St. Joseph Peninsula State Park Wilderness Area

This afternoon we went for a nice hike up in the wilderness area of St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. (You do need a permit to get into this area, but they just give 'em out at the park office free.) We parked and took the path over to the bay side of the peninsula and hiked up the bay a bit. Lots of hermit crabs, sea urchin shells, horseshoe crab shells, and herons. No people.

We walked for a while and eventually found a place where we could cross over to the gulf side of the peninsula, and we climbed a few pretty big (white) dunes to get there. It rained kinda heavy for about two minutes, so we were nice and wet for the last half of our walk. No big.

There are a ton of shells up this way on the gulf side:

And little birds:

And still, no people.

I love these ghost crabs! They blend in so well with the white sand, don't they? Here's a little one (little bigger than an inch across maybe):

And here's a little larger one:

The teeny ones are what make these little white sand tufts all over the place. There was a whole giant stretch of beach that was covered in them…it looked like an abstract chenille beadspread my grandma would have had:

Oh yeah, and parts of (big) sand dollars all over the place as well…

For dinner we grilled up the fresh red snapper we bought at the fish market. We marinated it in a mixture of lime/lemon juice, olive oil, coriander, cayenne, garlic, pepper, oregano, and achiote seeds for a few hours in the fridge first. Delicious.

In the morning we head for Miami (the fast, boring route, because we need to be there by Friday), but we could easily spend a week or more here.