camping info, the stuff you need to know: St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Port St. Joe, FL

If you do a lot of research on the internet about this place, you'll hear that it's isolated, it's got rats, the beaches are dirty and there are lots of bugs. Well, it is about an hour to the nearest Wal-Mart (Panama City) but there are a few smaller stores in Port St. Joe, less than 30 minutes and a couple of convienence stores on the peninsula. Don't worry about the rats (some kind of endangered beach rats), they mind their own business and have other things to worry about than the campers; that would be the rattle snakes, I saw one about 4' long in the campground along with deer, crabs, birds and lots of other wildlife. The beaches are not groomed like the ones near Destin, if sea weed and stuff washes up, that's where it stays. It's not trash, just the way it is. As far as the bugs, yep, there's lots, carry some bug spray.

The white sand beaches go on for miles. Each campground has it's on section of beach so it's not crowded at all. The Gulf Breeze campground is a little closer to the beach but it's an easy walk from the Shadey Pines campground.

Just through this shelter and over the dunes and your on the beach, it's part of the campground and there are boardwalks between the campgrounds and over to the beach.

This is the public beach in the park (bay side).

Gulf Breeze camping area from the road going to Shadey Pines. Gulf Breeze is not as shadey and more open, we liked Shadey Pines better. Gulf Breeze was almost like a group camp in some areas.

Our site, #60. From the camper you could not see another camper even though we were on the inside of the loop and an occupied site about 30' to the right. There are two bath houses in each campground, fairly clean but no A/C (HOT). The roads are paved but the sites are not (only 98 thru 103 are paved). Pay attention to the max lengths on the website, a lot of the sites will only hold a tent or a pop-up and all the hook-ups are 30 amp (no sewer).