Mark and Lyn

Hi Bob! This bobcat photo is the highlight of the trip so far! More bobcat photos and story at the end of this post.

[Carrabelle Day #22 2025-03-19 (Wed)] I’ve been planning another visit, at sunrise, to St Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge. Today was the day, dawning cold and clear with calm wind. Left the campground a little over an hour before sunrise, leaving Lyn and Tucker behind sleeping. Driving east there was beautiful pre-dawn light and mist over the calm ocean along the coastal highway on the way to St. Mark’s.

Arrived at St. Mark’s just as the sun was rising, and the drive along the road that goes through the refuge was beautifully lit. Couldn’t have been prettier, but there was almost no wildlife to be seen yet as I drove to the end of the 10 mile park road ending at St. Mark’s Lighthouse.

St. Mark’s Lighthouse lit by the rising sun.

My plan was to position myself to the east of the lighthouse with the rising sun at my back lighting up the lighthouse and the attached structure. The only problem, as I knew ahead of time, was that that required hiking through dense brush into a wet, muddy, swampy area. St. Mark’s Lighthouse is a popular photo site, but because of the “challenging” conditions this perspective is rare (I haven’t seen it, except old drone photos). It was worth the muddy boots and I’m very happy with the results.

Bird life as seen through an 800mm lens.

Gator with a swollen snout. Something must have fought back 🙂

On the drive back up the park road there was some nice bird life to photograph, including even a cardinal which Lyn liked a lot. I even found an alligator floating in a pond by a boat ramp. But the best photos by far came at the end of the drive …

Bobcat sighting!!!

And finally, this is epic! My last stop on the way out starts at a parking area with several trailheads. Before even getting on a trail I saw a gray animal with pointed ears at a distance. It appeared to look at me then bounded across the park road and disappeared into the brush. At first I thought it might be some kind of gray fox or maybe a marten. Also I thought there was less than a 1 in 100 chance I might spot it if I headed over to where I saw it disappear. But that’s how wildlife photography works sometimes, so I did. There was a stream/water filled ditch with brush on either side side so I pushed into the brush a little ways and looked across the steam. After a minute or two I spotted something gray slowly moving through the brush on the other side of the water. I kept changing my position trying to get an angle through the brush to see it as it moved. Finally it was visible in a small opening about 20-30 yards from me and it stopped and looked right at me. Holy shit it was a bobcat!!! I took over 50 photos while it just sat and looked at me and I tried to get unobstructed shots of it. It sat there for about 5 minutes watching me carefully, giving me a great opportunity. It was alert but didn’t seem spooked. I think with the distance, water, and brush in between us it didn’t feel too threaded. When it finally left it just nonchalantly walked off into the brush.

Wow wow wow! This was by far the best wildlife encounter I’ve ever had with a camera, just magical, and the photos turned out to be just incredible too to top it all off!!

Sunset walk this evening.

Look at what we found!!!

[Carrabelle Day #20 2025-03-17 (Mon)]  We’ve settled into a routine here of relaxing at the RV resort and exploring a bit of the area each day. Haven’t been good at photo documenting and blogging the last few days, but back at it a little today. This afternoon we wandered around Carrabelle City (since I needed to go to the hardware store anyways). To Lyn’s delight we found an ice cream shop, which surprised us since Carrabelle is small and we thought we’d investigated it pretty thoroughly by now. Well that shows the value of wandering off our usual tracks.

Inside Carrabelle Junction (uncropped 4 image panorama). Reminded me of Route 66.

We also drove out to Timber Island which is a small patch of land in the Carrabelle River directly across the river from Carrabelle and connected by a small bridge. Again just exploring places in the area we haven’t yet been. Timber Island is basically a marina with a few condos. There’s a storage area that seemed like a boat graveyard with wrecked boats and boats that look like they haven’t been used for decades.

Timber Island Boat Graveyard

Looking across the Carrabelle River from Timber Island towards Carrabelle

A few Carrabelle landmarks.

Home Sweet Home.

A nice start to the day.

[Carrabelle Day #16 2025-03-13 (Thu)] In all our times staying in Carrabelle we’ve never driven farther up the coast than Port St. Joe. So today we drove to Panama City about 80 miles west up the coast. Just a little past Port St. Joe is Mexico Beach where Hurricane Michael made landfall in October 2018 as a category 5 storm. At Tyndall Air Force Base outside of Panama City wind speeds of 139 mph were measured before sensors failed. As we drove through this area there were still signs of destruction everywhere. Construction was also everywhere, especially at Tyndall AF Base. The beach itself had reconstruction and reinforcement in progress using heavy equipment. Steel pipe was being placed, apparently for forming a breakwater.

We’ve only eaten one meal out since leaving WI 18 days ago, so when we saw there was a Culver’s in the Panama City area Lyn was *very* excited. The one we ate at was newly built/opened a couple months ago. There was a photo on the wall with some Packers players, and it felt just like being at home.

One of the reasons for driving up this way was to see if we might want to stay in the Panama City area next winter. But it’s a lot busier and built up than the Carrabelle area, and no easy access to dog friendly beaches. We came to the conclusion that we had it about as good as we could get right where we are, and have reserved a site here at Carrabelle Beach for the month of Feb next winter.

After dinner today we went into Carrabelle City to walk around and do a little photography. I was hoping for nice light near sunset, but a few minutes after we arrived cloud cover moved in. I did get one nice marina photo before the light disappeared.

Small marina on the Carrabelle River. Nicely lit by the sun behind us, just before the clouds moved in.

The sun struggles to break through at Carrabelle City this evening.

Cooking breakfast outdoors.

[Carrabelle Day #15 2025-03-12 (Wed)] Lazy day today. We put the pop-up screen room up yesterday and spent some time in it today. Serious relaxing.

St Mark’s Lighthouse at sunset today.

[Carrabelle Day #14 2025-03-11 (Tue)] The highlight of today’s wandering “Florida’s Forgotten Coast” was a revisit to St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge where we got some really really nice photos of the lighthouse just as the sun was setting and lighting it up beautifully. This afternoon was bright sun and windy, and the wildlife seemed to be mostly tucked away. Didn’t see nearly as much as last time we were here. But the lighthouse photos were definitely worth the trip!

Low tide, and standing in mud and rocks offshore for this one.

A bit of wildlife, but not much, at St Mark’s NWR today.

As a special bonus for today’s sunrise Lyn got out of bed and saw it in person! First time for that this trip!

Bayside Coffee, Eastpoint FL.

After watching the nice sunrise Lyn needed coffee STAT so we drove to Bayside Coffee in Eastpoint for coffee and apple turnovers. We watched lot’s of local customers stop for their morning coffee as we sat outside in a small patio area.

A nicer day today!!!

[Carrabelle Day #13 2025-03-10 (Mon)] We enjoyed Apalachicola last Friday but it was quite busy, so we thought it might be less crowded on a Monday. We were wrong, seems to be a very popular “tourist” city, but still had a nice time there having coffee and wandering around the city a bit.

At Apalachicola Coffee & Chocolate again!

Marina, Apalachicola FL. “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for” – John A. Schedd 1928.

The highlight of our wandering around was an out of the way marina full of old fishing boats. The place was so picturesque that there was a large group of painters there painting it as part of a “Painters/Artists Week” group that was spending the week in Apalachicola (as we learned from chatting with one of them). Apparently there’s over a 100 participants who gather somewhere is this area of the Gulf Coast annually. We saw them in several locations.

The weather was windy and intermittently sunny then cloudy, making for some photos with interesting moods. The photos posted above were saved with a “high dynamic range” profile, I’m experimenting with trying to better show high contrast scenes like we had today.

Carrabelle beach a little after sunset.

For our sunset walk we headed west up the beach to a place where old palm tree stumps remained, hoping they would add a bit to a sunset photo.

No sunrise photos today.

[Carrabelle Day #12 2025-03-09 (Sun)] Carrabelle received just shy of 2 inches of rain today. When there were breaks we walked down to the beach, but otherwise mostly were stuck inside. For excitement and to get away from Mark, Lyn drove the Jeep to the Publix in Crawfordville this afternoon, the first time she’s driven since before we left WI 2 weeks ago. Otherwise just a quiet day, tomorrow is better weather forecast and we’re looking forward to getting out and about then!

A few rays of hope at the end of the afternoon after a rainy weekend.

Never trust a beagle.

[Carrabelle Day #11 2025-03-08 (Sat)]  It rained all day today, with only a few breaks to get out and walk Tucker. It was nice to just relax and read, write, and (for Lyn) crochet.

On the way to the beach this morning I could see it might be a good sunrise …

… and yes, it was awesome!!!

[Carrabelle Day #10 2025-03-07 (Fri)] Today we decided to head west along the coastal highway, stopping first at the Apalachicola Coffee & Chocolate shop in Apalachicola. A nice place where we could sit outside at a table on the sidewalk with Tucker for our coffee and pastry. Apalachicola has a several blocks of a “tourist area” of which we walked around, and while of course Lyn liked this even I did on such a nice afternoon. I didn’t take any photos while we were there, so I grabbed a Google Street View of the coffee shop to share here.

Apalachicola Coffee and Chocolate, courtesy Google Street View

Cape San Blas Lighthouse, Port St. Joe FL

Next we drove to Port St. Joe where we walked around Maddox Park (a.k.a. Lighthouse Park) and a set of seaside trails. We started from a parking area near the Cape San Blas Lighthouse. Facing east, with the sun behind us in the west, the lighthouse was nicely lit up and there was a small pond where we could also get a reflection, which made for a really nice photo.

Maddox Park, Port St. Joe FL

Lastly we drove the “St. Joe Peninsula” up to the State Park at the end of it. Basically just 100’s of beach houses, much like St. George Island. I’m kind of jealous of the folks who have these places.

Bald Cypress Trees, Otter Lake – St Mark’s NWR

[Carrabelle Day #9 2025-03-06 (Thu)] This afternoon we went to Otter Lake just outside of Panacea FL. This is part of St Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge. Our goal was just to scout it out and look for either wildlife or scenic photo opportunities (presumably to return to at dawn sometime). Here we found some of those cool looking trees that grow in the water way down south. I had to reverse image search them on Google – there’re bald cypress (or swamp cypress) trees and they usually feature Spanish moss hanging from them. They’re so beautiful!!!

More bald cypress trees

In a few trees there were large nests. Near one nest a long way from where we could stand there was a bird. Even using an 800mm lens it was hard to make out but a tight crop looks like it might be an osprey. That would make sense here.

Osprey and nest??? I’ll be back!

Between the cypress trees and nesting birds here this is a place that I will return to at dawn sometime to get good light and hopefully active wildlife.

Ochlockonee River State Park

Next, nearing sunset with nice light, we stopped at Ochlockonee River State Park which turned out to be a beautiful place to walk around and grab a few photos with just the iPhone.

Back at base for the night.