Our original plan was to take a "dolphin viewing" cruise on a glass-bottom boat today. But I talked to the girls about it, and we all agreed that we wanted to spend the last day of our vacation at the beach. The boat trip sounded fun, but nobody wanted to give up our beach time for it. So we'll save the Southern Star Dolphin Cruise for our next vacation. We had a light breakfast, put our suits back on, and headed down to the ocean.
We claimed our same spot, and settled in. The weather was even more beautiful today than yesterday, and the ocean was so calm, it looked like a sheet of glass. We were able to wade way out into the gulf, and the water was still only waist high. It was so clear, you could easily see the bottom. At one point, I saw a pretty good size blue crab on the ocean floor, and he saw me too, because he quickly scooted away sideways before I could get any closer. Darn, there goes dinner! The girls were able to see lots of shells, and unfortunately, lots of screws, bolts, pieces of corroded metal, broken glass, etc. We did our best to clean up the beach of this junk.
The girls and their mom spent a lot of time building a sand castle. I just can't describe how serene it was, watching my family enjoy the beautiful weather and warm, clear water from my lounge chair. I never wanted it to end.Next to us, was a couple from Louisville, Ky. Coincidentally, the family next to them was also from Louisville. We had chatted briefly with both groups, and when they discovered that they shared a home town they became very friendly with each other. At one point, the lady from Louisville Group 2 told the couple from Louisville Group 1 that she was going up to the condo to make Beer Margaritas. Elzie overheard them (unavoidable really, as she was eavesdropping!) and exclaimed "BEER MARGARITAS!?!" Louisville Lady said she would bring one down for her. It was really good - I had my doubts, but it turned out to be very refreshing. It was different, and somehow familiar tasting at the same time. She gave us the very complex recipe, which I shall now share with you:
| Beer Margaritas 1 12oz Can Limeade Concentrate 1 12oz Bottle Corona 1 12oz Can 7-Up 12oz Tequila Mix it all together, serve over ice. |
Our plan was to visit a place called McGuire's in Destin for lunch, then stop at the Destin Fish Market for some fresh, locally caught fish to grill for dinner. Elzie's good friend had told us that their family enjoyed McGuire's on their excursions to the Panhandle. She told us that they brew their own beer and root beer, have great steaks,
great sandwiches, and U.S. Senate Bean Soup for 18 cents. However, we were having such a nice time on the beach, and we didn't want to interrupt little-bit's nap, so we continued to play until at least 3:00. At that point, we finally gathered up the family, sprayed them down at the outdoor shower, removed the rest of the sand in the showers at the condo, got dressed, and headed across the bridge to the city of Destin.We found McGuire's without too much trouble. We got there right as they were switching menus from Lunch to Dinner. They had us wait in the gift shop for about 15 minutes (maybe they do this to all obvious tourists, in the hopes that they'll buy some Irish Pub junk or a T-shirt or something).
There were lots of "Shoe" cartoons on the wall - apparently the author of that strip is a frequent guest. Hanging from the ceiling are about $300,000 worth of single dollar bills. It's actually sort of an amazing site to see. The kids' menu servings were generous, and contained the "best chicken nuggets" the girls had ever tasted. The bean soup was very good too. I had a huge hamburger with mushrooms and monterey jack cheese. It was so good. I chose home-made baked beans instead of fries, and they were great too. (Lots of beans at this meal - this could be trouble!) Elzie had a humungous Reuben sandwich with fries. I swapped half of my burger for half of her Reuben. Man, they were both great. Other folks around us were getting steaks (they were eating dinner, but we were stuck in a lunch frame of mind). The steaks looked and smelled heavenly.
By the time we got out of there, it was far too late and we were all too stuffed to even contemplate dinner. So we skipped the fish market and went to the pier. We paid $1 a piece to walk out to the end. Along the way were hilarious signs that advised patrons not to engage in "jumping or diving from the pier". We must have been 100 feet above the water! I can't imagine the suicidal idiot that would choose to jump off. There were lots of rather large birds on the pier, which we were informed by another tourist were Great Blue Herons. I guess they are used to stealing bait or other tidbits from the fisherman. There were a couple of folks fishing at the end of the pier, but nobody was catching anything significant. One man had what appeared to be a dolphin on his line for just a few seconds. Whatever it was managed to unhook itself and swim away. We were all somewhat relieved, including the fisherman, who wanted nothing to do with dolphins on his line. We watched the sunset from the pier. The "Blue Heron" guy offered to take our picture, and it turned out pretty good, except for the fact that little-bit refused to look at the camera. But we were glad to have a shot with all of us in it (the only other one we have from this trip is the SeaWorld photo).
Later, we stopped at "Alvin's", the tourist trap souvenir stand. We spent probably an hour trying to find something, anything, to bring home to our friends and family. We couldn't even find a decent T-shirt. Everything in the place was absolute junk. We really felt like we needed to look at another place, but we just weren't up to it. We hoped to find something more suitable the next day, on the trip home (but we didn't). We fueled up in anticipation of our drive the next morning ($2.64/gallon - a comparitive bargain!), and headed back to Water's Edge.When we got back, the girls watched a show on cable, while my wife and I started packing up to get ready to leave our condo at the beach. We could not get over our good luck with the weather, finding such a nice place to stay, and avoiding the red tide (OH! I forgot to mention that they had been experiencing red tide for the weeks prior to our stay - but the water was crystal clear while we were there). We must have found the three most perfect days of the year to visit Fort Walton Beach.
We slept with the windows open again tonight, but the sea was so calm, it barely made a sound.
Read about Day 9...
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