Trying a New Spot on Florida's Emerald Coast
We have been fortunate enough to vacation on the Emerald Coast a number of times now, but this year we picked a new spot along this beautiful run of white sand and green water. We decided on Seacrest about half-way between Destin and Panama City Beach with a house named Beach Haven. We encountered a LOT of rain on the drive down from Atlanta, but with my interest in Covered Bridges I was thrilled for the brief break in the weather when we drove past the Pioneer Museum of Alabama and this sweet bridge.
A couple of hours later (and at the southern edge of the rain storms we drove through) we arrived at our vacation home for the week.
It was pretty comfy inside as well.
This place is a row back from the beach, but we could see the gulf from the third floor deck.
We wanted to get our feet wet, so we strolled across 30A and headed down to the beach (36 steps down to the sand).
The girls were surely glad to finally be on the beach, too!
The red and purple beach condition flags were flying today and we found our first "dangerous marine life" on the edge of the surf.
We found out later these are called Blue Buttoned Jellyfish and we saw a bunch of them. Pretty interesting looking indeed.
That (and who knows what else) accounted for the purple flag and the rough waves accounted for the red.
There was a sandbar about 20 feet into the water and Zoe and I wandered out on it.
After a while we started seeing a bunch of sea cucumbers being washed towards shore.
I have to give Zoe credit as she was braver than me by being willing to pick one of these up (after a couple of attempts!). Sorry for the fuzzy photos below of Zoe holding it and then Gretchen. It is stretched out as it was "violently contracting its muscles preparing to jettison some of its internal organs out of its anus" (yes, NatGeo is always so direct).
And just when I thought there could be no more excitement, four US Army Apache attack helicopters flew down the beach. Go Army, Beat Navy! << BTW, we FINALLY did last year after a loooooooong losing streak.
After all of that excitement, we spent some time back on the sand just relaxing and listening to the sounds of the waves rolling in.
The beach can make even a grumpy old man like me enjoy himself!!
The girls and I headed back to the house and rounded up Connor to all get into the nice pool we have in the backyard of Beach Haven.
After grilling up some chicken for dinner we wound down the day playing some old-school Mario Party on our trusty-rusty GameCube system. I played as Yoshi and you can probably tell I was not doing all that well. 
Maybe we will not be so lucky the rest of the week with such good weather, but no matter what we will make it a great vacation and enjoy our time together. Again, we're so fortunate to be able have this opportunity and we are going to try to make the very best of it.