Panama City Beach - Spring Break '08

on a hike around Gator Lake
the whole crew at the beach

home sweet camper
the beach at sunset
cousins
pirate Hannah
celebrating Ann's St. Patrick's Day birthday

We just got back from a spring break trek to Panama City Beach, Florida. This is our third time to visit the beach for the week, traveling in our pop-up camper. We spent the night in Mobile on the way down. The whole trip is about 15 hours. This year, my parents and my sister, Ann, and her family also made the trip and camped right along side us. We set up camp in St. Andrews State Park which is located on a peninsula that sticks out into the Gulf of Mexico. It's a really nice park because it has wooded campsites that back up into sand dunes, and it also looks out into a sheltered lagoon area. The park is always packed with other spring breakers, but the sites (even though close together) feel pretty private. Because it's a state park, alcohol isn't permitted, so that keeps the rowdier crowds away. Ann's trailer was next to ours, and my parents were kitty-cornered across the street. We were just a short walk from the bath house which was nice because the boys could go by themselves. The loop we were on wasn't terribly large, so the boys could safely ride their bikes around until their hearts content.

We spent a couple of days playing on the beach. Lisa, my niece, is a sand castle architect! My kids really enjoyed watching/helping her with her construction efforts. All three kids enjoyed the really cold water, but Jacob especially loved the huge waves. There were red or double red flag warnings each day, so the kids couldn't really do much more than wade. Samuel loved flying his new spiderman kite.

My sister, Susan, and her family were vacationing further east along the gulf and were able to join us for an afternoon on the beach. It was great fun to see her and for our kids to play together.

Our one scary event was losing Samuel. We were all gathered to eat dinner outside my parents' camper. Samuel had been in our camper, and I had just seen him hanging out the door. I called him to dinner, but he didn't want to come. A few minutes later I had John go get him only to find out that he was gone. We began searching, calling his name, walking all through the camp area. Just about the time we all started to get very panicked, Samuel stood up out of a large palm bush right by my parents' camper. He had been hiding the entire time! Turns out, he didn't want to eat dinner and thought we would make him eat anyway. Needless to say, he got in BIG trouble. I don't think he'll be disappearing anytime again soon.

On the way home, we stopped at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola. This is an awesome museum! (not to mention, it's free) The kids, all three of them, were really fascinated by the airplanes. We only spent a couple of hours there, but we could definitely have spent way more time. We were fairly late arriving in Jackson, our overnight spot for the way home. We made it home on Friday around 6:00 p.m.

Seven loads of laundry later, I am ready to start looking at some pictures of the fun we had.