Port St. Joe: Florida ecotourism destination day trip column for fall

Visitors to Port St. Joe can’t help but find themselves near the water, and they usually flock to it anyway

Florida Ecotourism Destination
Fall Day Trippin' Column: Port St. Joe

“Cape Sandblast?” my friend asked when I told him where I was going.

No, silly, Cape San Blas, literally a small area near an Eglin Air Force Base site in Gulf County, but culturally the beach area around Port St. Joe, about 100 miles southwest of Tallahassee.

And what a beach it is. When I visited this summer, it seemed the whole town was gushing with pride over the recent designation of having the best beach in the United States--at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park--proclaimed by “Dr. Beach” Stephen Leatherman on his annual list. The park’s beach is in a natural setting, with high dunes covered by sea oats and with clean, white sand that makes a “crunch” sound almost like snow when you try to form either material into a ball.

Even outside the park, the beach is beautiful. And the clear, shallow water of St. Joseph Bay reveals scallops, starfish and sand dollars. Visitors to Port St. Joe can’t help but find themselves near the water, and they usually flock to it anyway, to kayak, fish, ride horses on the beach, build sandcastles or just relax.

The Cape San Blas area is part of the self-styled Forgotten Coast, a string of towns on the Gulf of Mexico in Bay, Gulf and Franklin counties. With hardly any chain hotels or restaurants and with no malls or outlet shopping centers, this really seems to be the place to forget life’s hustle and bustle. Instead of attractions, you get the Gulf and the barrier islands--like undeveloped St. Vincent Island, where red wolf home St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge lies only yards offshore, and St. George Island, where St. George Island State Park offers great beach camping. Boat and kayak rentals are plentiful and great ways to see the area.

And nearby, Apalachicola National Forest--Florida’s largest national forest--gives day trippers miles of trails and rivers to explore.

With so much of the area relatively undeveloped and with its great location, Port St. Joe is a good place for viewing wildlife. White-tailed deer, raccoons and Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins are common sights. Sea turtles nest on the beach. View shorebirds on the beach, wading birds in the salt marsh, raptors in the air above the water and songbirds in the pinelands. And if you go this fall, consider timing your trip for the Florida Panhandle Birding & Wildflower Festival.