Saturday, July 11, 2009

Ft. Walton Beach Vacation, Day 4

July 8th, 2009

 

First one up – before 8AM this time.  I go to the local stores looking for ‘sun shirts’ – those shirts that have some UV blocker in them and are basically 50 SPF by themselves.  Find one for Josh, but no one else.

We spend the day playing in the surf, building sandcastles and picking up sea shells.

Hannah and Josh really took to riding the “Gnarly Board”.  Hannah can go the distance on it, all the way to the beach!  Josh just makes it look good!

I tried to help Josh with the board, explaining he had to lay down on it instead of just sitting on it like he wanted, but he wouldn’t listen.  First wave tipped him face first into the (soft) sand and rolled him in sand and water.  He refused to ride the board for a while stating that it was my fault (meaning Dad) for his wipe out.  He later rode the board again, but laying down on the board, and was successful in catching some waves!  He later came over to me and told me “Dad, you were right, I was wrong” – priceless!

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The sea shells were really nothing more than fragments of sand dollars, but Hannah did manage to find a really nice one – looked like a conch shaped shell that a hermit crab might have lived in.

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Dad burns more but Josh is fine by slathering him in sunscreen and making him wear his shirt.  Hannah and Sally continue to work on their tans.

Threatening rain today, but we don’t see any.

Walk to Fudpuckers for dinner – its a complete tourist trap.  Not like I didn’t expect it.  There was also some questionable TV on in the background considering half the crowd there was under 10.  Commercials for the HBO series “Hung” is not appropriate.  I don’t want to explain to my 8 year old what that is – luckily, she didn’t see it.

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We got our picture taken with a baby alligator – pretty cool.  Though you kind of feel sorry for the alligators.

Everyone was crashed after dinner, but I had been seeing flashlights on the beach at night and I wanted to see what they were seeing.  So I hit the beach around 9:30PM with my flashlight.  Turns out that the whole event was probably started by someone who lost their watch – everyone I passed the conversation went like this:

Me - “What are you looking for”?

Them – '”Same thing you are, I guess”.

Me - “I”m not sure what I’m looking for”?

Them - “Oh, OK.  Have a good night”!

I did see 3 crabs…kind of like horseshoe crabs, but they are very fast!

Oh, yeah…Capital One disabled my credit card.  Seems I forgot to tell them I was travelling – since I’ve used this credit card all over the world (ok – China and US) and never had a problem it never occurred to me. I was fine with them disabling my card, appreciative really.   What I was not happy with is that there was no easy way to re-enable it without navigating 5 levels deep of menu options on a crappy Black Jack II phone.  Once I got someone on the phone, it took confirming a few charges and we were back in party mode!