A Perfect Day

Today was one of those days you wish you could store in a bottle and bring out often, taking little sips of a perfect day and making it last as long as possible.  And we made it last as long as possible.  Since we are now in the Central time zone, the day starts early and we are just keeping our Eastern time zone schedule to take full advantage of the daylight.  So when the sun came up at 6:10 this morning, we were already up and about.  The rest of the campground was very quiet. So much so that a few deer were grazing around the campers, looking very unconcerned.

The day dawned clear and mild, a great day to be outside.  We rode our bikes to the beach area and took a long walk on the beach.  I’m sure a couple weeks from now this place will be a madhouse as all the Spring Breakers descend, but right now it is very quiet. The perfect time to be here.

Directly across the St Andrews Pass, the main waterway from the Gulf into St Andrews Bay, is Shell Island.  It’s supposed to be a great place to find shells or just to get away from the crowds.  Not much crowds right now, but we thought it would be fun to kayak to the island.  The only issue was that it can be a very busy shipping channel with container ships and fishing boats coming in and out.  But the traffic seemed light today so we launched from the jetty parking lot and paddled across the channel.  It all went fine except I managed to ship a bunch of water into my lap when I hit a wave.

We walked the beach on Shell Island for a while and managed to find a bunch of small sand dollars and a really nice shark tooth.

The way back across the pass was also uneventful although the wind was pushing us into the bay.  It took a some effort to paddle back to the jetty against the wind.  The picture below shows our path across the water as well as through the campground and on the beach.  We don’t sit around.

We loaded up the bikes and took off towards our next destination, Grayton Beach State Park, another 30 miles to the west along the coast.  Driving through Panama City and Panama City Beach and the other beach towns takes a while but it’s interesting to drive through the concrete canyons created by the high-rises in these towns.  We arrived here at 3:30 and made dinner as we are staying on Eastern time.  Then we biked into Seaside, taking some of the bike trails behind the posh neighborhoods in town.  They are almost all vacation rentals, all large, all tightly packed together, and many, many of them.  We got a little lost on those narrow, winding streets, but eventually found our way back to the main road.  We rode back to Grayton Beach just in time to see the sunset.

A bridge on the bike trail in Seaside, flanked by blown glass artwork.  It appears that this will also light up at night.