Since we had a three-day weekend for Veteran’s Day this weekend, we reserved ourselves a campsite at St. Andrews State Park, and took the girls on a little camping trip! This seems to be becoming an annual tradition, now that we’ve done it two years in a row. So maybe we’ll get to do it again next year too! (Here’s the 2023 post.)

Saturday

We spent Saturday morning picking up a rental Dodge Ram, dropping off Pennie at Pet Paradise, and getting everything all packed up. We left right after lunch, and took the short two-hour drive to PCB.

We were on our way to the PCB Walmart to pick up our groceries, and Jeff saw this doughnut shop, Parlour Doughnuts, and just had to pull in for an afternoon treat. And this was certainly a treat – very delicious, very cute decor, kinda pricey, but so good!

By the time we got everything set up at camp, it was very much dark, so we made some burgers on the little George Foreman grill we brought with us, and the girls had so much fun just playing the rocks and dancing around under the twinkle lights to the music we played lightly on our phones.

I sat outside the tent late at night to read, while Jeff got Addie to sleep inside. Both girls were watching movies on their Kindles, and Addie just fell asleep with it still playing, so we had to pick it up and turn it off.

But once she fell asleep, Jeff and Emmie joined me by the twinkle lights, and Emmie read a comic book on her Kindle next to me. Girlfriend was glued to my side all night, and even once I realized I was near the end of my book and wanted to finish, she decided she’d stay up as late as I did until I finished. So by then, it was probably 11pm CST, which was midnight our time, but she stayed awake with me until I finished.

Sunday

It was beautiful to wake up to the early-morning sunrise (at 5:59am CST) the next morning and to get to see the gulf waters mere feet from our campsite with the lovely soft sunrise colors.

But you guys. The WIND that first night and the next morning was totally out of control! It was literally 25mph, with gusts of like 30mph or maybe more, and it was unrelenting. It kept Jeff and I awake most of the night, and even popped one of tent strings, that he had to fix in the night. Everything was just whipping around and our tent was just being pounded all night. We had actually dropped the 10×10 pop-up tent down to half-size the night before, so that that wind wouldn’t pick it up and carry it away. Jeff even used tie-down straps on it, and secure it to the super heavy picnic table.

All that to say though, that morning was still entirely too windy to make a campfire, or even try to cook on our little camp stove, so we found a local breakfast spot instead, The Pancakery, and had some delicious, gigantic breakfast meals. We should have shared one meal for the girls, and one meal for Jeff and I, and that would have been more than enough, we just didn’t know how much food it was gonna be!

They had their “chocolate juice” when we got back to the campsite, and then we went over the playground at the campgrounds to play for a while.

Emmie ended up making a friend at the playground, and the mama came over to sit with me to chat for a while. Eventually, she just invited us over to their campsite for coffee and to let the girls keep playing, and that was so lovely! We ended up spending a couple of hours with them. They’re from Jacksonville, and we enjoyed getting to chat and hang out.

We went back to our campsite for lunch, which was just a “charcuterie plate” situation, basically just all the snacks and things. We tried to get Addie to nap after lunch, but she just wasn’t having any of that, so we ended up back at the playground for a bit.

The humidity was doing great things for Emmie’s curls!

And then we made our way over to the actual beach part of the PCB campground. The little area at the jetty was perfect for the girls to play in the shallow, calm gulf water, and they had a great time splashing in the breaking waves. We also found our new friends there, so the girls all played together again and the adults all got to chat together.

We got cleaned up in the campground showers, put on some cozy, dry clothes, and then made cozy grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, with a side of popcorn.

Addie fell asleep watching her Kindle again, so we carefully pulled it away from her to turn it off, and Emmie got another night of special only-kid time with the grown-ups. She even got Daddy to make her s’mores on the little camp stove, just for her. She tried to stay up late again, but girlfriend just couldn’t hang, and she fell asleep almost instantly once I convinced her to just go lay down.

Monday

It wasn’t quite as beautiful when we woke up this morning, especially since I woke up in the tent at 5:50am CST with raindrops dripping through the tent onto my face, head and chest. I was like, “HEY JEFF WAKE UP I’M GETTING RAINED ON.” We think it was because the wind was blowing so hard directly onto my side of the tent and it had been raining so long and it was just pushing the rain directly into the tent.

So we started getting up and moving pretty quickly, trying to get things taken care of. Oh, and I quickly got a little photo of our campsite, once we had a break in the rain, and it wasn’t raining right that minute. We got things packed up as quickly as we could, but it was raining the whole time and that was the worst. Once the rain really started coming down, we let the girls just watch their tablets in the truck most of the time.

But our new friends walked over from across the campground to say goodbye and let the girls hug it out before leaving, so we exchanged numbers and social media names, so we can keep in touch. The girls decided they could mail pictures back and forth, so as soon as we got home tonight, Emmie immediately drew her a special card, and we’re ready to get it mailed out to them soon.

We stopped at the park office on our way out to check out all the cool nature displays they have in there, and it was really neat and the girls loved seeing all the animals and things in there. I also loved reading about the Norwegian seaman “hermit” who’s boat crashed on this beach in 1929, and he just decided to stay and live there for the next 25 years! He even helped with some of the park projects when it opened, including building the jetty wall where the girls played in the water yesterday.

And then we found ourselves one more local brunch spot, since I could not cook in the pouring down rain at the campsite again this morning for breakfast, and our pop-up was leaking super, super badly. (We almost threw it away, but decided it would at least be good enough for shade.) Today we went to Liza’s Kitchen, and after reading some Google reviews and seeing photos of this amazing bread, I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted to order. This is the “B.L.E.A.T” sandwich (bacon, lettuce, fried egg, avocado & tomato) on their homemade from-scratch Focaccia bread, and it was amazing. I want to eat that bread right now just toasted with some butter and nothing else. YUM.

We also made a quick stop at a little tourist beach shop, so both girls could pick out a souvenir. I had already picked out a sticker and a magnet from the state park shop, since we collect those, but the girls wanted another stuffy each, cuz you know we don’t have 4,000 already 😉

And here is a 3-pic collection of Addie just being the cutest little backseat rider on the way home, patting her new stuffed turtle to sleep, eating the last of her breakfast, and being very serious about her coloring. And then of course both girls just completely asleep within about 20 minutes.

After we got back home, we unloaded everything from the rental truck into the carport, but just kinda left it all piled up there, since it was still raining here in Tally too. We need to put the tents back up again so they can dry out before being stored again, but we’ll have to deal with that hoopla another day… But after getting everything unloaded, and the girls’ car seats switched back over, we went to return the rental truck. I wanted a chance to drive it, so Jeff took the girls in my car, and I drove the giant nice fancy truck, and actually loved it.

We returned the truck to the Avis rental at the airport, and then went to pick up Pennie from the boarding place. They people there loved her and said she had a great weekend, and I’m sure she did! They do a big playtime with all the dogs of similar sizes, and even have a bone-shaped doggie swimming pool they can just hop in during playtime. And she was clearly very happy to back with us!

When we got back home, we had an early dinner (breakfast burritos from the camp food I didn’t cook that was still cold in the cooler), and then early bath/shower time, followed by an early bedtime for the girls. And now that I’ve finished this super long blog post, it’s gonna be an early bedtime for me too. We had a great weekend, despite the crazy wind yesterday, and the rain while packing up this morning. The girls had so much fun and loved being outside all the time, and it was nice to make camping friends. Glad to go to sleep in my own bed tonight though 🙂