Vacation 2010

I am embargoing these posts, so they're not in real time but we are finally on vacation - again in Perdido Key, Florida.
Here is a day by day summary of some of the highlights so far:

Saturday - Day One  - Despite all of my extremely effecient wife's efforts - there were still a few last minute items we had to take care of before leaving.  We finally got away around 10:30 AM, which we estimated would still allow us to arrive shortly after the check in time.
The trip was fairly uneventful. We tend to be "drive-straight-through" people on long trips, trying to reduce our number of stops to a bare minimum, so I think we made the five to six hour trip with one meal stop and one stop for petro.

Ab began the trip trying to establish elaborate plans about what she would "count" on our trip. I guess I am to blame for this - as kids, we used to while away travel times sometimes by playing games like "Doodlebug" (counting Volkswagen "Beetles") or "Alphabet" (a game in which you attempt to spot the entire alphabet, one letter at a time, in order).  I sometimes have used the idea of counting games as an aggravation factor with Ab and AA - once suggesting and beginning a painful count of fireplugs - as a means of either turning their attention toward a common purpose (and sometimes focusing on a common enemy - yours truly).

Ab had difficulty getting a good count going, but the time we made it to the coast, she was counting, Tom Thumb convenience stores.

AA, on the other hand, was in a frantic attempt to try and complete all of his "planned" trip activities: reading a few moments and then moving to his movie, then DS games.

While R. had been busy with constructive and very pointed preparations the trip - I had been dealing with the dilemma of "what to do about the kids".  By "kids", I am referring to Floyd and Thunder, our new goats. We have never left them for any lengthy period of time and wanted to be certain they had the proper feeding and stroking of their collective chins.
I spent two evenings constructing a "hay rack" of sorts, so I could leave a large amount of hay for them. We came up with a list of daily feeding instructions for my brother-in-law to follow with each of our animals.

After a relatively smooth journey, we finally arrived at Perdido Key, near Pensacola.

We hit the beach Saturday evening.  The sand and water were very clear - and warm and calm. The normally steady breezes seemed to have taken a vacation themselves.  We also hit a very hot swimming pool.
I made the first supply run, visiting a very nice little Winn -Dixie store.  I was trying to buy as cheaply as possible and was a little put out by the way many grocery stores advertise low prices but then in small print they indicate that you have to have one of their "special" cards to take advantage of the discounts.
The lady at the register scanned a card for me and I saved over Two Dollars! - it's the little things in life...

Sunday - Day Two  We hit the ground running - desperate to make our first day count.  As is usual for me when I move from Eastern to Central time zone, the first day seems deliciously lo-o-o-ng.
The waters at the beach we again calm and very clear.  We met a family of home-schoolers from West Virginia the evening before and our kids spent some time playing with two of their kids on the beach.  As is characteristic with home schooled children (in my opinion) these kids seemed to view all of creation as their classroom.  They had small scoop nets and portable holding tanks with which they could study their catches.

The breeze was back but the waters were exceptionally calm. Even R. was lured into the surf (she doesn't like getting kicked around by the waves).

Typically our beach vacation pattern looks like this:  I usually will get up before the others, make coffe and take a quiet walk usually to the beach.  After breakfast and some television or something, we usually go to the beach late morning and stay a couple hours or so then return for lunch.
Afternoons may hold a return to the beach or pool time or just soaking up sun or air conditioning.

We ended our first full day with some fairly fresh Gulf Shrimp.

Monday - Day Three AA joined me on my morning walk this time.  We walked maybe close to two miles up to the Gulf National Seashore on the end of the road near the condo in which we are staying.

He and I are spending a good bit of time together this trip - I like his company.

After a very mellow start at the beach, the clouds moved in and the surf kicked it up a notch or two.  The waters became very choppy and no one seemed to want to leave for lunch. It was a great day.

Tuesday, Day Four  A couple of years ago, we went to Williamsburg for an Historic /Educational vacation.  While we had been able to work in a couple of trips to the beach during that excursion, I think we felt that we might have missed out on something by not spending some true down time beside water.
Last year our vacations were pretty much "education free" and so this year my goal was to insert some education somewhere in our trip.  We fulfilled that goal by visiting the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola yesterday.

I think we go a lot out of that visit.  Buck, our tour guide, was a veteran pilot serving in Korea and flying helicopters in Vietnam, was superb; he gave us stories.

That brings us up to today.