Our unique travel story began last year, in the early spring of
2019
when Marcia Murrah Payne invited me to accompany her to the beach
and
then immediately began putting together the details. Mary Jo
Worthington Dudley was given the date and accepted the invitation
and
Beverly Bidwell Crawford was invited and also accepted; suddenly
our
great escape to Panama City Beach was becoming a reality.
We had such a great vacation together that we promised to do it
again
one day and that day arrived the last day of January, 2020. We
had no
idea that a named winter storm was going to descend on Panama
City
Beach near the end of the week but we made the best of it, before
the
torrential downpours began we were still able to shop, eat at
our
favorite restaurants, try some new eateries and then enjoy
watching
the churning and foaming Gulf from our beach front rooms.
We agreed to meet in Havana, Florida for the sake of convenience
since
Bev lives nearby at Lake Tallavana and Marcia, who lives in
Tallahassee, is familiar with the quaint town since that is where
she,
her husband Tom and their friend Bev are active members of Salem
United Methodist Church. Mary Jo resides in Bainbridge so I am
the
only one who happily drives for hours to get there; my long
driving
miles are divided because I am able to spend the night with
Brother
David and Peggy Jo in my hometown of Richland.
Marcia reserved a two room suite at Panama City Beach and Resort;
we
unloaded our unbelievable amount of luggage and food items and
quickly
settled into our routine. We take enough homemade items to share
for
breakfast and by mid-morning we are deciding how to spend the
day.
Most days we are out shopping and eating and most evenings we
are
relaxing at the condo; being wintertime we can only gaze at the
Gulf
but it is something we all enjoy doing from the extensive
deck/porch.
One of my cadet daughters from the days at Georgia Military
College
works nearby and she invited us to attend an evening event at
the
Wyndham Properties and we happily accepted. Desiree Simone (Dugger)
is a talented entertainer; we enjoyed her singing performance
and
later she joined our circle of friends, which was such a treat
for us
mature ladies.
One of the funniest stories that came out of our conversations
was the
disclosure about the brown shoes. It seems that Mary Jo had been
on
an extensive hunt for a particular kind of brown colored shoes
and one
day like magic, there they were, in the back part of a sale
display
and they were the correct size.
At the checkout counter, as the clerk checked the shoes for the
correct size, she found an unexpected surprise in the box; there
hiding in one shoe was a partially eaten chicken leg. Needless
to
say, Mary Jo declined to purchase the selected footwear.