St. George Island: Continued

It was really interesting walking around the campground in the State Park.  The license plates were from everywhere.  We saw Utah, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Quebec, Ontario and many others. We even saw one from Florida.  They must have gotten lost. :-)  The campground was extremely quiet.  We noticed that very few people had campfires.  Maybe it was because the price of firewood was extremely high.  We did spring for wood ($10.00) and had a fire for one night.  I'm a morning person, so I did go to the beach early one day to photograph a sunrise.

We hiked with Wendy's parents (Dean and Sue) one afternoon on the eastern end of the Park.  They have a permit to drive a vehicle to that end of the island where we spent the afternoon beach combing.  The very eastern end of the Park has limited vehicle access.  Only about 20 motorized vehicles are let onto that park at any one time.  The area was all beach and dunes.  There was hardly a tree in sight.  Dogs were not allowed on this part of the Park.   We only saw 5 or 6 other people on that trip



On another occasion Wendy and I took a six mile hike on a nature trail to the western end of the Park.  Zoey could accompany us on this trip. While the island is almost perfectly flat, hiking on the sandy tails sure gave the leg muscles some exercise.  This part of the Park is treed with long leaf pine and sparse oak forest.  The Park conducts controlled burns to simulate the natural pattern of fire common with Florida and pine forests.  An example of the results of a controlled burn are on the right side of the road in the picture.

Dean and Sue, who have been wintering regularly on the island for 16 years (Sue retired in 1995) have developed a close knit group of friends on the island.  Most of them spend two to four months there each winter.   We got invited to a fish feed and pot luck dinner one evening.  All of the fish were caught locally by one of their friends.  The fish were called Whitings.  The typical catch is a fish 10" to 16" in length, and is excellent eating when filleted and deep fried.  The fish can be caught year round and is a popular sport along the Island's beach.

The trip to St. George Island was a wonderful experience.  I had never visited Florida in the winter, and now I see why Northerners go there.  That feeling was reinforced even more, when after Wendy and I made a two day, 1400 mile  drive home there was six inches on snow in my driveway.  I had to snow blow the driveway the next morning.  That white stuff you see in the picture is SNOW, not white St. George Island beach sand!

I plan to go again.  This time I'll take the bigger camper and stay longer.  I'm hooked.  :-)