Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, Florida - March 22nd to 25th, 2023

Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park was our first stop in Florida. We got a good first taste of Florida, from paddle boarding with dolphins to visiting the white sandy beaches of nearby Destin, along with our first taste of rolled ice cream. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Wednesday, we drove from Davis Bayou in Mississippi to Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park in Niceville, Florida. We finally were getting some of the nice weather that Ann was hoping for. It was in the 70’s, yay! Along the way, we needed a place to stop to eat lunch. There were no rest areas along I-10 in Alabama, so we stopped at a Buc-ee’s travel center. It was overkill, since all we really needed was a restroom and even that was not a requirement, since we now travel with a bathroom on board Red Tail.

Buc-ee’s started in Texas and is a Texas-sized travel center. Both our kids were members of the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps for a few summers. Drum corps love Buc-ee’s because they can get their three bus loads of members in and out of the restrooms and allow them time to stock up on snacks and drinks really fast, due to the large capacity of Buc-ee’s. The corps members love it because there is so much selection of food and drinks. We’ve only been to a Buc-ee’s ourselves once before, so we thought we’d give it another shot. The first time Ann was disappointed because she was looking for some fresh fruit and vegetables, which is one thing Buc-ee’s does not have much selection of.

For us, the only advantage was that we got some steps in walking to the other end of the large store to reach the restrooms. We used the restrooms before we ate our lunch in Red Tail and again afterwards. Both times we left Buc-ee’s with items we did not intend to buy. The first time we walked out with drinks and two pints of Blue Bell ice cream. The second time, Keith couldn’t resist purchasing a bag of beef jerky, what Buc-ee’s is known for. They have just about everything you could imagine a traveler might want to purchase, including smokers and BBQ pits. The pulled pork sandwiches looked good, but, if we’re going to have BBQ, we would prefer to buy it at a local BBQ restaurant.

There is a Winn-Dixie grocery store less than a mile from the entrance to Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, so we picked up groceries before checking in at the campground. The campground is nice. The large sites are nestled in the woods, not far from the bayou. We were even able to sit outside in the evening, no bugs!

Now that we had the p-clamps we needed for mounting the stretchy net, Keith mounted it before dinner. The stretchy net, one of the ones we had leftover from Organized Obie, fit nicely on the front side of the dinette bench, near the floor. It holds both pairs of our shower flip flops and both pairs of our warm slippers. We didn’t want to put them in our shoe bin, because we like to keep those clean and away from our other, possibly dirty, shoes.

After dinner, we thawed some of the strawberries from Ponchatoula that we froze and paired them with the Blue Bell vanilla ice cream for dessert. Delicious!

The state park has three nature trails, but they are not very long. The longest one is a one mile loop. Thursday morning, we explored them all. The trails were through woods of live oak, pine, and magnolia trees, with saw palmettos adding to the landscape.

The Sand Pine Trail goes by a lily pond. You can hear traffic noise from the highway throughout the park, but this trail goes pretty close to the highway, so the traffic noise is even more noticeable. However, we could still hear the frogs croaking out in the pond and the birds chirping from the tree tops.

The Rocky Bayou Trail starts at the same trailhead as the Sand Pine Trail, but it has a few views out over the water of the Rocky Bayou. There were signs in the park warning that there are bears and alligators in the area, but we didn’t see any.

There was also a concrete bomb on display. During World War II, the B-25 Squadron would practice dropping concrete bombs in the area that is now Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park.

The third trail is the Red Cedar Trail, which is on the opposite side of the park, past the day use area and boat ramp. Along the way, we spotted a couple of frogs. Keith almost stepped on one of them.

Then, on our way back to the campground, we spotted them. There were three dolphins swimming in the bayou. How cool is that!

Starting and ending at our camp site, we totaled 4 miles with an elevation gain of 75 feet in about two hours. We counted it as hike #9 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2023. We know we were trying to only count hikes that were five miles or more, but we decided to stretch that rule this time.

After lunch, Ann decided to give our new paddle board (paid link) a try. She’s never used one before, so she wasn’t sure what to expect. The water on the bayou looked pretty calm and there were several sandy spots along the shore to retreat to if she was struggling. After getting the board down from our roof bag, she pumped up the board at our camp site. It only took a few minutes to pump it up, but it was a workout, especially when the air pressure in the board was approaching the ideal reading. There was a place to launch it from within the campground, which was not a very far walk from our campsite. The board is not that heavy nor hard to carry, so it wasn’t too hard to haul over to the launch site. Keith helped her out and carried some of her gear over for her.

As Ann was getting ready to go out onto the water, we saw two dolphins out in the bayou. Ann got excited and pushed off from shore, kneeling on the board, and paddling out a little closer to the dolphins. She originally was going to hang close to shore until she got the feel of the board, but she didn’t want to give up the opportunity to get a little closer to the dolphins. She remembered reading somewhere that it was illegal to approach dolphins, so she didn’t paddle straight towards them. As she got a little closer, she pulled out her iPhone and took a short video of the dolphins. She had her phone in a waterproof and floating pouch that she attached to her life jacket. The pouch still allows her to use the touch screen and the camera through the clear pouch.

The dolphins surfaced just a couple of times before disappearing. Ann paddled around a little more, still on her knees. The board has a nice cushy area in the center of the board, so her knees were pretty comfortable. However, the position she was using was giving her hamstrings a workout. She decided it was time to try to stand up on the board.

First she paddled over closer to shore, keeping an eye out for alligators. If she fell into the water, she wanted to be close to shore where she knew how to get back onto the board. She wasn’t sure if she could get back on the board in open water.

It took a little while to get standing up. First, she placed the paddle vertical in the center of the board in front of her to help her steady herself. She remembered seeing that in a YouTube video once. Standing up was harder than she imagined it to be. She managed to get one foot under her, then the other, but struggled to maintain her balance, so she went back to her knees. Then she tried again. This time she managed to keep her balance as she rose to her feet. But she was still relying on the paddle, anchored on the board in front of her. “OK, now I need to balance without the paddle on the board so I can use it to paddle around in the water”, she thought to herself. She summoned up the courage and held the paddle off the board for a little while, still struggling to keep her balance. After she started feeling a little more comfortable, she started paddling. Her body was very tense as she didn’t really want to fall into the water. Her legs were shaking. In order not to overdo it the first time out, she started paddling back to the boat launch where she started. By the time she got there, she was starting to relax a little more, but her legs were still shaking. It will take a little while before she learns how much rocking of the board is comfortable, without falling off.

As she approached the small, sandy beach, she needed to get back down onto her knees. She thought that would be as hard as standing up, but, thankfully, it seemed much easier. She was probably only out on the water for about half an hour. She’ll try again the next day. Perhaps she’ll do a little research on the techniques of how to stand up on the board. She thought she would be able to figure it out on her own, but it turned out to be harder than she thought it would be.

The weather was in the 70’s again so we cooked and ate dinner outside. Now this is what we imagined this season to be like, spending more time outdoors than we did on our Alaska trip. After dinner, we finished off the rest of the ice cream along with more of the frozen strawberries. Now that really hit the spot!

Friday we ventured into the town of Niceville. It is mostly a highway lined with strip malls, so not the place to stroll around. We wanted to check out the Turkey Creek Nature Trail, which is a mile long boardwalk along the Turkey Creek. It was only about five miles from Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, so we could have ridden our bikes there, but the busy road we would be riding along didn’t seem very inviting for bikes.

When we arrived at the parking lot, right off of the highway, a park staff member asked us to go to the north entrance parking lot, since our rig was a little too large for the south parking lot. He kindly gave us directions to get to the other parking area, off of West College Boulevard. There are picnic shelters at both parking lots, but the shelters at the north entrance are in a much nicer setting, away from the highway.

The boardwalk itself was nice. It is a wide pathway through the woods, with several access point to the creek. The creek was a popular place to go swimming, floating, or paddling. The nice shade and creek water would provide a nice cool place to hang out on a really hot day.

While we were there, it was not the quietest place. The airport and Eglin Air Force Base are close by and there was a constant stream of noisy planes flying overhead. The fighter jets were especially loud and the boardwalk seemed to be right along their flight path. A local man was on the boardwalk taking pictures of the jets flying overhead.

For lunch, we stopped at the Landsharks Pizza Company in town. The pizza was OK, not the best we’ve ever had. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. The “Friends” TV episodes playing on the monitors overhead kept us entertained. Somehow their humor is timeless.

Back at the state park, Ann gave the paddle board another try. She watched an instructional video on how to stand up on a paddle board. It seemed to go much better this time. She ditched the idea of placing the paddle on the center of the board to help with balance, but she believes her main issue with her first try was that she was too far forward on the board. This time she knelt on all fours, with her knees straddling the handle in the center of the board. Then she placed her feet where her knees were and stood up, grabbing the paddle on her way up. It went pretty smoothly the first time. Then she was off paddling down the bayou.

She still was not as relaxed as she would have liked, but she was more relaxed than the first day. The thought of being in alligator inhabited water didn’t help her any. She didn’t last much longer than the first day, just a little over half an hour. Hopefully that will get better with experience. It is much different than kayaking, where she could be out on the water for hours at a time.

The weather was still nice, in the 70’s, with the temperature not dropping much overnight, due to the high humidity. We left the bedroom windows wide open all night, with half the screen and half the shade covering the windows to keep the bugs out and give us a little privacy. The nice cross breeze eliminated the need to turn the air conditioner on.

It threatened to rain most of Saturday. We did laundry in the morning and drove down to Destin in the afternoon.

Destin is only a twenty minute drive from the campground, if you take the Mid-Bay Toll Bridge. The bridge costs $4 cash for two axles, or $3 with the SunPass. We have an E-ZPass transponder which should work everywhere a SunPass works. There were lines of cars for all of the toll booth lanes except for the one that said pre-paid SunPass only. We weren’t sure if we could use that lane for our E-ZPass, so we waited in line. Our E-ZPass worked just fine and we confirmed that we could have used the SunPass only gate. Next time we’ll know.

Ann found a trail on AllTrails called Destin Boardwalk. We knew finding a place to park Red Tail might be an issue, so we scoped out the area using Google Maps. There is a large parking area along Scenic Highway 98 near the Crab Trap restaurant, so we headed there. Despite being a Saturday, there were open spaces, but they were all angled and we would have a hard time getting our rig to fit. However, at the end of the lot, there was an RV parked sideways, taking up several spots, so we pulled in behind them, taking up two spots ourselves. However, as we were getting ready, Keith spotted a sign saying no RV parking allowed. OK, we’ll move on.

Henderson Beach State Park was just a few miles west, so we drove over there. Along the way, we noticed there were some paid parking spots along the side of the road that we could fit Red Tail into. However, we still weren’t sure if RV’s were allowed to park there, so we continued on to the state park. We were hoping that they might honor our state park camping permit from Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park as admission to Henderson Beach State Park. No such luck. It was $4 for a single-occupant vehicle and $6 for vehicles with two to eight people. The paid parking on the street would have been cheaper, but we were tired of driving around, so we paid our $6 where we knew we would be legal to park.

Henderson Beach State Park does have a campground, but we were unable to get a reservation there, which is why we went to Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou instead. We enjoyed staying at Rocky Bayou and Destin was still a short drive away.

Destin is a large beach resort area, with busy streets, family attractions like mini-golf and bumper boats, along with high-rise luxury resorts and small, cute cottages. Although it would have been nice camping so close to the beach, we probably were better off where we stayed given what we like to do and see. Plus, we would have missed seeing the dolphins in the bayou!

The ocean was rough due to weather that day so the water was not open, no swimming allowed. That was OK with us, we just wanted to walk. There were still plenty of people out that day enjoying the beach.

The beach is beautiful with fine, white sand. Pelicans and sea gulls along with some other shore and water birds hung out along the shore. However, there were hardly any seashells.

We thought there would be more college students on the beach, since it was spring break season, but most of the people were families enjoying the beach. The weather might have kept some of the people away. It was cloudy and sprinkled on us now and then. A fire rescue truck roamed up and down the beach, chasing people out of the water due to the unsafe conditions, such as rip currents.

Ann should have read the description and comments on the trail in AllTrails a little more closely. The route was along the sidewalk next to the scenic highway, not on a boardwalk as the name suggested. Instead, we decided to walk along the beach. When we reached the state park boundary, there were signs posted that the beach was private. We asked the state park attendant there if there was a nice way to walk around the private sections of the beach. He claimed it was OK for us just to walk the beach through the private areas as long as we didn’t stop and set up there. We’re not sure if that is true or not, but we went for it. We stayed close to the water. It was easier walking on the wet, hard packed sand instead of the dry, soft stuff anyway. No one questioned us.

We walked the beach all the way to where we originally tried to park, at the Crab Trap, before turning around and heading back. We covered close to five miles, with a 30 foot elevation gain, in about two hours. It counted as hike #10 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2023.

Right after we hopped back into Red Tail, the skies opened up and poured down rain. Perfect timing. We drove over to the Curly Cream Rolled Ice Cream Shop in a nearby shopping center. By the time we reached the shopping center, the rain let up. How nice!

The ice cream place looked interesting. Ann found it online. We’ve never heard of rolled ice cream before, so we were intrigued. Apparently, it is a popular thing nowadays. How did we not know this? The way it works, at least at this little shop, is quite a little process. First you pick out a base flavor of cream: vanilla, chocolate or mint. Then you pick one mix-in. Ann chose the chocolate base with a peanut butter mixin. Keith got the vanilla base with strawberries for his mixin. The warm liquid base cream is poured out onto a freezing cold stainless steel surface. The mixin is worked into the cream with a couple of metal spatulas as the cream freezes. The mixture is then flattened out before it completely freezes. Then, as strips of the ice cream are scraped off the surface, it rolls up. The rolls are placed in a cup vertically and topped with up to three more items. Ann added chocolate chips and banana slices to hers, while Keith opted for whipped cream, sliced banana and more strawberries. The ice cream was very delicious. It was very smooth and rich. We’ll be keeping an eye out for rolled ice cream from now on.

Rolled ice cream, also known as stir fried ice cream, started as a street food in Thailand back in 2009. As people posted pictures and videos of it on social media, it spread to other countries. It hit the United States in 2015 and can now be found all over the country. Where have we been all this time?!

Florida was off to a good start. Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou had us excited for the rest of Florida. Most of our reservations were in state and national parks. Next up was Three Rivers State Park.

Check out our related video: Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, Florida

(Ann)