Vacation Blog - Part 3

Being a big kid....there's no better time than when on vacation. New environments, new places to explore - possibly under the influence of a tasty adult beverage at times to encourage this rowdy and goofy behavior.

We master the skill. At times, we define it.


















We do know how to be serious as well - and enjoy the scenery, wildlife, flora, and fauna of the Florida Panhandle. The humidity was hell - I'll be quite frank about that, but the bugs weren't as bad as they have been in years past. We usually go to a State Garden called 'Eden' in which we become a Thanksgiving Day feast for Flo the mosquito along with her entire family. Not this year! Sandestin had a really nice little walking trail, just in front of Club Intrawest, which had some nice big trees, swingset for the kids nestled away off the main road, and it was a nice quiet walk.

We also headed down to Topsail Park which runs up into the coastline. I thought we'd get there early on Saturday morning while it's still quiet out and not so hot, and we could get some nice photos. We were wrong. They charged $6 to get in. Not a big deal as we both don't mind the 'donations' to help keep up State and National Parks. They give us a map and say "the main trail leads to the beach and it's a mile long, and there's also a nature trail that will get you there - it's a mile and a half long" Good think there was a tram! (or so we thought) Tram only ran once an hour, on the hour and it had literally just pulled back up when we arrived. So....camera gear on my back, we started the walk there. It wasn't too bad, there was a nice breeze and a little shade. But I tell you what, by the time we got to the beach we'd started to sweat. We weren't the only ones there either. A whole rack of bicycles right out front of the walkway, and a shoreline with pop up tents, beach umbrellas, and lawn chairs. What the heck?! It's a mile to get here, and that's an awful lot of crap to have to carry down! Still - it was more secluded than the beaches at the resort would have been. It took about 30 minutes for my lens to clear up. Going from a cool air conditioned car to the beaches where it was hot and the humidity was at least 99%, caused the worst fog up I've ever had. We got our pics, walked in the water a bit, but it was HOT. We were both sweating buckets and knew we had a mile long hike back on hot steamy blacktop. Good news is, we had to have sweated off at least a pound each walking back. Cold showers were up next.