Our trip to Destin was the best family vacation we’ve had so far and I wanted to take some time to write about it. I should have done this a long time ago, but we’ve just had trouble finding time recently. The blog has been suffering from it too. Anyway, I created a website for Dan and Gayle Fulton’s condo and to “pay” me, they let us stay there for free for a week. It was completely awesome for many reasons. For one, I think it was the first time we’ve taken a weeklong vacation with just the 5 of us so we had lots of quality time together and got to do lots of bonding. The other part was that the condo was free, so that let us spend lots of money on other things like going out to eat and seeing a lot of the sights and doing lots of activities. Another part that made it completely awesome and probably one of the coolest things about the trip for me was that the ocean water was absolutely perfect!!! It was calm and clear and a beautiful turquoise color. It was as warm as bath water and there was no seaweed or any other “icky” things in the water. The kids literally played in it for hours and hours on end. Missy said it was the first time in her life that she actually enjoyed playing in the ocean! I think we just got completely lucky because Dan and Gayle said the water is hardly ever that nice. If we are able to go back some time, I want to go that same week in July and hope for the same water. We rented a canoe one day and paddled out to about 20 feet of water and you could see all the way to the bottom with ease. Some of the other things we did include:
Visiting a really, really cool community called Baytowne Wharf. It’s a gated community where people live, but they have a little town square in the middle of the community with tons of restaurants, bars, etc. and they open it to the public at night. They have something going on every night of the week with things like fireworks, inflatable bouncy toys, movies, bands, etc. We saw the fireworks and the inflatables and the kids loved it. We also ate at a couple of the restaurants that were really good too.
We rented a boat one day which was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We made it out to that submerged island called Crab Island and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life! The island was about 2 feet below the surface of the water, so it was very easy to pull up, drop an anchor, and walk around. We walked over to a houseboat selling ice cream and talked to the guy and he ended up being from Evansville! What are the odds? I loved letting the kids sit on my lap and drive the boat because I can still clearly remember doing that as a kid on my Dad’s lap on his boat on the Ohio. Missy took a picture of each one driving and I treasure those pictures. Unfortunately we tried to save a little money and rented a pontoon boat rather than a deep V boat because a deep V would have been much better in those waves. I tried to go out of the pass into the ocean but the current and waves were way too strong! I was heading out the pass, but decided to turn around and go back inland and as soon as I did that, the current kept pulling the boat out to the ocean! I had to practically gun it to make any progress. It was very eerie to hear the engine running that fast and look over to the shore and see that we weren’t moving at all! I got pretty nervous for a min. there, but finally realized that we were making progress, so it wasn’t too bad. I would have loved to have a more ocean-going vessel at that time though so we could have enjoyed the waves and current. Next time!
We also took the kids to a little amusement park and they had a blast there too. It was pretty darn expensive and made us realize what a bargain the Fall Festival was! But they had some decent rides and we didn’t mind spending the money since everything else on the trip was pretty cheap. Jack and I rode the go-carts a couple of times and he really enjoyed that. Ally wanted to ride the bumper cars so I took her to do that and Abby wanted to ride the bumper boats so Missy took her to do that. It was pretty late by that time and the kids were getting tired and Ally ended up having a meltdown so that was fun. I think I even overheard someone say something like “Man, if that was my kid, she’d be dead” about Ally! That was our last night and we still had to go shopping for souvenirs so we took the kids to a souvenir shop next door at midnight! They did really well considering how late it was and how tired they were.
We ate at some really cool restaurants on the trip too. Most of them were pretty crowded and we had to wait to get a table, but I didn’t mind because we had plenty of time and usually the view was incredible. My favorite one was AJ’s Steakhouse. It was right at a marina and we got to see lots of boats coming and going while we were there. We even got to see a charter fishing boat come in and display their catch for us. The kids really enjoyed seeing the HUGE fish!
We also spent a lot of time at the condo pool and the kids had a blast there too. Ally learned to swim with her face down while we were there and Jack made a ton of friends with other boys there and ended up playing baseball beside the pool. One boy had an inflatable bat and ball and I’d pitch it to them and they’d hit it and run to the pool and I’d try to throw them out by hitting them with the ball. It was a lot of fun. We also played that game where I’d throw a ball and they’d run and try to catch it while jumping in the pool. We probably had 6-8 kids playing that with us for a while.
It was definitely a great trip and I hope we can do every year. I just made some more updates to the Fulton’s Condo site and I hope they ask us if we want to go down there again this year. Even if we have to pay a little to rent it, I think it will be worth it because of all the fun things to do in Destin and that wonderful Destin Ocean! As we were driving home, when we crossed the Florida border into Mississippi, Missy said, “OK kids, say goodbye to Florida” we looked back and Jack was just sobbing! We asked him what was wrong and he said, “I just don’t want to leave Florida!”
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