St. Joseph Peninsula State Park

My full time job is the Tourism Director for Gulf County, Florida. It’s likely that you will see lots of posts from me about all of the wonderful things this area offers. I LOVE my job and sharing the natural beauty of Gulf County. Dealing with media outlets, travel writers and journalists, I’ve been asked many times what makes Gulf County so special. I always tell them that I believe this is truly paradise on Earth. I feel so blessed to live, work and play here. The environment is still in its natural form. Our area is a biodiversity hotspot, meaning it is very important because of the diversity of the ecosystem. The scenery is breathtaking and the people are genuine. You always hear people dreaming up ways to move to an island, start a little business and live in paradise. Well, I feel like I live everyday in paradise. The quality of life each day is crystal clear. I could go on about this place forever, but we’ll break it up into many posts. 

Today, I want to talk about St.Joseph Peninsula State Park out on Cape San Blas. This was one of our mini-adventures this past week. We headed south and made it into Port St. Joe around 11:30 Eastern. Yep, you cross over into another time zone from where we live in Wewahitchka. Gulf County is one of the few counties in the U.S. that has split time zones. Makes for a fun New Year’s Eve celebration, Celebrate Twice. Anyways, we pulled into the newest food joint in town, Dagwood’s, to pick up some lunch to go. 

I’ve eaten here once before trying the Beachcomber (turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, citrus avocado spread, sourdough or tortilla, yummy!). I was excited to have Matt try it out too. I ordered the Decatur St. Grinder (Salami, ham, pepperoni, provolone, red onion, peppers, lettuce, tomato, olive tapenade, french bread) and Matt wanted the Irish Cuban (Pastrami, provolone, slaw, jalapeno cream cheese, baguette). You have to check out the full menu. They’ve got street tacos, salads, wraps, smoothies and sweets too (and even do catering)!

I grabbed our picnic and we headed about another 20 minutes to the state park. This is a must-do that we tell first time visitors to try. Entrance is $6 per vehicle at the rangers gate and you pick up your park map there too. We headed past Eagle Harbor to the kayak launch for our picnic. We set up under a pavilion and watched some visitors set sail in their kayaks from the launch. 

   

There’s also a screened in pavilion area (when the bugs are vacationing) and a restroom and playground here too. These sandwiches were soooo good. They come with chips and this amazing onion cream dip!

Of course the pretty blue water was too tempting to Jax and he took off that way. Dad caught up and waded in with him. The water is very shallow on the bay side of the park and is ideal for small kids.

However, the park is on the peninsula so you have gulf side waves right on the other side. There’s actually a really cool boardwalk that takes you up and over the dunes to the gulf and that’s where we headed next. We parked at Eagle Harbor and checked out the gulf beach. 

It was beautiful and we played for a while (Jax spent most of his time chasing a lady on a huge yellow duck float lol!). The surf was a little rough for Jax to get in, so we walked back over to the bay. There were lots of families enjoying this calm area. 

You can even rent kayaks and paddleboards at Scallop Cove Too if you want, or grab some snacks and supplies. Jax spent some time investigating a hermit crab that was crawling along. We've also found tons of huge sand dollars in this area before! Then we practiced ‘swimming’ back and forth between mommy and daddy. Jax did grasp the kicking concept and kept saying ‘kick, kick, kick, kick’! 

  

The sun and saltwater had us tuckered out after a few hours and we packed it up for the day. There is so much to do at the park that you could explore for days. A lot of people do! You can rent a tent site, bring your RV, stay in one of the cabins (they book way out though), or you can go rogue and primitive camp out in the wilderness area. They book through Reserve America. We’ve tent and RV camped here many times and it is a fun experience. I highly recommend checking out their trails too. Baywalk is gorgeous and the wilderness trail takes you right over the 40-50 foot tall sand dunes! It’s amazing and looks like you’re hiking through powdered sugar or snow!

Another thing that is special about this trip is that we got Jax a deluxe passport book for Florida State Parks. We realized on our Florida Caverns trip that he has visited five state parks already! When I checked out the parks website I found the passports. 

You can buy them online or pick them up at select parks (St. Joseph Peninsula sells them) for under $20. These books are awesome. There’s a page about each Florida state park where you collect the stamps. Matt said on weekends that we don’t know what to do, we’ll just pull it out and pick a new park to explore. I think it would be a fun thing for Jax to take to show-and-tell someday ;) Here is Jax's first 'official' stamp! They may even have these for other states too!