St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge
Driving from Apalachicola National Forest to Osceola National Forest | Visiting St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge | January 2024
After reading about our perfect beach day on St. George Island, you may be wondering, why wouldn’t we want to enjoy more days like that? The truth is, we would have gladly repeated that day over as much as we could before having to get to Curtis’ next assignment, but that day was the last nice warm day we would have for the rest of this drive. We were able to avoid the worst of the cold that was hitting the country, but we still had some chilly mornings in the 20’s (and one in the teens!) and the highs struggled to reach the 40’s.
After leaving our campsite in Apalachicola National Forest, we drove East on US-98 to Carrabelle Beach, stopping to see the Crooked River Lighthouse on our way. It was raining when we arrived, but that was fine because Curtis had to call in for a meeting. While he did that, I made breakfast and tea which we enjoyed in the shelter of the van. Once the meeting and the rain wrapped up, we set out for a walk on the beach. The cold had us return to the van immediately to grab our coats, but Charlotte didn’t seem bothered by it. In fact, she took us on the longest beach walk that we’ve taken in a long time, which is shocking because she’s notoriously pokey on beaches. Maybe it was because of the weather, or maybe the smells, but this helped us to get some activity in for the day. After our long walk, we had a picnic lunch, then continued our drive East.
We stopped in Crawfordville to stock up on some groceries to get us through the rest of this trip, then drove back into Apalachicola National Forest near Arran to find a new dispersed spot to stay for the night.
The next morning, we had a few trails in the area starred that we thought sounded like good morning walks, but upon doing further research realized that they were currently extremely muddy from all the recent rain. Instead, we drove to St. Marks hoping to visit the San Marcos de Apalache Historic Park – a fort dating back to the 17th century. When we arrived, we found out it was closed on certain weekdays during the off season, which included today. Instead, we ended up just driving to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge a little further East. We were a little bummed to have struck out twice on activities that sounded fun, but I was secretly also a little relieved to not have to be in the cold as long!
We started our visit at the visitor center, then drove the long road through the park ending up at St. Mark’s Lighthouse. We took the road very slowly, looking for any kind of bird or other wildlife. At the end of the road, we got out to see the lighthouse, walk around, and admire the bay view at the Southernmost part of the wildlife refuge. On our way back, we spotted more birds than we did on the way down, mostly waterfowl like egrets and ibis. We even saw an otter by the side of a roadside pond! I’m pretty sure that was our first otter seen in the wild. Besides that, we enjoyed the lush Florida scenery along the road.
After our time in the wildlife refuge, we drove several hours East to a free campground. Usually when we drive, Curtis picks out the audiobooks we listen to, but today I decided to introduce him to the beautiful yet usually depressing world of Kristin Hannah’s historical fictions. I started him on “The Four Winds,” which was just as emotionally heavy as all the others I had read, so on that front, my description of her writing to him did not disappoint.
Tonight’s destination was in a small dispersed campground next to the West Firetower in Osceola National Forest. The campground actually exceeded our expectations, offering large sites that were nicely spread apart with plenty of trees and bushes in between for privacy, and each site had picnic tables and fire pits, and it even had a clean bathroom and an outdoor shower. The only ‘downside’ is that the people who live across the street seemingly have hundreds of dogs that spend most of their time barking — but luckily our van blocks out that noise so we were still able to sleep well. The best part was the tall firetower here which was open to the public (a rarity down here it would seem), which offered a great view over the tops of the trees. Just another example of how there can be great free campsites on the East coast, you just have to look for them and maybe be willing to go a little out of your way for them!
