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).