Destin Vacation
Day 1: Sunday
We arrived in Pensacola, FL around 2PM. The rental car place was nice enough to get us in a rental car that fit in with the rest of the Floridians...a Mercury Grand Marquis. It was about an hour drive to Destin from Pensacola, but was it was a nice scenic drive. We stayed at Silver Shells which consists of 5 buildings about 15 or so floors each. We stayed in the St. Lucia building which is not the closest to the beach, but still within view. When we arrived we stopped at the security gate and let them know which room we were staying in. They gave us a tag to hang from our rearview mirror and opened the gate. We drove around to our building and entering the garage which is on the basement level. We had one designated parking spot which we gently maneuvered our Grand Marquis into. They had those carts that bell hops use for luggage available for use. We loaded it up and headed to the 6th floor. Our room had a numeric key pad on that was to be used as our key. The owners gave us a 6 digit code to use to get in. The key lock allowed us to create a unique "guest" code that was easier for us to remember which was nice. I like the idea of the code instead of a key since that is one less thing we have to worry about losing on the beach. Our room (#605) faced the ocean. We found 2 key fobs on the kitchen counter that would be used for entering the garage and building after hours. The room was quite nice and well decorated! It was 2 bedrooms with a living room and kitchen separating them. The patio had 3 sliding doors; there was a door for each of the bedrooms and 1 entrance from the living room.
After unloading our luggage we heading downstairs to check out the pool and beach. The beach is very nice with some of the whitest sand I have seen. We were a little concerned if we were going to see any tar balls from the BP oil spill in the gulf. Luckily we did not see any the entire trip...I will have to look to see if any does eventually show up.
By this time it was dinner time so we heading to Cracker Barrel. This was my first experience at a Cracker Barrel. I had a bacon cheese burger...it was okay. Since we had a full kitchen in the condo, we headed to Wal-Mart (which was right across the street from the condo) to load up on some groceries. As usual, Wal-Mart on a Sunday, it was a mad house. Our plan was to eat in for breakfast and lunch and eat out for dinner. It was a little difficult to find the small servings of the typical items as they were out of stock. For example, we had to buy a large package of sugar since they were out of the little single use bags. It worked out fine and we wasted very little at the end of the trip. I also picked up a $9 boogie board to play with on the beach.
Next we headed back to condo and unloaded the groceries. Then we suited up and headed to the beach! The condo already had 4 beach chairs that we could use as well as a bucket and shovel for Marin to play in the sand! By this time the sun was starting to go down, so the timing was perfect. The wave were much larger than I had originally expected being on the gulf side and all. I played around on the boogie board for about 20 minutes...what a work out! I was so out of breathe by the end of it and red faced (not from the sun). We then headed to the pool to relax for a while.
Day 2: Monday
My plan for the trip was to stay out of the sun between noon and 4PM. The main reason was to avoid getting extremely sunburned like in Mexico. Hector and I knew we wanted to ride jet skis at some point so we looked up some places. The condo had jet ski rentals on the beach so I called to get availability and pricing. They charged $70 for an half-hour and $100 for an hour. I decided do some price comparisons using the free wifi (DSL speeds) that was provided by the condo. I looked on the bay side and found Xtreme H2O which had good reviews. I gave them a call; they charged $70 for an hour and you could go anywhere you like in the bay. They also did not charge any kind of deposit and didn't even require a credit card (not that it would have stopped us). I reserved 2 jet skis for 11AM to noon. The place was easy to find so we got there about 20 minutes early. They went ahead and got use suited up and ran down the ground rules which were really only two. Number one, stay under 3 mph until you pass the sign with a red circle about 200 yards away. Number two, stay at least 150 feet away from each other (maybe he said 150 yards...but we got the idea). We ended up shoving off about 15 minutes late since we had to wait on the jet skis to come back in from the previous renters who were running a little late. They seemed pretty easy going about it so we acted the same in case we were running late on our return. After a few minutes of riding I realized that we made the better choice of renting on the bay side instead of the gulf side. The was PLENTY of places to go! We ran down the shore line for a few miles then circled back. That took about 20 minutes, so then we heading out towards the center of the bay area and played around for most of the remainder of the time. Riding them really made me want to purchase one! Angela's Dad tossed out the idea of splitting one if we decided to get one (since we live a few miles from Lake Lavon). I ran it by Angela and she didn't seem as excited.
After returning from riding the jet skis, we stopped back at Wal-Mart to get a few items that we had forgotten and then met back up with Sara, Angela, and Marin at the beach. After about an hour there, we went back to the room for sandwiches. Later that evening we went to the pool, then finished off the evening with dinner at The Lighthouse which was not too bad.
Day 3: Tuesday
For lunch we used one of the 4 gas grills and cooked up some hot dogs and hamburgers. You could see the grills from our balcony, so the girls stayed on the patio while Hector and I went down to grill the food. I had finished my beer while I was down there so we asked Angela to toss one down 6 floors to us. Hector took the challenge of catching it. His hands slowed it down a bit, but it ultimately landing on the concrete...it was still good!
Dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse.
Day 4: Wednesday
We went to the indoor pool and used the complementary computer in the office to print out our boarding passes.
Since this was the last full day and we were leaving the next morning, we knew we had to finish most if not all of the food and drinks that we purchased so that we wasted as little as possible. Angela took inventory and we were set on the food, but she had a few doubts on the alcohol situation. I told her to rest assure that we would not have to throw away any alcohol when we left the next day. She said okay. But then around 3PM she questioned my earlier statement when we picked up another 12 pack. I finished the last beer at the end of the Country Music Awards and we all headed off to bed.
Day 5: Thursday
We woke up and slowly finished packing up the few items that we had not packed the night before. We took the 45 minute drive back to the airport in Pensacola, returned the boat car, and checked in for the flight. On the flight back I sat with Marin and Angela sat across the aisle (the plane was 1 seat/aisle/2 seats). Directly in front of me was about a 6 month old baby boy with a set of lungs...I'm sure I will see him on American Idol in about 15 years or so. It was not that he was screaming of discomfort, but screaming for joy...but it was so loud! Then behind Angela was this lady would not stop bragging about her son to the couple in the seats next to her. He is extremely good in baseball and football, runs 40 yards in 4.2 seconds, State Campions...etc, etc, etc. He is hoping to go to UT for college although the parents referred OU. The mother went further by saying that he does not like to run but they make him since he is so fast. He never even warms up before a competition. She was telling this other couple how his last competition (state level or something) he placed 3rd. The man in the couple she was telling this story to then said, "3rd...so 2 other people beat him?" I quickly turned my head towards Marin so she wouldn't see the huge smile on my face (she was diagonally back from me across the aisle).
Marin did just fine on the plane ride. She had some goldfish, water, and pretzels, then watched some Spongbob Square Pants on her portable player and even knocked out a 30 minute nap.
Once back in Texas, we went directly to Papasito's for some mexican food. We didn't even try to have any mexican food while in Florida since we knew it would not taste the same as in Texas.