Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Well, I awoke with a sad realization that our vacation was more than half over. We don't even have a dang tan! I'm scoping out a local tanning bed tomorrow.

It stormed all night last night...kept me awake. We woke up to an overcast sky. Winds fairly strong and was cool outside. Not many people were walking the beach when I looked out.

So the kids spent the first part of the day at the indoor pool. I got to do laundry and clean up the condo. Hey, wait! What about my vacation?

We then went out on an adventure, since it was too cold and rough to swim in the ocean. We first landed at Fisherman's Wharf. I remembered being there many years ago.

The kids enjoyed standing right next to the huge fishing boats. Our plans were to stop here to see if they had a place for the kids to fish. We had seen them doing it from the pier yesterday on Okaloosa Island. Mikey wanted to fish in the worst way. He envisioned catching fish and us bringing them back to the condo to cook. NOT!!!!

Luckily, two things happened to change his mind. The first was that we got to stand right by some fisherman who had just come in from an excursion. They were filleting and gutting the fish right there. I asked Mikey if this still put him in the mood to bring his fish home and he was a little hesitant to answer.

The fisherman threw the waste in the harbor to the pelicans. The kids got to throw some. Look at these birds. Once again, we attracted a huge flock of birds to our presence. What is up with that?

Apparently the harbor at Fisherman's Wharf is the place to hang out with your peeps.

We took pictures and then left for the pier. The boys got to fish for a few hours. Kennady and I tried our hand at it also. We couldn't get any of the fish to bite our shrimp. There were plenty of
fish being caught, however. But they were caught using fake lures. The kids enjoyed seeing all of this. When some of the fishermen caught their fish, they left them lying on the dock beside them, because they had no bucket to put them in. While the fisherman took a walk down the dock for something, a pelican came and grabbed one of the fish and stole off. This was too funny. You only see this is movies normally. When a fellow got a bite on a big fish, 30 fisherman would go running over to him...to help him and to throw their poles in, in case he lost it. Major testosterone was going on on this pier.

We also got to witness about 40 people in the water trying to surf. They must have been in a class or something. They waited for 10 minutes or more each time they wanted to ride a wave. They were there all day long, in the freezing water. You must really love to surf to go through that. My daughter decided from watching that that she wanted to be a surfer. Oh no.

We left when it started to downpour. We came back, cleaned up, and went to Hard Rock Cafe to eat. Oh, the second reason that Mikey decided against bringing his fish home to clean and cook.....was because he didn't catch anything! Kennady got to pick the restaurant, since the boys picked fishing.

After eating, we walked around this huge shopping area, similar to our Summit back in Louisville. They had every major high priced store and restaurant you could think of. We ate $14.00 hamburgers tonight, and I drank an expensive, watered down beer. Living well, I must say.

We were so tired after our excursion, we came back to the condo to chill out. I can only hope that tomorrow is the day we get some sun, and the kids get to use their boogie boards.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Drat!

We woke up to cloudy skies, and a cold morning. The forecast for the day was not good. I did not sleep good all night, because the tops of my feet and the front of my legs got too burnt yesterday. Looked like storms were brewing over the ocean, so we were too scared to go out.

Mike, however, took a walk on the beach to find Kennady some more shells. He was gone so long, we almost went looking for him. When he came back, he admitted that he walked entirely too far down the beach and when trying to come back, he was walking against the wind. He almost called me to drive down to get him. Tonight he is sulking with several blisters from wearing crocs to walk in.

We got ready and took the kids down the coast to Okaloosa Island. There was a Gulfarium there that looked pretty cool in our tourist manual. Even though the storms were still coming, we thought we should be safe for a while. When we got there, I immediately knew something was wrong when we got a parking place near the front door. Why was it not packed on a day like this? We checked out the premises from the outside. Not pretty. We saw a small stadium, a little longer than the width of two houses, and people were sitting inside, on bleachers. To the right, in a second small building, I saw an image of a dolphin. No where in the vicinity did I see a huge building where we would be able to walk through hours of sea creatures and view them. I deducted that the sea lion show was probably outside....thus the people in the bleachers. I guessed the dolphin show was probably in that small building. Since it would have cost each one of us over $20 to get in, and it was very windy and cold outside....we opted to not go in.

We started to drive away, and realized there was a fisherman's pier behind the Gulfarium. We went up on the pier and the kids enjoyed that, even though it was very blustery. The kids loved watching the fisherman fish from the wharf...although the water was too rough to catch anything.

We left and went on down the coast to look for the Hulbert Air Force base. We saw it in our tourist manual, as well. Mikey has to do a powerpoint project on picts from a museum, opera, or concert for his Fine Arts class every semester. We figured this would be a cool place to get some material for this project. We entered the base and saw these very cool airplanes, helicopters, fighter jets, etc. on the lawn. We inquired at the visitor center how to get over there to take pictures. We were kindly told to leave the base....there were no pictures allowed! We were apparently on a Special Operations Air Force base. Top secret stuff....NO PICTURES FOR YOU!!

We hightailed it out of there and started back down the coast. The skies were looking very menacing. On the way back, we spotted a Krystal burger joint. Both Mike and I had eaten these before. So we went over and got some for the kids. Don't think they were as impressed as we were with them. I am going to tell you they were actually better than our White Castles! The bread was much better. Shhh........

While coming back down the highway, we spotted a cool beach where people were para-sailing. Needing a place to take some more pictures, I pulled in. It ended up being a place called North Shores National Park. I believe we were in Ft. Walton. It was cool because I think we were actually on a bay..not sure which one. The water was a very bright lime green near the shore. There were millions of shells that we collected for Kennady and Matthew. I got several pictures. We got to see these guys kite boarding. The wind was great for it. Upon leaving the park, I noticed the seagulls were extremely friendly towards us. This one seemed to have followed us from the beach to the van. While we were cleaning the sand from our shoes, I threw out a handful of goldfish to him. This created chaos. 100 gulls came swooping in. they surrounded our van, like in the movie "The Birds." They were flying at us, and the wind was taking them every which way...which made it look like they were tring to attack us. I was cracking up. So, we figured that they must be used to being fed. We started taking turns throwing out handfuls of goldfish. This man in the truck next to us held out something about 2 inches long. The birds swooped down and took it from his hand. It was awesome. However, all good things gotta come to an end. This little green golf cart comes speeding up by our side. This nice looking park ranger gets out and politely tells us we're not allowed to feed the birds. I almost choked. i told him that we weren't aware of that law. He smiled and said that normally they give out $100 fines to people who do this. People have been feeding the birds moth balls, and such. So now the good hearted people like us have to pay for this. We can't feed the birds in National Parks. Fooey! My heart was in my throat, I was so scared. I hightailed it out of there, also.

Man, so now where do we go? Well, the weather alerts started saying there was a tornado warning in Okaloosa....and alerted everyone to take cover. That is where we were. OMG!!! So we finally hightailed it back to the condo. We stopped at a placed called the Mellow Mushroom and ordered two pizza's to take back.

We spent the rest of the night in the condo watching the dark clouds over the ocean. Home is starting to sound good right now. Maybe tomorrow we will get sun and make me forget about the bad weather.