Florida is a State of Mind

A typical Florida day at Navarre Beach.

I fell in love with Florida years before I moved here. A childhood friend of mine had vacationed in Miami and came home with stories about the beautiful beaches, palm trees, a rainbow of flowers, bright blue skies, huge white marshmallow clouds and water that went on forever.

To a Southern California beach kid, I think I was seven at the time, Florida sounded like paradise. I vowed then and there that someday I'd go to that exotic land.

Through my school age years I read what books I could find at the library and learned about crocodiles, sea turtles, dolphins, manatees and colorful fish. I was hooked. I was also surprised that the state didn't have any mountains. How could that be?

The west side of Navarre Beach.

I've always been in love with the beach, so heading to Florida, a state surrounded by beaches, was just a dream away. I could envision swimming in those turquoise waters and building sandcastles in that sugar-white sand.

As years passed I met more and more people who had either vacationed in Florida, lived there or intended to travel or move there. I kept that goal in mind as I went through college and started a family. Florida was out there, on the other side of the world it seemed, just waiting for me.

Sometime in my mid-twenties I was introduced to the wonderful Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald. I raced through that series and knew that Florida was where I belonged.

Eventually, my husband, Ben, and I moved to Florida. By that time, his parents had retired to the Florida Panhandle and mine were working on the east coast, in Daytona Beach. So we also had the excuse of moving closer to family. It was also a great place to raise our daughter.

We started out in Pensacola, on the Florida Panhandle, just minutes away from the Gulf of Mexico and those beautiful beaches I'd been dreaming about all those many years. After a year we moved to Ormond Beach, which is a bedroom community right next to Daytona Beach. A couple years later we were back on the Panhandle, in Fort Walton Beach. The next year we were living on a bayou off Escambia Bay.

The east side of Navarre Beach.

Florida is a state of mind, one of exotic sights and sounds and smells. In the years we've lived here, my husband and I have traveled from one end of the state to the other.

The Keys and Key West are favorites, so is Sanibel Island. Orlando is exciting with Disney World, Epcot, MGM Grand and Universal Studios. The Everglades is filled with those alligators I'd read about as a child and every kind of bird you could imagine, my favorites being Great Blue Herons, Egrets and Osprey.

The best part of Florida is the beaches, every kind of beach you can imagine. The beaches of Miami and Fort Lauderdale are trendy. Sanibel beaches are wall to wall seashells. In Daytona Beach you can drive along the sand. In the Keys, the beaches are thin strips of sand with turquoise waters in every direction. The Panhandle beaches are sugar-white sands, sand dunes covered graced with gently waving sea-oats and the most beautiful turquoise and emerald waters you've ever seen.

A view of Navarre Beach from the pier.

I fell in love with Navarre Beach from the very first moment. Back then, thirty years ago, only a few cottages and motels were built along the beach. You could walk at water's edge for miles if you wanted and only see a handful of people.

Now there are high-rises built along the west side of the Navarre Beach Pier and untold numbers of huge beach houses. The west side of the pier has been left in its natural state with the exception of a scattering of picket fencing designed to protect the sand dunes.

My husband and I have lived in Florida off and on over the last thirty years. We moved away to Las Vegas for eleven years, but frequently vacationed back here and checked on our bayou house that was rented out to a succession of renters.

When my husband retired we moved back to our bayou house, which had to be renovated after renters tore up the house and hurricanes took out dozens of trees. Living on the bayou was never the same after Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Dennis in 2005.

Our house was built on tall pilings, so it didn't flood. But most of the other houses around the bayou flooded out and many were never rebuilt. After a couple years we sold our house and moved away to the Texas Hill County. But like I said, Florida is a state of mind, and it didn't take us long to move right back. Plus, our daughter and grandkids are here, so we're back in Florida to while away the days.

The Pier Bar at Navarre Beach.

We now live only a couple miles from Pensacola Beach. If we had the energy, we could walk or ride our bikes over the bridge, but we don't have that kind of energy these days.

Our beach days are only now and then, for leisurely strolls along the beach or sitting under beach umbrellas and gazing out at that turquoise water. Florida is a place to dream about warm sun, tropical breezes and paradise.

I'll be doing a lot of Florida posts this month, so please check back for more photos of other Florida beaches, the Everglades, the Keys, Sanibel Island and even Orlando. This is a beautiful, exotic state and I hope to share it with you all.

For those who know I love to add lists of books to my blog posts, here's one I'm sure you'll enjoy. As I already mentioned, I fell deeper in love with Florida while reading John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. So here is a list of those wonderful books in order. All the series is now available in eBook format for those, like me, who love to read their books on a Kindle, Nook, iPad or other eReader.



Floridians fishing on the Navarre Beach pier.

The Travis McGee Series by John D. MacDonald:

The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
The Quick Red Fox
A Deadly Shade of Gold
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Darker than Amber
One Fearful Yellow Eye
Pale Gray for Guilt
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
Dress Her in Indigo
The Long Lavender Look
A Tan and Sandy Silence
The Scarlet Ruse
The Turquoise Lament
The Dreadful Lemon Sky
The Empty Copper Sea
The Green Ripper
Free Fall in Crimson
Cinnamon Skin
The Lonely Silver Rain

Me on the pier with the beach high-rises in the background.

I've read every single one of the Travis McGee books and highly recommend them all. I guarantee that you'll soon fall in love with Florida too.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my book, Bayou Blues and Other Sorrows, which is a collection of eight short stories and eight poems, many of which originated from the years when we lived on a Florida bayou.

The cover on Bayou Blues and Other Sorrows is from a photo I took of a sunset on our bayou. Yes, Florida is a state of mind.

BAYOU BLUES - Amazon/Kindle/US

BAYOU BLUES - Amazon/Kindle/UK

BAYOU BLUES - Barnes&Noble/Nook

BAYOU BLUES - Apple/iBookStore/itunes

Bayou Blues and Other Sorrows is also available at Sony, Kobo, Diesel and Smashwords.

Bayou Blues and Other Sorrows is a collection of short stories and poems touching on issues that all may face at one time or another, from lost love to life changing crossroads to moments of pure happiness. These are heartwarming stories you won't want to miss.

The short stories are:

"A Kiss is Just a Kiss" – People are not always who and what they appear to be. A kiss is not always just a kiss, it may have consequences.

"I Love You, Joe Montana" – This is a story about love renewed.

"Checking Out" – There are many crossroads in life. Check out? Or is life too beautiful to leave behind?

"The Night of the UFO" – Pure happiness can come at the oddest of moments. So how many Whiskey Sours do you need to see a UFO?

"Earthquakes" – Some people enter the world with a bang.

"Faded Love" – Faded love is better than no love at all.

"Harry's Garden" – How far will a scorned woman go to get even with her cheating husband?

"Old Dogs Need Love Too" – A story about love lost and love found.

The poems are: "Bayou Blues," "Cartwheels," "In a Café," "Sweet Lips of Time," "Barefoot," "Sunshine and Promises," "The Turtle," and "Tumbleweeds."

I hope you'll give Bayou Blues and Other Sorrows a try. These are heartfelt stories and poems which I believe you'll savor and enjoy.

As always, please feel free to add comments below. I love hearing from my readers. Also, feel free to add Florida books that you have written or your favorites from other authors. Be sure to check back from time to time for more Florida posts.

A Sandcastle on Navarre Beach

A Sandcastle on Navarre Beach.

I have always been in love with sandcastles. Growing up in southern California, my family went to the beach most every weekend all summer long. Laguna Beach was my favorite, because of the rocky shoreline that revealed starfish, sea urchins and other sea creatures when the tide was out. I also loved Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, because of all that sand which was great for building sandcastles.

At an early age my parents taught me how to build a sandcastle using my hands to form the walls, then digging the moat and forming the outer walls. Fingers worked just fine to create windows and doors. No, we didn't have plastic forms to build sandcastles back then, just our hands and a lot of imagination. When the castle was complete, my dad showed me how to drip sand onto the structure to create the roof, spires and other decorative elements. Then it was all topped off with an assortment of seashells and colorful sea glass.

These days people use plastic forms and a variety of plastic shovels and rakes to build a sandcastle. It's still a fun thing to do, but not quite as unique and artistic as the ones I built as a child.

Yesterday my husband and I attended the Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival. I expected to see an assortment of sandcastles, but such was not the case. Instead, there were the following sand creatures: a crocodile, a sea turtle, a gorilla head, horse heads, a snake, Humpty Dumpty, a giant eye and a giant face. Oh, there was also a race car, but only one sandcastle. Go figure. You can see the lone sandcastle in the photo above.

I'd love a beach festival of just sandcastles, but maybe sandcastles aren't popular these days? Oh well, I guess I'll have to go down to the beach and build my very own sandcastle, just to see if I still know how to do it the old fashioned way. On the other hand, when Hurricane Isaac battered the Gulf Coast several weeks back, I walked along the beach collecting plastic forms, rakes and shovels for building sandcastles. I wondered how all those brightly colored plastic forms ended up abandoned and half buried in the sand. Anyway, I now have enough plastic tools to build a modern day sandcastle.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any photos of those sandcastles I built all those many years ago, when I was just a kid. Well, at least I have the memories. One of the things I remember from those long ago days, was watching the rising tide wash away the sandcastle at the end of the day. There was something special about creating a momentary work of art, a sandcastle here for a few hours and then gone.

For those who might be interested in the Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival which continues through Sunday, here's the link with all the info.

Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival

If you want to see more photos of the sand sculptures I mentioned above, and some enticing photos of Navarre Beach, check out the two blog posts I did yesterday.

For those of you who know I love to make lists of great books to read, well, here's a list of sandcastle fiction. (Listed in no particular order.)

Sandcastle Fiction:

Sandcastles by Luanne Rice*
Sandcastle and Other Stories by Justin Bog**
Sand Castles by Antoinette Stockinberg**
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
Sandcastles by April Hill
The Sand Castle by Rita Mae Brown
Sandcastles of Love by Sydell I. Voeller
Castles on the Sand by E. M. Tippetts
Sandcastles by H. H. Campbell
Sand Castles and Seashores by S. C. Harvey

All of the above books are available in eBook format.

*A book I've read and very much enjoyed by one of my favorite authors, Luanne Rice. I actually have a hardback copy of this keeper book.

**To-Be-Read Books on my Kindles (Two, my old Kindle Keyboard and new Kindle Fire).

Note: My book list above would have been longer, but there aren't that many sandcastle books. So maybe I need to write one? Just sayin'...

Please feel free to comment below and add any sandcastle books that I might have missed.

Before I forget, I came across a how-to book about building sandcastles. So in case anyone is interested, here it is:

Sandcastles Made Simple by Lucinda Wierenga

Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival

Sand sculptures at the festival.

The Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival started today and runs through the weekend. Ten professional sand sculpture artists are in town for the event. Also, twenty amateur sand sculpture artists are competing for prizes.

Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival

My husband and I went to Navarre Beach this afternoon for the first day of the Sand Sculpture Festival. What an awesome day of bright sun, turquoise Gulf waters and lots and lots of sand.

Following are some photos of today's sand sculptures.

A close-up of the sand gator. 

I think my favorite was the sand gator. But the sea turtle and the gorilla are close seconds.

I wanted to jump right in and start on my own sand sculpture. But that wasn't an option today.

My mind was instantly scrolling through all those sandcastles built in years gone past. Of course, my favorite was the time my husband and I sculpted a sand mermaid. Then our daughter, niece and nephew decorated the mermaid with dried sea-grass and seashells. Oh, those were the days!



The sand gorilla.

The ten professional sand sculpture artists were busy working on their entries for the festival.  So I took some photos of their unfinished works.

A sand sculpture artist at work.



An unfinished sand sculpture.

 

 

The unifinished sand sculptures were so intriguing that I may just have to head back to Navarre Beach on Sunday afternoon to see the finished products.

 

 

 

A shaved-ice stand.

 

 

 

 

 

No beach festival is complete without craft, souvineer and food vendors. Everything from a lemonade stand to a shaved-ice stand to t-shirts to clothes with bling. This festival has it all.

 

 

Blingy Boutique - boots, clothes & jewelry with bling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't forget to take a look at my earlier post today, "Greetings from Navarre Beach, Florida," for an assortment of enticing beach photos.

  

For those looking for another list of great books, check out tomorrow's post about sandcastles.

 

Greetings From Navarre Beach, Florida

A bright, sunny day on Navarre Beach. Photo from pier.

This was an awesome day at Navarre Beach. Bright sun, puffy white clouds, tranquil turquoise Gulf waters and sugar-white sand.  The Florida Gulf Coast doesn't get much better than this.

Here's a quick photo tour of Navarre Beach.

I took a long stroll down the Navarre Beach Pier. What a perfect place for great photos.

Navarre Beach Pier

Walking on the pier is only $1 and fishing is $4 to $7 depending on age, with kids 5 and under free.

For those who love to fish, the pier is a great place to catch pompano, flounder, cobia and mackerel. If you're like me, the pier is just a great place to gaze at all that beautiful water, sand and cerulean blue skies.


Beach Bar/Restaurant at the Navarre Beach Pier

Navarre Beach Vacation Guide

Navarre Beach - Beaches to Rivers


I took a bunch of photos today which I hope you'll enjoy.

The Beach Bar at the Navarre Beach Pier was packed with a Friday lunch crowd.


View from the Navarre Beach Pier.

Only a handful of people were walking or fishing on the pier. One little boy, about five years old, reeled in a small sand shark. After his dad took his picture with the shark, it went back into the water.


The pier is a favorite spot for retirees, who come equipped with a fishing wagon, complete with fishing gear, an ice-chest and sun umbrella.


The youngest person on the pier today was a seventeen month old toddler in a pink bikini. She was determined to walk the pier on her very own two feet, shod in pink Crocs.



Retirees fishing on the pier.

To the west of the pier are high-rise condos and beyond that a long line of beach houses. To the east of the pier the beach is just a spit of pristine sand and sand-dunes.

 I remember this beach from way-back-when, minus the high-rise condos and only a handful of beach houses.

Navarre Beach has changed through the years, but it's still as awesome as ever.

A sea of umbrellas west of the pier.

To the west of the pier was a sea of umbrellas. To the east only a handful of beach-goers.

The beach east of the pier.

Be sure to check out my next post about the Navarre Beach Sand Sculpture Festival which started today and runs through Sunday. I took a bunch of photos of the sand sculptures that you won't want to miss.