Final Beach Report #4: Friday and travel home

We’ve been home a week already so I know this is old news, but for the sake of posterity, I need to finish up the end of our trip. 🙂

Friday was our last full day.

The original plan had been to drive out to St. Andrews State Park and spend the morning there (per my sister’s request), but when we woke up, she decided she was feeling a little meh about it. Didn’t really feel with the hassle of packing up beach stuff and snacks etc. We ultimately decided to just stay put at our place.

I have no pictures, but the day basically went:

• prolonged tea + morning relax time (now that we weren’t going anywhere…)
• ocean time (my sister + BIL and all the kids + me and Ethan). My mom watched from a beach chair.
• Asher had his 1st Certified Nursing Assistant class this morning so he stayed up in the room from about 8-11 on a virtual class. (This was unfortunate timing but this class was the only possible option before school starts. It wasn’t a big deal.)
• Ivan and I went for a long walk on the beach, just the 2 of us. 💕
• lunch of leftovers in the room + Ivan had a coupon for 1 very discounted pizza to use up, so he sent Asher to pick that up. 😉
• POOL in the afternoon! We spent several hours at the non-beach side pool with the kids. It’s not as “scenic” since it’s not right on the ocean BUT it’s a large pool and the water is incredibly warm and wonderful (the beachfront pool is colder for some reason). Also, it’s half indoor (covered)/ half outdoor, so it’s great for keeping the kids out of the sun. I swam around like a fish for a long time and probably looked a bit ridiculous at my 42 years old swimming and flipping around underwater in my goggles, lol, but I absolutely love swimming in warm pool water. (It was not like, hot, just pleasantly refreshing and not cold at all!) The kids seemed to have a blast swimming there.

We planned to all go out for a farewell dinner at a seafood place called Boon Docks. My brother-in-law had found it- it was very highly rated and was known for being more of a “local” place. It’s not located on the ocean along the main tourist drag, but rather on an inland bay.

It was fun! It had a cool vibe with big beautiful trees.

Looked like a “shack” but was actually quite large and had a waitlist already at 4:30 pm.

We waited for 20-25 minutes or so on the big deck out back.

The kids bought fish food from the dispensers and had fun tossing pellets in- there must have been a ton of fish because they immediately jumped up to get each one.

My mom with her oldest grandchild. 🙂

I like this family shot a lot!

My younger niece who just turned 9, looking very trendy and beachy 🙂

Dinner was good! My sister and I had margaritas and I opted for the popcorn shrimp + grilled scallops option, with a baked potato and creamed corn for my sides.

With our big party of 11, they seated us on this private front porch area off the main dining room. It was a cool spot.

On the way out we perused these funny signs by the gift shop. Hahaha. A couple of my favorites:

Since we went to dinner early, we were back at the condo earlier than usual. (Strategic timing, so we’d avoid huge dinner crowds on a Friday night and also allow time to pack up etc. for those who wanted to.)

The just-past-sunset skies were amazing!

Is this not an incredible shot?!!? I feel like I really need to frame this one.

My sister and her husband came to our condo for drinks on the balcony, while Ethan, Asher and my oldest niece went down to the beach to look for more sand crabs.

On Saturday morning, my parents + my sister’s family were up and moving pretty early. They wanted to hit the road by 8 a.m.

My family, in usual fashion, lol, was a little slower moving. We let the boys sleep in and Ivan and I relaxed on the balcony until after everyone else headed out.

Then we quickly packed up, showered, lugged all the beach stuff down to the van and hit the road by about 9:30.

We opted to drive longer on Saturday- about 10 hours. We landed in Marion, Illinois for the night at a hotel near the interstate.

I spent a lot of the drive researching Japan! After a lot of thinking and exploring options, I think I’ve landed on an itinerary that I love. I started looking into flights and am KICKING MYSELF that we didn’t open an American Airlines credit card sooner to rack up points there. Our main “travel rewards” option is our Chase Sapphire Preferred, but the points deals for our dates/cities look way better on American….

I drove for about 3 hours of the 10 and then proceeded to get a weird, bad migraine! Which is very rare for me. Not sure what that was all about, but after several hours of trying to sleep/ close my eyes with Ibuprofen on board, it finally lifted.

We ate a late dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings right by the hotel at like 9 pm when we got in, where I was sketching out various Japan options on a napkin and discussing with the family. Haha.

On Sunday morning we had a quick hotel breakfast and hit the road! 6 hours + a McDonald’s stop for lunch later, we were home. And I already told you about our mad dash to unpack and re-set our household that evening. 🙂

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All in all, it was a great week!

It was fun to experience PCB with my sister’s family. It was nice to just….be together, without all the hustle and bustle and itineraries that come with typical sightseeing trips.

I think the kids had a blast swimming and experiencing the warm ocean waves and pretty white Gulf sand.

It was, of course, a bit different than our “usual” trips to Florida, with more people and different schedules and all of that. But it still felt relaxing in a different way and I think everyone had a good time.

I’m proud of Ethan and Asher, too. They are obviously much older than their little cousins, but they stayed really engaged with them, played with them a lot in the water, and even babysat several times. 🙂

And now that’s a wrap on our big 2026 travel! Whew. We ended up with three big trips in relatively short succession March (11 nights), June (10 nights), August (9 nights). See my travel page for all the full details.

We now have a long travel-free stretch coming up. (Well, minus a 5-day solo work trip I have back to Florida (Clearwater) at the end of Sept. That makes 3 trips to Florida in 3 months for me- definitely a record. Haha.)

I’m excited about this and am ready to shift focus to:

• back to school!
• the boys’ fall sports!
• beautiful Wisconsin FALL!!
• cozy routines as the weather cools
• soaking in our hot tub again (it’s been too hot this summer for much of that)
• movie nights + NFL football with the fireplace on
• settling into a new normal with my parents living in town
• the holiday season (not too far away already)

I love to travel but I equally love our life at home. Summer is both amazing and also consistently chaotic for us as we tend to: a) travel a lot then and b) have a lot of out-of-town guests.

I’m ready for ROUTINE, to stay home, and enjoy a long stretch of regular life. 🙂