Back to life, back to reality. Life is better at the beach, am I right?
About every other year we head to Captiva Island, Florida with my mom’s side of the family but this was one of our “off” years so we didn’t make the trip with then in July. Nathan and I did our big New York trip in early May and were planning on making that our only big trip this year but when push came to shove I really wanted some beach time as a family of three before we add another member to our family this winter. We knew we wanted somewhere in the panhandle, which makes our drive more like 8ish hours instead of 16, not overly-touristy, and somewhere we could be directly on the beach while using our Marriott points to stay. Not as easy as it sounds, actually!
After a lot of research we settled on Springhill Suites in Navarre Beach. Navarre is a small area between the Destin/Ft. Walton and Pensacola Beach areas and even though the pictures of the hotel seemed lovely, there wasn’t a lot I could find online about the area so I wasn’t sure what to expect. A beach is a beach to me so we decided to go for it and were excited to explore a new area! (I’ll share more on my overall thoughts on the area at the end of my next recap post.)
DAY ONE
We have been looking forward to our trip to the beach for months and months now so when the day finally came we hopped out of bed at 3:30am to get ready, throw all the last minute stuff in the car, and be on our way. Since I get up pretty early anyways (not that early mind you but usually around 4:30) we decided I would drive first so Camden and Nathan could both go back to sleep for at least a couple of hours.
It was a beautiful morning on the road and I caught up on a few episodes of the True Crime Obsessed podcast while the boys snoozed. (I recently became a Patreon supporter of the True Crime Obsessed podcast and I highly recommend!) They slept until right around 7:00 when I couldn’t hold my pregnant bladder for one more second and had to pull into a rest stop, ha.
We stopped for breakfast at the great American rest stop – Cracker Barrel! Eating breakfast at CB was a tradition on road trips in my family and I love it. We never, ever, ever go to the one in our town though. It’s a travel thing only I guess? Kind of like Wal-Mart, ha!
Camden was a breeze in the car on the way down! He did get frustrated he couldn’t watch whatever he wanted on Netflix but spent the majority of the time eating snacks and playing with the other stuff in his road trip basket. So I call that a win! (You can see everything I put in his basket over on my Instagram Story highlights under “Road Trip Stuff.”)
We pulled into the Navarre Beach around 3:30 to sunny skies! We got checked in to the hotel, unpacked, and changed for dinner.
Room: This was the view from our balcony! Just a quick note about our hotel. We loved it. It was very nice, clean (newly built), and very family friendly. Our room wasn’t exactly a suite but the bedroom was sort of partitioned off from the living room area where Camden slept on the pull-out sofa which meant he couldn’t see us, but we could still hear him when he woke up.
Pools: The hotel pools were awesome! The outside one was pretty shallow on one end and had a lazy river on the other and there was an indoor pool that could be accessed easily from outside which came in handy a few days when it rained on and off. There was a super short walk to the beach from the pool area which was amazing as well. The beach was very clean, not at all busy, and they had a chair/umbrella rental service right there if needed (we brought our own of both).
Food: The included hotel breakfast was more than adequate to fill up our bellies before a full day of fun, though the breakfast area did get a little crazy later on in the week when the hotel got busier for LDW. We had dinner at the restaurant on property, The Beach House, one night and not only was it my favorite meal of the trip, it was by far the nicest restaurant I saw/read about in the Navarre area. Overall, we loved this hotel and would stay there again in a heartbeat!
The first night we had dinner at TC’s Front Porch on the recommendation of a friend! It was about two minutes away from the hotel and very laid back. Which was perfect for a tired, grouchy toddler who had been in the car all day! (And very into taking pictures, obviously.) I had the lobster nachos and Nathan had the fried shrimp dinner. I loved my dinner but he didn’t think his was anything special. We did share a crab cake as an appetizer and it was amazing.
Lobster nachos at TC’s Front Porch
We made a quick trip to Wal-Mart (there is one in the area) for a few grocery items, swim trunks for Nathan who forgot his (lol), a new pair of shoes for Camden (I noticed his Natives were rubbing the side of his foot raw on the trip down), and a strapless bra for me. After that we headed back to the hotel and called it a night with part of a movie on Netflix and an early bedtime for all of us!
DAY TWO
The next day we woke up to storms on the radar for the entire morning so we decided to quickly get ready, eat breakfast, and head to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. It was tricky to find because your GPS will take you to the front entrance of the base and you can’t get in there without military ID. We drove to that entrance and then got directions to the other, but it added a good 15-20 minutes to the trip. I would recommend calling beforehand and getting verbal directions because I couldn’t find anything on there website that told you a better address or had written directions to follow. Just a heads up!
Other than the entrance mix up, I would highly recommend this museum! Camden (2 years old) is very into air planes right now so I knew he would like to see them, but I was not expecting it to be SO kid-friendly. They can touch the planes, sit in and “fly” a bunch of them, and there is a cute playground area for small kids. This facility is also where the Blue Angels practice and the website tells you all about the dates and times of the practices. They were scheduled to be practicing the morning we were there but it was cancelled due to the impending storms, just keep that in mind as a possibility as well.
This boy was in heaven! There are two hangers filled from literal top to bottom with all types of planes. The museum hosts a free walking tour every couple of hours that I’m sure would have been very interesting if we didn’t have a toddler with us!
Trying to jump and “get da hell-copter.”
We didn’t feel like trying to find a place in Pensacola for lunch so we ate at the cafe in the museum. There was a good selection of lunch options and we all liked what we got but it wasn’t anything special. It would be hard to mess up a BLT in my opinion. 
The ride back to Navarre was a good hour and 20 minutes or so and Camden slept the whole way. The sun was shining when we pulled into the hotel so we decided to let that be his nap for the day and high-tail it to the beach! It was very windy and the waves were intense but we had fun the next couple of hours playing in the sand and ocean. Camden loved every second of it!
Covered from head to toe in sand and eating a cookie. Living the dream right there.
Glasses (less than $5 including shipping) | Swimsuit
After a couple of hours we went up to the pool for a bit before heading in to clean up for dinner. I squeeze my big ole belly into my non-maternity suits one more time for this trip but whew, I don’t think I would have been able to if this trip was even a week later. Ha! It seemed silly to buy another suit when this was likely the last time I’ll be wearing them this summer.
Since it was getting late, we decided to have dinner at the restaurant on property, The Beach House. Nathan and I split a shrimp ceviche appetizer then both got a seafood primavera dish, his with shrimp and mine with crab. Unbelievably delicious!
Even though we weren’t at the beach all day like would have been my idea of a perfect day, we still had a blast on our first full day in the area. I’ll be back on Monday (probably) with pictures and tips from the back half of the trip!
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The post NAVARRE BEACH TRIP 2018 (DAYS 1 & 2) appeared first on rachel emily.