Fudpucker’s for dinner. I don’t remember what Fred got, but I ended up with a burger without the bun, and a side salad. It wasn’t bad (though I should have just had grilled fish), and we got a 1/3 pound of shrimp to take back to the room with us, in case I got hungry later (and I did, and the shrimp was EXCELLENT). We also got t-shirts, and drove around for a little while before going back to the room.
It was still light out, so we went out for a walk along the beach, where I snapped about a thousand pictures, and we looked for shells, but didn’t really find any.
We were in bed fairly early again, and the next morning my eyes popped open at 5:30, and I got up and went to the bathroom, then sat out on the deck while Fred went for his morning walk. There were already people in the water (or maybe they were “still” in the water, rather than “already” in the water!), and I watched them, and the people walking by, and read a little.
As soon as we saw the chair-and-umbrella guy setting up, we went down to the beach, dropped our stuff by one of the umbrellas, and headed out to the water. We ended up finding a bunch of shells, and a weird sea cucumber-looking thing, and Fred spotted a couple of HUGE blue crabs. I’ll let him tell that story, though.
Again, we stayed on the beach for a few hours, headed back to the room and showered and dressed, and headed out for lunch. We ended up going to The Lucky Snapper (which is where we’d gone the first night), we had oysters, and I ended up trying blackened grouper for the first time. It was VERY good, and I ate more than I thought I was going to be able to. After we ate, we drove around Destin some more, looking for a store I’d seen advertised. We found the store, and I took one look and decided it was Not My Kind Of Place (ie, hoity-toity and expensive), and we went over to the grocery store to pick up a few things.
We went back to the room, took a short nap, and went back out on the beach for an hour or so. I started feeling kind of motion sick from the rough waves, and went and sat under the umbrella while Fred dove for more shells. Eventually, we made our way back to the room, showered and dressed, and went to The Crab Trap for dinner. We had more oysters (we had a lot of oysters while we were there, but I didn’t feel like I had nearly enough), and I decided to try Amberjack, which I’d never had before. It was REALLY good; they’d spiced it up with some kind of grilling spices, and it reminded me a lot – taste wise and texture wise – of steak.
We got half a pound of boiled shrimp to take back to the room (not as good as the shrimp from Fudrucker’s), and then hit a few more souvenir shops to pick up some stuff for Fred’s mom and stepfather, who’d fed the cats while we were gone.
Back in the room, we watched TV while I bitched about how fucking cold I was, which just surprised Fred to no end. No matter than I was laying on a bed that the air conditioning was blowing directly at, no matter than I’ve lost 100 pounds in less than five months, no matter than I am ALWAYS FUCKING COLD, somehow it just amazes him that I could possibly be cold. Because HE isn’t cold, so why would I be?
We watched TV, and I read a little, and we went out on the back deck to look at the beach and the people several times (I mostly did it so I could warm up), and we were in bed pretty early.
We both slept in a little on Sunday morning. Fred wanted to leave exactly at 6:00, but I wanted to wait until I was a little bit awake, so we hung out for a couple of hours, watched people off the back deck, read, and showered and packed. By 8:00, we were ready to go, so we took one last look at the beach, loaded up the car, and headed out.
All in all, a very good vacation and we enjoyed ourselves a great deal. I never really did get sunburned, though I think I got a little tan (a tan that’s already faded), and my skin reacted to the sun and ocean and sunblock by getting rashy and itchy AS ALWAYS.
It took us almost 7 hours to get there on Thursday afternoon, following the directions Google Maps gave us. On the way home we went a different way, and it only took about 6 hours. Stupid Google Maps. Of course, I think that the fact that we drove home on a Sunday, which always has less traffic, helped us move a lot faster on the way home.
Annnnnnd, that was our vacation: swimming, sunning, eating, and shopping. The perfect vacation, as far as I’m concerned!
Now, for the thousands of pictures.
The view from our seat at The Lucky Snapper. We’re thinking we might rent a WaveRunner next time we go to Florida.
Toward the lower left of the picture, you can see a dolphin fin. This was the view from our hotel room deck the first morning.
Tank tops in one of the stores. I HATE THESE FUCKING THINGS. I mean, seriously – “If you’re rich, I’m your bitch”?? If my child came home in one of these, I would KILL HER.
More horrid tank tops. UGH.
Man in the water, holding up his beer. We saw SO MANY guys doing this. It was funny, but SO trashy.
Dorks, in our Ft. Walton t-shirts.
The ocean, in the evening.
More ocean.
Anyone know what this is? I think it’s some kind of sea snail or sea slug; whatever it is, it’s alive. We found a ton of them on the beach.
Sunset on the beach.
People got married on the beach; this was the view from our hotel room.
I had thought that I would send this top back to Junonia, since my upper arms were showing too much. But the day before we left, I said “Life is too freakin’ short to worry about what a bunch of strangers think about my upper arms”, and so I wore it. And it wasn’t bad. And don’t try to be all “Your arms don’t look that bad!”, because I have them behind me TO HIDE THEM and so y’all can’t see the full extent of the horror.
Fully dorked out for the beach.
The view from The Lucky Snapper, where we had lunch.
Destin has a cat-only vet. How freakin’ cool is that??
This is Fred. Fred wasn’t too happy to see us, and he wasn’t much for being petted. He was a bit cranky, I guess you could say.
On the bridge going from Destin to Ft. Walton Beach, there’s this sandbar, where all the boats and WaveRunners gather. We supposed that there must be some really good snorkeling there. Fred asked a waitress at the Lucky Snapper, and found that rather than being a really good place to snorkel, it’s called “Crab Island”, and people gather there to party. Hmph.
A boat, seen from our hotel room. Heading out to fish, no doubt.
While Fred was checking out, I spotted this lizard.
All the Florida pictures can be seen here.
Obviously thrilled to death to have Mommy and Daddy home again.