Sunday, August 22, 2010

Vacation 101

Aye carumba! Chad and I are in Cape San Blas, Florida after a twenty hour drive with one pit stop nap for an hour at around 4 am somewhere in Alabama. Oy vey....that sucked, but we are here and we are having a total blast!!! It is more appropriate to say it is relaxation, zen mania. Should zen and mania be in the same sentence? Probably not, but it is true.
We left Des Moines at about 5pm on Thursday night to drive through the night to Panama City. Cheap hotel and only 45 minutes from where we needed to be on Saturday. It may not make sense to some, out travel logic, but it worked for us. Panama City is a bit of a dump. Would not stay there unless someone paid me and even then it would have to be a lot of moolah. Left PC at about 9 am on Saturday morning to head to Port. St. Joe to go to their Open Saltair farmer's maket.  Forgot about the time change in Mexico Beach and with travel time we got to PSJ at about 11: 30 with the farmer's market ending at noon. PLus it was raining off and on all morning long...much to Chad's chagrin. Couldn't figure out where the fm was so we drove to Cape San Blas to check out the house we rented before we could check in at 4pm. It was so fun to look at all the other beach houses and even better to see the outside of our abode for the next week. The hot tub maintenance guy was there getting the hot tub in tip top shape for us. YES! Based on a recommendation from a friend we drove to this little parking lot at the state park that is at the end of the cape to see if we could see any wildlife in the bay. It was a nature trail and we embarked on this great adventure hoping to see some fun stuff. We got about 10 minutes down the trail and we were getting eaten alive. So much for that...no way, man, we hightailed it out of there.  We decided to drive back to Port St. Joe to get some lunch and to look around and do some shopping and to get groceries at the Piggle Wiggly. We ate lunch at the PSJ marina at the Dockside Cafe. Chad had scallops and I had a shrimp po-boy. Holy cannoli it was so good! They had the remoulade that I wanted to bathe in and we contemplated stealing the squeeze bottle full of it so we could use it on all our food throughout the week. It was THAT good! We walked though their quaint downtown area with a bunch of little shops. We bought Lola a new collar at Bow Wow Meow Beach shop. (She is at camp at Four Paws Unleashed and her collar gets so nasty when she is there and it can't be washed out...seriously, it smells like the pig barn at the fair. Have no idea how it gets that way. I guess it is kind of like what happens at puppy camp stays at puppy camp. If you click the link you will be able to watch Lola t camp in their day care room. ) Then we found a couple things for the kids. We headed into a bookstore/cafe and bought a couple coconut cookies that Chad wanted to marry they were so good. Thankfully he is already married to me or I would be in trouble. They were THAT good! We got groceries where the check out girl asked if I had any Piggy Points and I about died from laughter. She laughed with me and said, "Yeah, we have to ask everyone that. It sounds so ridiculous if you don't know what it means." Then we drove back to our house in Cape San Blas.
We unloaded all our stuff and took a tour of the house. It is BEAUTIFUL and LOVELY and SERENE and PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY! Everything is white and sand colored with punches of color here and there. We settled in and got unpacked and went out the door to walk the 100 feet to the beach to look around.  Yes, 100 feet. We have a sand dune as our front yard. And because it is turtle hatching season we have to turn off all the lights after 9pm so the babies don't get confused and head towards our house instead of the ocean like they are supposed to. It is seriously freaking awesome here. We saw a 2 and a half foot manta ray in the water just cruising along. And a little crab. And some seagulls and pelicans. And these little fish that get brought in by the surf and they they dart out back to the deeper water. Chad saw a jellyfish and about ran on top of the water to get away from it. Hilarious. After perusing the ocean we headed to the hot tub. It was wonderful just sitting back and relaxing watching the waves and listening to the birds...and I am not going to tell you if we were naked. HA!  After the relaxation fest in the hot tub we got cleaned up and had some snacks for dinner then laid in bed and watched TV until we fell asleep. And that brings me to this morning. Now. Chad got up at the crack of dawn to head out to the beach to look for new shells that popped up over night and I slept in. I could smell the coffee being made so I got up. Grabbed a cup and sat on the deck watching the waves. Taking pictures. Watching the sun come out from behind the veil of clouds that has been covering it since we got here. Blogging. And waiting for my love to come back for some breakfast.

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