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.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Yes! There is not a cloud in the sky! B-U-ti-ful!!

We took about a 3 mile walk down the beach to go hunting for shells. Kennady is going to give people back at home a jar with sand and shells as a gift. So we were in pursuit of the most gorgeous shells we could find. Ha! We found 200 sand dollar pieces and many, many tiny shells about the size of my pinky fingernail. But she didn't quite grasp the tininess of the shells, and we picked up everyone we could find.

We came back and put on our swimsuits and headed back to the water. The kids played in the ocean all day. They boogie boarded, jumped waves, body surfed, and just stood there and let the waves roll over their backs. Well, slam into their backs, was more like it...with the rough waves. They built sand castles and even buried each other in the sand. I wanted to tape them doing the boogie board, but I ran out of tape before I could get them. Mike somehow forgot the bag I packed back at home that had my new camcorder tapes in it. Maybe I can get some good footage on Tuesday.

We left the beach, they swam in the indoor pool for a while. We came back to the condo, I cooked dinner and then we were going to head to the beach. However......we all looked a little red, so I decided we should stay in from the sun for a while. Hope there is sun on Tuesday.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

We awoke today ready to get some sun!

Not gonna happen today. Very cloudy and overcast....but luckily not looking like rain. We went down to the beach and let the kids get in the waves at the edge. There was a red flag up, so this meant no one could swim in the ocean. The kids played near the shore. It was very, very cold. They started out with long sleeve shirts, and eventually took them off a few hours later. They loved the waves and ocean. They built their first sand castles ever.




At 2:00, we went to Hooters to watch the CARDS play. Big letdown. By now, everyone knows they are out of the tournament. However, we did have some luck there. When we ordered our food, my clam chowder came out first...but no appetizers that we had ordered for the kids. The kids were starved. Then, Mike's wings came. Then Mikey's wings. Still no burgers for Matthew and Kennady. My salad had not arrived either. The waitress checked with us twice. Finally, the burgers came. My salad was still no where to be found. She went and checked, and finally came back with it. All this time, we had not complained. I just didn't have it in me to complain another day. All of a sudden, a manager stopped by to chat with us. We told her where we were from, and she told us the hotspots to go to in Destin. She thanked us for coming to Hooters, and apologized for the food being late. A few minutes later, the waitress brought Mike and I a pitcher of beer, on the house, because her manager told her to give it to us. They were sorry about our food being late. How sweet was that? The beer was the best beer I had ever had. It was Southern Pecan Lazy Magnolia. I will have to have more of this. We found it at the local Winn Dixie. At least the day was not a total loss.

We then took the kids shopping at the different souvenir shops around the strip. Kennady and Mikey got boogie boards to ride the waves. Matthew was going to wait for another store to find the perfect souvenir.

We came back and it was too cold to go out to the ocean. The kids went down and swam in the indoor pool for a while. Kennady found the sauna and fell in love with it. She thought it was a cool way to dry her swimsuit. ha, ha.

Maybe we will get sun tomorrow. We can only hope.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

We arrived in Destin yesterday, Saturday, March 28, 2009. We had great plans to leave Louisville at 4:00 A.M. and be in Destin between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Nothing ever goes the way you want. Because I stayed up late making finishing touches on packing Friday night, I didn't get up until 4:00 a.m. We finally left Louisville around 5:50 a.m. Our road trip went pretty well. We made numerous pit stops, which put us behind. Each rest area we stopped at, Kennady picked up 100's of pamphlets so we could learn about other vacation spots. They are now lining the floor of my van. We stopped at one rest area in Alabama that my sister told me about. She said you could walk under a rocket. We thought that would be so cool. Well, due to extended homeland security, you can only walk "around" the rocket now. There is a 6 ft. fence around it.



We passed Britney Spears' tour bus on the way. That was cool.


We had one good thing going for us. We forgot that once we passed into the Central Time Zone, we were an hour behind. So we really were only about an hour behind our schedule when we hit the last county in Alabama, which was called Florala, before we got on the final highway to Destin. We were finally going to make it. However, it was not meant to be.

We hit highway 80, which would bring us straight into Destin. During our whole trip, we were supposed to run into torrential rains. We never had rain, but apparently it was all around us. On highway 80, we stopped to take pictures of a lake that was flooded. Benches and picnic tables were underground. We bebopped on down the highway, until we were stopped 2 miles down the road. We were told the road was flooded. We had to turn around, go back, and head on down Hwy 331 and come to Destin through Panama City. This put us at least an hour more out of our way. Dang it!






We finally got to Destin around 5:35 p.m. The condo was gorgeous. We took the kids to the beach for a short time. It was frigging cold. I told them we would go to the beach for a few mintues, and dared them to get wet. We had not had dinner and I had planned to go out to eat shortly after. Of course, they were so excited to be on the beach, they stepped at the edge of the water at first. Then I let them stand "at the edge" ....but they all 3 coincidently fell down in the water and got wet. Ahem.


We got ready and went to eat at Fudpuckers, a local big time tourist trap kind of place. I remembered going there 17 years ago, on my last visit to Destin. We had a 45 minute wait. The kids were starved, but I talked them into waiting. My middle son, Matthew, saw some people with fishing poles hanging into the alligator pit in the bar area. Apparently, you can "feed" the alligators. We inquired about the price and such. The guy in the window looked at my 3 kids, and told us it would be $3.00, and they could all 3 try a pole. If the alligators weren't biting, he wasn't sure if they were, then he would refund our money. We went along happily, trying to feed the stupid lunks. I think they were drugged, because they didn't even move when we thumped them on the head or the nose with the bait. Aren't alligators supposed to snap your head off if you threaten them? They actually moved away from the bait, annoyed that it was taking up space in its kingdom. The wimps. So, we trotted over and announced that we'd like a refund, just like he told us. He looked at us like we were from outer space. Of course, he denied ever saying that. He almost acted like he'd never seen us...but we had his poles in our hand. I asked to speak to his manager.....who happened to be standing near by. He had one of those ropes like a lion tamer holds onto. I guess to contain any rampant alligators that got loose. I plead my case...and he pretty much called me a liar. He said he has worked with the guy in the window for a long time, and he would never make a deal like that. I yelled, he ignored me, with a smarmy grin...Matthew and Kennady even told him they heard the guy tell us that. It was no good. So we walked away, the kids wanted to leave after that, and we drove down the road to WhatABurger.


Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).