Thursday was Thanksgiving, but we’d already had our big meal. What we hadn’t done is spend an entire day at the beach. Thursday was the day.
We’d seen a public beach with a bath house and lots of parking right next to the The Crab Trap restaurant so we thought we’d try that out. We hadn’t brought any of our beach stuff with us to Destin … no chairs, no towels, no beach toys for the boys. So the first stop was Alvin’s to pick some of it up. Hey, you can never have enough beach gear, right? A few dollars lighter and we headed to the beach.
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- Even Dad goes in
The Gulf was beautiful, the sand was white, the beach wasn’t crowded, and the sun was shining. There were even several people flying kites. We got our chairs setup and our bags arranged and Noah was off to the water. I thought it was a little chilly, but he didn’t care. I think he’d prefer to be a merman if that were possible. Even though I thought it was kind of cold I decided to have a go at it anyway. You have to get in the ocean whenever you can, right? I don’t know if the water warmed up a little or if just running and diving in made a big difference, but the water actually felt great. It was so refreshing and awesome to spend a little time playing with Noah.
After the beach we still weren’t done with the water. We came back to the condo and everyone went to the outdoor pool. It was getting dark and the air was cooling off, but the water was heated. Most of the pool was three feet or less deep so Ben got to run around without the ultra-close supervision that we always give him around water, and the boys made friends with another kid who had some toys. A great day in the water all around.
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- Fish in the water
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- Coming in for a landing
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- Up and away
Friday was our last full day in Destin. We thought that it would be fun to take a helicopter ride. None of us had ever done it before so everyone was excited to give it a try … except for Ben. He’s afraid to try anything. Hopefully he’ll grow out of that. The ride was short but pretty darned thrilling. I’d never been up in a helicopter before, but I can’t wait to do it again. We took a run up the beach and got to see some schools of fish. We even saw a shark.
After the helicopter ride Nana and Peepop wanted to head to an outlet mall that was there. We didn’t have any interest in that so we decided to do mini-golf instead. That seems to be becoming a tradition for us when we’re at a beach for any amount of time. We’ll need to play mini-golf at least once. We weren’t real careful with the score … but I won by a landslide.
After everyone got to back to the condo we had to decide on a place for dinner. We’d heard good things about the place across the street, so we thought we’d check it out. Even though it has an Irish name and décor it turns out that McGuire’s is a steak house. When we got there the parking lot was pretty packed. We were sure we were going to have to wait. Thankfully, we were wrong. We got seated right away. Being as this was a steak house I just had to get a steak. Boy, was that a good idea. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it’s one of the best steaks that I’ve ever had. Everyone else was equally pleased with their food. As a matter of fact, if we go back to Destin that restaurant will weigh heavily in our decision.
Considering how it started, with Allison’s kidney stone, our trip ended up being very fun and full of activities. Time to come up with the next plan for getting out of this apartment.