At 6:55 on our second morning at Grayton Beach, Maya and I had our stretch of sand to ourselves, apart from a man with a metal detector and a few dozen ghost crabs that froze every time we got close. The sand was still cool under bare feet. The Gulf was flat, clear and that pale green that makes a Miami kid say "it looks fake." Five hours later the same sand had Nico hopping from foot to foot, and the thermometer clipped to the camper door read 91.
That became our pattern for three nights on the Panhandle at the end of the summer loop: beach early, camper in the middle of the day, beach again late. It only worked because of something none of our summer trips had before, a 30-amp plug.
Bending the 70 rule
Dana's 70 rule is simple. If the forecast dew point is over 70, we don't tent camp in Florida. Grayton sat at 74 to 76 every night we were there. In the dome tent that would have been Fort De Soto all over again, four people lying awake and sticking to their sleeping bags. In the pop-up, with the roof AC the previous owners added, it was a normal night's sleep. The unit rattles for a second when it kicks on, then settles into a steady hum, and it held the inside around 76 while the picnic table outside was still 84 at 10 p.m. The kids' end, with its curtain pulled, ran a little cooler than ours, which Maya pointed out more than once.
We picked up this site as a cancellation back in February, after a week of checking the state park reservation page every morning before school. Three nights cost $151, about $50 a night, a hair more than Bahia Honda and worth it.
Getting there on Father's Day
We came down from Chattanooga on Sunday, June 21, after a morning at the Tennessee Aquarium. Somewhere in Alabama the kids figured out we'd crossed into Central time and gained an hour, and Nico wanted to know if that meant his birthday would come sooner. We rolled in around 6:30, and setup took 20 minutes, which felt like a small miracle next to the 50 it took us in February.
Shade, bugs, bathroom: some scrubby oaks and pines on the edge of the site, biting flies only on the lake side late in the day, and a clean bathhouse a short walk away. Good enough on all three. Dinner was smash burgers on the griddle. I'd like to say Father's Day felt special, but mostly it felt like I had driven a lot. Dana handed me something cold and took over cleanup, which was the gift I wanted.
Beach early, AC at noon
The beach is a walk from the campground, not a step, so we settled into a schedule:
- 6:45 to 9:30: beach. Café con leche in the white enamel mugs for Dana and me before we left, juice boxes for the kids.
- 10 to 4: camper, AC, lunch, cards, Maya's nature journal and a nap for anyone who wanted one. Nico said he didn't want one and slept for an hour.
- 5 to sunset: back to the water, then dinner.
The Gulf was in the mid 80s, almost too warm, and the flag at the beach access was yellow two mornings and red one afternoon. On the red day we stayed on the sand and built a moat. On the yellow days an adult was in the water with each kid, and Nico wasn't allowed past his belly button, a rule he checked by lifting his shirt every few minutes.
My mistake came on day one, when I decided 11 a.m. was "still morning." The sand was hot enough that Nico sprinted for the towel, and his left water shoe disappeared somewhere in the dune grass on the way. That was this trip's missing shoe. We never found it.
Western Lake
The best surprise was Western Lake, one of the coastal dune lakes this part of the Panhandle is known for. The water is the color of strong tea, and when we walked over on our last afternoon, the outfall was open: a shallow channel where the brown lake water ran across the sand into the clear Gulf. Nico stood with one foot in each and reported that one was warm and the other was "warmer." Maya sat on the bank and drew the line where the two colors met, then wrote "tannins?" in the margin, which means I owe her a library trip.
The trail along the lake winds through dunes and low, wind-bent trees. At 7 a.m. it was lovely. At 1 p.m. it was not, and we turned around after ten minutes.
We were hitched and rolling toward Ocala by 9:30 on the 24th, with sand in the cooler drain, sand in the canvas folds and, as I found out last week, sand in a cup holder in the Pilot's folded-down third row. I'm still finding it. I don't mind much.
