Day 66: Topsail Preserve State Park

What better way to celebrate a successful overnight stay at a rest stop than McDonald’s for breakfast? The kids thought this was a fantastic plan.

We opted for a full drive day today to save us some drive time tomorrow. Mondays are always hard because everyone has so many calls. Fortunately, our route today had us on roads with pretty good cell phone coverage, so we didn’t have to stop too much. We did take a 15-minute detour to Costco to get some familiar foods. It didn’t hurt that they also had gas for nearly $0.30 less a gallon than other gas stations on our route, which really adds up at 55+ gallons at a time.

Rob found us a great campground at Topsail Preserve State Park, only 20 minutes from our next campground. It had a pull-through site and full hookups, meaning long showers for everyone and not having to detach the car.

Once we parked we unloaded our bikes to ride to the beach. We loved again seeing the beautiful powdered sugar type sand and hearing the squeaks when we walked on it. We decided we definitely had to hit the beach again before leaving the next morning. This is the first of the beaches on the “Emerald Coast” which Rob grew up visiting and insists are the best in the country.