A day at the beach

Yesterday was a beautiful day on the gulf coast so we decided we were going to the beach. Richard was going to do some fishing and the kids and I were going to play in the sand and explore. We decided to go to Fort Pickens which is right by Pensacola beach. I love this beach. More than all the other beaches around here. It's a state park so there are no surf shops or restaurants. Just beaches. This is what the drive in and out looks like...

On really windy days the roads get covered with sand which is why you occasionally see plow trucks randomly placed along the drive. There was a red and purple flag at the beach yesterday. Red means that you should not swim in the gulf. Purple means there are dangerous wildlife close to shore like jellyfish. This is kind of scary for me because I'm afraid the kids will try to touch them or not try to get out of the way if they do see one. I was able to give them quite a thorough lesson on jellyfish yesterday though.

The fist picture is a man o war. The second is called a blue button jellyfish.

We also got to learn a little about how they are trying to prevent the oil from reaching the shore. We saw the booms in the water and saw some workers bringing them back into shore. (Probably because the surf was so rough this weekend and they didn't want them to break loose and wash away.

We had a fun time at the beach yesterday. We built sand castles.

They were looked like they were having such a good time that we decided to take over help them build a bigger sand castle.

The end result was quite spectacular if I do say so myself. ;) While we were building our mega sand castle Richard caught the day's only fish...

I will leave you with a few more pictures of our day at Fort Pickens. Every time we go I make the kids take pictures all over the place because its just so pretty there. They get annoyed happily pose for me every time.