dow...and florida

Dow is a Colorado boy, born and raised. He doesn't take vacations. He takes hunting trips. Considering where I grew up and went to college, he's been most places I've lived...because it's good hunting country. But, Florida? Now that's another story.

Dow saw the ocean through the fog for 5 minutes when he was in the 5th grade. That was more than a few days ago. So he decided he wanted to come with me the next time I went back to Florida to check on the house and visit friends.

I warned him that this wasn't exactly a vacation, but he wanted to do it! We bought the tickets, booked a rental car, and we were on.

Taking a country boy to Florida, to meet your Florida friends means you've got a little work to do before you go.

This is what Dow is most comfortable in, but it's not exactly good for Florida weather.

This is what guys in Florida wear. Shorts and flip-flops. Neither of which are in Dow's wardrobe. I'm not even sure the last time his legs saw the sun.

As such, I took the liberty of shopping for him.

$85 later (thank you, Target!), he looked like a true Floridian.

*Note: I did not "make" Dow wear anything he was uncomfortable in and I took the directions I was given in making my purchases.

As I mentioned, Dow has never really taken a vacation before and he's never really been to the beach. So there were only a couple of things he had in mind, but he was definitely adamant about doing them.

He had never had a martini or been to a martini bar (not necessarily needed to be done in Florida, but I figured what better place) and he had always wanted to sip a fruity drink on the beach.

Since this trip was a combination of meeting my friends, doing yard work at the house, and vacation, I figured we could do both of his things while meeting up with friends.

We went to the Twisted Martini with Little Jessica, where we were supposed to meet up with some other friends from my old job.

Unfortunately, neither of them were able to meet us there, but we did get Dow's martini!

We thought we would head down to Cape Canaveral to see the Kennedy Space Center (we just missed the shuttle launch by a day or two!).

And we did head down there. And we did head right back out. That place is as bad as going to Disney Land! It was $40 per person, which was not the cost of our interest in space.

Having been friends with Jessica as long as I have, I decided to whip back around to get pictures to show we were at least there.

Since Cape Canaveral is 2 hours from my house and only 15 minutes away from Cocoa Beach, we decided to make the most of our drive. We had a picnic of Publix subs on the beach.

For those of you who haven't been to Florida, Publix is a grocery store, but they have uh-MAZE-ing subs. Maybe it wasn't worth a 2 hour drive to eat a grocery store sandwich on the beach when we could have done the same thing 15 minutes away, but at least we got to see Cocoa Beach.

We spent the next day scooting around. Although there is no proof of Dow doing this. He didn't want his picture taken on the scooter at the time, but once we got back to Colorado, he was a little sad there wasn't one.

Finally on Sunday, we did what he had been really looking forward to...spending the day on the beach.

Ryan and Jessica picked us up, threw some bikes in the back of the truck and we headed to Jacksonville Beach for the Blues Festival.

Little Jessica's dad is a lifeguard, so he showed us around the lifeguard station (think fire station) and took this picture of us at the very top.

We rode bikes up and down 1st Avenue and sipped our fruity drinks on the beach.

At one place, we ran into this guy...

Talk about begging!

We ended our perfect Florida day with a perfect Florida evening at Clark's Fish Camp.

Where the gators didn't get fed,

But Justin ate their tails,

Where I had a hard time eating my meal with this view,

Ryan and Little Jessica continued to enjoy their first year of marriage,

And I *almost* talked Dow into moving to Florida.