You Might Be A Tourist If...

There have been so many times on this trip when we have felt like complete hicks from the Midwest.

In fact, just tonight, my oldest son said, "Dad, do not turn around on this street one more time. We look like complete fools!"

If you ask my children what they did on vacation, they may say, "We turned around a lot."

Most of it was minor...trying to find restaurants, or Walmart, or the right parking lot for where we were going.

Yesterday the plan was to head to the beach.  We had heard over and over how beautiful the gulf coast beaches were, so we set out to head west to play in the Gulf of Mexico.

A couple of miles down the road, I opened my weather app to check out the details for the day and saw this.

High rip tide warning for the entire day.

     

Being from the central U.S., I technically have no idea how major that warning is. Is it like a thunderstorm watch in Kansas? If so, not such a big deal.

Is it a warning mainly for those who would be farther out in the water than we would be? If so, not such a big deal.

However, our lack of knowledge, combined with the fact that we have a son who thinks he's invincible and part-fish, caused us to decide to turn around (we're pretty good at that) and go to the other coast.

So we reprogrammed the GPS for Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach.

It may not have been quite as beautiful, but the beach was nice, and now my kids can say they have seen both oceans. 

See the flippers in that picture?

There's a little story there.

He so badly wanted flippers and a snorkel for the gulf coast. Before we left, we ran into Walmart and bought him a very cheap, plastic the only set they had available in his size.

He was thrilled.  He didn't care that we changed our minds and went to the Atlantic Ocean instead of the gulf. He was determined to wear those things into the water.

Two minutes later...a big wave came crashing in...and he only had one flipper.

Literally, two minutes.

Picture the little guy and his father searching for his missing flipper -- in the ocean.

Needless to say, they did not find it.

He actually handled it very well.  He played, swam, and built a little sand structure.

About an hour later, while playing in the sand, my husband looked down the beach and saw a lonely flipper that had washed up onto the shore about 100 feet away.

I wish I would have had a picture of my son's excitement.

All in all, it turned out to be a great day. The boys saw Cape Canaveral, the ocean, the NASA launch area, and a Disney Cruise ship docked for loading.

Travel Tip #7: Sunscreen. Use it. Lots of it. Several times a day. Ouch.