Florida, Day-3

We woke up to some not great weather.

Which we knew was a possibility.
It was really dark and drizzly.

The plan was to pack up and leave Rosemary Beach and head 45 minutes west to Destin

for the second half of our trip!

It was sad seeing The Pearl slip off into the distance in the rear view mirror.

Sniff, sniff.

 

On the way there I wanted to quickly stop in Seaside to see their iconic Post Office.

Isn't it adorable?!!

And it is fully functioning, even!

Much to our surprise, there was a full on farmers market AND the cutest airstream 
food trucks lining both sides of the street!!
Jackpot!
Our quick photo stop turned into (no joke) a 2 hour food truck crawl!

And even better that the sky cleared up!

 How could you pass any of them up?!

We ate...

...and ate...

...and ate...

...and ate...

...and ate...

It was funny,  the rain come back and the streets cleared out in a wink!

Didn't bother us!

We kept on about our business of eating!

The only shrimp eaters of the group.
 Cheers to more for us!

Did I mention we ate a lot?

I wish I had a pool house to do turquoise stripes on. 

We rolled ourselves back to the cars and drove
 to our next hotel, The Salamander Resort and Spa.

Destin has a completely different vibe than the upscale Rosemary area.
You could tell it was older and more run down.
Spring break, party destination for a lot of folks.

The resort was in the heart of Destin, and on what they call the
Henderson State Park.
So it felt secluded from everything else.
It was definitely much bigger than The Pearl, and had a whole different feel.
It had a Cape Cod style, which I loved.

We also were kind of scrambling on a game plan.
We originally were scheduled for jet skiing that day.
After not being sure what would happen because of the weather,
 I got the phone call that they
were officially canceling us for the day.
Womp, womp.

We checked in, but
our rooms weren't ready yet.
 It had just stopped raining and had a little mist in the air,
so we checked our bags and hit the hot tub while we waited!

Which then lead us to walking down to the beach, we couldn't resist any longer!
This resort was also not water front, but a quick few minutes walk away.

It was private to only guests which made it nice.

The sand, ohhh the sand!!
So soft and powdery. 
I think I am a beach brat now!
Nothing will compare!

We jumped in the water and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly! 

See the ominous dark clouds behind us?

Thankfully we had no rain the whole time we were in the water!

The weather in FL we hear is super bi-polar. 

Our resort in the background.

Some of us stayed by the pool for a bit before heading up to our rooms.

A tour of the room.

They ran out of king beds, which we requested.
Instead they knocked down the price of our room and gave us free parking.
Even better!
We sleep on a queen at home, so we didn't know any different.

I wish I had time to soak in that tub with that ocean view!

Views from our balcony.

The pool areas were super sweet.
And nothing beats a beach view.

We had a conjoined room next to Sunni and Travis.

I had a list of restaurants a mile long to try out.
We only had one night left, OH THE STRESS, haha. 

We decided on a place called FudPuckers.
It seemed interactive and fitting for Florida.
They have something called alligator island in their restaurant where you can feed live
alligators swimming around!
The reviews seemed great, so off we went for an adventurous dinner!

Kind of felt like I was at their State Fair!

Just passed the entrance was their alligator pond.
I was alarmed at how many BIG ones were swimming around down there!
You can see a group of people way in the back feeding them with food on
on long pole and string. 

The wait was an hour and a half.
No bid deal.

We checked out their huge souvenir shop, and walked around.

They had clear glass cases upon cases of mini alligators in a windy

hallway type of thing.

This restaurant was MASSIVE.

I thought for sure I would get lost.

It started pouring rain, and we were outside and still had time to kill.

 We went next door to another Destin, FL

type souvenir store and spent lots of unnecessary money on shirts, stickers,

beach bounce balls, bracelets and such for the kiddos back home!

Finally it was time to eat!

Here we are pondering on whether to get the alligator alfredo or nachos.

We chose neither:)

We did get the Gator-ail as a compromise!

Jesse and Justin were the true hero's for ordering real alligator food.

Bomb (chicken) nachos, tho!

And I got popcorn shrimp that was super tasty. 

When there is a ginormous ice cream cone on the building, you know
its going to be good!

Back to the rooms for more games!

I think this was a highlight for everyone.

We played Maui, Maui every night.

It's hard to explain, but so very hilarious!

Case in point.

Jesse had us rolling in laughter and tears this night!

These are screen shots of the video I was taking.

I think we had a solid 5 minute period where nobody could talk because we were laughing so hard!