Shooting locations near Fort Walton Beach Florida?

Hi everybody. I'm a NPN member from Arkansas. I'll be in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida area for a week in June and was wondering if anyone on this forum can suggest some good locations for early morning nature and wildlife photography. Refuges, preserves, state parks, that sort of thing. My main interest is scenic shots but I also will lug around my long lens for wildlife images.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks David and Michael.

John, Other than those already mentioned I also like St. Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach. Not far from where you will be. There is a small rookery on an Island within the park as well as a short trail that runs around the edge of the lake. I have photographed butterflies, Dragonflies, White tail Deer and numerous wading birds. The park is located next to the inlet where all the boats come in to bay and there are jetties on each side of this inlet where gulls, pelicans and dolphins in the water are all pretty close. Boats come in from fishing in the afternoon and Pelicans, Egrets, Herons and many Gulls fly in to get any throw away scraps from the fishermen. I have had better luck here than some of the places mentioned.

Have a great trip.

Grant

New here, but really like the Apalachicola area, it's probably a couple of hours from Ft. Walton Beach. St. George Island is the barrier island adjacent to Apalachicola and has some great areas as well. When I first got into photography my husband and I visited for a long weekend. Shrimp trawlers in the sunset, oyster boats in the morning fog -- endless possibilities. I've even saved a badly out of focus shot of a man throwing a cast net from the bank against the sunset. If I could just try that one more time....
I think you'd need to at least spend one night but when we were there last there weren't any decent hotels, so we stayed at the Gibson Inn, a B&B, which was pretty nice. There are several B&B's.
That area still has the flavor of old Florida, not quite so souvenir shop/bumper to bumper traffic as it is further west. I'm still trying to figure out how to get to St. Vincent's Island which has an interesting history.

Grant and Johnye, thank you too!

I plan on taking my big monitor with me to the condo to process photos (I'm not much of a beach person!). If I get any nice shots I'll post them to this forum.