Last day in Florida

We were able to rebook our jet skiing, hooray!
And the weather was looking mighty fine, double hooray!

It's funny how teenagers can turn a sketchy house tucked behind some trees into a 

business. Pretty sure it was a big frat house.

We pulled up and just shrugged our shoulders. 

The guy who gave us the run down of the jet skis was a stereotypical 

blonde, freakishly tan, cowabunga accented surfer dude.

Giddy up!

The crystal clear, blue water... I die.

We goofed around for a bit and rode past some big mansions, then headed over 
to the main reason we rented jet skis.

To check out the famous Crab Island!

It is not a land island, it is a HUGE sandbar out in the middle of the ocean.
You can only get there by a watercraft.

On the weekends people dock their boats and water toys and have a PARTY!

Pulling up to the social scene in awe!

Miles upon miles of boats, people, floating water vendors and even a floating trampoline park. 

Obviously we were way under prepared for what we needed to stay a long time.

For starters, we had no anchors for our jet skis.
Once we hit the sandbar and got off, we had to walk our jet skis everywhere we went so they
wouldn't float away or get swiped!

It was fun just observing people.
Clearly there are regulars who know how to do it!

One guy had a blender in his boat and was whipping out margaritas as a little side gig.

Pontoons full of kids going down slides.

Music coming out of every direction.

A nice man let us anchor our stuff to his boat.
The second the guys left to go tie them up, these hooligan boys walked up to us
and started flirting!

We were dying!
Clearly they knew we were twice their age, married with kids and MORMON!

Our husbands, they thought it was pretty funny. 
They got some good pictures of the whole thing. 

Yep, we still got it!
Or they paid them to make us feel good about ourselves. 

I don't know how people do the whole hitting on strangers at the bar type of scene.
Eh, even when single I'm glad that wasn't my type of thing!

We rented this huge floatie to make us look like we fit in. 

We returned the jet skis and got some burgers for lunch.

Casey got a fancy shake.

Lucky for me, Kilwins was right next door!

Last round of toasted coconut ice cream for me.

We had a couple of hours before we needed to head to the airport.

We went back to the resort and hung out by the pool.

Since we had to check out already, we were super ghetto and used the pool

showers to freshen up. 

While we were changing, we all started to get notices that our flight was delayed.

We would not make our connecting flight in Austin, and there were no more flights

to Phoenix that night. 

Uhhh, now what do we do? 

I highly recommend traveling with a pilot.

Did I mention that before?

Justin quickly got on the phone to make some calls.

We had 2 options. 

Take our normal flight and spend the night in Austin, or drive to Pensacola (an hour away)

and catch a flight that left in 2 hours, in hopes they would have enough seats for all of us!

Then have a layover in Dallas, then head home. 

They could not change our flights until we got to the ticket desk in Pensacola. 

Remind you, Stephanie and Justin are flying stand by, so double risk for them.  

We took the risk and started for Pensacola. 

Worst case we would be stuck in TX either way. 

The plan worked and we made it home late Sunday night!

And just like that, Destin became one of my top places I have visited!
There was so much more I wish we could have explored.

Not enough time. I guess I'll just have to go back!

 

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!