Florida

Topsail beach

We have been in Flordia since last Thursday, but we have not had any wifi. The state park we are at now has a hot spot, so we have banished the kids to the playground, and we are parked with the laptops. We headed to Destin after we left La. We drove along the Gulf Coast and saw lots of areas that still have not been rebuilt from Hurrican Katrina. We took a detour to eat at Lambert's cafe in Gulf Shores, Alabama and drove through lots of rain. We spent 3 whole days in the Destin area. It is in the Panhandle of Florida near Pensacola. It has beautiful beaches. The sand is white and looks and feels like sugar. I have never seen such sticky stuff! We took the kids to a public beach the first night just so they could see what a beach was. They thought it was cool. The only bad thing was the jellyfish were bad in the gulf. You had to be very careful. The next morning, we went to the state park beach. The water in that area is clear and a beautiful blue/green. They call that area the Emerald Coast. We had a great time, and only left when there was a storm that came up. On Sat. we went into Pensacola and spent all day at the Naval Aviation Museum. We were there almost all day. It was really cool. We were planning on spending Sunday at the beach, but it rained all day. We went shopping, did laundry, and ate seafood instead. Yesterday we drove across the top of Florida in the pouring rain. We have seen more rain on this trip than we have all year at home. Now we are at a state park outside of St. Augustine. It is beautiful and very tropcial. Our camp looks like the jungle. We spent the morning at the beach, and we all had a ball. I thought Serena might be afraid of the waves, but she is fine. She does not like walking way out in the water, but she loves everything else. We found lots of cool stuff on the beach today, and Keegan and I got body boards to surf with tomorrow. We have accumulated lots of beach paraphenalia. We also took a trolley tour of old St. Augustine today. That was interesting, and Serena took a nap for part of it. Tomorrow, we are hitting the two old forts and then the beach. We are having a ball and have avoided sunburns so far. I will post some pics from last week.

Not your ordinary camping spot

There were lots of cool planes and stuff to sit in.

Family photo op at Fort Barrancas -it was hot!