Living and Playing in Destin

This past week has been more of the same in Destin…Hot, humid and lots of people everywhere. I don’t want to sound like a broken record but every day it is temps in the mid 90’s, high humidity making it feel like it’s 110-115 and a 30% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. It will be this way at least till early September. Lol

Last week seemed to be the busiest week tourist wise so far this summer, especially in Fort Walton Beach. I had to take the backroads every evening as 98 was backing up through downtown Ft. Walton. We expect to start to see a slight slowing starting this week as many folks are getting their kids ready to return to school. In fact I believe our school system will be back in class on August 10th. That’s only two and a half weeks. The summer break seems to get less each year.

Sunshine Cindy and I stayed busy. Friday we had to take a trip to Pensacola for a routine doctors visit. As is par for the course nowadays we were in the office for well over 2 hours for an appointment that took about 5 minutes of time. Can you say “frustrating?”

After we were done we headed to Pensacola Beach. We ended up stopping at Flounders for lunch. Flounders sits right on The Sound with plenty of open air dining. We had a nice relaxing lunch sharing a shrimp platter that had 5 or 6 different types of fresh gulf shrimp. It was really good! 

When we left we put the top down on Badass and took the beach road to Navarre. Well, we got behind some folks driving real slow. The sun was baking us in the car. We like it hot but this was like being in an oven. We had thought about stopping in Navarre for a drink but decided to head back to Destin. In Fort Walton I pulled over and put the top back up. The air conditioning felt sooo gooood. Lol  In Destin we made a stop at the Rotten Apple. Tracy was working the bar. There were a few other regulars in there. By now we were sufficiently cooled down. So the top went back down and we went home.

There was a Parrot Head meeting at The American Legion that night. We got home about 5 and the meeting was starting about 5:30. We sat down and the next thing you know we decided to stay in as we were so comfortable. Sorry PH’s. We will be there next time!

Saturday afternoon we headed to the harbor and Tailfins for some dinner. We got our usual spot on the railing by the bar where we get some nice breezes. It was very relaxing there. Johnny the owner stopped by and chatted with us. He was lamenting how hard it is to get good help as many of the younger staff are just plain lazy. But we hear that from all the business owners in town. Rochelle is now working at Tailfins. She used to work at Landshark and always took good care of us. It was nice seeing and talking to her again.

We had our dinner then decided to stay and listen to Ronnie perform. Ronnie plays 6 days a week on the boardwalk. He does a good job and interacts with the crowds that walk by. I saw the next day our friend Sami and her husband Barry were there with some friends. They were down at some tables on the boardwalk and we never saw them. We ended up staying for Ronnie’s entire show. We had a great time listening to the music and people watching.

Sunday we were back down on the harbor. Sunshine Cindy, Tiffany and I went down and were surprised we could actually get into the parking garage. The girls went to Harry T’s to meet up with some of Tiffany’s co-workers and I went to Crab Island Cantina to listen to BT perform. BT had his son Jason playing the Cajon with him. Jason is very talented and you can see he has some of his dad’s talent. Sunshine Cindy joined after about an hour while Tiffany went on a pontoon with some friends to Crab Island.

BT’s parents and daughter showed up and sat with us. They are super nice folks. Jasmine took good care of us. The Destin Dome held as it looked like we might get some rain at one point. As we usually do we ended up talking to some other folks who were sitting around us. A couple from Ft. Walton, Christy and Steve were there with a friend having a good time. All in all another fun time at the Cantina.

We made one more stop before heading home at the outside bar at Jackacuda’s. Christy and Steve were there too plus a tourist couple from Texas. At one point we heard someone had hit several cars in the parking garage on the lower level where I was parked. I went and checked and didn’t see any issues. But when we left and pulled out of the garage there were cops and a damaged car in the parking area in front of the Grande. Hopefully no one got hurt.

The new pedestrian lights on Hwy 98 appear to be doing their job. We got stopped a couple times yesterday and the traffic gets backed up but then it was already backed up. It does make it safer to cross the road. It’s actually safer to cross there than at the intersections as you don’t have cars trying to turn with people in the crosswalk. I have seen an increase in traffic on the back roads though as folks try to avoid the madness of 98.

While we were down on the harbor we saw the charter fishing boats continue to bring in big hauls of fish. Red Snapper season is closed but there are still plenty of other species to give the anglers a fight and dinner later. Destin has the most charter fishing boats in the state of Florida and they are all busy this time of the year.

We don’t have any big plans this week other than working. Ugh… Have a great week. See ya next Monday.

Destin Steve