February 23-24, 2015 Indian Pass, Florida

Off down the road about 60 miles from the Emerald Coast (packed with tourists) to the Forgotten coast-very quiet and hardly any people. It was 70 degrees, sunny while we were driving, but cloudy once we got here. Very pleasant though.

 

We are at Indian Pass campground, at the end of a peninsula. Past the bus is the ocean. It is a small private campground, next to a state park and  some vacation homes no one is at and  across from some wildlife refuge islands. Quiet and dark at night. John walking on the beach . They call it the Forgotten coast here, less people, lots less touristy development.

 

Lots of shells and birds. A snowy egret, two pelicans,  Mr. Crabby-guardian of Indian Pass  and a great blue heron.

It is supposed to rain Wednesday so we decided to kayak to St Vincent’s island  and hike on Tuesday. It is an undeveloped wildlife refuge and about a half mile paddle. The sun was in and out, the high was 57 degrees with gentle breezes.  This is the dock at the island.

 

We paddled over then hiked across the island to the beach. The volunteer on the island told us that there are more shells here, no one comes here. There were more shells and lots more birds. A horse shoe crab, huge cockle shells and some kind of mollusk.

There were a couple students over for the day, we saw them briefly on the beach, then we had the island to ourselves. It is 4 miles wide at one end and 9 miles long. It is triangular.  At the way other end are some biology students staying in the only cabin for spring break. Before the island was a refuge is was a private hunting reserve. Before that it was logged. There are still some of the roads, the refuge uses them to manage the island. There are eagles nesting here, and they are breeding red wolves too. Also deer, lots of other birds, feral hogs and sambar deer. The Sambar,  imported by the hunters, are native to Asia, along with other exotic animals. The sambar look more like elk, they are huge and they live in the swampy area. We didn’t see any. John on our own beach. We then hiked inland.

The dune area is dominated  first by live oak/mixed hardwood.  Farther in  freshwater lakes and sloughs with pure stands of cabbage palm-the only palm native to Florida.

       

John in the wetlands.  Farther in  is mixed with slash pine with a palmetto understory. They have to burn the area every few years or it gets grown up with scrubs that push out the native plants. This is what most of inland Florida looked like before white man came. Florida has a lot of lightening so there were frequent wild fires.

 

The ground was mostly sand or mud. Better barefoot than in shoes. As we worked our way across the island it became an almost impenetrable lush  forest of pine trees, palms and hardwoods with swamps and thick understory. Gators live in here, but it is cold for them today. The sambur deer like it here too.

Yellow asters, wild rosemary, southern dewberry, a vine that does not know if it is spring or fall, pink flowers, bladder wort, slash pine bark and st. John’s wort.

When we reached the other  coast it was a narrow beach, still tight forest  and swamp with lots of oyster shells, needed shoes so they would not cut my feet. The native Americans came out here to gather shell fish and left huge shell mounds. We followed hog tracks in the sand, top tracks the mom, bottom tiny hoof marks are the babies. We saw a teenage hog and a tiny piglet near one of the swamps.

Here the tannin colored water from the swamps drains into the ocean. Oyster beds off shore at low tide.

 

Getting ready to head back. The campground is across the water. John paddling in the ocean into a headwind.

The light was pretty on the water. Afterwards we had happy hour in the sun.

Sunset on the bay side of the campground. We had dinner at  Indian Pass Raw Bar. It is the only restaurant in  Indian Pass and right down the road from the campground . It is in a building that was once the commissary for a turpentine company in 1903.

They serve oysters, raw or baked, steamed shrimp, crab and a few non seafood items. John with raw oysters and crab stuffed shrimp. The shrimp and oyster come from Apalachicola bay, which is where we are.