Gulf Coast Florida Trip-first stop at St Andrews State Park / Panama City

Florida trip

We left for our well-planned 11 months in advance trip to the gulf coast of Florida on January 15. Our reservations began January 16 but we wanted to get an early start. We were also anxious to leave Crossville, Tennessee and the rain/wind/cold behind us for a while. We picked a good day to go. Traffic was surprisingly light and the skies were blue all the way down to our first stop at Troy, Alabama. It was also unseasonably warm – highs were in the low 70s. We stopped at Deer Run RV Park in Troy. We had full hookups and a really good selection of cable tv channels. We were able to watch the Dallas Cowboys/Green Bay Packers playoff game (congrats Packers!).

We slept really well that night. I don’t know if it was the lull of the steady traffic from US-231 or just being on the road all day in the motorhome. We slept 10 hours (!) and ended up leaving later than we had planned. Still we were on the road by 9:30 and didn’t have far to travel.

Now our first stop was St. Andrews State Park in Panama City, Florida for 10 days. After that we are to head on to Grayton Beach State Park for 14 days; last stop is Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. We took our time driving and got to the state park around 1:30. We were able to check in right away although check-in is officially at 3:00 p.m.  Our campsite is very roomy and the park is really pretty. We have a very good view of the bay. The campground appears to be about two-thirds full. The main empty spots are for tents/pop-ups. There are many big campers here. There is ready access to the beach. The restrooms are in decent shape and are clean.

view of bay

 

The first day we did take a quick walk on the beach at the state park after we set up camp. The first night we were here we ate at Runaway Island at Panama City Beach. We were hungry because we skipped lunch so we got there around 4:30. They had early bird specials until 5:30 – which is good when you are retired! We had really good fish dinners – I had mahi and Ben had salmon – for $13. And we had happy hour $4 house wines which were decent.   We also stopped at Publix on the way back to the camper to pick up a few groceries.  We don’t like to pack a lot ahead of time.

Tuesday we woke up to electrical issues. Oh – oh – it was bound to happen sooner or later. We found a campground volunteer and asked if they had any recommendations for repair. They recommended Beach RV in Panama City Beach. They were very helpful and had our problem fixed by the end of the day. It turned out we had a bad wire. At least it wasn’t an expensive repair!   We did manage to get a short bike ride in this day and spent a lot of time reading books while we waited on John from Beach RV to show up.

Wednesday we decided to explore the historic part of Panama City and St. Andrew. This was interesting but there wasn’t as much to explore as we thought. And there was hardly anyone walking the streets! Still there were some interesting places to see and the drive was really pretty along beach drive. When we got back to the campground we had a nice bike ride to the picnic area, alligator lake and then to the beach. We stayed at the beach for about an hour.

 

 

We ate at Uncle Ernie’s Bayfront Grill and again the food was good. They have excellent fried oysters and shrimp. It looked like a popular local place that had been there a while.  We also hung out at the marina next door for a bit.

 

Didn't eat here but it looked like a cute place

Uncle Ernie's

 

So, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were bad weather days, and we mean that seriously. There were severe weather and event and to take it seriously. So we ended up staying at the Hampton Inn close to the state park. It was actually a nice, clean place and for this time of year really quiet. When I booked this state park I couldn’t get a spot for Saturday night, but we did manage to find one after we got here. But to get a spot close to us we ended up changing the campsite twice. It was a bit of a pain and we had to time the move of the camper in-between storms. It all worked out though, and the state park didn’t get much storm damage. In fact, many of the bad storms went around us. We did get a lot of rain. When we checked out of the motel Sunday we had to move to the site we had reserved for Sunday-Wednesday.

After that we decided to get some lunch and then pick up some more groceries. Well, the bad weather hung around and we were under a tornado watch for much of the day. When we stopped at Dockside down the road for lunch a tornado warning was issued. We (especially me) were terrified. The alerts on phones kept going off and the restaurant had an alert notification and it was going off as well. There were actually two possible tornado sightings. The storm was really bad and one tornado was close by but no direct hit, thank goodness.  The younger workers were pretty scared and some of us were huddled around the tv watching the weather warnings. We were amazed at two tables of older customers who sat by the windows and didn’t seem to take any of it seriously (!) The windows are the worst place to be during such a serious threat.

When we got back to the state park after the storms passed the tornado watches were cancelled and our camper was still standing unharmed. Some of the campsites had quite a bit of water and a couple could not have been used that evening. During the end of the day a big group from Quebec came into the campground and were pretty much all around us but they only stayed one night.

We had to move campsites Sunday.

Monday was quite windy. We took a drive down to Mexico Beach and then to Port St. Joe, about 45minutes outside of Panama City. We passed Tyndall Air Force Base, which is really big. We drove around and took pictures but a lot of the restaurants that we had wanted to check out were closed. So we drove back to the campground for the day. We rode bikes and read books.

Tuesday the wind had died down. The weather was a little cooler but still a good day for biking and walking. We want to just hang at the campground today, since we  will be moving on to Grayton Beach State park Wednesday. in the evening a family of deer crossed right in front of us as we were sitting outside our camper!