St Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach

We drove a big 90 miles west of Apalachicola, Florida on Thursday, Feb 22 to Panama City. We took the Gulf of Mexico coastal highway that traveled beside beautiful snowy white beaches with emerald colored waters. We did see some evidence of hurricane damage, but mainly in the form of dead trees from the water surge. Our destination was St. Andrews State Park that was located on Panama City Beach. We had a gorgeous site right on the water. The Florida State Parks are first rate and we haven’t seen a bad one yet. This park had sites right on the water, a fishing pier, lakes with birds and alligators, an ecological interpretive center and a lovely white sand Gulf beach. The beach was one of the most beautiful that we’ve seen yet, and had a great variety of shells for collecting.

The local seafood is absolutely wonderful. We’ve enjoyed local oysters, grouper, Mahi Mahi and shrimp. We haven’t seen that much crab, but we’re still looking.

We have enjoyed meeting and talking with people in the campgrounds. The campers are mainly from all over the eastern U.S. and Canada (mainly retirees, except on the weekends when many local families arrive). The week days are quiet and the weekends are more boisterous.

One highlight of our trip has been to visit family and friends along the way. We had a wonderful catch up visit with an old friend from Huntsville, Alabama, Jane M, who now lives in Niceville. We were very sorry to hear that her husband Jack had passed away in 2005 from leukemia.

We were all in our twenties when we lived in Huntsville. We were there because of the work at Marshall Space Fight Center. Jack, Jane and John worked as support contractors for NASA. Back then the center director was Werner Von Braun and the job was to design and build the Saturn V launch vehicle, used to send the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Those were heady days!

We reminisced with Jane about sports car rallying, boating and things that twenty year olds do.

While in Florida, we have also connected with relatives. John spent time with his brother Jim, who is wintering in St Augustine, and Pris saw her Aunt Larry and Cousin Shelby and husband. Too bad we are all so far apart.