Vacation – Day 2

The rest of our party was arriving today (My mom, dad, sister from Cincinnati and aunt, uncle, and cousin from Virginia) so we got up and headed to the beach. We weren’t sure which to go to, so we broke out a map and it looked like Cocoa was closer, so we went there. It was a nice hour long drive with the top down. I remember going to Kennedy Spce Center (nearby) many years ago on a two lane road that went through the swamps…this time we just went on the main toll roads. Once we got there, we picked a random beach access road and paid our $5 access fee. We parked and headed over the dune. We picked a spot about 2/3rds of the way down the beach and headed straight to the water…and…it…was…WARM. It was like bathwater…the ocean we had been to for the past few years in the Outer Banks was always on the chilly side, but we were able to stay in the water for an hour with no problems.
After a few hours at he beach, we packed up and headed to find something to eat…which proved to be harder than we thought it would be. There were a few small places, but nothing that caught our attention. So we headed towards Kennedy Space Center. I wanted to show my kids some of the rockets, and hopefully find something to eat. Once we got there, we realized that we were a bit underdressed, so we decided to just pack it in and head back to Orlando. We got there around 2:00 and headed to the nearest pizza parlor. It was some local place on I-drive and I got the kids each a large slice and a calzone for DeAnna and I to share. My son ate all of his and about half of DeAnna and I’s calzone. When we left the pizza parlor, my mom had called us on my cell phone and said they were checking in to the condo at Orange Lake Country Club. We headed south, got a little lost on the way, but made it there by 4:00. Our condo wasn’t ready yet, so I dropped DeAnna and the kids off there and headed back to our hotel to pickup our large bag that we had left in luggage storage. My dad came along and after we ran into some traffic and waited almost 15 minutes for the bell captain to come back, we made it back to the condo at around 5. We had dinner reservations at 6:30, so I brought the bag to our condo and hit the showers.
We headed out at 6 and made our way back north to I-drive and Sand Lake Blvd. We had reservations at Fish Bones, a place I had been to years before and that I remembered as being very good. We had a great dinner (seafood all around of course) with some nice white whine, a Viognier of some sort. It rained while we were in the restaurant and was just sprinkling when we came out. We headed back to the condo and hit the sack because, the next day we were headed to rat land.