Santa Rosa Beach Blues

It's Friday, the last day of our annual end-of-summer vacation to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and I'm sitting on the front porch watching it rain.  We had great weather Sunday - Wed., but it's rained the last two days.  We're staying at Cracker Jack in Old Florida Village, the same house we've stayed in four of the last seven or eight consecutive years we have vacationed here.

Maybe it's because our vacation ends tomorrow, but I'm feeling a bit melancholy this afternoon.  I can't shake the sensation that this weeks marks the end of something . . . something that has been an important part of our lives the last several years.  We're already set to vacation in Mount Zion National Park in Utah next summer, so it's quite possible we might not get back to Santa Rosa beach for a couple of years, if at all.  J.P. will be 11 then and Joe, 7, which means a different sort of beach vacation, I think.

Santa Rosa Beach is changing, too.  For the first time since we started coming here immediately following the economic downturn in 2008-09, I've noticed a lot of construction projects underway.  New residential developments, new houses and new restaurants/bars are being built and may well turn what was a sleep little beach town on 30A into a more upscale, populated resort area, like Sea Grove or Rosemary Beach.  If that happens, I'll be sad because I've always enjoyed the fact that Santa Rosa Beach is like a small town that just happens to be on the ocean.

It's also the first vacation we've taken where I haven't been able to check in with my mom daily and have tell her in detail what we've been doing.  When the boys and I called her last night, she asked several times where we were and when we were coming home.  I feel guilty vacationing down here, going to the beach and relaxing, knowing that she's struggling so much mentally and physically.  Something tells me that by this time next year, it will be difficult to carry on a conversation with her on the telephone, although I hope I'm wrong about that.

I just me our friend Jed - who owns and operates an ice cream shop in Blue Mountain Beach - for a beer at an Irish bar the locals frequent.  I won't recount our history with Jed here other than to say we met him at his family's newly opened ice cream shop when he was 17 or 18 and now he's 26.  Grown up in many ways.  We saw him last night and the boys gave him the swag from Nashville we brought for him.  Later, he texted me and asked if I wanted to grab a beer today.  It was fun sitting at the bar and talking with him, man to man.  He's at a great stage in his life, with so many great things ahead of him as he enters his late 20's.  He was such a good kid - so great to J.P. when he was a toddler - and now he's a fine young man, an adult.  Damn, that makes me feel old, for sure.

Over nearly a decade that we've been coming here, I've aged and my life has changed.  Santa Rosa Beach - the town, I mean - is changing.  But the beach itself and the ocean look exactly the same.  That's one of the things I think I love about the beach and ocean - any beach and ocean, really.  They never change.

Santa Rosa Beach always will have a special place in my heart.  I've spent the best vacations of my life here, for the most part.  I've played in the pool and on the beach with J.P. as an infant, toddler and a young boy.  Joe has enlivened our vacations here with his exuberance and sense of humor and sheer love, from day one, of the beach.  I've had coffee at several coffee shops I loved - Grayt Coffee house (2 different locations and sadly closed now), Starbucks (in Grayton Beach, also closed), Sunrise Coffee (just can't figure it out) and Ama Vida in Seaside (great coffee).  I've read many, many books here, especially at Cracker Jack.  I've had so many great morning runs on the Longleaf Trail I discovered, on the bike path that runs along 30A and on the "Redfish Lake" route I created.

If it's over, we've had a good run of vacations here.