The Real Florida?

 

If you’re camping and looking for a place to spend the night in Florida’s panhandle, go with a state park. We stayed in three as we headed west to Alabama and beyond and each one was worth revisiting.

After Withlacoochee State Forest, we drove just a couple of hours north to Rainbow Springs State Park near Dunnellon.  The entrance to the springs is north of Dunnellon, but the campground entrance is a few miles east of that, directly behind the springs, but not accessible from the Springs, unless you’re in a kayak.

St. George Island

Rainbow Springs is a pleasant classy campground, with lovely palmetto and shrub plantings bordering each of the 60 spacious sites, offering lots of privacy at each one.  The Rainbow River with its canoe/kayak launch is walking-accessible from the campground.  Rainbow Springs State Park is also a sleepy campground.  People seemed encamped there for days, maybe weeks or months. Not much activity, not much noise.

The next day we drove north and then west across part of the panhandle to St. George Island State Park near Apalachicola. On the way we drove out to Econfina River State Park for a picnic lunch. This quiet river runs into the Gulf and the park land is right at its mouth. There’s a boat launch and a fishing dock and a few picnic tables. It was a beautifully sunny warm afternoon, so we lingered over our sandwiches and then some ball tossing for Nina. And then we spotted the alligator! Sunning itself on a spit of land just a skip across the river. I think it was looking right at us!

Further west, at Eastpoint, we drove across the 4-mile bridge to St. George Island. The island is 28 miles long and one mile wide at its widest point.  The St. George State Park occupies the island’s eastern 9 miles and is a popular spot so best to make a reservation. Access to the beach is across the road from the campground entrance. Our morning beach walk was cool, a bit misty and foggy, but oh so pleasant, walking with the surf crashing, perusing the plethora of shells strewn across the pure white sand. Lots of starfish and sea worms of some kind, urchins, all sizes of clam shells and broken sand dollars. We found a few we just had to keep.

Nights 3 and 4 on the panhandle were spent in Destin, Florida. Henderson Beach State Park is an unexpectedly quiet oasis amid Destin’s box shops, hotels and strip malls. As at Rainbow Beach, the 60 sites are unusually spacious and private, enclosed by lush Florida vegetation.  Behind the new shower building in our campsite loop was a cement walkway through the palmetto-sand pine “forest” that leads to a snazzy boardwalk extending out over the sand dunes to the white sand beach. Surprisingly, there are high-rise hotels on either side of the state park property.  So coming out of the nature trail onto the boardwalk in view of the beachfront, it is startling  - to see just how close this secluded -feeling property is to the ‘real’ world.

Interestingly, the signpost as you enter Henderson Beach State Park says, “Welcome to the Real Florida.”

Fogged in at Henderson Beach