Panama City, Florida

Spring Break 2023

Home for the week-Campers Inn Inc., Panama City, FL

Our trip down to Flordia was filled with dodging tornado warnings and lots of traffic, but we made it safely and spring break 2023 has finally arrived!!! We all were looking forward to this much needed break from our regular routine. Panama City did not disappoint! We enjoyed beautiful beaches, perfect weather, fun adventures, and most importantly lasting family memories. 

​Beach Days

All of us loved playing in the waves. We had only one yellow flag day and the rest were red flag days, which means we had big waves! Mia loved using her boogie board and riding the wave. 

Florida State Parks

St. Andrew's State Park

St. Andrew's State Park

St. Andrews State Park
We spent two days hanging out at St. Andrews. The beach was beautiful and it's the only place we could find intact seashells and sand dollars. We definitely had to work for them by snorkeling and diving down to get them, but we found ‘em! Travis is great at this, I pretty much hold the net and he does most of the work diving down to get the shells.
Another great thing about St. Andrews is you get a dolphin show right out in front of you. All the dolphin tours come to the spot to see them too! Jess was lucky enough to paddle board out and he had dolphins surrounding him on the paddle board, such a cool experience!
St. Andrews was also the hot spot to catch Spanish Mackerel. We caught our limit on our fishing charter right off the jetty. People were catching them along the beach and off the pier as well.

There is a nice calm side by the jetty as well, our crew opted for the big waves ocean side! There were also some trails through the marshy area where you could probably see some alligators too. It was a little to warm for us to do that.

Grayton Beach State Park

Grayton Beach State Park
We took a day to drive up to Grayton Beach State Park. This was one of the spots we tried to get camping with no luck. I was very happy we didn’t stay there since Travis and I found 8 Portuguese Man O’War jellyfish within less than a 1/4 mile of the beach. We ended up not staying to swim there, yikes!

We brought all our snorkel gear to snorkel Turtle Reef, but on this red flag day it was too far to swim. Plus with all the Portuguese Man O'War jellyfish, we didn't even attempt it. 

Instead we took turns on the paddleboard on Western Lake. Although, after the fact we saw a sign to watch for alligators…oops! Good thing no one fell in and we didn’t stray too far.

​HOLY MACKEREL!!!

We booked a 4 hour fishing charter and we will probably never be this lucky again. We caught our limit in Spanish Mackerel and just had a blast. We were busy reeling them in almost the entire time. Many times we had all four lines hooked, it was so fun!
One of my favorite parts (not so much our captains), was having dolphins steal our fish off the line! We literally had to reel the fish in faster than the dolphin otherwise they would grab the fish and our line. View a quick video on YouTube! 
​Dolphin stealing our mackerel!
Each family ended up with about 35 pounds of fresh mackerel to take home! It is delicious, so there will be lots of fish tacos in our future!

​Shell Island

Right across from St. Andrews is a popular spot to get away from the crowds called Shell Island. You can take a shuttle over and it will drop you off and it picks up on the hour. We opted to rent a pontoon boat because for two families it was pretty close to the same price as taking the shuttle. We are so happy we rented our own pontoon. We were able to explore more of the island and we really enjoyed the peacefulness.
We did not find intact shells on Shell Island, only broken shells. Jess and I walked for miles and nothing. Maybe if you snorkeled, you’d be more successful. We didn’t bring our gear on our walk oceanside and the waves were pretty rough that day so we probably wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.

Ghost Crab Hunting

Most nights we would take the kids down to the beach with flashlights and search for ghost crabs. It was a lot of fun catching the little crabs. The kids would try to beat our number caught each night. Our best night, we caught 50 ghost crabs! All ghost crabs were caught and released! 

Ocean Sunsets and Sunrises

Catching sunsets and sunrises are one of my favorite things to do on vacation! 

Sunset

Sunrise