Florida 2020

 With Brandon being home for a month, I felt like we needed to take a little getaway so we didn't get bored and could have a change of scenery. I decided Florida sounded like a great idea. I started looking in the Daytona Beach area. At first I was looking at beach houses to rent. But then I saw a really cute little house that was a 15 minute drive from the beach and had a pool. I thought that sounded awesome and we booked it. The day after Christmas, we packed in the van and were off!

Georgia had a really cool and spacious rest area that we enjoyed. :)

And the sunset along the drive was GORGEOUS.

One of the bridges in Jacksonville was decorated with 

fun Christmas lights.

Google said our home was an 8 hour drive away, but the traffic was BAD and it took over nine hours to get there. Andrew remembered why we don't like to drive to FL on major holidays... I was hoping the day after Christmas wouldn't be too bad. But I was wrong...

We had never been to the beaches in this part of FL, so on Sun morning, we got up to scout them out. Our house was in a town called Port Orange, just outside of Daytona Beach.

On this beach, our closest one, you can DRIVE YOU CAR RIGHT ONTO THE BEACH. What??? I had never heard of such a thing. We wanted to check it out, but it costs $20 to drive on. And that wasn't worth it for our scouting venture. So we drove a few more miles down the coast and found THE BEST BEACH!

It's called Winterhaven Park, near Ponce Inlet.

It is free to park there, the beaches are WIDE and sandy,

and while we were there, they were EMPTY.

It was amazing.

Seriously, we had the place to ourselves.

I couldn't believe it.

It was sunny, high 60's, and Christmas weekend.

We didn't wear our suits to the beach on Sunday.

Mostly just took in the scenery, got our toes wet,

and played frisbee.

And we remembered to bring my very 

favorite two-stringed kite.

It is the best!

I was so happy I could make B take action photos.

So fun.

There are lots of fun beach houses along that coast.

It was fun driving and checking them out.

This is the cute little house we rented. It was three bedrooms,

perfect for our family. I didn't realize that it only had one

shower when I booked it... that was kinda lame. And

the girls' room had a bunk bed, but the top bunk was

super uncomfortable. So C ended up sleeping on a day

bed in the den. It worked out.

Since church is broadcast through Zoom, we came home in time for church 

and joined in on our ward broadcast from afar. Perfect!

After church, we went to a nearby park called Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens.

It's an old sugar mill that is now a public garden, open to visitors with free admission.

We had so much fun exploring!

Apparently, it was also an amusement park for a while,

but it was ahead of its time and didn't catch on.

But there are some leftover dinosaur statues throughout.

The vibe there was so cool!

Some parts felt like a rainforest or jungle.

They had a little fairy section.

Reminded me of Grandma S. :)

I loved this staircase going around the tree.

And this little door was so cute!

I love watching these three together.

Makes my heart happy.

There was a historical plaque about King Philip

being in this area. Andrew taught us about King Philip

a while back because one of his ancestors was killed

in King Philip's war.

The Spanish-moss draped trees are so cool 

and different from anything we have at home.

My three cuties.

After the gardens, I drove us to another spot on a pier

that was supposed to be a fun place to take pics.

It was a quick stop. The sun was harsh and there

wasn't anything else to do there.

Here's our cute little backyard pool.

Before I booked the place, I asked the owner if we

could swim in December. He told me it was

heated and you could swim year round.

"Heated" is apparently a subjective word.

It was FREEZING.

The girls were the only ones who got it.

And it was more of a polar-bear plunge dare

than a fun activity they would do by choice. Ha!

The house had several puzzles.

Whit and I had fun putting a couple together.

On Monday morning, we got up and headed to Daytona Beach.

It is super touristy.

I found an arcade for us. Yes!

I was hoping it would be like our favorite arcade in Myrtle Beach.

They DID have Space Invaders.

And we DID take over the top score!

But overall, the place was kind of a letdown.

We ended up winning a ton of tickets.

But their prize counter was lame.

Hardly anything we could get with our 

tens of thousands of tickets... Boo...

Then we headed back to Winterhaven Park.

I love those last few steps to the beach!

So pretty!

There were a few more people on the beach on Monday,

but still plenty of wide open spaces.

I love the beach!

We wore our suits on Monday,

but it was a little too chilly to get in the water.

I thought for sure B would get it, but he didn't.

Whit sculpted a starfish.

These two cuties stayed warm and bonded in the beach chairs. 

We built a couple of sand castle cities.

Had a lot of fun with the kite.

Dizzy races.

I loved the way the clouds would reflect in the wet sand.

So pretty.

We found a jellyfish on the shore.

A glimpse of how windy it was...

I found half a sand dollar on the beach!

I've never found one before.

But I put it in a baggie in my beach bag

and forgot about it. They are SUPER fragile

and when I remembered to look for it,

it was already broken. Boo.

It was a great day at the beach.

So relaxing.

Love that place.

The sky was amazing when I went out to pick

up our dinner that evening.

For Andrew's Christmas gift, I gave him an excursion to go Flounder Gigging. Ever heard of it? We hadn't. But we loved it! It was such a great experience! The trip included three people. The girls had no interest in going, so Andrew, Brandon, and I got to go. You go at night, which is interesting. We met Captain Mike at 9 pm at Ponce Inlet.

He took us in the boat out to the shallow waters of the inlet.

We saw LOTS of cool wildlife while we were out.

Here's a sea turtle. We saw several of them.

Also some stingrays, lots of cool birds, a baby manta ray,

and at the very end, two dolphins were swimming by our boat

as we left. It was so cool!

We went by the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse.

Still working.

So, flounder are the weird fish that have both eyes on the same side of their body and like to stay on the bottom of the water. Gigging is basically spear fishing for them.

We got LONG spears, stood on the deck, and looked for fish on the bottom.

It was a long excursion. I think we were out for four and a half hours.

The first hour or two were SLOW as far as fishing was concerned.

We couldn't find any flounder.

The other type of fish that you can gig is called a Sheepshead.

We ended up seeing a couple of them.

After a quick lesson from Captain Mike on what to do,

Andrew was able to catch one!

So exciting!

It was a big guy!

After the slow start, we ended up each catching several fish.

I caught two, and Andrew and B caught six between them.

These are the types of areas where we were fishing.

These were taken with Night Sight on my camera.

It was actually a lot darker than that.

Captain Mike also had a net and we could catch

blue crabs or stone crabs if we saw them walking 

along the bottom. The stone crabs were too fast and

all got away, but we got several blue crabs.

B's flounder

My flounder

Our eight fish--four Sheepshead and four flounder.

We had SUCH a great time.

So happy I could share that experience with my guys.

On Tuesday, I booked an airboat charter for the family.

Captain Josh took us exploring DeLeon Springs.

There's a state park in the area,

where there are natural warm springs.

That warm water attracts manatees in the winter.

There was only one manatee there on our day.

And she was hard to see.

Do you see a big, white blob in the water?

It was not very exciting.

We never got to see her very well,

just her form and her little nose sticking up to take a breath.

The trip got more exciting after that.

Gators! We saw lots of gators! Probably 10-15 total.

Can you see the gator in the background?

We were able to get CLOSE to them.

It was a GORGEOUS day.

We saw gators of all sizes.

These babies were so cute.

That little one was prob about a foot long.

Also saw big guys, the biggest was about 12 feet long.

It was such a relaxing trip.

We loved being out on the water.

Saw LOTS of cool birds, including a couple of bald eagles.

So memorable and different from anything we'd done before.

On our way home from the airboat trip, we stopped by Captain Mike's house.

He had fileted our fish for us and they were ready to pick up.

Yay!

Look at all that fish!

And our crabs were on ice, too.

Look at all those!

I wish we would've caught a few less, actually.

We could freeze the fish, but we had to cook

all the crab that night. And there were too many.

I had never cooked flounder or sheepshead before,

so we got to experiment with dinner that night.

I baked the sheepshead and fried the flounder.

Andrew and Brandon steamed the crabs.

It was crazy to see how quickly they changed from

blue to red.

Blue crabs are A LOT of work

to get not a lot of meat.

I didn't try them, but everyone else

in the family did, including Care Bear,

which really impressed me.

(She didn't like it, but I was glad she tried.)

The rental house owners subscribe to Netflix and had it on their TVs. We don't get Netflix anymore, so had fun watching some things we don't have access to. The kids liked watching Pokemon. We watched My Octopus Teacher together. Such a great show! And Andrew and I watched The Social Dilemma, which was a really interesting documentary about how addictive social media is. 

On Wed morning, it was time to check out of our cute house.

The kids decided when they're adults, they want to pitch in together

and buy a house like that. Andrew and I told them we'd be happy to visit them there. :)

One last stop before we hit the road:

The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse.

It was a great lighthouse, with several of the old buildings

turned into museums. I would've loved to take more time there.

But the kids weren't digging it.

The kids and I DID climb to the top of the lighthouse.

I love the spiral staircase!

And the views from the top are spectacular.

Since it was WEDNESDAY,  that means half price

games at DAVE AND BUSTERS!

We stopped at the one in Daytona Beach on our way out of town.

So fun! We got tons of tickets and bought another fire tv stick

to sell on ebay. Andrew and I are racking up the funds with our

advantage player gaming! Woo hoo!

Instead of driving all the way home,

we stopped in SC to stay the night with Marianne and Patrick.

We had dinner and played games and stayed up talking late 

into the night. Loved it.

So happy to have my bestie just a three-hour drive away!

Ahhhh.... It was an awesome getaway. I feel like I'm figuring out a good balance with my family. I love to go-go-go and see as much as I can. The rest of my family is up for my adventures... but they also want time to just chill and relax. So I plan the fun things, but also budget time to just hang out at the cute little rental house. Sleeping in, playing games, doing puzzles, or just being on our devices. This trip had a great balance. So happy we could create memories AND relax together.