Santa Rosa Beach is in our rear view mirror, receding into the distant past, as we quickly resume our busy lives.  

Work, school, baseball practices and games, interrupted yesterday by a trip to the emergency room with Jude when she got a kidney stone.  Hopefully, she will slow down a bit and not work so hard as she waits to pass the kidney stone.  

Jude and I began going to Santa Rosa Beach more than a decade ago, before Joe was born, when JP was a toddler.  Over the years, we've stayed in multiple houses - some more than once - in Old Florida Village, across 30A from the beach.  Two swimming pools, maybe 30 houses on a dead end street, quiet.  Perfect for our family.

It's funny but being away from Santa Rosa Beach for two years because of the pandemic, I had forgotten how much we love it there.  In many ways, it was Sewanee for us before we began going, regularly, to Sewanee.  A place where we felt comfortable, like slipping on a old sweater.  Our home away from home, albeit seven hours away.

Some highlights from our trip:

• Jude's early morning walks on the beach are probably reason enough to go to Santa Rosa Beach at least once a year.  Every morning, Jude got up before the rest of us and drove the golf cart to the beach.  As the sun rose, she walked along the shoreline and picked up shells that she brought home to show us later.  Those early morning walks, I think, center her and recharge her batteries (trite, but true).
• I loved being able to run, again, on the Longleaf Pine Trail.  I loved, even more, taking JP for his first run on the trail.  The trailhead is one street down from Old Florida Village, so it's really easy to get to for me.  I don't remember when I first discovered it but it was long, long ago.  
• Although the temperature of the water was cold - cold enough that there were never more than a handful of people in the ocean at any given time - Joe, predictably, couldn't get enough of the ocean.  He would be perfect content to stay in the ocean all day long, getting knocked down by the waves over and over again.  It's paradise for him, much like it was for me at his age and through my teens and twenties.  I've often thought that as a California native, the ocean is in my blood.  It's in his, too, or so it seems.
• We had a blast at Shunk's Gulley, watching the NCAA tournament.  The boys, on different days, tried raw oysters, which was impressive, and hilarious.  JP liked them more than Joe did but, still, I was impressed that Joe tried one.  
• Sadly, the Pickle Factory - our favorite pizza joint on 30A - closed, apparently about a month before we arrived.  Grayton Beach won't be the same.  Also, our friend, Jed (and his family), sold the Blue Mountain Beach Creamery last December, so we didn't get to see him.  We've known Jed since he began working at the Creamery at age 14 or 15.  Now, he's in his mid-20's and we keep up with him on Instagram or with the occasional text message.  Still, something was lost for us not seeing him - and getting a photo - at the Creamery.
• As usual, renting a golf cart was key.  It gave us the flexibility to be two places at once, with or without the boys.  JP, of course, was itching to drive it.  We let him drive around the neighborhood with one of us supervising from the passenger seat.
• We saw a beautiful sunset one evening at Blue Mountain Beach.
• Jude and the boys invented a baseball game - played with beach paddleballs - and we played one morning at the beach.  Over the years, Jude and the boys have invented all kinds of games to play on the beach.  It's cool that they still want to play with us, particularly since that will change sooner rather than later.
• I finished three books during our stay - Scoundrel, The Mercenary, and, finally, Jay Drescher's Glasby's Treasure.  Jay is a lawyer friend of mine and Glasby's Treasure was his debut novel - a tale of pirates in the late 18th century, self-published 5 years ago.  I had meant to read it forever and finally did, finishing it, appropriately enough, sitting in a beach chair on the beach, a few yards from the ocean.  Great book.
• We discovered the Grove, an outdoor restaurant on 30A, right before Blue Mountain Beach, and had a wonderful late afternoon lunch there.  The Grove's lease is up in October, we learned, so my guess is that it won't be there when we return.

Santa Rosa Beach has changed a lot in the two years since we last visited.  It's still much less developed than Seaside, Watercolor, etc., but it's slowly catching up.  Old Florida Village is "gated" now, which was strange.  There are new houses, and developments, being built all over the place.  A neighbor told us her house in Old Florida Village had tripled in value over the past decade.  Time marches on.

A great week at the beach for our family.