Two years ago, I’d had a truly awful year, leading to my resigning my position and accepting on in a neighboring district. My wife had spent her first year in a new district. We were both drained to our core and needed something different. We booked a trip to Destin, FL, because we received an offer for a cheap hotel for a “presentation” by that hotel (IE: Timeshare nonsense). We took it and had one of the more relaxing trips of our lives. Beach life is truly the life for me.

This school year wasn’t bad, but as we came to the end, there is change in the air. I lost my grade partner, we lost a secretary and principal, so there’s a lot a stress both right then AND coming. So, we did the same thing; we booked our trip to Destin.

Destin did not disappoint, again. We spent hours and hours on the beach, reading, splashing in the water, and to be honest, napping too! I wanted to do Destin things, but my wife wanted to relax, so we did just that. Our adventures: We took a night kayaking trip on a clear-bottom kayak outfitted with LED lights. This was one of the cooler things we’ve ever done. We saw tiny fiddler crabs, different fish, a blue heron and it’s nest with eggs in it, a sea slug, and a fairly nice boat beached. The story is that a couple of kids took off their dad’s boat, beached it, then got in trouble with both the city AND their parents. The boat sits there because their dad isn’t coming for it, and the city is now responsible, to which they’ve said, “Oh well”.

Our other activity was going to the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park. This is a smaller marine park full of different gulf marine creatures. They offer a lot of things to see, which we took full example of! We saw the dolphin show, the sea lion show, we saw the new Manatee Cove, and took in all the walking parts. The best part of this adventure, we got to the back side of the dolphin area and watched trainers working with and caring for their dolphins. There were a couple of misbehaving animals, and the trainers were getting a little frustrated with them. But then, they do their trick, and the trainers would sigh and give them some love. Man, we could relate to that one SO much being teachers!

The food, oh my goodness, the food. Shrimp for every meal. We went back to a couple of local places for both the food and live music. On our last day, we went to a more chain-style restaurant (Rockin’ Tacos), and it was as good as we remembered! After a tremendous meal, we took a stroll on the local pier. It’s a local spot to fish without a boat, so we saw a lot of fish being pulled in. However, the best part was the wildlife! We saw blue herons waiting for men to drop their fish (sneaking things), dolphins, a possible shark (a really big fish!), some jelly fish, and the best, a freaking sea turtle! As we saw it stick its head out of the water, we were stunned. We never, EVER thought we’d see something like that in the wild, let alone in Destin!

As we got ready to leave, we got about 35 raindrops, then the sky cleared, so we rented a couple of beach chairs and an umbrella, and took in the gulf air and the crashing surf for one more time.

I cannot say enough good things about Destin. We say on the side that isn’t as commercialized, but if we wanted more partying or things to do, it was just a quick Uber or Lyft ride there and back. I’ll write about our Lyft ride in an upcoming blog, but that was the only thing that made us question our judgement. Otherwise, the weather was great, the food was amazing, the people (for the most part) were polite, and the hotel we stayed, the Four Points by Sheraton, was exceptional!

If you need a chill vacation, a “5 o’clock somewhere” vacation, a beach vacation, I cannot recommend Destin enough. It’s got enough for the party person in you, but yet, it has such a chill vibe. This may be our “end of school” trip before we get ramped up into summer for the next few years.