Days 310-313: Seeing our Boys

Rosemary Beach, FL (housed)

November 23-26, 2022

(Yet another catch-up blog)

Kevin and Brianna were already at the house her folks rented in Rosemary Beach when we arrived yesterday; Eric arrived today with G, a friend of Kevin’s who picked up Eric in Birmingham yesterday. We are so very thankful be with our boys. Brianna’s folks are wonderful hosts who shared this beach house with our family.

I have never been to this part of Florida. We took some time to explore some nearby trails.

Camp Helen is Florida state park that was a former resort for the employees of an Alabama textile mill. It’s also the largest coastal sand dune lake in Florida. There’s a huge variety of biomes here – from sand dune to maritime forest.

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner was an all-day affair with some blended traditions: Lisa made sausage balls in the morning plus deviled eggs with our dinner. We cooked 10 lbs of potatoes for mashing and made macaroni and cheese, too. Of course we all agreed that the best cranberry sauce comes from the can and has ridges on it.

Kevin doesn’t know his own strength – I asked him to twist the lid off this jar

Thanksgiving dinner was on the screen porch of the beach house; the temperature was just right for us to be outside. Brianna decorated the table with natural items she’d collected on the way to the beach.

This area of Florida has a few ‘developer towns’ like Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach: developers bought the area and created family-friendly areas of residences and small shops. They have also set aside some land for nature trails.

We explored a trail in Alys Beach. It’s in the midst of a lot of residences but there were some cool wild things like carnivorous pitcher plants and a bear track.

We had heard that there are bears in the area. In fact, there was an information display at Camp Helen describing what to do if a bear is encountered. I’ve been on a mission to see a bear ever since we saw the bear crossing signs at the Alligator River Marina – I still haven’t seen one, but now we have evidence that one was near.