Redemption

My last post seems as if it happened so long ago.   It's only been one day but I have intentions of making up for that!  Yesterday we were in the car all day!  We had to leave Florida, to come home to cold weather!  Last blog I left you with was my husband wanting to drive on the beach and what came of that.  Yesterday he said, I have to redeem myself; I laughed.  We were driving up A1A and decided to stop in Daytona, for a bit before we got back on the Interstate.

It was here that I let him redeem him self.

It's a very packed down sand and set up to be driven on, not as easy to get stuck in.

He felt much better after this, so much better that when we got to Tennessee he wanted to go up this

I know it doesn't look like much here, but it was a trail that went up the side of the mountain. The only reason I talked him out of doing it was because it was a trail for 4x4's and 4-wheelers, which was posted on a sign along with the tickets you could get.
Now that he's redeemed himself, I can get on with my blog! Here is me and him on Daytona Beach

Here we are in St. Augustine at the Fort

We seen tons of stuff which I plan to tell everyone about, but right now I just want to get home!

Tuesday

Today we had a very busy day!  Let me tell you, I don't know why people think that a vacation is rest!  My husband wanted to show us things in Florida that he did as a child as well as do the space center and see the ocean.  Well as you may remember we left the house Thursday afternoon, and pushed down to Florida checking into our resort by 2 p.m.  Well needless to say we were tired!  I have to tell you, it doesn't seem like it has slowed down at all!  Today we started at 6 a.m.  Our air boat tour was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. and we figured we needed to give ourselves 45 minutes to get to our destination.
We went out on an air boat tour for 1 hour and a half.  We didn't get to see a lot of alligators, but we did get to see a bunch of birds, and I got to see a pink bird, which I believe was a spoonbill of some sort, but I didn't get a shot of him because he took off as we were buzzing by.  Here is a bit of what we seen today:


These were the first birds who didn't fly away as we came by.  I am pretty sure that they actually put forward their best side.


It's a small world, this shot was taken in Florida, I live in Michigan, about 30 minutes away from Litchfield, and we actually worked for the owners of this company.


We seen these just before we got on our airboat.


This was the last thing we expected to see while out in the wet lands and swampy areas.

This was out on a refuge trail, we didn't see a lot of animals or many exotic birds, but it was very cool to see the areas we did see.


And finally, we did see the Manatees on Sunday, but we didn't get great photos because we were quite a ways away from where they were swimming. We did find another area thanks to some locals, and these Manatees were really close, but the water is murky and they don't surface very often and when they do they mostly just take a breath so it's quick and not a lot to see! Here's some noses:


I did get a tail. But most of the shots are of noses.
That's all for now!

More from Florida

My version of "footprints" except I think I will call it, "Webprints"



On the beach there are tons of seagulls, and there are many other birds as well, I don't know the names of them, but here is one:


Then there was these cute little fluffy birds, and they just run and pluck from the seaweed and they will fluff up thier feathers and sort of "cuddle".


And if you get out to the beaach really early, or late in the night you will see these little cuties:

They are FAST!

Why we didn't go....

So last weekend we head for the boat with thoughts of coasting down the shore to South Haven dancing in our heads. Ha ha! Thursday night we left our house and set off to Grand Haven. We had reservations for a slip in South Haven, which is the 2nd time my husband has made reservations. Checking the weather before we left, there was a chance, a rather big chance, that we might not be able to make the trip due to the weather. First thing Friday morning, my husband and I went and got coffee then made our way down to the beach to see how the lake was looking. The website I checked for wave heights said 6 to 8 footers, but I didn't really expect to see them:


The beach was empty, except for the seagulls, who didn't seem to mind us being there;




It was so windy that when the seagulls would try to run away from the water, they would get all fluffy, which they didn't seem to like, so they would run then turn around very quickly! They were also hoovering in the wind, a few of them right next to us as we were walking toward the shore. Even though our trip was out of the question we had quite an experience on this morning and we had an awesome day just checking out things in Grand Haven and Muskegon and Whitehall. All of which I will talk about later!

The boat trip

Last Thursday, would have been the 23rd of July, we packed our boat full and waited for the morning to arrive. Rather early, we unhooked all the lines and shoved off for our very first boat trip away from our marina. We were heading for Ludington, 56 miles north of Grand Haven on a very smooth and calm Lake Michigan! This is Sarah and Harlins boat on the way to Ludington. Gives you an idea of how calm the water was.

That is the sand dunes behind them. Silver Lake Sand Dunes to be exact.
This is their boat again, and we are actually leaving Ludington and that's the light house we got to go up into, but more on that later.

While we were gone, I took over 400 photos and that's just with my big camera. For now all I have is boat photos, from the ride there and the ride back. We started to head home on Sunday, but we were facing five footers that we heard turned into eight footers (waves) so we turned into port at Pentwater. We had a lot of fun there, even though I complained a bit about the lack of luxury! It wasn't so bad and we had tons of fun in the one night we were there. The town was adorable and had tons of shopping. We left out of Pentwater at 7:30 because we wanted to beat the waves that were going to build, and the waterway would be shut down at 1:00 in Grand Haven for the Coast Guard Fest that would start last weekend!
So here is Rick and Kim on the way home! It was a very nice ride home, we were so glad we waited until Monday.


Here is Tu Dogs, Herb and Kathy, also on the way home. This was such a nice trip we can't wait to do it again. There is plenty more to talk about, as I said earlier, I took over 400 photos on this trip! More Later!