Maritime Hammock Nature Trail, St. Joseph Peninsula State Park

Today was just a lovely and lazy day of shelling on the beach in the morning and taking an easy hike on the Maritime Hammock Nature Trail located in St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in the afternoon (note: this is not the same as the Maritime Hammock Sanctuary, also in FL).  The Nature Trail winds through swamp, salt marsh, thick wooded areas rich with a mixture of live oak, magnolia, palms, sand pine, longleaf pine, and other plants indigenous to this area. Large areas of open sand are covered with blankets of lichen, live oak play host to resurrection fern, Spanish moss hangs from magnolias, and palms reach skyward both in sunny areas and in the darker forested sections.  The hike meanders along the bayside beach for a while, which hosts horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, and sea urchins, many washed ashore by the tides, and live oak tree roots washed bare showing just as much curved and unusually shaped growth as do their tops, next to palm roots washed bare and leaving us wondering how so little root can hold up large palm trees in this sand.