St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL.

                       Monday 2/24/2014

After 4 nights in Grayton State Park, we continued our crawl across the panhandle of Florida on Hwy 30-A. Along 30-A we went through Water Color, Seaside, Seagrove, Watersound (which was the community we visited and liked when we explored it 5 years prior. I wanted to see it again, but couldn't remember the name or where it was. As we drove by I recognized it). After the town of Watersound, we went through Seacrest, Alys Beach, and finally Rosemary Beach before Hwy. 30-A  dumps you back onto Hwy. 98.

This is Rosemary, which seems pretty upper class also. We took a very short jaunt on Hwy. 98 across Lake Powell.

On the other side of Lake Powell, the highway split and we took Scenic 30 also called Front Beach Road into Panama City Beach. The sign tells us that Panama City Beach has the World's Most Beautiful Beaches, and that may be so, but they need to clean their sign, because it does not represent the town well.

Back to high rises and big cities!

All along Scenic 30 we saw these city beach access signs from 98 to 1. No worries about finding a public beach access here!

Another Margaritaville along the panhandle of Florida. We saw one in Pensecola, Destin, and now in Panama City Beach. Too bad we never had a chance to enjoyone of them! Next to Margaritaville is Pier Park which looked like a nice shopping center.

We saw a business along Beach Front Rd. that rented out lots of these get around town go cars. These two women were going a bit too slow for Joe as they were sightseeing along the way!

Just before we got to our next destination we missed our turn (GPS wasn't clear that we needed to go straight verse follow the road that curved to the left, so we headed up having to go around the block. Luckily there were roads big enough for us to get turned around though our tow car took a curb along the way). This park, "The Panama City Beach RV Resort" is one block up from the state park. If you are not into state parks this is a very nice, clean and well kept park to stay at, but a little more pricey.

We have never stayed at St. Andrews State Park, so since we were going by the area, we decided to stay for a few nights. Normally we just stay at Wal-Mart for a night when going through Panama City.

At the guard shack we are told to turn right (which is a real tight turn for a big rig with a tow car. At least we just missed taking our tow car across another curb), and to park off to the side and check in at the next building ahead. This state park sits at the end of a peninsula.

Joe got directions to our site, and was told it was a pull through so we didn't unhook. Unfortunately we misunderstood the directions and came to our site #19, the wrong way. We stopped and unhooked, and I directed Joe into our site. This picture shows us in our site after 5 attempts, sitting in the direction we were suppose to be. We had originally come into the site from this direction which is the opposite direction.

After 4 attempts to get our self in right,  we realized the hookup utilities were on the other side. We both couldn't understand how neither of us had not noticed this. We also saw at this time that all the RV's in our row were facing the other direction. When we finally figured out why we were having so many problems getting into the site, Joe went around the block and got in first try. Boy did we feel like some real dummies. There was only 5 neighbors watching us and no one had the nerve to tell us, we were coming in the wrong way. I don't ever remember even from day one having so many problems getting into a site!

What was so dumb about it was I kept saying to Joe, I didn't understand why the cement drive was angled into the site the wrong way. It was angled the right way. We were just trying to get in the wrong way. Duh! The RV sites do not have sewer hook ups, but we only stayed 4 days, so it was do-able.

Our drive from Grayton Beach to Panama City Beach was 30 miles. Because we drove through the busy Beach Front Rd route, it took us 1 hour to get to the park. But it took us an hour and a half to get into our site. Needless to say we were both stressed by the time we got set up thinking it was going to be a short day! On the bright side our site was paved and I had a water view out my lounge chair window.

View out our front window looking at Grand Lagoon.

95% of the sites are sand/gravel. The sites up from us had nice water front sites at #'s 2,4,6,8,10,12,14, &15. There are other waterfront sites, but these didn't seem to have low spots.  This area had recently had a few days of rain, and many sites were full of low spots with puddles all around the sites.

After setting up, we took a walk up the road to see what was in the park. First thing we saw was this sail boat that had sunk with a Great Blue Heron using it as a good  place to hang out on!

Further up the road we found where you catch the shuttle boat to Shell Island. Unfortunately, the shuttle is not running yet until prime season.

Another view of the sunken sailboat. Wondering how long it has been under water.

From the boat launch area we started to walk to  the camp store, and saw people getting real close to the deer in the park. I like deer, but when I see them I think deer ticks and Lyme disease. (My sister and nephew have been dealing with Lyme for years, so I like to avoid deer). The park is very large so I will show you more in the coming post. Here is a link to a map of our location at the St Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach, FL.                    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Saint+Andrews+State+Park/@30.1227546,-85.7235558,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x889387086781efdf:0x12a4eee83851ab30