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 
e 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.
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