Daytona Beach

Sunday, July 10 - I forgot to include in yesterday's blog that we finished our marathon day on Friday,after the shuttle launch and our naps, by going to the movies.  We saw Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts) and we liked it.

Today we debated about staying here at this state park another day or moving on, and didn't seem to be motivated either way, so we stayed here.  We drove back down to Daytona Beach this morning and did the shops and the boardwalk and the beach.

 This wasn't quite how we remembered it from 1974 -- apparently a lot has changed since then.  But you can drive on the beach here, so of course Joe had to do that.  We drove a 6-mile stretch right at the boardwalk, and another small section later.  They have sections of the beach marked off for traffic and no traffic, so you can just drive between the sections.  Joe did mentioned that by driving the beach we weren't getting much exercise, but we were seeing more beach.

It looked like a storm was brewing so we didn't get in the water here.  And sure enough, we heard the beach patrol gal blowing her whistle and clearing the beach, and then the patrol jeep came through.

Because there was lightning, they made everyone get beyond the traffic lane.  So here's the empty beach and the clouds.  It did rain for a while, but not very hard.

As we drove along the beach, we saw a couple of pretty good sand sculptures -- a turtle and a mermaid.

We stopped for lunch and then the grocery store, and then headed back to camp.  We actually did some housekeeping, I vacuumed and Joe shook out rugs and checked the batteries.  Finally, we decided we should go walk the beach since it was only 80 degrees outside, so we put our swimsuits on just in case we braved the water.  The tide report said the water temperature here  at Flagler Beach is in the mid 70s.  We finally decided to get wet, although Joe whined the whole time he waded out, then a wave took him down so he got completely wet.  It was a little brisk out there. 

We are heading out of Florida tomorrow.  We've been in this state for 6 weeks and we have really seen a lot of it, done a lot of things, and had a great visit with John and Bridgette.  And we got to see our nephew Mike and his family, so we'll leave Florida with very fond memories of our time here.