On the 2nd Sunday before the 2nd Thursday in January, there is a phenomenon known as the "Silver Wave" in the Florida panhandle town of Santa Rosa Beach.
This "Silver Wave" is NOT out in the Gulf of Mexico! No, this "wave" is on the highways leading to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. All of this is thanks to the "Canopener Airstream Rally" that takes place here next week.
The wave this year was comprised of 81 Airstreams that checked in here at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park in a matter of just a few hours. Between now and over the next 10-days, as we get closer to the "Official Canopener Rally" dates of January 9-12, there will be another 40+ Airstreams checking in here, but only a few each day.
Instead of another wave it will be more of a "ripple effect". By the time January 9th rolls around we should have close to 124 Airstreams in the park. That's pretty impressive, considering there are only 150 campsites available here.
We had just finished unhooking THE POD when it was time for us to jump in ROVER and head out to our first event. We didn't even have time to set up all of our decorations before leaving.
It was an informal "get acquainted" lunch/dinner outing at a nearby BBQ restaurant. We were the first to arrive at 3:00PM because we were hungry after having only ate a PB&J Sandwich for lunch before switching campsite locations today.
That's when we started seeing other Airstreamers arriving in the restaurant and devouring our meal got put on hold for a few minutes. After all the "hellos" and "how've you beens" were over we quickly got back to our rapidly cooling meals.
Even slightly warm the potatoes and meat were really good and I suspect we'll be back sometime in the next two weeks while we're still here at this location.
As usual there was no thought of taking photos of the food before it was too late!
Even though the campground here at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park is a little more than a mile from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico there is a tram operated by the park that will shuttle you down to the water.
However they don't start operating the tram until after the park opens at 8:00AM which gives Tricia the opportunity to walk the roadway without fear of being run over.
For those who were interested between 8:00-10:00AM there was a temporary Pickleball court set up outside of the clubhouse. There you could watch and learn, then play the "slow version" of tennis known as Pickleball.
Apparently it didn't stop others as well because she wasn't alone out on the beach this morning. It's going to be a full 20°F colder tonight than last night.
The New Years Eve activity for tonight is a "Poker Run" (Canopener style). The way we conduct our Poker Run here is we all gather outside of the clubhouse and then at 6:00PM we leave in groups of 25 or so to begin walking to the 5-card stations scattered around the entire park.
We make this a fund raising event by charging $10 that is donated to the "Friends of Topsail Hill Preserve" state park organization. For your $10 you receive an "Official Score Sheet" that volunteers will record your card drawings on when you pass by their station.
It's a fun way to meet more attendees, raise some money for the park and give you a chance to win a valuable prize. This years "Best Poker Hand" will win a certificate worth $1500 to have your Airstream pressure checked for water leaks, donated by Vinnie's Airstream in Tallahassee. It's something we could definitely use, but we unfortunately didn't win.
There were other prizes too, but we didn't win any of those either.
After the Poker Run prizes were handed out inside the warmth of the clubhouse, we all headed back out into the cold to conduct our "Flamingo Drop". Think of it like the ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve, except we string a Flamingo up in a tree and drop it at exactly 10:00PM. We observe a ficticious "Central Atlantic Ocean" time zone here at Canopener because nobody wants to be awake at midnight. Besides it's too cold this year to be outside for long!
Tricia is still doing her morning walks, but that may soon have to be put on hold also.
Tricia's knitting group attracts anywhere from 1-5 people and the game nights bring 15-20 people out to the clubhouse at 7:00PM.
Thanks to our game night experience, and Amazon, we've added a new game called Left Center Right Dice Game to our collection. It's a simple, mindless and fun game that takes absolutely no time to learn. The plus side is the more players you have the better it gets. We had more than 20-players on one of the nights. Even if you lose all your tokens you're never completely eliminated!
Tricia's morning walk photos tell the whole story of the weather conditions here.
January 6th is known worldwide as Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, or Theophany and even Día de Los Reyes. It all depends on where in the world you are. A popular tradition in many cultures is to serve King Cake on January 6th whereas each country or region has it's own variation of what the cake looks and tastes like.
Another tradition is to hold a parade in celebration of Kings Day. Here at Topsail we too held a parade, but not in typical style.
Ours was a Mardi Paw Parade, where a few dozen Airstreamers dressed up their pets, and themselves, to parade through the campground.
while others would stop to "water the trees" at every chance.
Today's activity is to head out to the local bowling alley for a friendly 2-game tournament. We ended up with 48 bowlers and a couple dozen hecklers, I mean cheerleaders, to urge on the participants.
Awards were given out to the highest score (210) and lowest score (32) for the day, in addition to the highest team score. There were also a bunch of door prizes and this time we actually won something. A pullover Airstream hoodie that Heather will be taking home with her to remind her of the good time she had while visiting.
After the bowling event concluded we head over to the town of Seaside, made famous by the 1998 Jim Carey movie called "The Truman Show". On the way there we passed by a huge cloud of smoke, but were relieved when we saw it was a controlled burn being conducted by the Florida State Forest Service.
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