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The WBI Krewe Mardi Gras in Seaside


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I like the bike cup holders.  Do you find that when drinking a carbonated beverage, all the jiggling of the bike makes the drink go flat?

 

Also, it's surprising to see a house being demo'd like that.  It certainly can't be a very old house.  I wonder if someone is doing a huge expansion / remodel job and they need to maintain a certain percentage of the original structure to be grandfathered into some sort of preservation code or something?  

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Wow, that Seaside day looks perfect!

 

The TCD girls used to roll down that hill at the amphitheater every time we went there.

 

As for W's battle scars, I had the pleasure of taking each of the TCD girls to the ER for stitches at some point during their toddler years.  They all were very reckless walkers.  Twin #2 still has a sweet Harry Potter-ish scar on her forehead from an unplanned meeting with a wall.

 

TCD

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What an awesome day! 

 

Z used to do that kind of stuff to himself too. 

 

How long was the bike ride into Seaside? 

 

Yes it was a great day!

 

Yeah I figured it was a boy thing that we'll get used to, I know I used to get beat up all the time.  Well actually CP was a very clumsy kid also.  I actually told CP about Z's pre-cruise fall during this trip, that was a rough vacation experience but CP agreed that the ice cream prescription was a great way to get over it.

 

I thought the bike ride was about 1.5 miles but I just mapped it and it looks like its 2.1 miles.  The ride wasn't bad at all, except when there was a high wind against you because then W's bike trailer acted like a sail and made for some tough peddling.

 

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What a lovely way to spend the day.  Not sure it would be as enjoyable in the summer heat.

 

Poor baby.  Glad he healed quick.

 

It was a great day!

 

The heat would have changed it up some but it still wouldn't be too bad, we would just drink more and get the water.

 

Thanks, he does heal pretty quick, but I'm thinking one of them might be a scar for a while.

 

I like the bike cup holders.  Do you find that when drinking a carbonated beverage, all the jiggling of the bike makes the drink go flat?

 

Also, it's surprising to see a house being demo'd like that.  It certainly can't be a very old house.  I wonder if someone is doing a huge expansion / remodel job and they need to maintain a certain percentage of the original structure to be grandfathered into some sort of preservation code or something?  

 

Thanks, they sure came in handy.

 

The drinks do get shaken up a bit, but for the most part we didn't notice.  The hardest part was the ice melting since we only had plastic cups and no tervis tumbler with us that day.

 

I agree I was surprised about that too.  I'm thinking at most the house is 30 years old, but probably half that since I think that section of town was built later.  You're probably right about the big expansion or total remodel.  That certain percentage idea may be right, I'm not sure what kind of rules they have on that but I'm sure they are strict about everything.

 

On another note there is another house that is being rebuilt and it looks like it's from the ground up, but I can't confirm that since I didn't walk around it looking for an old piece of it.

 

I'm wondering if I can get a cup holder aftermarket for my bike!

 

Yes you can!  Because of delays on the bike I wanted I opted for one without a cupholder and then added this one.  lol actually I bought the cupholder first to make sure I could get it in time.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Kroozercups-Drink-Holder-Flat-Black/dp/B0088XDATO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425654965&sr=8-1&keywords=kroozercups+drink+holder

 

It's called Kroozercups and it worked pretty good.  When I installed it I thought it seemed loose but I never had an issue with it and it worked great.

 

Wow, that Seaside day looks perfect!

 

The TCD girls used to roll down that hill at the amphitheater every time we went there.

 

As for W's battle scars, I had the pleasure of taking each of the TCD girls to the ER for stitches at some point during their toddler years.  They all were very reckless walkers.  Twin #2 still has a sweet Harry Potter-ish scar on her forehead from an unplanned meeting with a wall.

 

TCD

 

It was a perfect day, and the warmest one of the trip, I even got to wear flip flops for a while!

 

Man I'm not looking forward to those ER trips but I'm sure they'll happen.  Sorry to hear the girls had to go but I fully understand now that it happens.

 

WBI

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How about another update.

 

It's still Sunday and we left Seaside on our bikes.  I completely forgot this until just now but we biked over to Seagrove, we wanted to eat at the Seagrove Market Café.

 

TCD said it was his second favorite place to eat in the whole world, I don't know about you but that's one heck of a recommendation.   That actually sparked a lot of conversation for us, we tried to figure out what our favorites were in the world and you know what?  That's hard to do.

 

Anyway we biked over to Seagrove Market but we were too late, they were closed, they don't open for dinner on Sundays.  So we decided to bike back to the site and decide on dinner later.

 

On the way we passed this sign just before entering Seaside on 30A:

 

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That's awesome!  Congrats Mr. Modica

 

 

After passing through Watercolor we got to Western Lake and the sunset was beautiful, check it out:

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Pretty soon we were back at the site:

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As per usual, we couldn't decide what to do for dinner, so we loaded up and drove back to Seaside to hit up Modcia Market for some pre-made food.

 

One the way there people were pulling over taking pictures of the sunset so CP stuck the camera out the window and got some great shots:

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I don't think I've posted any pictures of the inside of Modica Market so here you go.

 

It's actually changed around a little, I think they moved the vegetable cooler to make room for some beach toys, and the Modica poster from the Truman Show movie had fallen down:

 

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We loaded up on some little spicy chicken bites, shrimp salad, and I can't remember what else.  Sorry no pictures.

 

The shrimp salad was amazing, huge fresh shrimp in it. 

 

That's all my pictures from Sunday, we headed back to the site and ate all of our goodies plus some we brought from home and called it a night. 

 

Did I mention that in preparation for this trip CP wanted to give up sweets for a month, the goal was to eat better until our trip.   Well that's hard to do during Mardi Gras with all the great King Cakes around so when we left for this trip we picked up a king cake from our favorite place and also got a big thing of Blue Bell king cake ice cream.  So add those two treats to all of the good stuff we were getting in Seaside and we ate really good the whole vacation! 

 

Ok up next Monday and we finally eat at Seagrove Market Café...

 

WBI

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I LOVE the Western Lake photos!

 

And the Modica Market photos- you're right- things have been moved around in there.  They used to have all the chips there where that ice machine is.  It could be that this is their winter/spring set-up. On nice days, they open up the big garage door they have in the front, and have a bar set up there for folks to eat and drink.  Maybe things will go back to normal for the summer.

 

I'm glad to hear you got to eat at the Seagrove Market Café.  I am anxious to hear how you liked it.

 

TCD

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  • 2 weeks later...

I LOVE the Western Lake photos!

 

And the Modica Market photos- you're right- things have been moved around in there.  They used to have all the chips there where that ice machine is.  It could be that this is their winter/spring set-up. On nice days, they open up the big garage door they have in the front, and have a bar set up there for folks to eat and drink.  Maybe things will go back to normal for the summer.

 

I'm glad to hear you got to eat at the Seagrove Market Café.  I am anxious to hear how you liked it.

 

TCD

 

Thanks, Western Lake makes for some great sunset pictures!

 

That's a good point about the winter setup, that could be it.  We had breakfast one cold and rainy morning at that bar area, it was nice to be able to eat inside and still watch the world go by.

 

Seagrove Market is coming up, but spoiler alert, we loved it!

 

What a beautiful seaside town!

 

It really is, if you ever get a chance you should go!

 

WBI

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Wow, sorry I didn't mean to go so long without an update but I'm back and I'm going to fire this thing back up.

 

It's now Monday morning and we had a big day of nothing to do so we did our normal routine and relaxed and drank a pot of coffee while we got ready.

 

The weather was a little cooler today but not to bad so we loaded up the bikes and headed to Seaside for breakfast.

 

Action shot while riding:

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This is a good shot of the trail that runs along 30A, it's nice and wide so you can pass other bikers or runners with no problem, well except for the narrow bridges but they aren't too bad either.

 

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Pretty soon we rolled into Seaside and passed the house where we had our Rehearsal Dinner again, Changes in Attitude:

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We once again hit Modica Market for breakfast, I think I changed it up this time and had a croissant sandwich instead of the chicken biscuit.  Then we walked over to Amavida coffee and got a small cappuccino or something and headed out to the pavilion to enjoy the view:

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The problem was though it was windy, so we didn't stay too long, instead we decided to walk the shops some (they weren't open yet).

 

While looking around we came upon some guys working on the beach, they were moving some sand around and filling in this access point:

 

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Looking over to Bud & Alley's.  That's where we had dinner on Valentines' Day and you can see upstairs the Tarpon Club bar.

 

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To my left was Bud & Alley's Pizza Bar, we didn't get to eat there this trip but they had a great special going:

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I lost track of how many pictures that is so I'll stop here.

 

WBI

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Oh that pizza place brings back a bad memory. There's a bathroom across from it where Z picked up the freshener in the urinal when he was 3ish. Jason almost puked and came back and told me, so I could almost puke. 

 

You guys make cool weather beach trips look more than that I thought they'd be. 

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Continuing on, there's an open walkway through the Pizza Bar so we walked through and found this open area:

 

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I remember this being an empty lot, but now I have no idea what they use it for. 

 

TCD do you know?  They have those pole in place to put a cover over this area but I've never seen it used. 

 

We continued on down the foot path through the cottages to this beach pavilion we've never been to before:

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We had this area to ourselves but man was it windy!

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After we had enough wind for a while we walked back to the center of Seaside and went to Sundog books for a while. 

 

I looked at books on Seaside and found this huge one, evidently its the most current one, but it cost $75!

 

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W had fun looking at all the kids books but we left without buying anything.

 

Instead we hopped on our bikes and rode to the playground area.

 

Would you believe we didn't even know this was here? lol I guess it makes sense, we never had kids before and we've never used the pools.

 

Anyway we found the playground and W used the swings for a long time:

 

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Even though it doesn't look it in these pictures, he loves to swing and could do it all day.

 

After that we hopped on the bikes and went for a long ride and sadly I only have one pictures from it all.  We rode all through Watercolor, we had never really explored in there before so today was the day and man is it big!

 

We had no clue it had so many streets and they are building some gigantic houses in there!

 

Here's the one picture I have from the bridge that crosses Western Lake near their boat house:

 

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After riding all over we ended up on Highway 395 at Watercolor Crossing and decided it was time for lunch so we rode down 395 to Seagrove Market.

 

I mentioned this before but TCD said this is his second favorite place to eat in the world, and I can testify that it has some amazing food!

 

I forgot to take pictures of the place but the food was so good that we came back again so I'll have more pictures then.

 

Here's our food:

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I had the Café Burger, it was a burger topped with their house made pimento jalapeno cheese.  Growing up I never liked pimento cheese but after eating this burger we are both hooked on it!  I have no way to describe how good this burger was, all I can say is it might be the best I've ever had and I wish I had one right now!

 

CP had some type of specialty BLT and even though it was good she was constantly steeling the pimento cheese off of my burger.

 

Thanks for the recommendation TCD!

 

After lunch we biked on back to Seaside and decided we needed something sweet so we went where else but Modica Market and got a slice of rainbow cake and we all shared it outside:

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This seems like a good stopping point, but I'll be back with more scenic shots of Seaside.

 

WBI

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Oh that pizza place brings back a bad memory. There's a bathroom across from it where Z picked up the freshener in the urinal when he was 3ish. Jason almost puked and came back and told me, so I could almost puke. 

 

You guys make cool weather beach trips look more than that I thought they'd be. 

 

Ewww that is a bad memory and I don't blame you that sounds gross, I bet Jason scrubbed his hands like crazy.

 

You know I wasn't sure how we would do with this long of a cool weather beach trip but it actually turned out great.  We really wanted a relaxing trip and that's exactly what we got plus we had some great days of sunshine, now if it had been cold the entire time like the last day of our trip and caused us to not be able to bike everywhere and play outside then it would have been rough.

 

WBI

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Continuing on, there's an open walkway through the Pizza Bar so we walked through and found this open area:

 

IMAG3787.jpg

 

I remember this being an empty lot, but now I have no idea what they use it for. 

 

TCD do you know?  They have those pole in place to put a cover over this area but I've never seen it used. 

 

 

 

No, I don't know what's going on there.

 

Like you said- that area used to just be an undeveloped lot.  At one point, they let people park in there.  It was blocked off a few years ago, and was just a vacant lot.  I thought it was privately owned, and that a big house would be built on it one day.  But, now it looks like it's being used as a common area.  I've never seen it like that, so I can't help you.

 

I'm glad you found the playground.  I used to spend A LOT of time there.  It's a great playground for smaller kids.

 

 

TCD

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No, I don't know what's going on there.

 

Like you said- that area used to just be an undeveloped lot.  At one point, they let people park in there.  It was blocked off a few years ago, and was just a vacant lot.  I thought it was privately owned, and that a big house would be built on it one day.  But, now it looks like it's being used as a common area.  I've never seen it like that, so I can't help you.

 

I'm glad you found the playground.  I used to spend A LOT of time there.  It's a great playground for smaller kids.

 

 

TCD

 

I always thought it was privately owned also.  I guess I'll have to go over the summer to figure out how they use it.

 

I bet you did spend a lot of time at that play ground, and I'm sure I will too.

 

WBI

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We'll I'm going to keep this report going.

 

I left off with an after lunch desert from Modica Market.

 

At this point we were full and didn't have any plans so we decided to walk off some of our meal.

 

We ended up at Ruskins Place, its a little park area with townhomes on either side.

 

CP decided she should show W how to do a cartwheel, this is the best pic of the ones I took:

 

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Then W climbed this tree, I was so proud.

 

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Ok maybe not, CP put him up there:

 

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Some tables in the middle of the park:

 

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One of the townhomes near here has a long time resident.  I can't remember his name but on one trip we were walking by in the morning and could hear this beautiful classical music, we found out it was coming from this man's townhome.  He likes to open his windows to let the music out while he sweeps the walkway in front of his house.  After complimenting his music he told us that we could buy the cd at the record shop above Sundog Books so we did.  The record store guy said he's always sending customers to him for that cd.  Later in that trip we were reading the Seaside news paper thing and there was a big article about this guy.  Evidently he's lived there for years and was kind of an honorary mayor.  To this day when I listen to that CD it reminds me of a peaceful morning in Seaside.

 

Fast forward to this current trip and one morning my father-in-law, W, and I were walking by and guess what we heard, the same music, we didn't get to talk to him but it was still cool!

 

After checking to see if the guy was around (he wasn't) we headed to the Chapel area.

 

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Pretty soon we had worked up a thirst so we headed to the Great Southern Café.  We had noticed they had specialty mojitos and we wanted to try them:

 

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Quote of the day:

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With our mojitos in hand we headed out, but first let me take a selfie:

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On the bikes headed back to the camper:

 

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When we got back I decided to walk our loop and take some pictures so I'll break that into another post.

 

WBI

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Looks like a GREAT day....my kind of beach day.  I know I always say I hate the beach, but I actually do love looking at the beach, or even walking on the beach.  Especially in cooler weather.  I just hate sitting in sand and dealing with sunscreen, and salt water and all that garbage.  So this trip is up my alley.  

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Oh man, I am homesick for Seaside now.

 

We rented the light colored townhouse you see in the background of that photo last year for our Easter trip.

 

Every summer, the TCD gang played epic wiffle ball games right on that grass where CP is dong her cartwheel. 

 

I have never tried a mojito from Great Southern. 

 

Yet.

 

TCD

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Looks like a GREAT day....my kind of beach day.  I know I always say I hate the beach, but I actually do love looking at the beach, or even walking on the beach.  Especially in cooler weather.  I just hate sitting in sand and dealing with sunscreen, and salt water and all that garbage.  So this trip is up my alley.  

 

Dave I fully agree, I tell people all the time that I don't like the beach, but I really love the idea of the beach, I just don't like the sand in everything and sitting there sweating for hours.  I love a cruise or even a beach trip where I get to enjoy the beach related things and views without having to sit out there in the sand and sun for hours.  The two beach camping trips we've done now have been great, we can do the beach if we want to but we also get to enjoy the camping part at the same time.

 

I know I'm repeating myself, but what a beautiful place!

 

Repeat away, it really is beautiful and my blurry pictures don't do it justice!

 

Oh man, I am homesick for Seaside now.

 

We rented the light colored townhouse you see in the background of that photo last year for our Easter trip.

 

Every summer, the TCD gang played epic wiffle ball games right on that grass where CP is dong her cartwheel. 

 

I have never tried a mojito from Great Southern. 

 

Yet.

 

TCD

 

That's awesome, I wondered which townhouse you had stayed in, there are some really neat ones there.

 

Wiffle ball, that's great!  That's what I loved about Seaside, we were outside the entire time just playing in the grass, I see some wiffle ball games in my future there.

 

You should try the mojitos they were good.  We tried to different flavors and they were good and strong.  One warning though, those two mojitos cost more than our two drinks and two appetizers during happy hour the next day at the same restaurant.  As you've said before Seaside can be more expensive than Disneyworld.

 

Awesome TR.  Seaside looks like it wold be an awesome place to visit for a few days on a Florida trip.

 

I will add it to my list along with Topsail, for when we buy our own RV someday.

 

You should definitely visit Seaside one day!  You could always rent a cottage and go without an RV, but the prices are usually pretty high.

WBI

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Time for an update, when I left off we were biking back to the campground.

 

Once there I decided to go check out the comfort station.

 

It's in the center of the loop, this is the view as you pull into the view:

 

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Looking behind me to the entrance road:

 

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Walking up to the comfort station you see the washer and dryers:

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They looked a little rough but a lady was there using them.

 

Vending machine:

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I walked around to the men's room side and you can see this sidewalk leads out to the road and to the back of two ADA accessible camp sites.  As we discussed before there are only four sites in the loop that have concrete and those are two of them:

 

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Going in the Men's room, don't worry no one was in there:

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Overall they weren't too bad, but I did a google search and found TCD's report from back in 2010 and compared the pictures and I can tell you that they are showing signs of wear and tear from the last the last 5 years.  It wasn't an issue for us though since we never used them, that's why we bought the glamper.

 

Back outside I walked down the sidewalk and looking across this campsite you can see our 5er:

 

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This is another reason I wouldn't want the sites on the interior of the loop, not much privacy and people walk right by/through your site.  Note: I didn't walk across their site but I saw some people do it.

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See how close the sidewalk is to this site:

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Empty site:

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Our site:

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Empty site across from us, when we arrived there was a camper there with three full sized poodles in a pen outside, they only barked when we were setting up though so I can't complain.

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I'll stop here, up next we drive out to the beach,  because would you believe we've been here four days and haven't been yet.

 

WBI

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Whoops I've been slacking on updates so let me get this guy going.

 

Let's head to the beach in February with a LOT of wind.

 

It was so windy we actually drove instead of taking the bikes.

 

Getting ready to go:

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If you didn't believe me that it was windy, check this out:

 

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I know what you're thinking...red flag day.

 

The beach:

 

 

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W hated the sand which is strange because over the summer he loved it.  We think it was because it was so cold because he did not want to be put down.

 

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After the beach we headed to dinner at Pizza by the Sea.

 

It was our second time there and pretty good, we actually ended up with the same order, some kind of chicken pizza. 

 

The big difference was the crowd, it was empty, in the summer you have to fight a crowd.

 

Then we hit Publix for some cookies.

 

Back at the site:

 

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After W played with rocks we put him to bed and watched a movie.

 

Up next Tuesday morning, our last full day.

 

WBI

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