I took a million photos of my vacation and uploaded a few of them here.

This was an excellent vacation, first and foremost because I was spoiled rotten, and also we did a lot of different activities other than laying out on the beach. On the way down to Florida we stopped and did a 50-mile ride about half an hour north of the South Walton beach area. The next day, we rode on the bike path down 30-A and explored various resorts. My favorite was Watersound, because it had a series of linked wooden walkways elevated above a lake/marshland. We rode on the pathways and came to a bridge (see photos) and then the pathway stopped on the beach, so I can say that I literally took my road bike to the beach.

The next day we rented a tandem kayak and explored both Western and Eastern Lakes. The scenery was beautiful and it was so quiet on the lake, you could barely hear a sound except for the occasional fish jumping out of the water, or (my favorite) the rustling of the sea grass in the wind, which sounded similar to rain. If you look at the photos, you will see that Eastern Lake connects directly with the Gulf of Mexico. It is a very unusual geological phenomenon. The water from the waves was pouring into the sound, which was much warmer than the ocean. We took the kayak out into the Gulf for a while, but it was kind of boring since there wasn't much to see, other than water. After the Eastern Lake jaunt, we pulled the boat ashore and spent the afternoon lounging around on the beach.

We also decided to have an evening of Redneck Riviera fun. I haven't been to Panama City Beach in twenty years and it hasn't changed much. There were tattoo/piercing parlors, liquor stores, and giant overly-lit beach crap stores every 20 feet and gigantic condo towers on the beach that reminded me of the huge apartment buildings that are prolific in Russia and Eastern Europe. The reason why we went to PCB was to ride the go-carts on the spiral track (PCB was closer to us than downtown Destin). After we go-carted with the rednecks, we went to the video game parlor and played skee-ball and air hockey, then hit some balls in the batting cages. Then we left the world of neon lights and tacky, oversized displays of sea animals, back to millionaire-land, where every beach-style McMansion in a generic developer-designed complex-imitation of Seaside is selling for $2 to $5 million.

On the way out we did some outlet-mall shopping and someone other than me went nuts in the chocolate store, and thus I gained about three pounds on the ride home.

I should spend about a week down there next time; anything less is never enough.