St Marks National Wildlife Refuge and Lighthouse in Florida

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge is a federally protected site and home to many kinds of wild animals and nature. The place is vast, sitting on 3 counties! Wakulla, Taylor and Jefferson! We go there for watching sunrises and sunsets. Walking is great too if you like walking a little longer distances. You can also park your car along the shoulder of the road and take shorter walks. We usually park at the park center and ride our bikes all the way to the lighthouse.
There is so much to see and enjoy out there. You are doing all this with your own risk so beware it is really raw around. There is a chance you will run into an alligator, bobcat, Florida panther, snakes of all kinds, so many birds including bald eagle, butterflies (seasonal), all kinds of different trees and plants, bears, crabs, fish, frogs etc. It gets really loud with all of them trying to say something.
There are couple of bathrooms, one at the entrance where the parking lot is and one at halfway to the lighthouse. We usually ride all the way to the lighthouse and that is close to 7 miles from the parking lot. They screwed up the mile markers so the distance between 6 and 7 is not accurate.
The water levels fluctuate by day. There is some kind of control system to let more or less water to the refuge. We have not figured how they have done that yet. Water never threatened the road all this time we visited the place.
It is $5 a car to get in. You can pack as many people as possible in your car and the price would be the same. Or if you are planning on going often, you can stop by the office (closes at 5pm weekdays) and get a year pass to display on your dashboard when you visit. It was $15 for a year. Good savings there for us since we are there every other day.
I am not saying it is not safe but we have not seen a ranger or any other law enforcement there yet. It is federal grounds so punishments would probably/possibly involve feds and/or federal laws. So don't be a jerk and visit nicely, respecting others and nature. Take out what you bring in! If you are dumping garbage at the area of picnic tables, make sure to close the lid of the garbage cans. They are some kind of bear proof ones anyways. Read the signs and use good judgement when getting close to any animals. Alligators are very quick to respond and they may surprise you. So be careful when you go near ponds and areas where there is water.
Lighthouse is under restoration and should be fixed and restored soon(as of March 2015) It is all getting done by donations if I am not mistaken.
The video is taken while driving right under speed limit. There are slow motion parts for you to see more details. I will be posting more videos with sounds since it was so windy and the wind sound recorded was very annoying. So to easy guide you to different sections of the video, I made the below index. Just click on the time-code of the section you want to jump to.
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[@stmarkjo]

thanks for the video
My favorite place during my school days at FSU

[@MrGlendale111]

Is there no people in this place?

[@KENFL74]

Toyota1949 mostly wild animals but sometimes you will some people driving through to go to the lighthouse.