St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, FL

Of course, when I am in the area I have to visit St. Joe State Park.  I got there on March 11 and was there for 5 nights. 

On my initial drive into the park, I saw a sign that said “Smoke/Fog ahead”.  I quickly realized that they were doing a prescribed burn.  When I drove thru with my RV, I saw a flames and a lot of smoke.  I was a bit worried that my smoke detector would go off, but it didn’t.  I set up my RV and rode my bike back, but by the time I got back most of the flames were further away.  You can just make out the flames in the picture below. 

Like in most places I have visited recently, while there I biked and walked. St. Joe is known for it’s sand dunes and white sand beach.  Like St. George, St. Joe is not very crowded.  On my morning walks (about 4 miles round trip), I would see very few,if any, people.  

The picture above is a picture of my footprints  in the sand. 

On my walk I saw a few areas they had blocked off for nesting birds.  I am guessing it was for the Snowy Plover.  It looks like the one below has been banded.

Below is a picture of me enjoying the beach --

While there, I made some Sloppy Joes.  I am trying to get back into healthy eating and this recipe is a great find!  It came from the Skinnytaste blog.  (skinnytaste blog link)  She has some very good recipes that I have used.  While making these, I chopped a Green Pepper and then was cutting the Red Pepper, when I found something interesting.  I found another pepper growing within the red pepper.

A shot of my open faced Sloppy Joe is below. Note the spinach under the sloppy joe filling.  I would have never thought of this, but it is really good!

If you looked at the recipe you may have noticed that it calls for Turkey sausage.  I typically use Jimmy Dean’s Turkey crumbles, but while I was in Utah last year I discovered a grocery store with great Italian chicken sausage.  I froze a few packages of it and used the last of it in these sloppy joes.   Yumm!!!!  A great thing about this recipe is I eat it for a few meals, but the rest freezes really well! 

From here, I headed back to Georgia stopping first at Crooked River State Park.  Believe it or not, I am up to date as I am currently at Crooked River State Park.