After Christmas Getaway 2020

The Monday after Christmas we got up and headed out to Inlet Beach near Panama City Beach, FL. We make a little detour on the way down to our favorite sausage store, Conecuh. If you’ve never had Conecuh, you are totally missing out. It is made in Evergreen, AL and I think most of the Southeastern states have stores that carry it. They have a special Christmas Hot sausage that has red and green peppers in it and it is spicy! We got several of those and a few other things. We also got some Conecuh bacon to try since its not carried in our stores.

Rob’s sister and her husband and their 6 kids rented a place down near Inlet Beach.

We go there and got everything unloaded and then drove over to Pier Park at Panama City Beach, where there’s lots of shops and restaurants. We ended up at some restaurant that we waited 45 minutes for. However, when we got in there, it was loud, very crowded, and they were not enforcing any type of social distancing. We ended up at Chili’s because we don’t have one of those back home anymore.

Tuesday
The next day we hung out at the house some of Maria’s kids got in the private pool there.

The youngest addition to their family, Serena, and I hung out.

Just before sunset we went down to the beach to try and watch it. We barely made it!

Love the beachy views

Owen came back and chowed down on several handfuls of Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Crackers that I brought to share.

When everybody got back the kids gathered around the table for some cards while Rob and I made dinner.

We made a low country boil in a sheet pan with fresh shrimp.

After dinner we sat around the table and talked while the kids continued to play.

Owen was in rare form. So entertaining. The more we laughed, the more he kept going.

Wednesday
The next day we walked and some of the kids rode bikes to the beach.

Rob and a few of the kids walked all the way over to Camp Helen State Park where they got to see Florida’s largest sand dune lake!

Rob and I cooked Gumbo for lunch and then a few of went over for a little hike at Conservation Park. Since Maria’s older 3 decided not to come the rest of us all piled into Maria’s Suburban. Alex was such a good sport with his 6 foot self crammed into the back seat with his 2 younger boy cousins.

We enjoyed a little bit of a walk watching for alligators or other swamp creatures. I think we may have been a little too noisy for them to hang around for us to see.

When we got back from the park, most everyone went to a new spot to watch the sunset. I stayed back because of a migraine coming on. So the next several pictures are ones Rob took on his phone.

Thursday we packed up the car and took one last walk/bike ride to the beach.

We also made another stop at Goatfeathers for several pounds of shrimp to bring home to freeze for future yumminess!

This area is so pretty.

We went over to Pier Park at Panama City Beach for lunch.

We ate at Hooked Pier Bar. Alex and I got the blacked grouper tacos and Rob got the shrimp basket. All of us were underwhelmed with the food.

We walked around a little before getting back to our car to drive home.

There was this really cool candy store.

This candy store had all sort of different flavor of cotton candy. I laughed so hard when I saw this trump hair cotton candy!

We are so grateful that Maria invited us to join in them on this little getaway. Honestly we believe because we went on this trip that it saved us from getting COVID. Our son Drew went to work on Monday (the day we left) and they believe that day he contracted COVID. Of course, he didn’t get symptoms till Thursday. We know that we would have seen him during that week if we weren’t gone, which would have meant we would have been exposed! So for all the people bashing travel…this trip was a blessing!