Sunday, June 29th
We take our time getting up and about. Dana and I are in a room together, the twin bed room, clearly the kiddie room. We have happy dancing lobsters and crabs on our walls and in our bathroom. Amy and Patti are in the adult bedroom, queen bed, view to the ocean, and drunk frogs at the tiki bar… I’ll post some pictures of the condo – I took a few before we put our stuff all over it. But it’s a great place. You open the back door and it sounds like someone has the wave sound on the sleep machine turned all the way up to 11.
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| Susen and Dana's room (more pics to come) |
Since we don’t have supplies yet we decide to eat breakfast at the Waffle House across the street. Been a while since I’ve been south enough to have one, and I’ve missed my hashbrowns, smothered, covered and country… this place is very busy, but they have a system. There are a line of chairs that you wait in and they rotate out pretty quickly. They ask us how many (4).. and then they ask Amy how many.. (still 4).. but the waitress kind of laughs at herself because there are just 4 people there. While we’re waiting we see a family entertaining their children as they wait for their order to arrive. The mother has take the sugar dispenser and emptied a PILE of sugar onto a napkin in front of each child (about 6-8 years old each) and then teaches them how to wet their finger to make the sugar stick to their fingers so they can eat it. Mmmmm…mommy, I want some SUGAR!!
Breakfast is good, and we laugh at conversation that we overhear behind the counter. Two of the waitresses are joking, “You don’t know me like that.. you don’t even know how many holes I have in my ears!”.. and the other replies, “Well you don’t even know how many holes I have in my butt!” – the kitchen erupts in laughter. We think it’s pretty funny too – stealing it… you don’t know me…
As we’re paying and leaving Amy sees a group of people come in the door and take seats at the front of the chair line (those people had just been seated and the people behind them didn’t have a chance to move up to take the “on deck” seats) – and just then another table is available and these people that just walked in are about to get a table ahead of everyone who was been waiting. Amy steps up and fixes the injustice – she’s a fighter for those who can’t fight for themselves. There’s no trouble. This time. There may be a rumble before we leave.
As we’re paying and leaving Amy sees a group of people come in the door and take seats at the front of the chair line (those people had just been seated and the people behind them didn’t have a chance to move up to take the “on deck” seats) – and just then another table is available and these people that just walked in are about to get a table ahead of everyone who was been waiting. Amy steps up and fixes the injustice – she’s a fighter for those who can’t fight for themselves. There’s no trouble. This time. There may be a rumble before we leave.
We head to Wal-Mart for supplies – we need food for some meals at the condo, some beverages to quench our thirsts, and toilet paper. Wal-Mart is madness. It’s like the just announced that we’d be getting 12 feet of snow… we finally get what we need and get out, but it takes us a while to come together and get what we wanted. Back to the condo and supplies unpacked…
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| Our haul... |
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| Putting the food away |
We head to the BEACH!! The sun feels great, the waves perfect – white sands.. ahhhhh…
We quickly pick up a friend, a boy named Logan who will be going into the 7th grade. We love him. He’s here with his father, he gets to go to the beach twice a year, once with his daddy and once with his mamma. He’s from a town about 2 miles wide and he loves to read. Once he finds an author he likes he sticks to them, but he’s not much into Harry Potter, he’s more of a mythology person. He just hangs out with us and chats. He teaches us about the flag system (yellow flags mean moderate waves, red means strong waves – stay out, purple means dangerous sea life has been spotted) – and his favorite beach (Panama) – his favorite restaurant in the area (Hooters – because they don’t have one back home), and he says, “I know you ladies are older than me, but they have a great amusement park and even adults enjoy that”. He really seems to love Amy – if we drift apart, it’s Amy that he sticks by. He asked when we got here, and then tells us that actually he saw us arriving in the parking lot. They got here the day before we did and they’re here for 5 more days – he’s jealous that we’re here for 2 weeks.
We hang out on the beach until we get hungry, and yes we just bought food – but I want some seafood. There is a restaurant on our beach, just 500 feet away called Sea-n-Suds and it’s been recommended. We take our stuff up and walk down to dinner. It’s little seaside shanty – and they advertise on their sign “great salad bar!”. We get in and I check out the salad bar. It’s about 5 feet long (one section of a rolling salad bar cart) – iceburg lettuce and your average toppings…. The menu is mainly fried food, but we get some oysters (of course), some fried crab claws, fried oysters (which I’d actually never had, and taste just like fried morel mushrooms to me), and fried stuffed crab (which is stuffed with stuffing that tastes like stove-top stuffing). But we do learn something that made us feel totally dumb. We ask for cocktail sauce and the waitress says yah, you just make it yourself… (umm…. )… there is horse radish on the table in containers, you just add ketchup and mix. Dana knew this. And while Patti and I knew that things could be created (like you can make your own tartar sauce from mayo and relish in a pinch, but it’s not “real” tartar sauce) – this is really cocktail sauce, and tastes better than most other sauces actually. Dana laughs at us, but we don’t care. Every place we’ve gone since has the same set up – horse radish in plastic containers on the table – make your own. As good as the sauce is, we miss Felix’s. yum. Spoiled us.
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| Fried crab claws |
Back to the condo and just chill – we brought the Roku box so we start Dana on “Orange is the New Black” (never watched it). But the internet is iffy here – goes in and out, so there is quite a bit of buffering. It’s all good, we’re on beach time. Buffering ain’t no thang. Tomorrow… the beach. And the day after that? Beach.
Monday June 30th
Ok this one is really going to short and sweet (I say that and then we’ll see what it becomes)… we got up and had breakfast – bagels or cereal, whatever we have laying around.. Amy was up at 5am and took a walk along the beach (she keeps bringing up that no one wanted to go with her.. but um, it was 5am).
Patti and Dana headed down to the beach first, about 9:30. It’s nice to just have the beach in the back yard and be able to head down at any time. We’ve noticed people on the beach at night with flashlights, and we looked it up. They’re crabbing, you can see sand or ghost crabs along the beach at night. They’re tiny and not edible, but just fun to watch – or some people catch them and keep them as pets, or just catch and release, making a contest of how many each person caught. We’re going to give it a try one of these nights. By the time Amy and I wander down to the beach Patti and Dana have wandered off. We’re there for about an hour before they get back and I text them to ask if Amy and I are going to be interviewed for an episode of Disappeared.. and we find that they went on a walk down the beach to the pier. They got some cool pics of the pier and a jelly fish that had washed up. Logan had told us the day before that there were jellyfish in the ocean, but it was ok, only 3 people had been stung so far (whew!).
Typical beach activities ensue – we read, go get wet, come dry off and lay in the sun, relax, repeat. At the end of the day we decide to leave all of our stuff on the beach – our chairs, blankets and umbrella – because we see that everyone around us has done that same thing. Some people have those tent awnings that they keep up all night, all of their chairs and everything piled up in the middle of their tent, and because that it’s a private stretch of beach and all of us are from the condo, everyone trusts everyone else not to mess with their things. We figure that if anyone takes it then they needed it more than we did – and we head in to shower and get ready to go to dinner and shopping.
Today we’re heading to The Original Oyster House – another recommended place on our list – another disappointment (Damn Felix for spoiling us). I get oysters (still not as big, but you can’t go wrong with them) – and the ahi tuna (DRYYYY)… Patti gets fried crawfish.. the scampi is ok – but the cheese grits are amazing. The one thing that we really can rave about – really. Really good. But before all that we shop – the wait for the Oyster House is long and they make sure to let you know that the pagers they give you have a massive range and you can feel them buzz from any of the shops in the complex (and it’s a large complex) – we’re eager to check out some local shops, so we take advantage of our wait. There are some cute boutiques, but nothing I need to have – a shop with tons of shirts that I would love to have (everything from Superman, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, to Seinfeld, Arrested Development and even Dukes of Hazard).. but I don’t leave with anything.
After dinner we hit the big souvenir T-Shirt complexes – you can buy nearly anything made of a shell or driftwood, tons of Gulf Shores shirts, and hermit crabs. We’ll likely be back to look at shirts again, but we have plenty of time to look around. Back to the homestead and we have some dranks and watch some more Orange is the New Black before heading off to bed fairly early for us (10ish). The plan for tmw Pinky? Try to take over the beach! (and blog)… blarg... (it obviously happened because you're reading this...). Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. (That's for the one person that will read this and know what it's from).
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| Entry way from the front door |
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| Patti and Amy's room |
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| Living room (Patti on the balcony) |
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| The view from our balcony |
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