The Gulf water is different. It is a warmer, calmer, and more peaceful place. Here the waves are gentle. You aren't going to get knocked over by a 10 foot wave, in fact most of the time it is a stretch to actually call them waves, mostly it is just a pleasant rolling in and out of the water.
Fort Walton Beach is about 1 hour east of Pensacola, it is an absolutely beautiful place. I loved it from the moment I saw it. We left Pensacola in two cars. Rebekah got stuck coming with the men and the rest of the ladies went to the store first. We arrived just before 5:00pm, which was great because as we found out, the office closed at 5.
My coworker lived in Fort Walton Beach for many years, so he had an excellent recommendation for where to stay: the El Matador. The El Matador is a condo rental on Okaloosa Island. It has six buildings, two pools, and of course is right on the beach. We stayed in room 547. One side of the island is completely full of condos and hotels, the other is owned by Eglin Air Force Base. El Matador is the last condo on the privately owned half of the island. This means that when you look west for as far as the eye can see is undeveloped sand dunes, and while you can't drive onto the base, you are allowed to walk along the beach as far as you want. It is a really nice way to get away from the crowds that can sometimes fill up the beach.
Not that there were a whole lot of crowds anyway. May 11-14, so most schools are still in session, and the beach was relatively quite. It is the perfect time of year.
After we had unpacked and waited for the girls to get in, we all walked down to the beach and played in the sand and surf until the sun went down. Both Rebekah and Matthew Jr decided they hated the ocean. While from my perspective, the water couldn't have been calmer, it was still a little rough for two little kids that weren't used to anything bigger than a bathtub.
The next day was the day for boats and jet-skis. We had two activities planned. In the morning we were going to go Jet-skiing. And in the afternoon, we would go on a boat tour and see the dolphins. For the first activity we went to Boogies Watersports. Both of these activities were in Destin, the city across the bridge. Destin has a great harbor, so most of the boat activities were over there. When we got there, my first thought was we got lost and had landed on Jambalaya Island. It was the very definition of a tourist trap. But since that was what we wanted, it was loads of fun.
Since it was still early in the season, there were no lines at Boogies, and we were able to get a waverunner right away. We rented 2 waverunners for an hour. Unfortunately though, this meant that one person had to stay and play with the kids while the rest of the adults got to go have some fun. Dad elected to skip the waverunners and Mom, Paul, Stacy, and I jet-skied our way around the gulf. What a rush! I described it as a motorcycling without the fear of falling down. Since if you do fall down, you just fall into the water. We went jumping over the waves, swerving back and forth, going around in circles. All with Stacy holding on to me as tightly as she could. It took a little persuading to get Stacy to try her hand at the wheel, but once she did she enjoyed it as much as I did. We even almost ran over a turtle. She also was very proud to get the fastest speed of 42 mph.
After lunch, Mom had scheduled a boat trip with Olin Marler's Dolphin Cruises. It was a two hour cruise around the gulf with the hope that we would see dolphin's. It was a glass-bottom boat, but we quickly discovered that is a gimmick to sound good on the brochure. You will not see anything out of the glass bottom. Instead the fun is on the top deck. From there you have the wind blowing in your face, the seagulls following you trying to get popcorn, and a great view of any dolphins that might swim up to the ship. We had a great time, and everybody enjoyed it. We saw a lot of dolphins, a couple sharks, and one ray (although it was very hard to see since it never came to the surface, but swam down at the seafloor). On the way back, everybody that wanted to got to sit in the captain's chair and drive the boat for a few minutes.
All in all it was a load of fun, if a bit expensive. And speaking of expensive, we spent a fair amount of money on the two activities of the day, but the thing that struck me was that everybody wanted a tip. The ships crew wanted a tip, the jet-ski boy wanted a tip, even a man making cute balloons for everybody that passed by wanted a tip. You could spend a days wages just giving out tips to everybody who asked for one.
Exhausted after the long day, we all went back to the condo and quickly fell asleep.
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