Indian Rocks Beach, Part I

Blogger is being cooperative today and let me upload the above photo.

As I did on my trip to Glacier last year, I took along a tiny composition notebook and kept a short journal of my travels. I tend to be more of a fact-writer, and not so glorious at conveying the joy and beauty of things, so you'll have to use your imagination as well as click on the blog title to go to the flickr page with some trip photos.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 8:54pm CDT

We are in Florida! It was a long, hard day of driving in nasty weather...over 700 miles of rain, some of it so severe I could hardly navigate by the center stripes' reflecting my headlights. I got up at 5:15am and made my way to N's house by 6:40 where I picked up N, AD, and M. It took us over an hour (and one stop at Chick-Fil-A) to get out of Dallas.

We headed east on I-20 toward Shreveport. From Shreveport we turned south towards Alexandria and Lafayette then turned east to Baton Rouge and on through Gulfport, MS, Mobile, AL, and finally stopping at about 8pm just shy of Pensacola, FL. We entertained ourselves today by working crossword puzzles in the car, snacking on the good foods N brought, and buying a lottery ticket somewhere in LA. N and AD sat in the back seat and slept or rested quite a bit, and M acted as my navigator.

M unconciously made remark after remark about all the bridges we were crossing, "Look, we're going off into space!," and "Boy, I sure hope this bridge holds up. Wouldn't it be terrible if it collapsed?!" AD is claustrophobic and has difficulty with bridges, so the entire time I was counteracting M's remarks with, "The bridge looks extremely well made," and "I think the water here is only 3 or 4 feet deep." N and I are sharing a hotel room tonight and are still laughing about it right now.

More tomorrow, after we arrive at the beach!
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Thursday 5:12pm

I'm at the beach! I already went down to the water with N, M, and AD. The sand felt so amazingly wonderful on the soles of my feet! AD and I found the pool, too. I'm off to take a shower, then we're going to dinner and grocery shopping!

12:40am on Friday the 19th

I'm about ready to go to bed. We all just finished playing a game of SuperScrabble, where N got a 2nd wind and took the lead to win it in the last 3 rounds. I had a strong second showing followed by AD then M.

We went to a place called Guppy's for dinner tonight. I had the Caribbean jerk swordfish. It was so very tasty. They had a 100+ gallon marine aquarium at the restaurant. There were fish, tiny hermit crabs, starfish, and some sort of eel or seasnake, live coral, and other creatures. It was fascinating to look at.

Then we drove to the grocery store to buy all the food and wine we would be drinking...will be drinking. I'm exhausted and now going to sleep. AD and I have made sand castle building plans for the morning, or some time tomorrow. I did get some pictures of the sunset tonight. I hope they turn out well.

Note: Though I didn't write it in the journal, we also suffered very terrible weather in the last stretch of the drive from Pensacola to Indian Rocks beach on that Thursday. Later that evening our party received 2 concerned calls from family members inquiring about our safety, as they knew we had stayed in Pensacola the night before. It turns out a tornado had hit the city, and we were unawares other than the fact that it was another terrible day for driving.
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That's all I can type for now.