Day 24 – 6540 miles … The Beaches of Florida’s Panhandle

The rumbling of our neighboring trucks woke me around 7A, as I had forgotten to set an alarm. Everyone was still sleeping and I tried to be as quiet as I could be in making my coffee and getting the RV going. Our generator had surprisingly lasted through the night, which was great, as the temperature and humidity here is very high.

I get out of Mississippi and within a couple of miles “lose” the generator … oh well … we are used to it now, and have figured that if you run the cabin AC at max and close the partition to the back of the RV, the main salon area stays cool enough. We stop for fuel in Alabama, and the needed souvenir that Kate has been collecting from every state that we visit … we transition to road mode and continue on into Florida. I notice in my mirror, something “odd” … with so more careful looking, I realize that one of the doors on the outside is flying open … then I figure out it is the one with the generator … then I remember that I had left it open, and removed the access panel to the generator the night before. One look at the odometer puts me 86 miles from the door. Going back for it … would be 200 miles … oh well … 1 lost door, about $100 to replace it :(

I10 in Florida is surprisingly a great road, we easily tick miles away and start looking for a place to stop for lunch … in a lapse of focus, I take the exit for the Pensacola Beaches and take the detour.We push a little further and decide to stop in Destin. We’ve seen some beautiful sites on this trip, some outstanding vistas and some very unique things … yet the ocean and beaches for us is a huge thing. Our first view of the water, was as rewarding as any we’ve seen before. We find Henderson State Park and pull in. We get a great parking spot with a view of the dunes and ocean beyond it.

The sand on this beach is outstanding … I can only describe it as sugar. It is really white, soft and crystalline in look at texture. The water is in the 80s and the clarity is excellent … we play on the beach for almost 3 hrs. Jack, loves the beach, he is very comfortable sitting in the sand … and eating it :) … not sure what to make of that. We get back in the RV with some extra souvenirs … about 2 lbs of sand in baggies and about .5 lb in Jack’s belly.

Kate announces to the RV that she has a plan … she suggests that we find a campground nearby, then drive home early tomorrow morning. We all agree that this is a great plan and start looking for options. We find a state park in Grayton Beach and make our way there. The ranger was very helpful and we found a nice site. Our site was about .5 mile from the beach, and was nicely “wooded”, this for me, was probably the second best park we have camped at (from a site perspective) … nice lot, we couldn’t see the others and we had a clothes line to hang towels and a private path to the central showers … excellent.

We headed to the beach to watch the sun set and for another swim. Jack continued to fill up on sand and the girls wandered an almost empty beach looking at sea life. We saw a bunch of jellies, some really cool looking small ones, a puffer fish, which seemed to be lost and a small shark (about 18”) that was feeding on a dead fish about 6 ft from the sand. We brought some “bubble” toys and the girls played with those. I was asked to capture the shark using the bubble toys … which was going to be a difficult task, even for MacGyver … oh well, just looking at the shark will have to suffice.

We walked back to our site in the dark, and tried to figure out dinner options … our plan was to have been home, so our pantry was starting to get bare. We all decided on breakfast for dinner, as we had eggs, bacon and pancake mix … while I made pancakes, no where near as good as grandpa’s (according to Jaci and Kate), everyone had showers. We ate dinner and collapse for the night … this would be our last night aboard our RV.