Last weekend we took advantage of another Groupon: $35 parasailing with Destin Parasailing. By buying two for “myself” and gifting two more to Dave (per the terms of the Groupon), we were able to swing $35 parasailing for the whole family!
We were scheduled for last Saturday, but due to poor weather, we rescheduled to this past Sunday and the weather was fantastic!
You can read more details about a parasailing experience here from our trip last year, but with the kids we were really happy they enjoyed it. There was another 7-year-old on our boat and she was much more high-strung. She went up before our boys did, and she shrieked and hollered most of the time. We didn’t know if she was happy or sad about the experience. When she came back, she seemed to be giggling, but then said “It was scary!”. So I was nervous that the kids might get nervous themselves.
Today we took the kids parasailing (new blog post coming soon!) and we used the same business, Olin Marler Fishing Service, that we did for the deep sea fishing earlier this month. So when we were checking in, Jacob pointed out that Dave and I were in one of the pictures in the window. This … Read more
I’ll refrain from the more gory pictures of chum and cigar minnows with their eyes stabbed out, ha ha. But here’s the boat’s catch. There were 10 of us fishing, so we each were allowed to take home two red snapper and many other kinds of fish as well. Dave’s biggest red snapper catch is on the farthest right of the top row, and my lesser amberjack is right next to it.
Yep, I’m quite a bit behind, but I wanted to share Dave’s and my latest Florida adventure.
While the kids were in the northeast visiting with the grandparents, on July 3rd we booked a half-day (6 hour) fishing trip out on the Gulf of Mexico. We had SO MUCH FUN (yes, I’m shouting this).
Our boat, the Gulf Breeze.
We chose Olin Marler Charter Boat service for our trip, since that’s the same company we used for our dolphin cruise in April. The Marler name is a fixture in Destin: “Uncle Billy” Marler was one of the founders of Destin and served as the fishing village’s first postmaster. The founding families’ names are everywhere in Destin: street names, company names and even tied into the names of the boats.
Olin Marler offers several options for deep sea fishing trips: the “party boat” which holds more people on the boat but costs less, the group charter: a smaller boat experience that accepts an assortment of smaller parties, and the truly private charter, where a single group pays for the full cost of the boat trip, regardless of how many people are in the group.
We chose the middle option, since we didn’t want the chaos of a large group but weren’t about to pay for a full boat all to ourselves. Our group charter was able to accomodate up to 30 people on board, but there were only 10 of us. It felt very fortunate to not be on such a crowded boat.
We had a wonderful afternoon on a dolphin cruise. The weather couldn't have been more cooperative!
I guess it’s been a while since I wrote one of these “Discoveries” posts, isn’t it? It doesn’t mean we didn’t do anything — in fact, I’m reminded that I should relabel my USS Alabama, Mardi Gras and Santa Train posts “Alabama Discoveries”…we do seem to spend a lot of time there, don’t we?
Maybe while I’m at it I’ll rename our Atlanta road trips “Georgia Discoveries” 🙂
Thanks to a Groupon I purchased several months ago, we were able to take advantage of a dolphin cruise around Destin Harbor and the Gulf of Mexico this past weekend. The Groupon benefits expired on April 30th, so in typical Major Mom fashion, we took the trip on April 29th.
We took a 30 minute narrated tour of Destin Harbor and then traveled through the East Pass into the Gulf and got up close and personal with three separate pods of dolphins. As you might have read or heard, dolphins are indeed very social and friendly. The younger ones enjoyed showing off for us — trying to get as much air as possible when jumping!
Dave Update: With the kids at home to help Dave (most of the help he needs now is picking up stuff that he’s dropped, by the way), I was able to go back out to the weekend crop on Saturday and take advantage of a few more hours of making pages. Dave had a really … Read more
Who here is a fan of Groupon! Go ahead, raise your hand! Don’t be shy…. I started using Groupon in the Omaha area ($5 Omaha Lancer’s tickets!), but quickly transferred my settings to Pensacola when we got here. I’ll admit that I don’t care about most of the deals that come our way (half price … Read more
