Stretching from the end of September into early October was out long awaited beach vacation to our very favorite places, Cape San Blas/Port St. Joe. We were all thrilled to have booked this trip months and months ago and had counted down to this trip since well over 200 days away! The kids love a good countdown! Since we were mid-build with our house last fall (our favorite time to visit CSB), we didn't travel. So it had been a LONG 16 months since we had been, so we were very excited to be staying even longer than usual this time at just over a week.
Nana made the kids little goodie bags for the trip, so a few hours into the drive we handed them out and they were thrilled with new entertainment.
Getting closer!
This is the most relaxing place to us. We stay in the exact same townhouse on the beach each time we go so we know exactly what the set up, room arrangements, laundry, cooking set up will be and it works out perfect for us. The day after John's birthday, we loaded up and drove down to the beach. Now that we are in Alabama our drive is two hours shorter which is awesome! We even managed to transport John's birthday cake from the night before! Haha! We got up and got on the road for a smooth drive (other than driving through clouds of love bugs that "decorated" our van) and (after stopping at the car wash-thanks love bugs) stopped at an open air seafood restaurant we like on the mainland for lunch (yes, we got there by lunchtime! which was great!). Then we stopped at the grocery store before driving out on the Cape.
It was beautiful weather and when we arrived we found the townhouse as we remembered it but we a new roof and a few updates (thanks to hurricane Michael), put on our swimsuits, and spent the entire afternoon on the beach! We went in for a quick dinner and headed back out to the beach where we stayed playing, swimming, and chasing crabs until bedtime.
Ahhh, so relaxing.
The rest of the week we spent in the sun, sand, sea, pool, and state park.
We are on "cape time" when we are there and it's always very relaxed. We mostly live in swim clothes and pajamas, stay on the beach from right after breakfast until dark, coming into the townhouse for lunch and dinner, and everyone is perfectly content with this.
We took this picture out the window when we were almost there!
The kids had asked if we could take our inflatable Explorer 1000 raft, and they had fun paddling around the ocean in this.
They build castles
Buried each other
Went on runs
(it's kind of interesting that the trees all looked like this-bare at the top-due to hurricane Michael that came through 12 months ago)
The big three kids were trainging for a kids marathon while we were there, so we managed to log a few of their running ours while there. Here NK was by my side running, and Carter and Dawson can be seen running in front of me...they love that they're faster than me!
Found big crabs
Clayton loves the special snacks we get on vacation that we never get at home.
The first fish we caught...also, the tiniest.
We LOVE the teeny, tiny little donut shop on the cape. It's the size of our pantry at home, no joke, but they have the best donuts I've ever had (and I don't even really like donuts), but their old fashioned donuts are the.best.ever! John went to pick some up for us on Tuesday and to find out what day was old fashioned day since they only make them once a week. It was Saturday, we would have to wait all week. So Saturday morning John was the 2nd person in line when they opened to get us Old Fashioned Donuts.
the lighthouse
We found great shells.
Turned Nora Kate into a mermaid.
And dug SO many holes!
Clayton kept a close eye on this HUGE crab we caught.
the stumphole
Some of these pics are out of order. Nora Kate remembered when we took a ton of selfies in DC in June, and when we stopped for lunch when we first arrived, she asked to take a selfie with me since we were on a trip. Sweet girl.
We took Pop's net he always used for catching bait fish at the beach, and this provided hours of entertainment! We caught TONS of little fish like this (we would throw them back after we checked them out).
the most relaxing place ever
It made me so happy to watch Dawson fishing with Pop's net just like this for hours on end.
We kayaked everyday I think. I'm not good at steering a kayak (I haven't had much practice), so John got the task of ferrying everyone around the ocean in the kayak every day. The kids loved it!
When John and Carter were out in it one day they even saw a sea turtle swim by them!
That's another thing we love about this area-all the animals you can see!
What this picture doesn't show you is how impossibly heavy this kayak was....as in it was about all I could do to help John get it down to the beach. Thankfully once there you could drag it along the sand, but it was much heavier than anticipated.
We decided to do something different than our usual one day and drive over to St. Island and go to the Estuarine Center there. We learned a lot about estuaries specifically the Apalachicola Estuary, walked on some trails, and saw lots of tree frogs.
This was also at the Estuarine Center.
We also drove around St. George Island and saw the beautiful lighthouse there.
St. George island was beautiful too. It reminded both John and me of Isle of Palms near Charleston.
Then we headed back to the Cape for more fun in the sun-
We have pictures of the kids on this chair from every single one of our trips to the Cape!
Someone was super relaxed (or was it tired?) after a day in the sun.
More shell finding!
We made the kids limeaid popsicles to enjoy by the pool.
They were all John's idea and SO good and SO refreshing.
John and one of the boys kayaking at sunset.
These are the kids favorite crabs to catch.
We love this beach so much, and we are always spoiled to have it mostly to ourselves-this time that was even more true. Now that the kids have flexible school schedules we opted to go the week before all the school's fall breaks start (not that it's ever crowded there at all anyway), but this time there were even less people. It mostly felt like our own private beach....
the only downside to that is there is no one to a take a family picture for you-haha!
So as I mentioned, this was the first time we had been to the Cape since Hurricane Michael hit it hard in October 2018 which caused a shrimp boat the crash into "the point" of the Cape. Despite trying over the past 12 months they have not been able to move this boat. It is named the Donna Kay. I have been reading about the Donna Kay since this happened because I just found it all to be interesting. All week I begged everyone to hike to the Donna Kay with me. I really wanted to see it because chances are they will figure out how to move it before we make it back. The point where it is shipwrecked is not near anything, but I had read you could park at the stumphole and hike about 2 miles to see it. I convinced Dawson and Nora Kate to do it with me one morning.
The red dot on this map shoes where the Donna Kay was shipwrecked.
Some of the hike was just beautiful open beach like this.
We saw interesting things that had washed ashore or been unearthed by Hurricane Michael.
I think this was maybe a rusted anchor?
It was huge-I made the kids stand by it so I could show it to John and him be able to tell how big it was!
Then a large portion of our hike was like this.
FINALLY! we caught sight of her!
There was another couple there that had hiked to see her also. They had only been about ten minutes ahead of us and asked if we saw the snake on the trail-AH! Thankfully we did not!
But we talked to them and they took our picture with the Donna Kay!
This was also what a lot of our hike looked like.
The salt water slowly kills the tree and it breaks off leaving stumps-that's why the area we started our hike is called the stumphole.
The kids decided they were going to try to pull the Donna Kay all the way ashore...no luck! Haha!
Then they decided to try to push her back out to sea...no luck.
It really was a sight to see this large shrimp boat that was shipwrecked!
Stumphole portion of our hike.
This was along our hike, and this might be my new favorite picture of these two.
I was so glad that I was able to convince half of our family to do the hike with me. If it's still there next time we go, Carter has already said that he wants to go to see it.
I usually don't include videos on the blog because I hope to one day make this into a printed book, but I couldn't resist sharing this video here. Clayton was VERY serious about his digging this week. Take a look-
I am always SO sad to leave the beach. The day we leave I always have the kids go "tell the beach goodbye." So this picture was as we were saying goodbye to the beach.
We had an long, amazing, relaxing, fun vacation. Dawson got to be really good at casting Pop's net and catching fish, Carter was great at finding shells and kayaking, Nora Kate chased more seagulls than anyone and made the most creations out of sand, Clayton spent the most time digging, in a hole, or in the water! I am so very thankful for the family time we got to enjoy-our favorite place with our favorite people!
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