Made it to Niceville a little after lunch on Friday; boys made a bee-line of the pool and we just hung out around the homestead that day. Saturday and Monday were planned beach days….
Gulf Island Natl Seashore: It’s a drive, but, we like it. It never never seems crowded, and Saturday was even doubly so, we waited for the downpour to stop and made it to the beach around noon.
Yellow flags – waves were pretty good and there was more than a decent undertow…if we got out too far from shore it definitely made you pay attention. For today, boys are explicitly told they need to be further in than the norm.
As always, the first activity is battling the waves….at least I think that’s what he’s doing here. Or, he’s doing his best Fonzie imitation…”Ayyyy!”
Scouting the incoming waves. Note the beach behind us…nothing, nobody! It’s a Saturday during Spring Break!!!
Must be a big one on the way! Love these 1/2 Cpher sthots; I know there’s one like this from the the beach in Maui……
As usual…the waves win.
They keep coming back for more…..
And the waves keep coming back for more too!
The best part about the beach was the weather; I mean, it poured, rained cats and dogs as as I’ve ever seen it down here. But we left around 11 am and were on the beach at noon and it’s blue skies and in the high 70’s. And I know if I look back at BNS blog archives I’ll see some comments about how cold the Gulf is in early April; not this year, the water temp is 75 and it is completely awesome.
We battle the waves, we have a ball we tossed around for a while, we brought our lacrosse sticks and practiced that for a while. A nice day at the beach, but, a long day, and even with a reapplication of sunscreen I had two rosy looking boys at the end of the day.
Navarre: Monday’s stop…still a drive, but, we’ve found the best shells here so it’s a favorite as well. Green flags on the beach as we pull up….and it is literally the calmest I’ve ever seen the water at any beach down here….There’s maybe one little 1-foot wave every minute or so, and it looks like you could swim out forever.
Walk up to the beach, set our chairs down, set up the umbrella, and you can see, not 100-yards from the shore, a pod of dolphins swimming along. Very cool!
The best picture I could get of the dolphins…and I tried.
The best picture I could get of the boys with the dolphins behind them. And I tried. But look, no waves, nothing, zip, zilch.
You’ll note the rashguard shirts; a little too much sun over Saturday and Sunday……
We brought some of our snorkeling gear down; tried to snorkel once before down here but too much sand in the water….figured that if I’m ever going to see if it’s worthwhile snorkeling down here, today, with these waves, is the day.
So, Matthew and I head on out (Cpher came out a little bit, but headed back). We had decided to swim out about even with the end of Navarre pier…..got out about that far and started to see a few jellyfish and decided to head back in.
So, the snorkeling? Nothing but sandy bottom all the way out….no rocks (which means coral, which means fish). So, not so good. BUT, we’re heading back and Matthew and I wander into the largest school of fish I’ve ever seen; it was like a train, they kept coming and coming and coming. They were in front of us, they were below us, they were all around us and for a few moments there I started to think “if all these fish are here, what else is here”…..
What kind of fish? I don’t know…they were white, and they were between 6 inches and about a long. Matthew and I surfaced to talk about it and we could see one of those afore-mentioned dolphins maybe 50 feet away surfacing. Never saw one in the water with the mask on. Not sure we’d see that kind of a ‘swarm’ of fish anywhere else, not sure I’d even attempt to go snorkeling like that again in the Gulf in bigger waves, but, pretty cool for this trip.
