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.