Pelicans at St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach FL (April 13-16, 2014)

The Place

Our Campsite

St. Andrews State Park is growing on us.  When we arrived, we passed the tourist detritus of the town of Panama City Beach (souvenir mega-stores, seafood eateries, hotels) right up to the gates of the park.  It was a Sunday afternoon and the park was crowded with day visitors.  Our campsite overlooks the Grand Lagoon (what they call the waterway between the mainland and the barrier island here), and on the other side of the Grand Lagoon are condos and marinas!  Civilization!  Ach!

Kayaking in Front of Our Campsite

Then we realized, the view out our windows is very pretty.  And for only the second time on our trip, we have a water view out of our windows.  The beaches here (on the other side of the park from the camping) are really gorgeous. The marshland and Gator Lake (lots of signs saying Don’t Feed the Alligators, but no gator sightings) in the center of the park are really beautiful.  And the place is loaded with egrets, herons, pelicans, and other birds.  So now we see why people stay up until midnight 11 months before their vacation to reserve a campsite here.

The Adventure

We Made It to the End of The Island

Floating Bait Shop!

If you have a waterfront campsite, you can throw your kayak into the Grand Lagoon from off of your bit of shore.  We are across the street from those sites, so we carted the kayaks to the boat launch and the beautiful sand launch spot there.  Our first destination was to paddle around the end of the island into the Gulf.  It was windy and tide was coming in against us, but we made it around the end … and then turned around and floated back without hardly paddling at all.

On the way back we were able to watch the pelicans feed.  Along part of the shoreline of the campground is a breakwater, loaded with pelicans.  They just let us glide past and take their pictures.  We found them in winter and summer plumage and there were some immature birds without the distinctive head and neck markings.  Given the number the pelicans that we've seen on this trip and particularly here, it is hard to believe that this species was almost wiped out in the 1960s.

As I am writing this, we are in the middle of a rain storm, and the pelicans are putting on a show over the Lagoon outside my windows.  So, St. Andrews State Park has grown on us.

We got lots of great pelican pictures. Here are just a few!