While the majority of Florida's coast is renowned for its fabulous beaches, they are nearly absent from Tarpon Bay, on the west coast of the peninsula, to Ochlockonee Bay, along the eastern panhandle. This Great Bend region is characterized by coastal marshes, swamp forest, pine flatwoods, meandering rivers and rich estuaries, all vital to the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
Home to black bear, American alligators, bald eagles, ospreys, a wide variety of waders (herons, egrets, spoonbills, ibis, limpkins) and a host of other birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, this vast coastal wetland is relatively inaccessible and generally ignored by most visitors to the Sunshine State; on the other hand, fishermen, birders and naturalists appreciate its natural diversity as did the first humans to colonize the region.
Last evening, standing on a small beach at Bald Point State Park (just south of Ochlockonee Bay), it was easy to appreciate the serenity that the Great Bend affords in an increasingly populated State. As the sun set beyond the pines to our west, lines of brown pelicans cruised above Apalachee Bay, shorebirds foraged among the gentle waves, ghost crabs scurried across the darkening sand and evidence of human habitation was nowhere in sight. Only the occasional deer fly disturbed the serenity.
