Today dawned gloomy, dribbly, chilly, and very windy. We heard rain drumming on the roof off an on last night and it was still raining a little bit when we were making breakfast. The campground is right on the Grand Lagoon and there are several ... and I hesitate to call them boats, because one in particular appeared to be a thatched-roof hut on a floating platform ... moored just offshore from the campground. The thatched-roof hut had two boats tied to it, a sail boat and a motorboat, as well as a dinghy and a paddle board and some other unidentifiable flotsam. A small wind generator sticking up through the roof was furiously spinning in the stiff winds that were blowing. There appeared to be no activity in this flotilla, however some loose thing banged in the wind with a metallic clang about once per second. All. Night. Long. Made it difficult to sleep. I should have taken a picture of it. I’m not sure how it was allowed amongst the upscale high-rises and vacation homes and resorts.
Another boat just a few dozen yards away was an older sailboat with no mast, also apparently unoccupied.
All this next to a state park campground that appeared to have more staff and volunteers than campers, where each camp site was “cleaned”, when the camper left. Cleaning consisted of sweeping any gravel that was on the pavement back to the gravel camping pad, making sure there was no gravel around the fire ring, that there was no ash in the fire ring, and raking the gravel camping pad so that any evidence of wheel tracks was completely gone. This place is spotless.
Quite an exercise in contrasts.
We left the state park and drove down Front Beach Road in Panama City Beach past all the high rises which completely blocked the view of the Gulf. We stopped and had lunch in the parking lot of a county park along the road which offered beach access and one of the few glimpses of the water along the whole stretch.
Heading west, stopped in Conservation Park, which has a series of bike trails. We were here last year and rode our bikes on some of the trails. We did the same today. Unfortunately, last night’s rain left lots of puddles and muddy areas on the trails, so we only rode one loop before moving on.
Looking for bike trails last night, I spotted a donut shop on our route and this was our next stop: the Donut Hole in Inlet Beach. A couple of donuts later we were on our way again. Just can’t pass up a good donut.
We arrived at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park just before 4pm and discovered why the camping here is more expensive than other state parks. The campground attached to the state park is actually an RV resort, complete with a pool and other amenities which we won’t use. We found our campsite in the maze of sites, and then looked for a place to eat that was reachable by bicycle. I really didn’t want to drive the RV over all those nasty speed bumps that we hit on the way in. Speed bumps may be no problem for a car, but driving a house over them rattles the dishes in the cupboards and makes everything move about in undesirable ways.
We set our sights on Pizza by the Sea, about five miles away by bike trail. Arriving there, we found that there was only outdoor seating and the kid minding the store appeared to be really bored. Since there was a stiff wind still blowing and the temperatures were dropping, we looked for something a little more indoors and found the Perfect Pig Grill in the same complex. We both had the smoked chicken sandwich which was delicious.
The ride back was getting quite chilly as the sun was setting. Tonight is supposed to get down to 41 degrees and the temperature was speeding towards that goal as we rode back to the RV. Time to get in and warm up.
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