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29 DECEMBER 01
Would you believe that I'm sitting outside our motel room typing this and pausing every once in awhile to view all the comings and goings of life on the beach? Yep, I sure am. I'm here in Hudson, FL on the gulf of Mexico with Althea. She flew into Jacksonville yesterday and in the last 29 hours we've have had nothing but a great time. All of our decisions have been spontaneous ones including the decision to drive here today so that she could see the gulf. This particular area isn't that grand compared to the stretch of beach near Destin, but it tis the gulf all the same. We arrived here about 3 pm and found a motel right across from the water. It's called the inn on the gulf and has a full bar and restaurant attached. I can hear them calling out "party of ???, Your table is ready" from where i sit. We didn't eat there though, we ate at a seafood restaurant called "Maryland Seafood Restaurant" which was about 4 miles north of here. Outstanding food!! Althea ordered crab cake stuffed lobster and I ordered fried shrimp. Boy did i make a mistake... I tried the crab cake and now I'm hooked. It was delectable! And the lobster was pretty good too. Don't get me wrong, the shrimp was the best I've ever had... It almost melted in your mouth it was so tender. Anyway, never again will I go to a seafood restaurant and just order shrimp.
We got back to the motel just in time to go watch the sunset from the boardwalk (for lack of a better description) which was just a hop, skip, and a jump away. The sunset itself was beautiful although not as spectacular as the one mom and I experienced at Ft Walton beach last month :-) what was noteworthy though was that a full moon was rising behind us as the sun was setting. How often do you get to experience that?
Tomorrow we head to Orlando where we have reservations at the sleep inn in Kissimmee. We plan to go to the MGM park first followed by magic kingdom on new year's eve. Should be a blast!
Oh yeah, yesterday after Althea arrived at the airport, I gave her a choice of driving directly to my house for a quiet evening or an adventure into Jacksonville to visit the Atlantic ocean. Bless her adventurous heart, she chose the latter and we had a fantastic time. We drove over to Mayport (where I'm going to stay for a couple days come 1 Jan) but to get there we had to take a ferry to get across the St. johns river. What a neat experience although it was only a couple minutes worth. Once across the river we drove down to Atlantic beach and found a perfect parking spot that was within walking distance to the beach and then to the best ribs you could ever eat at "sticky fingers restaurant and bar". I told Althea that i had to return someday soon with my mother so she could experience it too. I also took note that there was a nice motel we could stay at and make a weekend of it. I think it was called "Seahorse Oceanfront Motel". Very nice area full of shops and restaurants right on the beach.
Speaking of my mom, Althea and I drove to Thomasville this morning to take her to breakfast. They hadn't seen each other since my first wedding 24 years ago... Very nice visit!
30 DECEMBER 2001
I woke up early and put the coffee on so that I could enjoy the morning sunrise and that's where althea found me an hour later. It was so peaceful sitting there with her drinking our coffee and listening to the birds sing their morning songs. We decided that after we packed the car up we would take a final walk on the shoreline. What a treat that was... My emergency supply of crackers became breakfast for a flock of birds. It was cool the way that all it took was a lift of an arm to bring them in to us. They were so used to being fed that some would hover just inches from our outstretched arms to grab their morning goody. We laughed and exclaimed through both packages of crackers. It was great!
Our trip to Orlando was uneventful although it took us a little longer than expected. We had stopped to get post cards and a phone card and then for a leisurely breakfast at burger king where althea filled out her post cards. We felt that we weren't on any kind of strict schedule and that worked for us on the whole trip. We were in sync on nearly all of our travel needs and we confirmed that we make great travel partners and can't wait till our next adventure.
We arrived in Orlando and found the motel however we were disappointed to find out that the free Disney shuttle only departs for the park in the morning. I really didn't want to drive so we inquired about alternatives, one of which was the city bus. We decided on this because $1 sounded better than a $30 taxi ride... Duh!! Of course it takes longer by bus but an hour later and one transfer we were at the transportation and ticket area of Disney world. Piece of cake!
The ticket man we encountered gave us some true hard facts about the anticipated crowds at magic kingdom on new year's eve. The kicker was a 2 1/2 hour wait just to go to the damn bathroom. For those of you who know me well, there was no way I could handle that. I would miss half the day just by standing in the line to go to the bathroom. That wasn't going to work at all. Soooooo, we decided just to do the MGM studio park that day and to make other plans for tomorrow. What a good decision that turned out to be because just the crowds at MGM were nerve-wracking to both of us and we couldn't imagine having it be 5 times as bad the next day. Call us crazy but doing our own thing appealed to us more.
31 DECEMBER 2001
New year's eve day... We got back to the motel last night about 9 pm after taking the free shuttle. We could have stayed til the park closed at 10 but we were tired and didn't want to take the chance of missing the last bus. Like I said yesterday, althea and i make great travel partners as we are so much alike it's uncanny. We also both agree that our intuition guides us and we listen closely. And this is how we chose to spend the day... Whatever felt right, we did and had a fantastic time. It took us all day to drive 115 miles to St. Augustine. We ended up visiting cocoa beach, Patrick AFB (I really liked how the base was right on the ocean), and Melbourne beach before we headed back south towards Daytona Beach where we drove to the end of the inlet and walked up a 203 step lighthouse. Wow! That was an adventure in itself and my legs still feel the effort it took. A beautiful view from the top made it worth it plus it fulfilled something that Althea hadn't ever done which was to climb a lighthouse.
After the lighthouse we headed towards St. Augustine which is where we were to spend the night. We had no clue what was available or where so again we went with our intuition and a little help from the lord. Althea knows what I'm talking about :-) we were able to see some of the historic sights of downtown St. Augustine before it got too dark which made it about perfect since the area was lit up by lights. We passed horse drawn carriages... Drove over the bridge of lions... And cruised the downtown streets before heading down the road hoping for a motel next to a seafood restaurant. We indeed found one and ended up eating so much we were nearly sick. That's what we get for not eating lunch :-) we toasted to the new year at dinner because we knew that there was no way we could stay awake for it and we didn't... We were fast asleep by 9 pm.
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