We were sad to leave Pensacola, but we still had much of Florida left to explore, with the next stop being Ochlockonee Bay on Florida’s “Forgotten Coast.” Stretching from roughly Mexico Beach to Apalachee Bay, the Forgotten Coast is named for the area’s relative lack of tourist activity compared to the western portion of Florida’s panhandle – my kind of place!
Since we weren’t in any sort of rush to get there, we opted to take the scenic highway 98 from Pensacola to Ochlockonee Bay which followed the coastline and took us through famous beach towns such as Panama City and Destin. This turned out to be a great decision as this drive easily ranks in the top 5 of most scenic rides along our RVing journey (and easily better than the alternative route along boring ole I-10)!
We arrived at our campground in Ochlockonee Bay, the Holiday Campground, just in time to beat the rain that was rolling in. Or so we thought… Turns out that they had given us one of the worst campsites that we have ever seen in our time on the road – there was a friccin telephone pole damn near in the middle of the site which required us to “Austin Powers” the camper in there just right, allowing the rain time to catch up to us.
However, the site’s saving grace was the fact that it backed up to the bay, providing quick access to the water and beautiful sunset views right from our back window – not to mention frequent dolphin sightings right off the beach!
There wasn’t much to the “town” of Ochlockonee Bay. In reality, it was just a bunch of vacation homes, with the only businesses being a gas station and a seafood restaurant. However, it was big enough to warrant a water tower which was just down the road from our RV park with painting that read “Welcome to Ochlockonee Bay, Home of Surf Dog.” Naturally, this got us wondering about this “Surf Dog” – was it some cool dog who surfed? After a brief internet search, we discovered the truth was far less interesting. It turns out that Surf Dog is just some stray dog who lives near the water tower on Surf Road… hardly from “water tower worthy.” I guess there’s a reason they call it the Forgotten Coast, there really is nothing going on down there.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Sam and I hadn’t gone out for a proper date night in over six months, so we decided that it was finally time to remedy this and chose The Seineyard Rock Landing, a seafood joint right on the water in nearby Panacea, as our destination. Long story short, it was quite medicore, and reminded us why we tend to cook our own meals these days.
Our last activity of note during our time on the Forgotten Coast was a trip over to the nearby Alligator Point and the adjacent Bald Point State Park. Alligator Point is a cool little beach community located on a long, skinny peninsula just south of Ochlockonee Bay only wide enough for a single road in most places with a house on either side along the water. We had a great time just cruising down to the end of the peninsula before stopping at one of the few public beach access points on our way back and taking a stroll through the sand.
We took a quick detour on our way back from Alligator Point to the aforementioned Bald Point State Park where we explored a small sliver of the park’s vast marshlands before hunger struck and we opted to make our way back to our little trailer.
I wouldn’t say that we would recommend this area as a travel destination, however, that isn’t to say that we didn’t enjoy our time here as we met some lovely people in the campground and got to experience a nice quiet week next to the ocean in January – hard to beat that!