A Tornado Watch and a Good Time

After a few weeks of staying at home for the weekend, we were ready for a weekend away.  This time we went to St. Joseph Peninsular State Park.  We had postponed our trip from the weekend before due to a bad weather forecast.  Around Tuesday of this week, it was starting to look like we were facing another stormy weekend; however, being the fearless campers that we are we decided to let nothing stop us this weekend.  We left right after lunch on Friday hoping to avoid getting rained on as we set up at our campsite.
When we arrived, we discovered that I had reserved a site that was going to be difficult to back into.  A fellow camper pulled up right behind us and proceeded to help Bubba with backing in.  Thankfully Bubba has greatly improved in this area and before too long, we were getting set up.  It did sprinkle on us a little bit, but not too much.  About the time Bubba got us all hooked up, a ranger came by and handed him this:

Oh great, it kind of made me think of the time we spent a hurricane on a shrimp boat in the middle of the bay.  Bubba went for a look around while I put things in order on the inside (getting the channels set up on the tv).  He soon came back and wanted me to go down to the beach with him to look at the waves.

The wind was really blowing and  the waves were white capping behind us.  That is a red flag warning against any swimming in these type seas.

And, of course, that dark spot is a young man who is paying no attention to the warning flag and going for a swim.  I was ready to go.  If he was going to be that foolish, I wasn't going to hang around to watch.

This is another picture of us by a tree.  You can tell we are getting a lot of use out of our new tripod.
We returned to the trailer and I fixed ham, eggs, and grits for supper.  The tornado watch ended by 8:00 and we were able to get a good night's sleep.  The next morning after some oatmeal and strawberries, we went back out for a walk.  We wanted to pick some sites for our next trip that would be easy to get into and closer to the gulf.  I want to be able to open the window and hear the waves crashing on the beach.  There are two areas for camping.  The first is the Gulf Breeze Campground and the second is the Shady Pines Campground.    The Gulf Breeze Campground seemed closer to the water, but the sites were also more crowded there.  Still we picked out several sites there that we liked. Then we picked out several sites that we liked in the Shady Pines Campground.  

Then we went back for another walk on the beach.  It was cold and windy, but still enjoyable.  People were surf fishing and had on coats, hats, hoods, and gloves.  (I wonder if my friend Mary Ellen likes fishing that much?)  

We saw a lot of birds.  There was a bird watching walk scheduled for Sunday morning with a ranger.  As we passed leaving today, I was surprised how many people had turned out for this event.

This pelican just swam around while we took his picture.

We had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.  Then we read and played Scrabble and of course.....

Bubba won again.  This is starting to really get to me.  The man can't spell.  How is he beating me every time????

This was his reward.  Maybe I would have played better if I had know that was going to be the prize!

For supper we had barbecued pork chops in the crock pot, baked potatoes, broccoli, and tomatoes.  It was good, but I'm looking forward to the weather warming up so we can grill outside again.

St Joseph Peninsular State Park is a great place to visit. We're really looking forward to going back this summer so we can enjoy the beach.  It is a good place to go and it has the bonus of not being that far away.  If the price of gas continues to rise, this is a place we can go without too much expense.  By the way, Florida State Parks give a 50% discount to senior citizens who are Florida residents. There are some definite advantages to getting older. I'm also glad we didn't postpone getting a travel trailer until I retired.  We are enjoying these little excursions so much and we have no doubt that we did the right thing.