Last day of Florida Little Beach House Vacation

 

🚗.   ✈️.   🛫.  🚗

Donna fixed us a nice big Southern breakfast this morning over at Sally's house. I think I might just start buying biscuits in cans. They are really good. Much simpler and faster than making from scratch. Add gravy and they are yummy. Or just as good with butter and jelly. Mmm.

THEN add sausage, scrambled eggs, and chocolate milk and we are stuffed and all set for the day of travel. A LONG day of travel. We won't be home until close to midnight. But it will be nice to get home after a very full week of fun in the sun and water. And heat. Ugh. Yesterday with clouds and rain was much more temperate. Still very very humid here in Florida. 

Corbin has a shorter  day before he's home by 6:30 p.m. or so. Depending on if there are no delays, we should have time to deliver Corbin to the baggage claim and Katie or Casey, then get back through Security and to our gate for the flight to St. George.

And we are stuffed. What a food- filled vacation! And the fridge is still full of food. Crazy.  Sally has leftovers from the breakfasts and all that pizza last night in HER fridge. We have drinks and snacks and chips and cereal and cheese and lunch meat and rolls and bagels and peanut butter. We did manage to finish off pancake mix, syrup and butter. Janet bought most of that food. We contributed very little in comparison. 

But we sure ate a lot! All day every day and now my clothes are much tighter. 

Bye bye, Little Beach House! We shall return😘

🩴⛱️🌊🌴🌴🛥️🐬🎣🐟🦈🥽🏊🥽🏊‍♂️

Happy Pioneer Day!

 First stop- Walgreens for Allergy nose spray. Poor Mike and his allergies. Those sprays really help with so many things. How we love modern medicine.

Next stop-- Indian Mound Museum. Sadly, they were closed long term for renovation. I got to read a few outdoor signs about it. 

Third stop -- find the dolphin tour boat place so we know where to go this afternoon. It wasn't an easy task due to major bridge and road construction in the area. But we found it eventually.

Fourth stop -- the Coral Reef souvenir shop. So much stuff.  Way too much made in China junk, basically. But I found some cute shells and starfish, and ornament and a candle. Corbin managed to find a surfboard shaped wooden. Key chain for each member of his family- with names on them!

After lunch we headed to the Dolphin tour place. It was a Hurry Up And Wait situation. We headed out to sea around 2:30 pm. No rain , but plenty of wind and not very smooth seas. "Weather" they call it. 

We did see some Atlantic bottle nose dolphins in the water and motored around to find more. Maybe saw about 25 or so. Some even leapt out of the surf! That was cool. Mostly it was just fins and backs.

Back inside the sound to snorkel. In sea grass! Ick. With water that was under 5 feet deep. Ick. Only a very few fishes. It probably would have been clear except 37 people all just walked everywhere around the boat.  It was just a sandy grassy bottom. Some found hermit crabs.

Definitely not my favorite snorkel trip. Sorry I spent so much money on it. Live and learn. 

Janet ordered an obscene amount of pizza for dinner tonight. They were beyond large. They were HUGE. Plus garlic knots, and salad. There were 5 different pizzas. Plus bread sticks!!!!

We are stuffed. Corbin swam at Sally's ( so did I, before dinner), then I showered and got ready for bed. Even without extreme heat and exhaustion, I'm still pooped out at night. Water time, boat time (and shopping!! -- [horrors!])...it all takes a toll on this old gal. Mike didn't even snorkel this afternoon. He just watched from the boat, and took a lovely shot of Corbin and me standing out in the sea grassy water.

Watching for dolphins out in the Gulf.

Some days are good hair days. Some not so much.

July 23, 2024 in Florida

 Donna's little House is so comfy. We have loved being here and just relaxing together. And we especially needed a day of nothing but relaxing today. I think we all had a bit of heat exhaustion. And some of us were sun burned, too.

David got up early this morning and packed his car to leave for home. I think he would have just disappeared without saying anything to anyone, but I smelled ( burnt toast?) his coffee brewing and got up to investigate. I rather startled him when I came out and found him in the kitchen. That guy drinks A LOT of coffee daily. And he's back to smoking cigarettes, too. But he was just done with being gone from his home. Done with people. Tired. Missing Laura. But, sadly we cannot help with that part of his life. He just Wanted/Needed to get home. So he left. It was good that he could spend time with us. But, "Fishing is not my thing," he said. Yeah. Well, we are ALL sore from fishing! Ha.

And you know what? We never tried to pose a nice photo of the four of us siblings together. Too bad. We don't get together often enough.

Butch's Mom, Sally, was having her eye shots today, so we kind of steered clear of their house most of the day so she could rest. But we rested over here with Donna and Butch coming over and discussing cruise excursions with the rest of us. 

Corbin slept in till close to 10:30. Ate a lot of pancakes for breakfast ( late). Rested. Read a very little bit. Played no games with us, though that's about all we did all day. Games and eating. Some people napped or watched TV. I worked on Hotel reservations for CA and Kenny's funeral next week. And flowers for that. And Mom's prescription. It was over cast today, so no blistering sunshine; however, the weather app on my phone said it was 89 degrees this morning, but felt like 101. Ugh.  So it was inside and air conditioning for us all. 

Rob, Janet, Butch, Donna had dinner out, but Corbin made Chicken Quesadillas for us. They were yummy. He did it all ! 

Banana cream pudding for dessert. I've eaten a LOT this trip. Everything feels so tight. ( Like skin and clothing)

In the evening there was lots of booming thunder and crackling lightening as storms were passing through, leaving a light rain falling as we all went to bed.

Corbin never did join us in any games, even when I offered to play any he chose or wanted to play. But he did wander over to Sally's after dinner (She was rested and doing okay after her procedure) and was nice enough to take out photo. Her table fits the six of us much better.

It's been a nice, pleasant and relaxing day. I hope the rain goes away for our afternoon dolphin and snorkel excursion tomorrow!!

Tuesday July 22, 2025 Blue Angels

 Pensacola Florida's Naval Air Station is the home to the Blue Angels. They practice a couple of times a week in the summer months, so went to see. And to see Fort Pickens, too. THAT was a pretty impressive National park site! The fort is old, huge, well- preserved. Interesting, too. Also hot. (The Tourist gift shop was air conditioned, however.)

It was close to a two hour drive to get to the national park. we got up and had pancakes and leftover Striklin's sausage for breakfast, packed a picnic lunch, umbrellas, towels, drinks, and were out the door by 8 am! Pretty good! 

We wandered through the fort looking at all the places to put Armaments. And places to live, I suppose. Cook. Eat, perhaps. Store food?  ammo? Hide? Get lost in? We didn't take the self guided OR the Ranger tour, so we did not know what we were looking at. But it was cool. There were a few plaques around.

We cooled off for about 15 minutes in air conditioning and purchased souvenirs. I got a magnet, naturally.  Then we went to the car and got chairs ( a mistake- they were low-to-the-ground BEACH chairs. Unusable for us folks who can't get out of a sand chair :-/.  But the large beach umbrella was NOT a mistake.) And we got a water bottle each. We climbed to the top of the wall  via stairs and viewed the 30 min "Air Show "  from up there. Nice view. Good show, too! The umbrella gave us some much-needed shade. There was a pleasant breeze. But sweat was just rolling down my back. And there were lots of ants.  Few bit.

At the end of the airshow, we drove on out of the Fort area and found parking at the nearest beach. They had bathrooms ( Yay!), soft white sand... So so pretty. So we swam! 

And swam and swam. 

I got a nice sunburn because I did not re-apply sunscreen .  Oops. Corbin did. We took a swim break once and ate lunch in the shade of the umbrella. Sandwiches. Cool drinks. Snacks. It was perfect. Except for all that salt and sand. . .

 Haha. And the little fish that kept surrounding Mike's feet and nibbling. Ick! They were about 4 or 5 inches long. When they found MINE, I was out of there. Corbin tried to catch one. Unsuccessfully, though he did touch a fin.

There were occasional clouds, too, so it didn't seem quite so hot. But it was still SO  hot. 

It was hard to drag Corbin away. He would have stayed all day. As it was, we were back by 3 :30 or so with one stop to get milk on the way home. 

So tired! Every day is long... And exhausting. Because it's hot and we are old and fat and out of shape and have been enjoying great food in large amounts..ha.

Tonight: Butch cooked some of our fish out on the grill and we had fresh coleslaw, rolls, leftover salads. Plus desserts. Yes, desserts, as in plural. And not just two. We had THREE.  But not everyone has three. I merely had banana pudding. I made that for Rob at his request. I did NOT know that Sally had made Butch's favor dessert of yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Plus there was still some of the caramel cake from Stricklin's that was left, too! Man, we are livin' it up. 

I think Corbin may have overdone it with the sun and sand today as he is feeling rather pukey tonight. Or the fish didn't agree with his yummy. He ate a lot. 

Photos:

Fort Pickens

The three of us watched The Blue Angels rehearse from on the Fort Wall.

Big cannon on tracks for turning it around. This was a key Naval Station area for a long time, like Revolutionary War!!

The clouds set a lovely backdrop for an airshow.

And then we hit the beach. Langley? Langford? I don't recall. But it was nice.

Corbin body-surfing.

FISH ON! Monday Gulf Fish Trip

 Only that's not what they do in Florida on the deep sea fishing boats.  "FISH ON!" was Alaska terminology on the Kenai river years ago. We had a 48 foot, rather large boat with 8 fishers for fishing out in the Gulf this morning. Poor Janet got really ill and spent a lot of time lying down. Donna was queasy as well, but fished a lot.

27 fish, a lot of pretty good-sized swells to keep up ALL scrambling to stay up right  (except Elmer, the deck hand) about 4 or 5 stops out in deep water. Bottom fishing for snapper mostly.

We had to be at the dock at 5 am.  I set my alarm for 3:45 so I could have time to make sandwiches and get ready to go by 4:30 a.m. I followed Butch...even onto the WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET in a construction zone. Gaaaaa! We were in the left turn lane for the OPPOSITE direction with plastic upright pipes separating me from the correct lane. I may have run over a few at 40 mph when I realized what was happening!! Luckily, no one going the opposite way needed to turn left, so we both got back over once the little orange divider pipes were gone. But talk about scary!!!

We ribbed him thoroughly about that.

It was dark that early. But still about 80 degrees. It's so hot here. We were all so hot and sweaty. So hot. So sweaty. So tired.

 And a bit of heat exhaustion to go with the sea sickness for some. David said, in his sweat-soaked shirt, " Maybe fishing's not for me." Robert had shakey hands and it wasn't from excitement -- he was over heated! Mike was wearing out fast and we were happy to head back to land. 

Sitting here typing on my phone at 10 pm, the room is still swaying.😆

We got home with two gallon baggies of lovely snapper filets . Just filets. They include NO bones and I was sad to see so much meat tossed out for fish food. We paid a lot of money for that fish food! Oh well.

Naps, swimming afterwards, Stewbies for dinner for some of us. Mike and David passed. 

Corbin and others swam in Sally's pool. There was too much thunder and lightning to go to the beach earlier, but it did clear up . Hope it's clear tomorrow! Corbin has been begging to go to the beach. 

Some photos.

Sunrise from the boat on our way out. We motored out close to an hour and it was not smooth. Could have been much worse.

Venus and the moon from the dock. We were exactly ON TIME at 5 a.m.

So we wait. And wait. Till close to 6, I think

 Maybe 5:30.  Time for bathroom breaks and moon and sat gazing and bird watching.

A "Pet" named "Fred."

The cabin was air- conditioned, but still felt kinda hot.

Corbin hogging all the coolness from the A/C unit.

Rob and David.

Donna and Elmer, deck hand.

Janet.

The back of Butch and Mike's heads.

David, me, Corbin.

Robert's good catch.

My big catch. Donna was a big help for me-- this was HARD!!  My hands are sweaty and the rod is wet, the pole twists around, making it hard to reel it in. Plus, it's just hard. They are heavy.

Corbin caught some that had to be thrown back because they were too small. Sad.

Donna did, too. Me, too. Or, they were out of season ( trigger fish)

Decent catch by Donna.

Janet is ready to be back at the dock.

Fred was still hanging around.

Here we all are, with entire catch.

Long full day. 

I'll proofread later. Even after naps, I'm still tired. And the room is still swaying. Maybe it will lull me to sleep!😅