White Sand Beaches (March 10-15, 2021)
“After a visit to the beach, it’s hard to believe we live in a material world” - Pam Shaw
Charley and I just spent five glorious days at Henderson Beach State Park in Destin Florida. Destin is located on the Florida panhandle and is known for it’s white-sand beaches and beautiful turquoise water. We were lucky enough to enjoy absolutely perfect weather, with sunny skies and temperatures hovering around 75 degrees each day. Henderson Beach State Park is nestled in the middle of town but feels like it’s own little oasis amongst the hustle and bustle of the main strip. You can’t even hear the highway from the campground and once you’re there you’ve forgotten all about the sights and sounds of the rest of the area. As an added bonus, the campground has it’s own private beach with access a short walk through the campground. We now know why reservations at Henderson Beach were so difficult to get. As a matter of fact, Destin was the very first place we knew we wanted to visit on this trip, and reservations at Henderson Beach were the very first reservations that we made so we’ve been looking forward to this stop the longest. Initially, we were only able to book one night – at site number 21 but Charley was put on a notification list for cancellations and he was able to secure four more nights at site number 42. This meant we had to switch sites after the first night. It wasn’t a problem at all though because the staff had site 42 ready for us early so we didn’t have to vacate the park like we thought we’d have to. Henderson Beach was definitely worth the extra effort in getting reservations and moving sites. This post’s fun fact: The sand on the beach at Destin squeaks when you walk on it. An explanation is in the photos.
Charley and I spent most of our days at Henderson Beach relaxing, reading, and taking long walks. Between strolling the beach, hiking the park’s nature trails and walking to town for ice cream, we managed to log over 30 walking miles while we were there. All that walking was just what we needed to negate all the eating we did! One of the things I like most about camping is having our kitchen and refrigerator with us so that we can do our own cooking. We’ve never been the type to eat out a lot so we really enjoyed this stop for the time it allowed us to cook some delicious meals. We bought a Blackstone griddle specifically for this trip but bought it early enough that Charley could perfect his griddle skills while we were still home. This week we enjoyed chicken fajitas, breakfast burritos, and cheesesteak sandwiches (made with the beef we bought at the Harvest Host farm we stayed at in PA) all cooked on the Blackstone. Also this week Charley got a chance to use the portable smoker that I got him as a retirement gift. We bought a pork butt back in Gaffney with the idea that we’d have a bad weather day for smoking it at Destin. Turns out we never had a bad weather day but none-the-less spent almost an entire day tethered to our campsite while the smoker did it’s magic. Totally worth a day away from the beach because the pulled pork was delicious!! It weighed nine pounds total so we have lots of pulled pork in our freezer for future meals.
There are definitely plenty of other things to do in Destin if you’re into the beach town vibe (think arcades, mini-golf, go-carting and shopping). I came into town thinking that I’d really like to try snorkeling because I’ve never done it. Unfortunately, it was pre-snorkeling season in Destin, so we decided to take a sunset dinner cruise instead. I’m almost happy it turned out this way because the dinner cruise was really incredible. Again, we were blessed with absolutely perfect weather so the “sunset” portion of the dinner cruise was amazing! The dinner was good. I had the stuffed chicken and Charley had the filet – nothing to write home about but definitely worth the ticket price. There was also a live two-piece jazz band on board so the atmosphere was pretty amazing too. The dinner tables were spaced adequately apart so social distancing was easy. We were free to move around the boat but it was large so there were rarely people very close to each other. As a matter of fact, Charley and I spent a good portion of the three hours cruise on the top deck completely alone. I don’t know what the others were thinking because the view was incredible from up there.
Also while in Destin, Charley began to research a new hitch for our rig. This was something he had been thinking about for a while and since the hitch we left home with was pretty basic, he thought an upgrade would be good before we began our trek out west. As luck would have it, he found an RV dealership relatively close that had a gently used version of the hitch he was looking for and more importantly, the time to get it installed while we were still in Florida. It was a bit of a drive to get there, about 3 hours round trip, and it took a few hours to install but Charley is super pleased with the end result. As the passenger in the vehicle, I can even tell how much more stable we feel driving down the road. Time and money well spent!
Also this week, we tried to get some photos of a few of the necessary evils of living on the road - laundromat laundry and getting rid of our wastewater, better known as “dumping the tanks”. For those of you who might not know how it works, some campgrounds have no hookups at all – meaning we aren’t hooked up to electricity, sewer, or water and need to be completely self-sufficient with what we have with us. This is known as boondocking. Generally speaking, we can survive about four days with the water in our holding tanks, the electricity in our batteries, and before needing to dump our wastewater tanks. Some campgrounds have full hookups – sewer, water, and electricity are all provided at the site. Henderson Beach had water and electric hookups at our site but no sewer hence the need to empty our tanks this week. When we’re at a campground without sewer hookups, we tend to use the bathhouses for showers so that our wastewater tanks don’t fill up as quickly. The bathhouses at Henderson Beach were beautiful and very private so showering there was actually nicer than showering in our camper. Laundry is never fun whether you’re at home or on the road. I was surprised at how pricy it was to do laundry at the campground though. $4 to wash and dry a load. Maybe that’s the going rate these days but it seemed kind of steep to me. We’ll get a better idea of what “normal” is as we visit other locations.
I know we have so much more to look forward to but I really didn’t want to leave Destin! I think it’s mostly due to the gorgeous Florida weather versus the brutal winter we had in New York. We are happy to hear that the weather is finally breaking back at home and we are hoping sunny skies and 75 degree weather is just around the corner for all our loved ones. Today we finally start heading west!
Just an FYI - I never ever filter my photos. The vast majority of the pictures I post are taken with my Google Pixel phone camera. We did bring our fancy Nikon camera with us but my phone actually takes better pictures.
