It's good to be home. Ok, I just lied.

Destin Florida vs. Gulf Shores Alabama.
Which is better? Destin is.

It is with much regret that I am now back in North Alabama. Usually at the end of a vacation I'm kind of ready to come home. This time, something was different. I didn't really want to come home. Maybe I had imagined a little too much over that 120-hour period what it would be like to live at the beach with my baby for the rest of our lives. They say the American dream is to be a homeowner. I wonder if that is caveated with, "near the ocean."

On the way home, I thought about a lot of things. One of which was being obsessed with finding a car with wood grain sides, which I finally spotted just north of downtown Birmingham. The rest of my ponderings were related to all of the firsts this excursion contained for me:

1. The first road trip. It seems like I have heard over the years that road trips are a true test of a relationship. As best I can tell, things went very well. This is the first time Jawana and I have gone anywhere for an extended period of time, and this was the first time for me, I've ever gone anywhere with a girl. I had an awesome time just relaxing and not doing anything that involved much more thought than, "Did I put enough sunscreen on my shoulders?"

2. The first time in the Gulf of Mexico. I've never actually gone to the beach and gotten in the ocean. I have always just stayed on the beach or in the swimming pool and never actually swam in the ocean. However, this time, I was in it everyday for quite a while. My favorite part, floating on the float with Jawana out at sea. Which was also a first, I've never been on a float with a girl before. (Man, if you didn't know better this post makes it sound like I've never even dated a girl before. Which of course is preposterous. How could any 31 year old completely heterosexual male have never been in a relationship with a girl before?)

3. The first time I've ever caught crabs. Have you ever caught crabs before? I never have and it was quite the experience. They apparently only come out late at night and you need a flashlight to see them. Those critters are fast!

4. The first sandcastle. I do not believe I have ever actually built a sandcastle before. Actually, I wouldn't call the thing Shayla, Jawana, and I made a sandcastle. It was more of a sand wall, 4 bucket forms in a row that never got completed because Shayla wanted to go collect seashells. Either way, I've never done that before either.

5. The first time without eating fish. This was the first time I've gone to the beach and have not eaten at least 1 seafood type dish. I usually will get some sort of seafood product. This time, I did not. My favs are Tilapia, Grouper, Flounder, and Mahi Mahi. Dianna and I did split some spinach dip that was laced with crab meat, at the back porch, but it was kind of BLAH. Chips were stale, and the dip just had no flavor.

6. The first condo. Previously I had always stayed in hotels at the beach. This is the first time I've stayed at a condo. It was nice, and a good deal at like $100 night. Jawana and I would like to maybe live at the beach, and we checked the price of units where we were, and a 1-bedroom, 1-bath unit like the one we stayed in sells for $289,000. Maybe we'll just stay where we are.

7. The first non-late nights and early mornings. This was the first time where I've ever kept -regular- sleep hours. We were in bed every night before 10:00 PM and up around 6:30 every morning. In the past it was always a bunch of single guys, or just Jeff and I, and we would stay out late, until like 10:30 and sleep in really late until like 9:00 the following morning.

8. The first picture session on the beach. Jawana badly wanted us to take black and white family pictures on the beach. So we all dressed up Sunday evening and headed out to do this. They turned out nice, but we were squinting in several of them.

This morning on the way to work we were talking on the phone and I asked the question, "I wonder what it would be like to just live at the beach and not ever do anything." Jawana thought it would get old after a while. I personally am not so sure. Maybe it's because at this point we are both working about 60 hours or more a week. Well, let me rephrase that, she is working about 60 hours a week, and I am just at work 60 hours a week. Sometimes. Anyway, point being, I am so involved with my day job and side video work, that it feels like I've worked enough hours to equate to being 50 years old. Which is about retirement age. The more I look back on the trip, the stronger a desire deep inside my soul grows for moving south.

Trip recap is below

Wednesday
after work, Jawana picked me up from my parents house. We cruised by my house, got Shayla at dance and then ran by church to eat dinner. We hit I-65 South at 6:00. The drive was pretty uneventful until we hit the final stretch of Hwy 331 which intersects 98 around Destin. It was raining pretty good and we were behind a 18-wheeler going about 40 mph, for about 30 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. We arrived safe at our destination, Pinnacle Port, at 11:30. There was no unpacking of the car. Instead, we made a beeline for our room located on the 6th floor of the 3rd building in the complex. When Jawana put the key into the lock, it would not un-lock the door. What a fabulous way to start a vacation. After a few minutes, she got the door open. The lock did not work correctly the rest of the trip. We got inside and went straight to bed.

Thursday
I was up at 6:30 as if I were going to work. Everyone got up and we drove to Panama City Beach looking for a Wal-Mart where we could buy food to cook. Thus saving a lot of time, money, and gas expenses. After taking the scenic route, we arrived at a Burger King to eat breakfast around 8:00. Since we did not know where Wal-Mart was, it made sense to us that if we asked an employee at Burger King they would know. This was not the case. No one could tell us where it was located, only that there was one. Finally, someone said it was on down the road a few miles on the left.

We headed back to the room to eat our delicious breakfast of French Toast Stix and Dr. Pepper so we could get out on the beach. We would come back to Wal-Mart later in the day.

It was around 10:30 before we actually made it onto the sugar white sandy beaches. The water was crystal clear and the sun was beating down on us. After a few hours we thought we might be getting the munchies so we headed back to Wal-Mart and stocked up on food.

We ate dinner at La Famina, Guglio's Italian Restaurant in Destin. Jawana and I both had the Lasanga and the waiter gave us free salads, so that was nice. Shalya had some ravioli. Later that night, Jawana, Shayla, and I hit up The Track and rode Go Karts and played a round of putt put golf, which Jawana won. We got back to the hotel, watched some TV, and went to bed.

Friday
For dinner we decided to head over to Panama City and try a steakhouse that was recommended to us by some friends on the beach: Angelo's Steak House. We arrived around 4:00 and it wasn't crowded so we ran to Wal-mart which was a couple blocks over to pick up more drinks and junk food. We got back around 4:30. It was then that we learned they didn't start serving until 5:00 PM. We went inside and there were about 30 people already waiting. As 5:00 PM neared, the amount of people in the waiting room increased exponentially. Finally when the clock hit 5:00, it was like a mad house. There was even a cop there to control the crowd. I would say that about 100 people were waiting to get seated.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and called it a night by watching some TV and playing the card game "Old Maid", which I had never played before. It was actually quite fun. It was about 9:00 PM when we laid down.

Dianna was on her way into town from Pensacola, and arrived right at midnight.

Saturday
Seems like we were all up by 7 AM and eating breakfast in anticipation of another fun day on the beach. After lounging around all morning we got cleaned up, ate lunch and headed into Destin around 1:00 to go outlet mall shopping.

It seemed like overall the deals were not that great. For example, I was in the Eddie Bauer outlet and the majority of the items were 10% off. 10% off? When I compare that to the 75% + additional 35% off sales that Dillard's has every 6 months, 10% off just isn't going to cut it.

Likewise at The Gap (where I did give in and buy a few items), the 40% and 50% off deals weren't that great. Then you had stores like Ralph Lauren where clothing that was 50% off was still like $50/item. There is absolutely no shirt that is worth $50. I have a hard time paying more than $12 for any kind of dress up button type shirt.

Jawana was a sweetheart and bought me a much needed smaller wallet from the Fossil Store. Many of you are aware of the huge, back pain inducing, leather wallet that's the size of a small notebook which I have now. The good thing about that is, you'll never leave it anywhere because it's so big.
I was a bad boyfriend and didn't buy Jawana anything. We did look at one of the home stores at getting a comforter for her bed, but it was shedding a little too much for her liking. I felt pretty bad about not getting her something.

For dinner, we tried this place called The Back Porch. I ordered this Hibachi Chicken thing dish and split it with Dianna. Jawana had cheese stix which we all split and Shalya had chicken fingers. My food was absolutely delicious.

After that we headed back to the condo to turn in for the night.

Sunday
After a full day on the beach and a late lunch, Sunday afternoon we got cleaned up and headed to Destin to do the picture taking thing at sunset. First we stopped at Wal Mart to get Shayla a Destin T-shirt airbrushed.

We found a nice spot on the beach around 6:15 and began taking pictures. It was a lot of fun and there were actually a lot of families out there doing something similar. When we got done we decided to eat dinner at Fudpuckers around 7:30. There was a 1.5 hour wait, so we chose to eat at the bar which was much quicker. All our food was good, except for Jawana's hamburger. I tasted it and something was vastly wrong with it. She didn't feel good, Dianna wasn't feeling good, and I wasn't feeling good when we got into the car. It was a long ride home.

When we got back to the hotel Jawana and Dianna went right to bed and I took Shayla out to go crab hunting on the beach. We stayed out for about 15 minutes and caught one crab. At one point she lost her shoes in the sand when some waves came up on shore, but I got them back for her. We finally called it a night around 10:45 PM.

Based on the fact that the girls weren't feeling well, I called up the Dolphin Cruise we had booked for Monday and cancelled it and passed out in the bed shortly thereafter.

Monday
We slept in the latest of all the days and got up around 7:30. Since I had called and cancelled the Dolphin cruise the night before, there was no need to rush. Dianna and Shayla went down to the beach while Jawana and I headed into Panama City to do some souvenir shopping and have a little alone time. After hitting up several shops, one of which had a live baby alligator we got to hold, we arrived back at the room a little after 11:00. Everyone got cleaned up, packed up, and we said our good bye's and got on the road right at 1:00.

There was a major traffic problem on 331 North and it took us 1 hour and 30 minutes to go 57 miles. I don't think Jawana was too happy about that. I was fine with it, because it was just that much longer I got to spend in lower Alabama. The drive home was pretty uneventful other than that. We stopped off at Backyard Burgers in Cullman at Exit 310. I went to use my frequent diner card and the cash register girl didn't know what it was. The manager was all like, "We're not on that program yet." How can you not be on the program?

When it was all said and done Jawana thanked me for taking her on a great vacation. The more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that she should not be thanking me, but rather I should be thanking her. She did all the planning and organizing, all the driving, all the cooking, and her and Dianna did all the dishwashing and cleaning. All I did was eat, sleep and lay around. Indeed, it was a great vacation and a great first road trip.

Here are some pictures from the trip