Wish You Were Here!

Greetings fellow blog readers!! Hello from sunny Florida! I'm sitting here on the second floor of the downtown Orlando Marriott at the free internet connection. Casey and I are busy exploring our new surroundings. We just checked into the Marriott, late this afternoon. This is the first internet opportunity I've had so far in the trip. After much preparation on Tuesday afternoon, and dropping Bear off at Kindred Spirits, we made our way on the first leg of our trip. We stopped and spent Tuesday night in downtown Atlanta. We had a fabulous dinner at our favorite restaurant, Carrabba's. Early Wednesday morning, we made out for Florida. We arrived at our destination in Palm Coast, early Wednesday afternoon. Seems we rode in on the tail of one fantastic thunderstorm. Power was out all over town. When we went to check into our hotel room, the desk clerk informed us the power had just come back online. Anyway, we were only able to go and walk on Flagler Beach, because the rain just didn't stop soon enough to permit a swim. We strolled along, got our feet wet, and collected lots of shells there. On Thursday morning, the weather was sunny enough to venture south down the coast to Daytona Beach proper. We got there about 10:30 a.m. With umbrella rented, much sunblock, chairs, and a cooler full of lunch packed, we enjoyed the sun, sand, and surf until about 4 p.m. At that time another HUGE storm drove us away from the beach and back to our hotel room. The storm did quite a bit of damage and even collapsed a business roof at nearby Ponce Inlet not too far from us. Today was much better weatherwise. No sign of storms anywhere near us today. We got checked out of hotel around 11 a.m. this morning. Since we couldn't check into the Marriott until after 3 p.m. in Orlando, we decided to go back down the coast to Daytona again. We did a little shopping, and I finally got to see inside the Salty Dog Surf Shop. I ended up getting a t-shirt and ankle bracelet there as my Daytona souvenirs. We finally made our way back down to the beach and got our umbrella all set up. Casey and I managed to be quite the seafarers this time around. We made it out pretty far. Not being used to swimming in the ocean, it took us a little while to become comfortable in the deep sea water. When we finally managed, it was a very rewarding experience. We've definitely decided to do a beach trip next summer too. We left Daytona after 4 p.m today, a little sunburned and no worse for wear, and headed out to Orlando. That's the details so far. The F.I.R.E. show starts at 10 a.m. in the morning. We'll be here until Monday morning. I think that we are going to try to do Downtown Disney one night before we leave to come back home. I'll check in again tomorrow night to let you all know about any new lizard family that we decide to bring home with us. Everyone have a pleasant evening!! Until tomorrow......