The Florida Coast

We left St. Louis as the sky was full of stars and the moon was shin­ing bright. Our car­a­van was four deep as we made the trek from Mis­souri down to Florida. One of the pas­sen­gers rid­ing with us is preg­nant so we had to stop more fre­quently which was kind of nice. Being in Cal­i­for­nia away from my fam­ily makes me long to see them — hear their voices, see their dif­fer­ent facial expres­sions, and find out how they are doing with this thing called Life. So even though we had to stop more fre­quently than we had planned on, I loved watch­ing my nieces’ and nephew’s sleepy eyes as they woke up, crawled out of the back of the van, and took my hand as we made our way into the yucky gas sta­tion bath­rooms. I loved hear­ing my dad recount our jour­ney so far as he wore his flo­res­cent green secu­rity hat. I sat back and took it all in — the peo­ple com­plain­ing about stop­ping, the upset stom­achs from too much road trip junk food, and of course the karaoke in the car. It was one fun road trip full of puffy eyes with sore backs and lots of love and laugh­ter with those I hold dear.

As we pulled into the park­ing lot of our condo, everyone’s excite­ment shined in their faces. We raced to unload the cars so that we could make it to the beach before the sun set. The sun shone in the sky above the deep green ocean as we laid down our tow­els on the soft white sand. I raced to feel the warm water wash over my feet. After expe­ri­enc­ing the ice cold waters of the Cal­i­for­nia beaches, I longed for the warm water of the Florida coast. As I reclined on the beach and splashed in the water with my fam­ily, I thought to myself, “We’re here. We’re finally here. Time to take a break, relax, and have a lot of fun.” And that is exactly what we’ve been doing ever since.

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