Destin: Part One

Well. I'm home. I'm sure you all missed me TONS.

This could get boring...but I want to get all my trip "stuff" and stories out, so here goes...

We left for Destin at about 9 am from Sylacauga, Alabama after saying goodbye to my grandparents. The drive took about 6 hours with traffic and weather conditions, we went straight through a tropical storm. It wasn't too bad, I like driving through the rain, and as soon as we arrived the storm passed and the sun came out. We unloaded everything into our AMAZING condo, complete with two bedrooms, a living room, a pretty big kitchen, and a beach-front balcony. Then changed and went down to the beach. The storm had ruined two of the three stairways down to the sand and tossed TONS of brown, nasty seaweed onto the beach, along with a pretty good amount of debris. My personal favorites were three steps from the above-noted destroyed stairway, and a super old, blackened coconut. It was a pretty ugly site, but that didnt stop us from getting completely covered in sand and salt. I got in the water about knee deep and then right back out. I was pretty proud.

After than we went back to the room, showered, changed and had dinner at a Captain Dave's, a nice resteraunt located right on the beach, with good food and terrible service. Our waiter was a total loser and really made us mad, he got two of our orders wrong, forgot my drink, and spilled water all over my dad. It was kinda funny, but extremely irritating. I ordered the chicken parmasean (sp?) which was pretty good until I flung the sauce all over myself, burning my arm. I still have a mark.

We went back to the room and my parents and sister left for the grocery store. Brandon and I rocked out to Aaron's Party and Elton John, and then went down to the beach. And may I just say that there is NOTHING in the whole, wide world that is more amazing than the beach at night. I loved it, except my brother threw me in the water and I was SO scared I though I might die. AND the ocean ate my FAVORITE beach shorts so I'm extremely depressed.

Anyway, we went back to the room and fell asleep. We were all pretty tired from the drive and such. But that didn't stop my parents from waking us up at 7 o'clock the next morning to head down to the beach. Brandon and I went straight to the water and were only in there for about 5 minutes when a "lifeguard" - really just a person with a red shirt who sits around and tans all day - told us that we had to get out. So we of course asked why, and he said, "well because of the storm the under-toe is really strong today so we are flying a double red flag which means if you are caught in the water you will recieve a $200 fine." Normally, we would say OK and get out, but no more than 50 feet down the beach there were tons of people in the water. So naturally we were extremely confused, and I wasnt about to let some "im-so-hott", fake blonde, tounge ring boy ruin my trip. So I was like "well why can all of them be in the water, but we cant." And he sound all irriated and was like "Well THEY dont have a lifguard like YOU are lucky to have so no one is telling them to get out." I hate people like him. And he really made me mad. So I said "Well then what is stopping us from walking away from my "lifeguard" (and i did the little quote fingers) and swim down there with them?" That really ticked him off...so he said "well nothing, but if you get sucked under and drowned that's you're own fault" and he walked away. It was really funny, and I'm not usually the person who makes a big deal out of things but he caught me at a bad time, I mean it was 7:30 in the morning afterall, so I was a little snappy. I thought my parents would be pissed but they thought it was funny too.

So I spent the first half of the day building sand castles with my sister and laying out, and then we moved down the beach and enjoyed ourselves in the water. I went waist-deep. It was intense, but I didnt die.

We left the beach around 6, had dinner, played this amazing charades game, and went to sleep.

The next day, which was friday, my dad woke me up at 7 and told me to run outside to the balcony. I was still half asleep, but I went anyway and sure enough there was a family of 6 dolphins swimming and jumping right infront of our condo. I love dolphins. They are my second favorite animal, following baby hippos. It was a really cool site, but I went back to sleep about 10 minutes later. When we all woke up we went down to the beach for our last full day there. They were flying the yellow flag that day which meant you could swim but to be carefull. Stupid flags. We noticed that the complimentary beach chairs were not out, which irritated my parents, but we didnt think too much of it. We all got in the water and I was really brave. I went so far out that at one point my feet couldnt even touch the ground. It was really intense.

I saw a fin in the water. I freaked out. I mean I REALLY freaked out. I told my dad about it, and he saw it too. Then it dissapeared and about 15 seconds later a dolphin jumped out of the water in the same area that we saw the fin. He thinks the fin was the dolphin. I think it was a shark chasing the dolphin that jumped. I could have died. So I got out of the water.

Ugh ... So tired ...

To Be Continued...