My Panama City Beach Vacation Experience

by Teresa
(NC)

We had been traveling to Panama City Beach by car and our oldest daughter, Erin, was tired of riding. She began to whine. We turned on the radio in time to hear the news of an approaching tropical storm. They weren't sure where it would come inland yet.

As they continued talking, they mentioned that if the storm became a hurricane, it would be the 5th named storm of the season and would be named "Erin." We then began to tease our daughter saying that even the people in Florida had heard about her and were naming a hurricane after her.

We arrived in Panama City Beach and began enjoying our vacation, playing on the beach and in the gulf. Soon, we heard that the storm had, in fact, become a hurricane named Erin. We were a little afraid to stay there since we'd never experienced anything like that before but the hotel management assured us that they would alert us if we needed to leave.

We stayed and road the hurricane out in our motel room. It came inland just a few miles from us. We watched as the waves swallowed the beach we'd been playing on earlier. We also watched as the wind picked up the lounge chairs and threw them into the pool just out from our room. Waves began to come over the deck and into the pool.

As the eye passed over us, we all went out onto the hotel deck and just watched the water. The wind was still quite strong but not like it had been earlier. Then we were back in the room for the rest of the storm. We did convince our daughter that she'd better behave from now on, because she never knew who was watching!

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