Saturday, October 10, 2009

Back from Florida!

We're back from Florida! What an excellent week! Being just at the ocean is a vacation in itself.

On Saturday morning, we got up around 8 AM so we could finish packing and then load the car. We finally got out of the house around 9:30 and drove to Chick-fil-A for breakfast. Then the driving began. It was roughly a seven-hour journey, but keep in mind we're no strangers to driving long distances; driving for three weeks from Georgia all over the West proves that. Needless to say, we've figured out ways to keep ourselves busy on car trips, usually for me and Mandy which means bringing out the MP3s. Anyway, we drove to Alabama and turned south in Birmingham, where Mandy took the wheel to drive a little. The area there was rough, and I've never been in a place where I've seen bars on most of the windows in some of the houses. South of the city, we headed for the more rural areas. They were absolutely beautiful, just houses on hills of green grass or surrounded by trees. A few looked fairly old, though we didn't see any plantation houses, but I loved the whole rural feeling of it all. In a town called Luverne, we stopped at McDonalds for lunch then Dad took the wheel for the rest of the way. We finally arrived in Fort Walton (about seven miles from Destin) around 3 PM, and we were able to check into our room early. After unpacking the car, we drove to a public area of the beach, about five minutes from the hotel, and explored a little bit. We didn't go swimming, but we did get our feet wet. The beach had beautiful white sand, and the water was a clear blue. We were really excited, but we returned to the hotel for dinner.

On Sunday, it dawned cloudy with a chance of rain. After a devotional in the morning, we spent a few hours at the beach (mostly out of the water) then returned to the room for lunch. While we were making our sandwiches, it started raining. It was a slow afternoon, but my, it was full of silliness. Dad corrupted us forever by showing us some camera tricks with a mirror, and then later we goofed off with Mandy's squishies.

On Monday, it was still a bit cloudy though there was no rain. We went to the beach and discovered it had a red flag (which means a strong rip current) and the wind was creating huge waves. Mom stayed on the beach to do some schoolwork and I read a little before I went out to join the others. The current indeed was strong, and I soon retreated to shore. It was either this day or the next day that I began construction on what I called "Gondolin" (I borrowed the name from Tolkien). Basically, I dug a hole in the wet sand and left the very center undisturbed then surrounded it with a wall and a canal to let the water in. I made it twice in the period of a few days, but I imagined it as an island in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains. Anyway, after dinner that night we went for a nightly walk on the beach and I ended up soaked by one small wave.

On Tuesday, it was still a red flag though it was nowhere near as strong as it had been on Monday. We all stayed out longer in the water, jumping waves and body-surfing, and we had a blast. The waves, however, stole my ponytail holder so I felt and looked like a wild woman for a few days. We all returned to the hotel that afternoon looking a bit cooked, so when we went to the beach again later we put sunscreen (we usually don't use sunscreen because it blocks UV rays, which is what enables your body to make vitamin D and which helps you to fight off colds and the like) only on the affected areas.

On Wednesday, we got more sun, and it was beginning to show a little more. Mandy was red briefly then immediately turned brown, but the rest of us took a few more days, probably because she gets the most sun out of all of us. The water was a bit more rough that day, but it was still a good day.

On Thursday, we decided we would drive to Cape San Blas to get some big seashells. However, we decided against it, so we ended up driving around a large beach community outside of Panama City. The community was absolutely beautiful, with several beach houses and condos everywhere and then the occasional shopping area. Later that afternoon, we went to the beach briefly for the last time. Before dinner, we went walking on The Strip, a bunch of little shops mostly dedicated to beer or tattoos, but we had fun just looking even though most of the stores were already closed. Then we had dinner and took advantage of the cable to watch "The Office" episode of Jim and Pam's wedding, though I watched that while everyone else watched "CSI" in the other room. We also discovered a show called "My Name Is Earl" that left us rolling afterwards. Anyway, then we began packing up everything.

We had originally planned to leave on Saturday, but we decided to leave on Friday so we could have a day to recover at home and also so that Mom could get the church cleaned for church. We woke up on Friday, finished the packing, then checked out. We took a bit of a loop while trying to find one of the roads, but we found it again. On a section of the rural road in northern Florida/southern Alabama I took the wheel for about thirty minutes or so. As Dad said, I didn't do that bad, but I feel otherwise. My speed kept shifting between 40 and 65 mph, I had a bit of trouble keeping the car in its lane, etc... I didn't feel so good about it afterwards, but I'm reminding myself that it was a first time on the road and I just need practice and experience. Anyway, Seth took over the wheel for a while, then Mandy then, due to heavy traffic, Dad took over. We ate at Wendy's for lunch near Birmingham and got caught in some of the Atlanta traffic, but we finally arrived home around 4 PM or so. Cliff was still there, so he got his things and left while we unpacked everything. After cleaning the house, Dad and Mandy brought home pizza for dinner.

I took lots of pictures on the trip, but there's (as Sondre Lerche says in one of my favorite songs) a major minor detail: no computer. My laptop is just about dead. Before we left on Saturday, I moved it to a secure location on my dresser, but one of the house-sitters moved it to the kitchen table, where one of the cats knocked over the fish bowl and left my laptop sitting in the water. I dried it out as best I could with a hair dryer yesterday, but turning it on, my battery is completely dead, my keyboard doesn't work, and the whole computer is just messed up. I managed to transport all my writing and some of my music to a USB drive, but moving my 19 GB of pictures taken over a period of two years is something I've yet to solve (as I can't use the internet or one of our external hard drives because the one with all our music died about two weeks ago and the replacement for it is acting weird as well). So, needless to say, there won't be any pictures until I figure out which computer to upload them to.

Anyway, the trip to the beach was great. It was nice just to relax and not go anywhere for a week, goofing off with the family and just enjoying ourselves. We went at a time when it wasn't very crowded and the weather was still nice and hot, so it was just perfect. Well, I've got to go. I've got to finish a rough draft of a paper due for Bible class on Monday and I've got a lot of reading due the same day (hey, it's hard to do homework when you're on vacation).

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