This year's vacation was August 6th-13th. Since a part of "family vacation" is that we have to all ride together, Micah and I had no idea how we were going for fit 6 of us comfortably into one vehicle. However, when we arrived at his parents house, we were greeted by our elegant roadtrip chariot
This baby gets a stunning 12 miles to the gallon, and comes complete with an antenna where we could get two cable channels inside. It says it sleeps 6, but I say it only COMFORTABLY sleeps two. And yes, we slept in it. Micah and I got to his parents house on Friday night, and we didn't leave until Saturday morning. Since his parents are renovating, we didn't have anywhere to sleep inside their house, so we got to break in this beauty. Look mom, I went camping!
A drive that GPS said would take us 14 hours, ended up taking us 22 hours.
Noah took the early morning hour driving shift, and between him and my father-in-law, we arrived in Florida at 7am Sunday morning.
**A side note here: these two maps show you what part of Florida we explored. New Smyrna, Daytona, Deland, Port Orange, and Ponce Inlet are all places I will reference. In the first photo, it's too hard to read given the size of the photo, but we are in the Yellow section-the Central East. In the second, you can see an enlargement of Volusia County, where we spent most of our time.
Once we made it to Oak Hill, Florida, the rest of Sunday was spent pretty low-key,
"watching the Olympics" (taking naps....)
and lounging around until that evening, when 'the kids' (Micah, Myself, Noah, and Kourtney) went to New Smyrna Beach at sunset and walked around for about 30 minutes.
It was really nice going later in the evening, as the beach was all but empty, and we had it to ourselves.
Monday we visited what used to be my favorite beach in Florida, Playalinda Beach on Merritt Island. This is south of New Smyrna Beach on the County Map I showed you up above.
This beach used to be my favorite because:
1. It's never very busy
2. It costs $5 a vehicle to park
3. Because it's not a heavily traveled public beach, it's very clean and you can find lots of seashells
4. You can stop and watch Manatees swimming in the river
While it is technically a public beach, it's not commercialized. So, there are no lifeguards, snack stands, or planes flying by advertising restaurants. In fact, if any planes do fly over the beach, it's probably a military one since this beach is located near a military base, and also not far from the Kennedy Space Center.
I was so proud of myself at Playalinda, I went the whole day without getting sunburnt!
That night, we fulfilled another vacation tradition, a mini-golf showdown. This year's course was the Pirate Adventure course, located in Daytona. We have done this one before, but I certainly didn't mind doing it again. And we had an amazing sunset as our backdrop for golfing :) I didn't win, but we had a great time being competitive with eachother
Tuesday, we paid the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse a visit. This might be the only lighthouse I have ever been to. My first visit here was in 2012, but there was so much that I had forgotten about it, I'm so glad we went again!
We met a turtle...I tried to take him home with us, but he wanted to continue living in Florida.
After traversing the 200-and something stairs to the top, the ocean breeze that hits you when you walk out on the platform is a welcome surprise. And the views are breathtaking.
Don't look down! :)
Family Selfie! (The only one we took the whole week)
Wednesday morning was our trip to the Deland Flea Market. My father-in-law loves flea markets and we visited several throughout the week, but this one was the biggest. To make things more fun for the rest of us, this year we decided to have a competition. The rules were simple, find the most random item you can for under $5, winner gets both items. The teams were Micah and I, versus Noah and Kourtney. I feel like we both did well. Micah and I scoured around the various tables and found several things that we kept in mind. In the end, though, it was the $1 framed photo of a llama that won out for us. I thought our entry was going to be the winner, but...Noah and Kourtney proved victorious with their Michael Jackson rubber ducky, for $3.
The winners with their prizes....and the losers, with...nothing. :)
Once the flea market was done, we headed to New Smyrna Beach for an afternoon in the sand. New Smyrna might be my favorite beach now. Since we had the RV, we couldn't park anywhere in the "normal" parking lots and had to drive up to the northern point of the beach and walk through a neighborhood to get over the dunes. There were people there, but it wasn't crowded at all and was very clean, AND had lifeguards!
I got sunburnt (as you can see in the photo above, which was taken at the end of the day) all because another tradition was fulfilled. Each year we go to Florida, we try to make a sand sculpture. This year, we made a whale.
Unfortunately, we started it too late in the afternoon and the tide started coming in before we could finish him. (His poor tail...) That night, we ate at DJ's Deck in Port Orange. It's a little seafood shack under the overpass, right on the river. I got scallops and Micah got Crab legs.
Sunburn is in it's full glory now..
The food is always good, but my favorite part about coming here is feeding the fish that live under the dock!
I don't know if the video will work or not, but these fish go CRAZY when you drop in a few pieces of the food you can buy out of a gum dispenser on the dock.
Thursday was our trip to St. Augustine. When you get done reading this post, if you'd like to read about St. Augustine, go up to the top and in the first sentence, click St. Augustine, or just click here.
Friday was another day at New Smyrna Beach, this time, I wore clothes and camped under the umbrella the entire time. I even took a chair and just sat and watched. No more sun for this girl, but my view was still pretty nice.
We ended our Friday night with a trip to the Daytona Beach Pier. I was very sad to see that they got rid of their giant ferris wheel, without it the pier seems really empty. We walked along for a while, catching Pokemon and watching the sunset.
Then, once the sun went down, we wandered across the Hilton's outdoor area and saw that they were showing Ghostbusters on the side of their building, so we sat in their wicker chairs for awhile and watched the movie. It was very peaceful, watching a movie with the sound of the waves behind you and the cool ocean breeze.
Looking back, my favorite part of vacation week was getting to genuinely relax for a little bit. We didn't jam pack the week full of activities, but we also did just enough that I wasn't bored. I enjoyed watching the Olympics during the day, as we don't have tv at home, and I wouldn't have gotten to cheer on team USA otherwise.
This time, I actually had cell phone signal most places we were, so I was able to keep in touch with my parents. I also didn't have to worry about our animals because Lindsey is amazing and we knew she would take good care of them. (And she did)
Saturday was our 22 hour trek back to Illinois, and Micah and I pulled into our driveway at 9am Sunday morning. It's been a full week and I feel like I'm still behind. I mean, I only have one week of August left and we are getting into the busiest time of the year that I'm totally not ready for.
Life goes on ready-or-not though, right?
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