Best Layed Plans

Beautiful day at the beach.   Not a cloud in sight, with each step, your foot sinks into the sugary white sands, and you look to the left, then to right, and only a handful of other souls in sight.  Gonna be an awesome day.

You reach you destination,  a spot in the sand, in close proximity to the waters edge.  The surf barely has a ripple,  and the water is that picturesque emerald green.  Then it hits you.  The air is not moving, OMG it's hot!

You quickly insert the anchors for the umbrellas into the hot sand.  Umbrellas up, chairs set, cup stake anchored and ready for the first margarita of the day.  The cup of choice is the 30 oz Yeti Rambler.  Ok, I can now handle this heat.  The frozen margarita on the beach is a stroke of genius!   Cool and refreshing, and it doesn't melt in this Yeti cup of mine!

Later in the day, the wind has finally showed up.  The small ripple in the surf has now grown into full fledged wave action.  Ah, life at the beach is good!

My phone rang.  It was one of my contacts from New York needing me to a quick job in Clinton, Ms today.  I said, sorry, I'm at the beach, in a chair under and umbrella and I'm enjoying a frozen margarita right now.  The reply was a bit of silence, then the words "i am so jealous of you right now!"  Yes, life at the beach is good, and today  it is all mine!

Plans had been made to leave around 5 and venture east to Destin and meet up with a dear friend after her work day was done.  Navarre Beach is only a hop, skip and jump from Destin and we would be there lickity split.

The hour finally arrived.  We packed up our gear, and began our trek back over the sand dune for the short walk back to the beach house.   We reach the top of the dune, and good lord, the cars!  Traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see!

We are on Santa Rosa Island, accessible only by two bridges, one at Pensacola Beach, and the other, here at Navarre Beach.  Today was the Blue Angel air show, that started at 2:00, and it is now after 5!

After staring at the traffic for a minute or two,  it became obviously to me really quickly  that if we got in this line of traffic now, we might make it to Destin by midnight.  I quickly sent a message to our friend that we would have to take a rain check on our plans to meet.

Back to the water's edge we went, for another hour of heaven.  Eventually the supply of frozen margaritas was gone.  An hour has past since we had first worked our way over the top of the dune.  Here we are again,  same spot, and the line of cars seems to be even longer!

We make our way through the line of cars.  One driver politely asked if we had an extra bottle of water, as she had been in this traffic stall for over three hours!

We made it back to the beach house and got a shower and cleaned up.  We stepped outside onto the second floor deck.  It's now past 7, and the traffic is still there!  We spot some people walking along the side of the road, with gas cans in their hands.  In our view, we see little boys exit the cars  and they run over the top of the dunes.  They return in a matter of minutes, it's obvious that they have just answered the call of nature!

The line of cars finally began to disappear a little after 9.  A neighbor said this line of cars lasted til after 10 last year.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever invision a traffic jam of this magnitude.   Couldn't see it, but I'll  bet every gas station along hwy 98 toward Destin was drained dry!

Lessons learned, we will be enjoying another day at the beach today before heading back home.  Gotta let all that traffic heading west from Destin, Orange Beach, and Gulf Shores clear out first.

Don't worry my sugary white sands, we will be back in two weeks for another visit!