Day 47: Destin or Bust

Monday, May 20: Sleeping with the A/C on was so much more comfortable. We still heard a few planes in the early morning but we slept so much better. It was nice to wake up feeling rested and not sweaty.

When we got up, Mike had already gone up to the shower facility, or at least that’s where we assumed he went at the time. Fred and I prepped breakfast and used our single burner Coleman stove to make some hard boiled eggs outside. We called Mike and invited him down for breakfast. He had hit the peak hours for shower usage and hadn’t even had the opportunity to shower yet. He had been waiting for a shower the whole time he was gone.

We all had a bowl of oatmeal while we waited for the eggs to cook. It was a great breakfast. Fred, Mike, and I sat around and chatted for a long time just telling stories and then we tried to peel super hot hard boiled eggs. At home we usually put the eggs in an ice bath to cool them off quickly but we didn’t have any ice in the RV. After a few minutes of fiddling with the hot eggs, we suddenly remembered there was a ice chest full of ice in the bacolk of the Jeep. So eggs were a bit of a process today.

We cleaned up and I put on my new Duluth Trading Co clothes. I opted to wear the shorts… even though I still haven’t shaved my legs. It just too hot for pants and I really don’t care if people stare at me.

Fred had a bit of an upset tummy after breakfast. After some time in the bathroom, all was better. We had beans twice yesterday, so we may have to take them off the approved food list. That may be too much fiber him these days.

We prepped the RV for travel and said our goodbyes around 10:30am. Then we all drove over the Loves Truck Stop to fuel up. Its a good thing we did because apparently one of the outdoor storage doors had popped open during the short drive. Those things can be a pain in the butt. You have to shut them very firmly to be sure they are closed. That same thing happened to us the day we drove the RV off the dealership lot. That day, someone flagged us down to let us know it was open. Today we just happened to catch it.

We made quick time to westbound I-10, heading towards Destin, FL. Google mapped it out for us at 327 miles, in 4 hours and 49 minutes. We had a few midway points plotted out to cut the drive down into two days, but when we drove by those RV parks, they were a little scuzzy so we didn’t stop. We decided to drive on through to Destin.

Our GPS troubles struck again today … We had it set to show “arrival time” instead of “hours remaining to arrival.” When we switched back into Central Time, with one about hour left on our trip, we shaved off an hour in real time, but our arrival time stayed the same. That shocked both of us because we were looking forward to a one hour drive, that then became a two hour drive. That was a bit of a poke in the eye.

We finally made it to our destination park, the Destin West RV Resort.
We set up and then rested from the long drive. The drives are always longer than you think they will be! Fred took a little nap and I went to explore the park. Its an awesome place. It backs up the bay on one side and then just the roadway on the other side separates you from the Gulf of Mexico.

Having all day tomorrow to explore will be worth the long drive today.

There is a restaurant right next door to the park that over looks the bay. Its all part of a giant time-share resort. We grabbed a quick pizza dinner there and watched the sunset and then headed back to the RV to watch a little basketball.

I was all set to relax and then my niece called me for homework help. Somehow over the last year, I have become her 7th grade math tutor. I am horrible at math, but Fred is really great at it. So he tutors me and then I tutor her. How many men do you know who can cook, clean, cuddle, and recite all the different types of triangles and the properties of their angles? It’s just one of the many special things that I adore about him.