St. Andrew's State Park (a good park for the Sabbath because it's named after a saint)

We had the option of attending church in person at 10:00 in the morning, but the girls' friend Jessica was giving her mission farewell talk so we decided to Zoom into our ward. Our home ward meets at 9:00 AM, which is already early enough...but we're in central time currently so that meant church was at 8:00 AM for us (which felt really early to have church during vacation, but it was a wonderful service). 

After church we packed a picnic lunch and got ready for a visit to St. Andrew's State Park. Grandpa doesn't feel we should swim on the sabbath, so his plan was to not to. We had no problem making alternative-to-the beach plans with him, though I don't have the same qualms about the beach on Sundays. I mean, we don't typically go to our pool on Sunday—because we do other things to keep the Sabbath holy that day—but the beach feels different to me somehow. 

Maybe I would say no to the beach if we lived at the beach, but we don't live at the beach so...it feels okay to me to marvel at God's planet on the sabbath...even if we happen to get wet doing it.

Anyway, we went to St. Andrew's after church and hiked a little trail by Alligator Lake (where we saw only one gator). Phoebe got to ride on Grandpa's shoulders for quite a while, which she was very happy to do.

The kids have loved getting to spend so much time with Grandpa and Darla!

While the lake is called Alligator Lake, the real draw is all the birds that roost there. We saw so many nesting woodstorks. Our path put us up above the treetops and we could see right into their nests. Perhaps you can make out some of them in the trees below:

They weren't remotely worried about us, but went about their business, squawking and chortling to each other. The little alligator that we saw slithered away through the water crowded with duckweed and evidently attempted to disturb a nest because those birds all started sounding the alarm. It was quite...alarming. 

"We're in a documentary!" Andrew said, in awe. 

Who knows if the gator got anything. The birds eventually quieted down and we continued on our hike.

 

There was a prescribed burn in St. Andrew's in January and we saw some evidence of that. We thought these burned out palmettos resembled alligator tails. 

 

Here's Benjamin climbing a tree:

Here's Alexander up a tree:

And here's everybody (minus Darla, who is taking the picture):

Phoebe found a big feather, which she was very excited about.

Benjamin borrowed it and pretended to lick it...

So of course Phoebe had to pretend to lick it, too. 

Andrew is so funny about things like this—nature things, I mean—feathers and grasshoppers and ladybugs and things. When Phoebe requested to hold his hand on the way back, he couldn't bring himself to do it—he was too concerned about the fact that her hands had touched the feather.

She eventually won the argument, however, and she ended up riding on his shoulders most of the way back. 

Here's Grandpa's new invention—the hands-free water bottle holder:

And here's Zoë posing in her sunhat.

We tried to take a little walk to find, like, a gun turret...and a tower...and other things we found on the map, but apparently we were too famished to do so (or simply couldn't read the map). We did find this little round bench, where we decided to turn around and head back to the car to find our lunches.

We think it may have once been the gun turret. I'm willing to be wrong. There wasn't really anything there, but it does remind me of what Rachel said at the Infantry Museum the day before... 

We were walking out of an exhibit and she said, 'Wow! I saw a pistol!"

"A pistol?" Rachel said. "How do you know it was a pistol?"

"Because it was little!" Phoebe said. 

And fair enough. It was probably a pistol. We had no idea she had so much knowledge about guns, however.

Anyway...after lunch we headed back to the beach house, but on the way we had to stop at the store Jaws to take a picture in the shark's mouth that doubles as the entrance (there was also a Moby Dick store that had a white whale entrance, but that was across the street).

I once made a book of pictures from various family vacations to the beach, mostly from the time we lived in Durham (and were close enough to the beach to squeeze in some day trips). On the way to North Topsail Island there is a shark mouth store and we stopped once to take pictures of the kids and Phoebe thinks it's the coolest thing ever!

Miriam and Rachel inside the shark's mouth, July 2014

Of course, Phoebe is sadly not featured in any of our family photo books...except for her 1-year baby book...so she wasn't in the picture with the shark...at least until now! 

Here's Phoebe in the mouth of a shark!

Now I'll really need to put together a new book of beach trip photos for Phoebe to enjoy (and Alexander, who pointed out to me that he's not in any of the beach trip photos either). We've probably managed enough beach trips since living in Georgia to warrant making a new one...and Phoebe and Alexander probably deserve to see their happy memories on the pages of a book, as well as the happy memories that came before them.

We made a stranger take a picture of all of us by/in the shark's mouth:

And here are the kids playing around after:

It was a good excursion, but also a very hot excursion. 

So guess what the kids begged to do the minute we got back to the beach house... 

That's right—they wanted to go to the beach!