Chapter 3: St. George Island State Park

Chapter 3: St. George Island (Jan. 24-27)

We had another uneventful drive from Montgomery to St. George Island on back roads and several National and State Forest Scenic Byways. The temperature rose into the low seventies and we drove mostly in sunshine and then in and out of light showers. When we got to the coast just east of the causeway to the island we encountered a lot of fog. After getting some groceries we drove over to the island, arriving at the park by around 3:00. Last year when we were here it was windy, rainy, & cloudy with temperatures in the fifties. Even in the fog, we knew this trip would be better. We did a minimal set-up and then rode our bikes the half mile or so to the closest beach access and walked along the sand for a while on the Gulf side of the island. There were lots of Portuguese Man O’ War (deep, inky blue with edges of pink and purple) and Cannonball jellyfish (nearly clear with short stubby tentacles like bundles of cables) along the tidal lines. Back at our #27 campsite we did more setting up and moved many of the items in our back seat into the camper and made a light supper. We marveled that we could hear the waves crashing right from our campsite. After a good night’s sleep in temperatures that didn’t go below 60 we rose to a sunny day and temperatures that would soon rise into the low seventies. We spent a leisurely morning until about 11:00 when we took the Eastern Slough Interpretive Trail through the slash pine forest and beside the Slough. It came out at the park road so we crossed over and walked back up the beach and to our campsite. Along the way, near one of the freshwater ponds, we saw mergansers, a Great Blue Heron, an egret, and a majestic Bald Eagle. Lunch at 2:00 was very welcome after what was about a three and a half mile hike. After some reading in the sun we drove over to the boat access point on the Slough to put in our inflatable kayak and enjoyed a quiet hour’s paddle on the protected water which we shared only with the leaping mullets and a few herons and a merganser. Marv grilled pork chops for dinner and we finished the evening by listening to MSU defeat Minnesota in basketball on Spartan Radio on our very tenuous phone connection at the camper.

Thursday we wanted to ride out to the eastern point of the island. We had done so last year on a bitterly cold, windy day where the enjoyment of doing so lay in the finishing. Today it was sunny and in the low seventies with a breeze out of the south from which the dunes protected us when we left about 11:00. What a difference! The 5 mile “road” is mostly crushed oyster shell gravel but about a mile in the middle is still the original black top of the old County Road 300 which apparently used to go down to the point. About the half way along there is a bisecting bit of black top that goes about 50 yards each way to Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. We walked out to the Gulf and saw only two other people (far in the distance) as far as we could see in both directions. At the end of the road we walked a while to the left and then for a long while to the right and around the point. There were many different kinds of birds/ducks/gulls in the water right off the point and when we had walked around it we found hundreds if not thousands of sea stars that had washed up. I filled my pockets with complete ones and interesting shells and we stayed about an hour before biking back. The sky had clouded over, winds had turned to the west (so we biked into them), and it appeared that the predicted thundershowers were on their way. It was a bit cooler and our return wasn’t quite a pleasant as the ride out had been. Surprisingly, though, when we got back to the campsite, the sun came out again and the rest of the afternoon was very nice. About 4:00 we walked over to the bay side shore on the short path behind our campsite and watched the pelicans, grebes, mergansers and even a couple of loons. Two women joined us and we talked about favorite camping spots and travels and life. They left and we talked to another couple before going back to the camper to batten down the hatches for the severe weather that was on its way. When the rain hit us it was pretty spectacular with lots of lightning and thunder. But the high winds for which we had been warned didn’t get down into the protected campground. It rained most of the evening but quit sometime in the morning and we awoke to bright sunshine and about 60°. By the time the camper was packed up and we were ready to leave things were dried up and we had no problems getting on our way to our next stop.