Vacation Day 3

Taryn ate GATOR!!! More on that later…..

We went to Castillo de San Marcos. It was built by the Spanish in the 1600’s. It’s shaped kind of like a star and is two stories tall. It is right on the water and has fantastic views. It was a beautiful sunny day with a lot of breezes, and it felt wonderful on top of the fort. Also, it was rather fun, because as we were nearing the top of the stairs, a guy came over to tell a park ranger that someone was climbing up the outside walls. She goes over to look, and of course, we followed. Sure enough, some dufus in flip flops mind you, is scaling the stone walls and is almost to the top. It took him a really long time to get back down, and seriously, if he had just hurried up a little, he could have gotten away with it, but by the time he made it back to the ground there was another park ranger there to meet him. Then the police arrived. It was rather entertaining.

Then we went across the street to St. Augustine’s Old Town to browse the shops lining the cobblestone streets. This was a bit of a disappointment, not because of what was or wasn’t there, (we don’t know!) but because OF A SERIOUS LACK OF SHOPPING AMBITION ON THE PART OF ONE THIRD OF THE FAMILY!!! I think we only saw about a tenth of what’s there. Judging by the look of torture on the faces of ahem, the oldest and youngest amongst us, I figured a little food would boost ‘em. We had lunch at a nice outdoor restaurant in the Old Town where Taryn and Gib were excited to try the Fried Gator Tails. Yep, we don’t want to go see Alligators, just eat ‘em. We all tried it, and I gotta say I wasn’t too impressed. It’s too chewy to be normal and kind of a combo between fried clam and chicken taste. But Taryn really liked it! She and Gib polished it off. Mariah, the D.Q. to end all D.Q.’s, was still hanging off the table in extreme distress at the end of lunch, and since we needed to move condos anyway, we called it quits for anymore exploration of Old Town.

We were so happy to see our new condo is a vast improvement over the other one. It was definitely worth the hassle to move. It’s cute, cozy and much more comfy. I love the décor and the beds are about 10x better. Hopefully Indy’s neck will feel better. She sure is having a hard time recovering from the accident and just can’t seem to catch a break healing. One thing after another destabilizes her neck and she is having a lot of aches and pains because of it.

We took that walk TOWARD the pier. We could have made it. I didn’t think it was so far away. MIKE WAS RIGHT! There I said it. I guess it was about 4-5 miles after all. And when you stop to look at each and every shell and someone goes boogie boarding every 50 yards or so, it takes FOREVER to walk that far. And someone, who demands to remain nameless, is having a serious chafing issue, couldn’t walk like a normal person anymore, so we called it quits and turned around, maybe a half-mile or so from the pier. It was a really long walk back even without all the stopping. Mike made us walk up on the sand away from the distraction of the shells in the surf. What a spoilsport. Indy discovered that Taryn was stepping in all her footprints in the sand so she started walking all weird, then she ran all screwy, walked backwards, spelled Taryn’s name in footprints, stuff like that. It was pretty funny to watch. Mariah was so inspired she flopped down and made a sand angel.

When we got back, we made dinner out of fruit, popcorn and snacks and hunkered down to play Phase 10. Indy finally finished us off close to midnight with the winning hand. Go Indy! We ended up placing in the same order as the No Sunburn Contest! Weird huh?! By the way, we had to make an adjustment in that order and take the Bronze away from Taryn and award it to Gib. There was a protest, and a bodily comparison, and sure enough, Gib was clearly the 3rd place finisher.

Day 4 – Those of us who want to continue our tanning want to return to the beach. Those who are still too tender will have to wear a t-shirt and shorts to the beach…haha!