed because parts of the concrete from the bridge overhead have been falling down.  Plans are underway to build a new, and higher bridge here. 

 

 

In the meantime, the pelicans are enjoying it as a roost. 

 

 

This is the beach on my side of the river.   A couple of centuries ago, a treasure ship was wrecked along this coast and supposedly, occasionally, someone finds Spanish coins on the beach after a storm.

 

  

A nice store and rental shop in the day use area.

 

 

This is the campground check-in and fishing museum building. 

One of the campers told me that there would be a SpaceX rocket launch on this night 56 miles away at Canaveral, so I put on long pants, a mosquito hat and a long-sleeved jacket.  I am not positive, but I think the mosquitos got me that night because I had neglected to put rubber bands on my pant legs at the ankle.  

Anyway, I walked out on the pier past the bridge and waited in the dark with a bunch of fishermen and a couple of fellow campers.  This is what the lift-off looked like in the far distance. 

It took me a while to realize that this ball of fire was the rocket.  It came up from the pad northeast of us, took off headed across the ocean to the south, and passed in front of us, but way out to sea. 

I think this is where it dropped the booster.  But did you know the booster does not just drop into the ocean?  It is steered to a special ship landing platform and lands upright ready for the next flight.  Amazing.  After this, it headed up and so far away that I could not get any photos.

 

 

Down the beach about a mile or so is a treasure museum.  My photos are a bit blurred, but it was an interesting place.  

On my last morning here, I checked out and headed for urgent care.  Got prescriptions for prednisone and antibiotics, which have really helped my bites over the past few days.  I am trying to stay in at dusk from now on.  

4/9 Alligators at Myakka & Bad Dump Hookup

The best place to see alligators at Myakka State Park is along the bridge that passes over the Myakka River.  The river widens a bit here, and a lot of fishermen use the bridge for fishing, so it attracts alligators.  

Here are some of the photos I took this week while I stayed in the park.  

No swimming in this river, for obvious reasons!!

The birds do not seem worried, however.

 

 

I like to come back to this campground at Myakka because the sites are very large and this area has full hookups, meaning I can hook up my rig to electric, water, and sewage.

Most of the time, sewer hookups are level with the ground.  Unfortunately in this campground, someone decided that water could run uphill.

What this means for campers like me is that we have to "walk" the liquid in the sewer pipe by lifting it up in sections to drain it.  I know they have done this to prevent sewage from ending up on the ground, but it is very irritating to have to by lifting the hose up, and hoping the end does not come loose from the hookup, thus dumping sewage on ourselves and on the ground!!  Grrrrr!