cimorene

Swimming is so fun. And an indoor heated pool is the closest to swimming Nirvana one can come in Finland, I think. But let me tell you about my very favourite swimming.

I grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the college football capital of the country. This location is 45 minutes by car from Birmingham, the biggest city in the state; 3½ hours from Atlanta; and 5 hours from the Gulf of Mexico in Gulf Shores, Alabama or Pensacola, Florida. (This vacation destination is a ferry ride away from the Estuarium at the Dauphin Island research station, and therefore a big favourite.) Now, this is difficult for people from most small countries to comprehend (my mother-in-law often feels she needs an entire weekend to drive an hour and a half to our town even though she's got two children and four grandchildren here), but all of these are day trips. Sure, we often camped at the beach for a week or two, but we were just as likely to get up at five am, drive to Gulf Shores in time for breakfast, spend the middle of the day at the beach and then drive home at sunset, stopping on the way for dinner.

My favourite aunt and uncle, and the parents of

kitten_head, who has been my closest friend since before we could walk or talk, live in the suburbs of Kansas City, smack in the middle of the country, a 12-15 hour drive depending how often you have to go to the bathroom. We saw them two to three times a year on vacation, and given the distance they had to come just to visit us, once they did we usually minimised the extra road trips by staying at Gulf Shores.

Now, I don't actually like the beach all that much, even though I adore swimming, apart from walks after sunset when it's already starting to cool down. I'm that pissy one at the family vacation grumping about sand and mosquitoes and how much more fun it would be to stay at home in the airconditioning. I'm the one wrapped up in a sheet, under a beach umbrella, shades and a straw hat, reading through piles of trash novels all day while everyone else builds castles, wave jumps, shell combs, and plays beach football¹. The gulf coast at Gulf Shores, Pensacola, and all the beaches in the vicinity is too hot and bright, and the water is too cold (nb: it's not cold compared to like, Finland. It's kind of warm, it's just too cold for ME) and the waves are too big and violent and it's too noisy and crowded. I usually only get in the water for a few hours together if we're there for three or four days².

But all of the beaches in the Gulf of Mexico aren't like that. The coastline of Florida is wriggly, and the bits where the water is protected by some land or influenced by some currents or whatever³ can have quite a different character. Let me introduce you to my favourite beach: the St Joseph Peninsula State Park at Cape San Blas, which is about another 3 hours past Gulf Shores - which is why I've only been there about three or four times. Here's a zoomed-out map showing Port St Joseph and its proximity to the sweet little tourist town of Apalachicola. Because of the peninsula, the beaches at the state park are protected, and that results in a swimming area where you can wade out for what seems like acres of clear chest-high water, warm and swelled by huge, gentle waves, cupped protectively in the curve of the beach where white and black sand mix in these amazing streaks and fractal-like swirls. Although I've seen more horseshoe crab corpses there than any other one place together, if I'm remembering right.

1. Even though I don't burn easily, although that's relative on the gulf coast. Everybody burns.

kitten_head, a translucent-skinned redhead, has several times burnt not just the rims of her eyelids, but her eyeballs.

2. Although in those hours I've been in arm's reach of a dolphin and stepped on a ray. And been stung many times by a jellyfish.

3. Hey, I'm not a meteorologist.