8/30-9/9: Florida's Heavenly Grayton Beach State Park

In all the dozen or so years Steven and I have visited Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle, we'd never been unable to get across this spit of land while walking along the beach. On the last day of August last year, the situation looked more challenging with the rushing waters meeting the Gulf of Mexico. No doubt the area's recent heavy storms had contributed to the sand giving way and the water pouring in from the nearby lakes to the gulf.

On our countless previous walks, we'd been accustomed to nothing more than a couple of inches of water at the worst and normally just an endless stretch of sand.

Steven attempted to wade through first, wanting to check out how deep the water was and how strong the current was before I followed him. After a few feet, he turned back, saying it was too dangerous to proceed any further. 

Even if we couldn't enjoy a long walk along the shore, we did take pleasure in the sunset that same night.

9/1: The storms had let up sufficiently to allow swimming for the first time since our arrival several days earlier.

A few years ago we bought this beach tent that was perfect for me as I didn't feel comfortable being out in the blazing sun for hours on end. It was ventilated on the back and sides so I could feel the gulf breeze without getting the sun's intense heat.

Steven has always been much more of a sun-lover than I, preferring to 'bake' in the sun with very little time in the sun tent. We both apply copious amounts of sunscreen but I wouldn't want Steven's dermatologist to witness Steven spending hour after hour in the sun. I was able to just poke my head out of the cabana to take this photo of him!

Believe me, I didn't crop people out of these shots - the cabin beach at Grayton Beach State Park is normally really this blissfully empty almost all the time! That is part of the reason why we keep coming back year after year to our little piece of heaven on earth! 

If other people do get too close to us, we just up and move further down the beach so we have uninterrupted views and peace and quiet. Fortunately, the little cabana is very light and, therefore, very portable and folds up at the end of the day into a small tube-like bag.

The long walkway down to the beach is on the right.

Seeing this elderly man walk past us that first day of September reassured us that all was 'right' with the world as we'd been watching him on his daily afternoon walk on every visit for the last dozen or so years. I've always wondered where he lives, where he's from, and what his story is as he is so much a part of our Grayton experience.

On our walk that day, we saw a number of these things all along the beach that looked like very ripe bananas.

9/3:

Another shot of the empty beach from the walkway:

9/4: 

I must have spent an hour off and on while reading and watching this one sand crab digging into this small hole, throwing out sand, and repeating the process time and time again.

This part of the Florida Panhandle is known as the Emerald Coast but you wouldn't have known it for the turbulent waters we'd experienced our first four or five days at Grayton in 2020. These glorious sea-green waters were as blissful as one can ever hope to swim in. 

When we walked around the state park's cabins, this was a view of the rear of our cabin visible through the forest.

Last year, when we were assigned a cabin further from the beach, I admit to some initial grousing. However, when I realized there was this beautiful and peaceful walk to the beach along a trail instead of the road, I thought we'd struck gold! In the spring and early summer, this expanse is full of water lilies so I was surprised it had dried up almost totally this late in the summer.

What a magical way to reach the beach by taking this pretty trail that hardly anyone else seems to have discovered!

9/5: This looked like another day of pure bliss, right? It was until we found out that swarms of biting flies had invaded the beach to an extent we'd never experienced on any other visit. It got so bad we ended up having to move to another area of the beach. We talked to park staff, one of whom described the dog flies as being like house flies with fangs! We were told that the flies are often a problem in August and September, especially when winds from the north blow the flies from the forest to the beach. It was pretty unpleasant as you can imagine! I found the only thing that helped was to wrap myself like a mummy with towels to reduce the flies having too much skin to feast on! Not the way you envision enjoying a beach vacation all wrapped up in 90-degree weather.

Fortunately, our sun shelter was pretty light to move to another area of the beach where there were fewer flies, for a short time at least.

Grayton Beach is obviously on a flight path for the nearby Eglin Air Force Base as Steven and I have regularly been entertained by Air Force jets flying at very low levels on what we have figured must be training runs while we relax on the beach. Several times a day, we look up to watch noisy low-flying planes pulling banners behind them advertising cheap summer garb from beach stores.

9/6:

The sign marked the state park boundary on the beach.

9/7: To escape the nasty flies at the cabin beach we decided to return to the park's camping beach located a couple of miles east. I purposely said 'return' as the camping area and its beach were all we knew of the state park for the first eight or so years we came down to Grayton.

We were so enamored with our annual respite at Grayton that many years ago we donated money to the park so that this bench could be built at the entrance to the camping beach for people to rest a spell and enjoy watching the beautiful sunsets. 

Because it catered to so many more people, the camping beach was far more packed than what we'd gotten used to at the cabin beach the last few years. The flies seemed far less prevalent so the 'crowds' didn't bother us!

9/8: Some more shots of our cabin in case you missed the last post:

To reach the camping beach, we had to drive past this small lagoon. In our 'old camping days,' we used to bring down to Grayton a small inflatable kayak that Steven especially loved to maneuver through the lake and lagoon that abutted our camping spot. He could even take it as far as the expanse of water in this post's first shots!

I have never grown tired of watching the sea oats flutter in the gulf breeze.

You can perhaps now appreciate how the pristine sandy beach helped Grayton Beach State Park be named America's Best Beach last year!

To recapture our old days, we walked through the camping area again and what we had always considered our own private beach from our favorite camping spot. In our camping years, we made sure to reserve our favorite spot eleven months to the minute in advance, the earliest time possible to make a reservation for the following year! It was nothing short of magical to set up our 36-foot-long travel trailer in our spot that had access to a short trail to the lake beach. Steven loved to leave his inflatable kayak there so he could leave anytime for the 'open water'!

9/9: This photo from our last day would have to suffice until we returned to Grayton on September 27th for two more weeks in our little piece of heaven on earth.

Next post: An idyllic time at Wakulla Springs State Park en route to Hudson near Tampa.

Posted on March 23rd, 2021, from our home in Denver's western suburbs. It is another sad day for the people of Colorado as we grapple with understanding yet another horrific mass shooting all too close to home. The city of Boulder just a short drive north of us has always had the reputation of being a peaceful enclave for people searching for an alternative lifestyle. How tragic that Boulder is another city that has lost its innocence and joined the far too long a list of communities that have witnessed such senseless gun violence. Please make sure to tell your loved ones you love them and hug them tight when you can.