FLORIDA

Ok so maybe some of you have been wondering why I haven't written in awhile. My family went to Florida for 2 weeks. So here is my story of what happened.


Day 1: Friday March 2, 2007

Woke up around 2:30 am and got ready to leave. We drove and drove and drove. We went to the border and had no trouble at all getting through. Really we hardly were asked a thing. All the guy asked was how long we were gonna be in the States and if we were all coming back on the same day. That’s it. He didn’t even ask us where we were going or if we had any BEEF in our car. After some more driving we finally we stopped at our hotel in Charleston, West Virgina. Wow what a hotel that was. We got into the room and there was only one bed. Hmm that happened to us before and I had to sleep on the floor, but not this time. There ended up being a pull out couch that Adam and I shared.. in our own room.. Yes there were 2 rooms in 1 room. Crazy eh? We had the living room while my parents slept in the bedroom. We got there sometime in the afternoon so we had tons of time to swim and shop. There is a mall across the road from the hotel. We didnt buy anything but it was still fun to look. Every evening at 6:30 there is a manager's reception with all sorts of finger food. Veggie trays, all sorts of nuts, chips and more. There even was an open bar... all this was FREE with the cost of the hotel.


Day 2: Saturday March 3, 2007
We had a free breakfast at the hotel and left after we finished eating. Another long drive. I was stuck in the backseat of the truck which isn’t very comfortable. If we had a van that would be a different story, but yeah I shouldn’t complain since I was getting a free trip! We finally arrived in St. Augustine, Florida around 7 pm. We couldn’t find the campground and everywhere we stopped and asked, no one knew where it was. Finally we found it. But the gates were closed and we couldn’t get in L A car pulled up behind us and they told us the code to open the gate. They even showed us the way to our campsite. What service! Setting up a tent trailer was hard to do in the dark, but it wasn’t too since my dad brought along his huge spot light thingy which has like 10 million candle power (if not more) We went to bed since we were so tired of driving.

Day 3: Sunday March 4, 2007
We got up and had breakfast. I don’t really remember what else we did that morning before we went to church. We went to St. Augustine Baptist Church. They have 3 morning services plus an evening service!!!! Yikes. We got there kinda late for the 2nd morning service. WOW I’ve never seen so many people in a church before. I felt so out of place since we didn’t really know any of the songs or anything. The sermon was pretty good though. After that we were bad and went grocery shopping. We didn’t really bring any food along since we thought that we would have trouble bringing it through the border. Then back to the campsite we went. We did a ton of biking along the beach.

Days 4-9 : March 5-10, 2007
Most of these days were pretty much the same. We did a lot of biking along the beach/ocean. Went Geo-caching, shopping downtown and other things like that.
Mom and I did laundry one day. Yikes was it expensive. But we needed clean clothes so we had to pay. On Friday we went to Daytona Beach. We didn’t know before we left for Florida that it was Bike Week in Daytona. What I mean in bike is motorbikes. Yikes what a crowded place it was there down at the raceway. We thought it was really cool that you drive right under the track. Adam kept asking “when are we going to see the Nascar Cars?” We never saw any but we sure saw a ton of Bikes.

Day 10: Sunday March 11, 2007
We went back to the same church. This time we decided to go to the early service which was at 8:15. It was more like what we are used to. Again I felt out of place since my brother and I were the youngest ones there. Everyone else was old..lol But it was a good service and I knew most of the songs. I never knew that drums would sound good with both a piano and organ. They weren’t that loud like at the other service. After church we biked downtown. We even met some people from Ontario. Some lady over heard us say we were from Barrie and she came over and said that she too was from Barrie.

Day 11: Monday March 12, 2007
We packed up our trailer and drove 5 or so hours to St. George’s Island. Boy what a dumpy place it was before we drove over the bridge to the island. While driving over the bridge we saw a dolphin jumping in the ocean. That made our day. After setting up we went to the ocean. The weather was just gorgeous that day and we had our first experiance swimming in the ocean. We saw a sea turtle when we were in the water. That sort of scared my mom but it was pretty small.

Day 12: Tuesday March 13, 2007
We packed up again and drove 1-2 hours to St. Andrew’s. We set up and then went searching for my mom’s oldest sister and her family. They were camping at the same campground as us. We didn’t find them so we decided to look at the beach. We didn’t find them but we did find my cousin Beth and her husband Nate. We were shocked to see them since we didn’t know they were going to be there. I think they were pretty shocked too. We heard from Beth that we just missed my mom’s sister and that crew who just left for lunch. We then had fun playing football/catch in the water. Later on my cousin’s husband Brian was biking and saw us so he stopped. We talked to him for a bit. We found out where everyone else’s sites were so we stopped by for a visit.

Day 13: Wednesday March 14, 2007
We went shopping. Went to a couple places. We got some boogie boards from Good Will for 6 bux each which isn’t too bad I guess. We had a blast with them in the ocean. Adam thought his was a surf board and was trying to stand on it, but it didn’t work since he never left the sandy bottom. We saw a bunch of surfers and some guys with wake board s and a kite type thing. That was really cool. They did some pretty cool tricks. I wanted to get a picture but they were too far away. Oh well. I did get a couple pictures of the surfers. I am now regretting of not taking any pictures of my cousins’ kids. They are sooooo cute especially Bradley and Andrew. Those 2 guys were pretending to be surfer dudes. And they are only 3. After we got back from the beach we went to the other campsites and played a couple games of volleyball. My team stank and we lost both games. Oh well we had more women than the other team which only had 1.

Day 14: Thursday March 15, 2007
The morning started off nice, but soon it was rainy. It sort of spoiled the day but we went shopping. Again we didn’t really get anything since Dad doesn’t like shopping that much and he only likes to stay at each store for 5 minutes or so and then has to leave. So we drove back to the campsite and then mom and I went to some of the close shops. I was hoping to get a new swimsuit, but they were soooo expensive. Some were $80 and they weren’t even that nice. Most of the shops just had skimpy 2 piece ones which I’d never be caught in. I finally decided to get a sweatshirt/hoodie. Its brown with the words PANAMA in big letters and then CITY BEACH underneath in smaller letters. St. Andrews is really close to Panama City. We did a bunch of packing since we were leaving early the next morning L

Day 15: Friday March 16, 2007
Early again..too early for my liking but yeah. It was something like 3:30 when Dad told me and Adam to get up. We left around 4. Another long day in the truck. We drove and drove till we got to Dayton, Ohio where we stayed in another hotel. We got there around 7:30 and swam for a bit. Then we went back to our room which wasn’t near as fancy as the other one but it was still nice.

Day 16: Saturday March 17, 2007We got up and had breakfast. Then we grabbed our stuff and went to the truck. Dad went down to the truck before us and I was shocked to not see him when we got there. Then I noticed that 2 bikes weren’t there either. Mom went inside the front doors and saw dad talking to someone at the desk about the bikes. So we had 2 bikes stolen L they just happened to be Dad’s and mine. Then mom and dad came back to the truck and we waited to the police came. Then we drove home. At home we got a nice surprise. Mom was putting some things away downstairs and then she sort of screamed. I thought there was a mouse or something but no that wasn’t why she screamed. The basement was flooded. So we spent most of the evening using the shop vacs trying to suck up the water. We didn’t get it all but its not near as wet as it was. I watched the Leafs lose to the Canadiens L Why couldn’t Tucker score in the shoot out?? Oh well.

So that pretty much sums up the trip. I even didn’t even say everything even though it might seem like that to you. Pictures are coming in another post.

Please comment!!!