Florida Panhandle

10-7-21: Today I moved to Falling Waters State Park, located in the Florida panhandle a little over an hour Northeast of Panama City Florida, its a smaller campground and is highly reviewed for being quiet and well maintained. I selected this area to be close to the Gulf coast. I snagged a great pull thru site and settled in for a six night stay.

My plan for Florida is to criss cross the state and explore as much as possible. By scheduling far in advance I was able to get 5 or 6 night stays in state parks which should allow me plenty of time in each area.

I have to say that so far Florida parks are really killing it with nice facilities including bath houses and hot showers. So far all the RV sites have had at least power and water hook ups, all for an average price of around $20 a night. Having spent as much as $85 a night on this trip so far I can say I’m becoming a fan of FL state parks!

I explored the park a bit and visited Florida’s tallest waterfall, falling over 100ft into a cylindrical sinkhole, it is a pretty cool site!

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The next morning I drove in to Panama City to check it out and also caught the new 007 movie, which was great.

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The city is laid out along the beach and I spent most of my time in the Panama City Beach area. I visited several local dive shops and also St Andrews state park which is the only real beach dive option locally. The bottom topography is primarily just sand, so without an artificial reef being placed there is not much to see. On the day I visited it was still drizzly and the water looked like tea it is however very warm probably in the mid 80’s. Water clarity is a theme that will continue for much of my visit unfortunately.

On Sunday I went out on a charter for a near shore 2 tank dive. For the first dive we visited a wreck called Black Bart which was placed as an artificial reef in 1993. Once you got down below the brackish layer that I have decided to call the “Sweet Tea layer” (in honor of the southern fascination with overly sweet tea) the viz was not bad at maybe 30ft visibility and there were a lot of fish and I even spotted a couple barracudas. I didn’t take my camera so no pictures of the dives today.

The second dive was on a section of bridge span called Span 14 and here the visibility was really poor, the turbidity from all the recent rains makes it pretty dark at depth and it was pretty well stirred up at depth on this site, I’d say it was probably 20ft viz at the most. Not a great set of dives but the water is super warm and I’m always happy to be out or in the water.

Continuing the dive theme, I visited the Man in the Sea museum which is home to the original SEALAB I habitat. An enthusiastic bunch of volunteers are responsible for assembling this amazing collection of vintage dive gear and dive related memorabilia. If you grew up as I did loving all the undersea adventures of the SEALAB programs and Jacques Cousteau you will want to allow an afternoon to visit. Click on the photo below for more pictures.

As my time was winding down in this part of Florida, I took a day trip to visit Port St Joe, a small very sleepy beach town about 50 miles south of Panama City, it is an area that was hit very hard in 2018 by Hurricane Michael. I was curious to see this area as it is consistently rated as being more “old Florida” and less touristy that the bigger cities like Panama City.

I took the bike to explore and was pleasantly surprised to find a very nice multi use path running along the beach and I was able to get in a good ride in while exploring the city.

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Next I’ll be heading to the Atlantic coast side to explore the Jacksonville/St Augustine areas.