Beach Bums

Whew, everyone needs to take a little summer vacation. Holly and I spent a good weekend in beautiful Jacksonville, Florida. I spent the week there working at the airport. I have decided that this is a great way to travel. It is like having an advance team, for all you military types out there. I scope out the lay of the land, know some good places to eat, and how to generally navigate the city.

Being that Holly’s birthday is June 28^th and my Birthday is July 6^th, I decided that this would be our little birthday trip. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us. Last year we traveled to North Carolina to visit our great friends (HI Clint and Erin!). Holly arrived at 1pm on Friday afternoon. I decided that we need to really enjoy the Florida sunshine and rented a convertible for the weekend. Something odd about renting a convertible, you have to program in a country station into the presets. ;)

We loaded Holly’s bags and took a long way back to the hotel, to give her the lay of the land. We were staying in downtown Jacksonville, a good central point for all things in the city. We decided that we should catch the local Double-A affiliate of the Dodger’s play a little baseball. So we headed off for the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville (we had to go simple because of the cool name like Ballpark in Arlington). We have this crazy knack of catching baseball games that have fireworks attached, without even knowing it. So we were watching the Jacksonville Suns battle it out with the Montgomery Biscuits (serious the Biscuits?) when we heard the stadium announcer say “Remember fans to stick around after the game for the NAPA auto parts post game fireworks show.” SCORE!

So the mighty Jacksonville Suns won and the fireworks were great. We get up on Saturday and head to St. Augustine, Florida. It is about an hour south and claims to be the oldest city in the USA. It is a cool town that reminded Holly and I of the old European cities you see on TV. It has very narrow streets that are made of rickety stone and brick combo, uneven sidewalks and buildings all smashed together. It would never pass Texas wide-open space planning rules. We toured an old Spanish hospital, an old wooden school house (not really worth it) and an old fort. While at the fort they were demonstration how they would fire cannons and we actually saw them fire one. It was pretty freakin’ loud and very cool. We rounded out our visit to St. Augustine by visiting a lighthouse and climbing 219 steps to the top of the 14 story house. I loved it, but Holly hates heights, so she literally climbed to the top for a single picture and less than 25 seconds of views.

After St. Augustine, we headed north to Jacksonville Beach. We camped out and played in the super fine white sand for a few hours. Having only seen Padre Island and Galveston bay, it was like playing in the Caribbean to us. We then headed back to the hotel and out to a fancy dinner. We went to Benny’s Steak and Seafood and had a scrumptious dinner as we worked our way through a bottle of wine (It was a Riesling Trey and Viki!).

Sunday we slept in and headed back to the airport. After some tense moments trying to get on some flights we were on our way. Take it from us, get out for at least the weekend and enjoy some quality time away from reality!