Erin Napier Remembers Late Singer Jimmy Buffett During a Family Trip to Orange Beach: Watch 

HGTV’s Erin Napier and her family are remembering music legend Jimmy Buffett after his death on September 1. The Home Town host and her husband, Ben Napier, took their daughters, Helen and Mae, on a trip to Orange Beach, Alabama — a destination that was very special to the late star. 

“Jimmy Buffett died, and I needed to go back to the place where my parents had a home in Orange Beach,” Erin captioned a video from the trip on Instagram on September 10. “They sold it the month before Mae was born and she never met the beach the way her sister did as a baby. Found a last-minute unit available next door to the one where I spent my summers.”

In the clip, Helen, 5, and Mae, 2, were spotted walking along the shore as their father stood nearby in the sand. Erin, 38, chose Buffett’s “Tin Cup Chalice” to play in the background of the candid post.

“We were so lucky to grow up jumping into Ole River and riding boats with tangled salty hair out to the islands,” the mom of two continued in her caption. “I needed my girls to hear songs about the Gulf and dig in the sand, to know this place and how much it meant to our family. Maybe you can’t go back, but you can rent for the weekend.”

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Buffett battled Merkel cell carcinoma for four years before losing his fight with the rare form of skin cancer at age 76. The Mississippi-born performer long had a connection to the Gulf Coast, which is where he grew up and often returned to perform after finding fame in the rock genre. 

“For young Jimmy, the Gulf of Mexico was the doorway to a world of adventure where the characters he heard about in his grandfather’s stories were waiting to be discovered,” Buffett’s website reads. “The siren call of exotic ports was in contrast to his days as a parochial school student and an altar boy, and it only took a guitar to take him off course from the life his parents had imagined for him.”

Like Erin and Ben, 39, many fans of Buffett loved his appreciation for his hometown and the way he never hesitated to return to his country roots. 

“There’s a truly lovely nostalgic piece to Jimmy. I think he credits a lot of his success to his Gulf Coast roots,” his youngest sister, Lucy Buffett, told AL.com in February 2012. “They gave him the foundation that’s sustained his success. You can’t grow up around water and not develop an almost cellular longing to be out in a boat on that water. So many of his songs resonate with his love of exploring the ocean. That notion was born in his youth on Mobile Bay, Dauphin Island, Gulf Shores and the Mississippi barrier islands.”