Destin {Part II}

Although this post will show up as published on 6/2/2019, I'm finishing it up on 3/13/21. Yikes! Priorities, am I right?...I forgot how therapeutic my blogging could be and will be catching up on vacation posts over the next few weeks.  

Here it is. The long-awaited debut of Part 2 of our Destin Beach vacation.

We try to spend some part of every day at the beach actually on the beach. This trip was no different.

We recreate this picture of Chris and the kids almost every time we're at the beach because it reminds us of one of our first family beach trips.

After a day on the beach, we ended our day at the Back Porch. 

We had dinner with a beautiful view and the food was delicious and filling. We watched the sunset over the beach while we ate our dinner.

 The following day, we enjoyed family fun at the Gulfarium.

 

Apparently, albino alligators are extremely because of their inability to survive in the wild, but this was the second one we saw in Destin.

They also had a pressed penny machine and you know how much we love them!

After our day at the Gulfarium, we stopped by Sexton's Seafood Market and picked up a Red Snapper and the fixins for a crab boil. It was a bit pricey, but " When in Rome..."

On one of our last nights in Destin, we caved and brought the kids to Fat Daddy's Arcade next to Fudpucker's. They had been begging to go to since our meal at Fudpucker's a few days earlier. If you ask them about the trip years from now, this will probably be the only thing they remember about our vacation. This was definitely the highlight for them, especially when Chloe won $5,000 tickets from a claw machine!

Here they are posing with their final winnings! Ha!

On our last day in Destin, we visited the HarborWalk Village where we ate lunch at A.J.'s, had a virgin Piña Colada, and watched the fishboats come in with their catches.

Afterwards, we drove to the Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. This was by far our favorite beach! On the date the we arrived, there was no entrance fee. (It looks like there is a nominal entrance fee now, but it will be well-worth every penny if you decide to go.) We parked and rode a trolley to the beautiful beach.

We thoroughly enjoyed our full week at the beach. This was the first time in my adult life that I'd been on vacation for longer than a few days. Although it may look like we stayed busy the entire trip, we actually had a lot of down time. The vacation was restful and recharging, just the medicine that we needed.

Destin {Part I}

We kicked off our summer with a week long vacation in Destin, Florida.

We arrived a little after 4pm, so we decided to save our first beach trip for the following morning. We took a dip in the pool and headed out to find some dinner. I got to witness my first beach sunset of the year. Ahhh, all was right with the world.

Parking was a nightmare at Pompano Joe's, so we decided on The Crab Trap, which was about a 15 minute walk from our condo. I got the crab cakes and they were delish! Here is a picture that we took while we waited. (Chloe was behind the camera.)

The next morning, we made a bee line for the beach. For some reason, I didn't take many pictures on this day, just a few blurry phone pictures. Don't worry. I took several over the next few days.

I did, however, get some pool pictures and a picture of Chris grilling out for Memorial Day. 

He looks thrilled, doesn't he? Ha!

As promised, beach pictures from the following day...

That night, we went to Fudpuckers for dinner. The last time we ate there, Evan was celebrating his 3rd birthday. I have to say, this was probably the "funnest" meal of our trip.

They still had the creepy albino gator. It was just a little bigger this time.

We paid for a picture with a gator. It was pretty cool. We were allowed to pet it and ask the handler questions about it.

We let the kids get "fancy" drinks.

There was a man walking around offering to make balloon creations. We talked to him and found out that he was from our hometown and was even a member of our church at one time. It's such a small world! The kids really liked his balloon animals as well. They held on to them until I finally threw away the shriveled remnants a week later.

The next day was pretty low-key. Chris and Chloe headed to Big Kahuna's Water Park....

...Evan and I had no interest in going, so we decided to stay back and enjoy the condo's pool. We spent most of the day in the pool. Then, we rode our bikes to The Crab Trap for a lunch date.

Chris and Chloe returned from the water park and joined us in the pool.

Later that night, we headed to Uncle Bucks Fishbowl for a little late-night bowling. I read a lot of online articles about family activities in Destin and this kept popping up. I found a groupon for it and we decided to go. It was a little more commercialized than I was expecting. I didn't realize it was attached to Bass Pro. However, it had the coolest underwater theme. We got the cheese curds as an appetizer. I hear from my crew who gobbled them up before I had a chance to try them that they were delicious.

I hope you enjoyed highlights from the first half of our beach vacation. I will share more of our trip in a follow-up post.