Daytona Beach

Welcome to my Daytona Beach vacation saga.
After a long Wednesday of travel I made it to Orlando where Alma and Ronnie were waiting to pick up me and Amanda (Ronnie's wife) and drive us to Daytona Beach. It was so great to see Alma, it was exactly what I needed.



On Thursday the boys had to go to work, but we were able to meet them for lunch and take a tour of their office.



While the boys were busy working, learning, and serving the Veterans of this country-- Amanda and I explored the beach and the mall.
I would like to take a moment here to address something. I have always resented the statement "Well at least it is a DRY heat" in reference to the surface of the sun temps we have here in the Valley. I resent it NO longer. Praise the DRY heat!! I will take 116 degrees over 85 degrees with 75% humidity. It was so gross and sticky that when we were walking around it felt like my shorts were on backwards. It was hard to breath, and being right on the water brought no relief.
We sought refuge in the mall and sang the praises of air conditioning until it was time to pick up the boys from work.



It had recently been the Blows anniversary, and it is almost Alma's birthday-- so we decided to go have a nice dinner. We found a restaurant with an ocean view and delicious food- Azure. It was really nice until an extremely drunk group came in to dine. I need to research why deafness increases as blood alcohol levels increase. We enjoyed going out on the deck after dinner to listen to the crashing waves of the ocean-- so romantic.



Friday brought our St. John's River Airboat Tour! Above is a picture of the airboat in action.
Ronnie and Alma set it all up before the wives even got to Florida. Our guide was Captain Gator Bruce. What a character. Ronnie had asked him on the phone what the likelihood of us encountering an alligator on the tour would be. The answer was, oh and please read this in a thick southern accent, "I take you where the gators are". One of our favorite quotes of the trip. Below is Capt. Gator Bruce.



This is us enjoying the ride. We had these headsets with mics, so that we could all communicate- though the Captain had such a thick accent and the wind was still so dang loud it was difficult to understand anything that was said. But don't we look cool?



Below is a picture of the general splendor. It really was beautiful. There were wild cattle, birds of all kinds, and of course gators.





Below is the beautiful Cypress Swamp. I know, swamp? beautiful? But it was, just look at it. The dark mark on the trees is a water mark from 2005, I don't know the name of the storm or remember the details. I was having to focus too hard on understanding the Captain to remember much of what he was saying.



Saturday brought Independence Day. We decided to drive to St. Augustine which is just up the coast from Daytona, and is apparently the oldest city in the USA. We toured a castle/fort there. It was interesting but we didn't last long because it was crowded and so hot.



Me and Alma in the fort, sweating to death- but loving being together. See how festive I am in the American flag shirt.



At the fort they were dressed as 1800's naval sailors for the holiday. We got this great picture above, just before the ceremony where they fired a cannon. Lots of regalia, one loud boom and a lot of smoke.



We went back to the beautiful hotel where we had eaten on Thursday to watch fireworks from the deck. It was really entertaining, mostly because fireworks are very legal in Florida. We saw 2 permanent fireworks stores that were open year-round. So everyone had their own little fireworks displays. I braved sparklers that I bought at WalMart.



We had fun playing in the surf as we watched the fireworks. When am I going to get to do that again?



In case you didn't remember Daytona is a Nascar town. The stadium/arena is just a 5 minute drive from their apartment. There happened to be a race that weekend. Every store displayed a sign saying "Welcome Race Fans", this became our second favorite quote of the trip. Below are some pictures of the Race Fans. The first picture are tailgaters in the mall parking lot. This was a common scene... no shirts, beer, bbq, and lawn chairs. The second picture is more of the same but these cars are parked along the main road.





Now I never liked Nascar, but I will tell you why I now hate Nascar (aside from the obvious waste of resources when the rest of us are trying to go "green"). We knew traffic was going to be terrible, we were forewarned. But we had no idea that a town who should be used to the bad traffic could make such a mess of things. Their game plan seemed to be "Let's put twice as many cars on the road, but give them half the number of roads to drive on". Again, read that with a thick southern accent. No matter what path we attempted to take we were funneled onto the busiest street where all the race traffic was. It took us 2 hours to get home from the fireworks, when it only took us 15 minutes to get to them. At least we had A/C and loads of people to watch. For awhile I tried counting people without shirts on, and Alma was counting people walking around drinking beer, but we got too tired.



The rest of my time there consisted of cooking dinner for the boys, catching up on DVR'd So You Think You Can Dance episodes, swimming and relaxing. Sadly, it was time for me to go and Alma to stay. But we only have like a month left of this. Hopefully it will go so fast. I had a great time in Florida, lots of great memories- just what I needed. Hope I made it sound as fun as it was.