Port St. Joe

Hooray for Saturday! Brock had a little bit of work to do this morning, but it was the kind that he just sort of had to babysit while still being engaged with us so that was ok and we had a leisurely morning. Spence and Sky were playing outside this morning almost as soon as they were up...still in their pjs. While they were outside, I was making breakfast. We are still trying to use up the grits we bought so this morning was round 2. I made the grits and some bacon crumbles and one scrambled egg apiece for us. We put finely grated cheese on top and hot sauce. It was pretty good. I think everyone feels like grits are not our favorite food and we probably won't buy it again. Problem is...one container goes a LONG way and we are only about two-thirds of the way through it so I think we'll have one more grits meal to eat.

The PJ Boys - I think Spence is Sky's puppet :O)

The kids all enjoyed more outside play time. They were playing with some other children that came out. Once we were all showered and dressed, we hopped in the Yukon with plans to find someplace to eat out for lunch. We drove along the coastline toward Port St. Joe, a direction we hadn't gone yet. It's a little town about 10 miles from here. I say little, but it did have Piggly Wiggly and Dollar General stores for groceries, unlike Mexico Beach. We found that just outside of the Mexico Beach city limits, dogs are allowed on the beach. :O) Heidi would be so glad.

We used Google local search to find restaurants in the area and I'd hoped to try a wood fired pizza place that had really great reviews, but when we drove by it, it was only open for dinner. We saw a place called Beachcombers III and I looked up its reviews on google and there were only three, but they were all excellent so we decided to give it a try. Brock and I hoped to have some local seafood and they had seafood-ish specials like shrimp baskets and fish baskets. Brock tried the fish basket which turned out to be a fried filet of Alaskan pollock sandwich (not too local) and I decided to be really daring for me and try a crabcake sandwich basket. I don't think I've ever had a crabcake before and it wasn't really what I was expecting. Two kids had burgers, one a BLT, and one grilled cheese (guess who! LOL) and they all thought their food was good. Brock and my baskets came with hush puppies, but these didn't have the same flavor as the ones we tried before; they tasted very fishy. Brock and I were both fairly disappointed in our meals and thought them pretty mediocre for the price. Bummer. Oh well. At least now we could go beach exploring with full bellies.

We drove around looking for a nice beach access, but ended up heading back towards Mexico Beach and found the access point right where the city limits are that allows dogs on the beach. It is so amazing to me how uncrowded the beaches are during this winter season at least. There were a few people fishing in the surf in both directions from where we set up our beach blanket, but we definitely had our own space for building sand castles, looking at shells, dolphin watching, walking, and running around.

Bri worked on a pit fort which everyone leaped into at some point.

We saw several dolphins that seemed to be playing, but I couldn't really get a good picture.
We saw a lot of tail thrashing.

Spence needed a little space this time. He enjoyed the feel of sand getting everywhere possible on him. 

Brynna walked and ran Heidi the most, but Brock and I took her for a little walk too. 

Just chillin' in the sunshine.

This depressed dog has such a rough life. ;o)

Spencer did some impressive jumping too.

Sky saw me trying to take pics of the dolphins and came barreling towards me making this face.
What a goof!

When we were done playing, and we needed to find a restroom, we headed in to Mexico Beach proper to find someplace for ice cream. We could only find a place called Beach Pizza that had a sign that said ice cream. We pulled into the driveway, but I just couldn't see going into a restaurant and paying those prices for the cones. We decided to go to the expensive little market that we went to earlier in the week, to just buy ice cream there and take it back to the trailer. Bryn and I went in and she chose the flavor of the same brand of ice cream we would've gotten at the pizza place and we found sugar cones there too. The total for a half gallon of ice cream and the cones was under $10. It probably would've cost us $25 at least at the pizza place so I was happy. AND we can all have ice cream tomorrow too! I made the kids complete their shower routines to rinse the sand out of their orifices before they could have their ice cream cones and it worked like a charm...fastest clean up in history.

We check out of Rustic Sands tomorrow. It has been a nice place to stay. Brock and I are working on our next couple of weeks' reservations so that feels good.