Florida’s Forgotten Coast…and Friends!

We have had an awesome but super busy few weeks exploring a new (to us) area of Florida and meeting lots of new RV friends. It all started a few weeks ago when our friends Nancy & Betsy of RVaGoGo invited us to come join them at nearby Topsail Hill Preserve State Park for the day, because there was an Airstream rally going on.  We had a lot of fun walking around looking at all kinds of different Airstreams and meeting lots of RVers. And then something really exciting happened – a blog reader recognized us! It was the first time that has happened and we got such a kick out of it. So thank you to Greg and Joanne for stopping us and saying hello – you made our day!

One night we joined Nancy & Betsy at their RV for dinner, and then we were joined by Jim & Debbie, who we knew from RVillage but had not met in person, and their friends Jim & Tim. They were all in town for the Airstream rally, and we had a great time laughing and sharing RV stories. Jim and Debbie own a company called Kleen Tank that cleans out RV holding tanks. A very important task!

During the conversation I mentioned that Deas and I were going to Indian Pass the following weekend for an oyster festival in Apalachicola, and as it turns out Jim & Debbie and Jim & Tim were going to be in nearby Carrabelle so they decided they would try to attend the oyster festival too. We promised to keep an eye out for each other and Nancy took a great group picture of us all.

The next week we rolled out of Grayton Beach and headed east to Indian Pass. Our good friends Mark & Paige were going there to stay in their house for the weekend with a bunch of our other friends, and they invited us to join them in our RV. Indian Pass is in an area of Florida dubbed The Forgotten Coast, and it’s one area of Florida that neither Deas nor I had ever visited. So we decided to make a trip out of it and planned a couple of stops.

In Indian Pass, we stayed at the Indian Pass Campground, which is a somewhat rustic but very quaint and friendly RV park. We got an awesome sight facing right at the water, and we were very close to the house where all of our friends were staying. We saw dolphins playing in the water right behind our RV almost every night, and could walk right out onto the beach and walk the dogs. It’s a sleepy little town but we really enjoyed our stay – and one of the best things about it is that we were right down the street from the famous Indian Pass Raw Bar. We went there 3 different times during our visit! This area of Florida is known for their oysters, and this is one of the best restaurants to get them. It’s a small little place with a unique system for serving drinks. There’s a beer cooler in the back of the restaurant, and you just help yourself to whatever you want, and then tell your server at the end of the night what you had. And if you want draft beer instead of bottled, you just help yourself to the keg also! We had a large group of our friends in town for this weekend and we had a blast. And we did manage to run into Jim & Tim and Jim & Debbie at the oyster festival too!

After we left Indian Pass, we headed about an hour east to St. George Island State Park. This is a great state park with large sites and lots of walking trails. St. George Island itself is lovely but remote and there aren’t a whole lot of stores or restaurants on the island. But we really enjoyed walking all of the trails with the dogs and we had a nice, spacious site. After all the activity of the previous days it was nice to just relax and be quiet for a little while.

We visited one of the few restaurants on the island – Eddie Teach’s Raw Bar. This is a great dive bar and one of those places where they encourage people to sign their names on the walls. So of course we had to leave our mark. If you’re ever in the area and visit this restaurant, let us know if you can find our signature!

While we were on St. George, we got an invitation from Jim & Debbie and Jim & Tim to join them for breakfast at Ho Hum RV Park in Carrabelle. We happily joined them and fell in the love with the location of this park. We had a delicious breakfast and then played a fun dice game all while enjoying the view. We had so much fun we ended up hanging out for awhile and joining them for lunch also. And we liked the view so much, we ended up booking a site for ourselves for the weekend, and moved over there the next day.

As luck would have it, Brandon and Kerensa of Drive, Dive, Devour were camping about 15 minutes away from Carrabelle, and they decided to join us for dinner one night. Also, Maria from The Roaming Pint was going to be driving through and she decided to camp at Ho Hum for the night also. We knew all of them from blogging but have not yet met in person so we were excited for the chance to finally meet all of them. And just to add more fun to the mix, we invited Howard and Lauren of Nosh Bus to join us for dinner as they were also camping at Ho Hum, and Deas and I met them earlier that day. So all of a sudden we had a little party on our hands! We all had a really great time cooking out and talking – in fact we had so much fun I forgot to take any pictures that night! But I did get some great shots of the views from our site.

After all this fun we headed back towards Grayton – but this time we are staying at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. I mentioned in our last post that we have been spending a lot of time at Grayton Beach State Park, but there are restrictions on how long you can stay there. We’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two parks (with the occasional trip back to GA to visit family), so for now we are at Topsail. Which actually worked out great because Nancy & Betsy are camp hosting here, Brandon and Kerensa just showed up for a stay, and Jim & Tim have also moved back here too. And on top of that, our friends Kim & Sherry that we met in Zion last year are here for a few days, as well as their friends Chris and Donna. So we got everyone together one night for a fun pizza dinner – what a fun group!