Let me preface this by saying that I never really had any desire to go to Florida. Muggy heat, retirees, expatriate Cubans, hanging chads. I had some friends who lived down there, but hadn’t talked to them in a couple of decades other than some passing emails. If there was a state in the union I wanted to visit less, I couldn’t think of one.
Then my nephew fell in love with a Florida girl.
Well, it looked like I was going to Florida. In June. I decided to just bite the bullet and go. I didn’t want to be the Bad Uncle, and besides, it’d be a vacation with my wife. We’d just happen to be part of a party of twelve family and church members.
So off to St. Augustine we went. We got my nephew all weddinged off. We even got a couple of days to play tourist after the wedding.
And I, much to my surprise, fell in love with the place.
Some of the highlights:
- That 8 pound flounder my father-in-law caught on his Father’s Day fishing trip on the Intercoastal… and the way my wife cooked it.
- Anoles and lizards… everywhere.
- Watching egrets and sandpipers feeding on the beach.
- Going to the nearby pond to check out the turtles… and having 25 in three different species show up hoping for bread crumbs.
- Watching egret chicks hatch at the Alligator Farm.
- The Alligator Farm, period.
- Standing alone on a beach… and seeing a whale offshore.
- Other Florida flora and fauna too numerous to mention.
- Finding a box kite at a local kite store.
- Tacos in a Bag.
- The 2 am beach walk with our son.
- The wedding itself, beautiful on a patio above the beach. Best. Wedding. Food. Ever. And the most crying was done by… the groom.
- Driving around town at 10 pm looking for a seafood restaurant that was still open and discovering The World Famous Oasis.
- Going back to The Oasis with our in-laws the next morning for breakfast.
- St. Augustine… the nation’s oldest city.
- The wit and wisdom of the sightseeing train drivers.
- The scandalous picture my wife and I took at one of those “old timey photograph” places.
- Chocking up some good face time with my wife.
Not bad. Not bad at all, even when you factor in that incident where I went into the Atlantic with my cell phone in the pocket of my swimsuit.
Yeah, Florida. It’s a good place to stop.
Filed under: My Boring Life, The Unexpected! Tagged: | Everyday Life, Tales of the Unexpected
Thanks for the links to your blog, as well as Abigail’s. I had to comment on Florida, we just returned a few weeks ago from the same area. We did Marineland, St. Augustine and Palm Coast. It was great, despite the weather. Our daughter’s favorite was swimming with the dolphins and our son’s favorite was the fort in St. Augustine – the Castillo. He has captured my dad’s love for history! I hope Grandmother has a great day. -a-