Actually, I got back yesterday, but didn't feel up to doing much of anything. A day in the car can do that to you.
Anyway- the breakdown of the trip!!
We left on Friday, but only drove about six hours to where my Aunt and Uncle live, the seven (there are eight in my immediate family, but my older brother didn't come with us,) of us divided into separate households, Mom and Dad staying with my Aunt and Uncle, while EvilGlare and my little brother stayed with "the ticklemonster" cousin and his family, and Squirt, my littlest sister and I stayed at another cousin's. She has a great dane named Samson, and he is adorable. And huge. Reallly Reallllly huge. He was so excited to be around people!
We got up early the next day and drove for about twelve hours- all the driving on these trips is done by my dad, he says he can't relax when mom drives. That might be weird for other families, but its been that way as long as I can remember, so it's pretty normal to me. A little tough on dad though.
(As a side note, it was totally crazy- once we got out of texas, everything was GREEN. And there was water EVERYWHERE. I mean, it's one thing to know that your state is almost constantly in a state of drought, but it's another to see it. And the swamps of Louisiana? I'd never even seen a swamp/bayou thing before. Holy cow that was a lot of water- just sitting there! and trees growing up out of it!!)
We stopped that night at Panama City beach, the next morning, Mom, Squirt and I were up with the sun to gather seashells before the other tourists got to them. Yeah. We're greedy. XD
Didn't really matter though, since we didn't find any big shells, we did get a lot of pretty little ones though. The weather was really nice up until the others woke up- then a storm blew in. It was pretty incredible to see the lightning strike the water- mom says that she and her dad used to watch that all the time. It was cool, but we kids (probably mom and dad too) were pretty worried that we wouldn't be able to play in the ocean, and it was such a pretty beach. The closest ocean beach to where we live is probably Galveston, and that beach, while nice enough if you can't get out to a real beach, is pretty depressing. Brown water meeting brown sand, and everything smelling a lot like fish. The Panama beach was gorgeous, white sand that wasn't coarse, and water that was a dark green near shore, and blue on the horizon.
The storm blew past in about 40 minutes, and we were the first ones in the water. There was a pretty strong current- fortunately, it dragged ACROSS the beach, not OUT to sea. No Riptides please. We had to keep wading ashore to get back to our stuff on the beach!
After a while, and burying my little brother, most of the family just laid out, tanning, or resting in the case of my mom and I, who only really freckle and burn- burning being the more likely.
Since I know I burn, and was too excited to just lay around, Squirt and I tried our hands at making a sandcastle- with Mom and Dad giving pointers. We still failed pretty miserably. I like to blame that on the beach- it was a pretty steep one, so all the good wet sand got hit by the waves every few minutes, so we hand to build it up on the level dry sand. We wet it down with seawater, but.... yeah. ANYWAY!!!! I tried to make a moat too- but the seawater sank down into the sand.... lol..... should have thought about that a little better!
After this, we all piled back into the van, and headed out once more. We stopped to say hi to an old friend of mom's, who she hadn't seen since before any of us kids were born.
We arrived in Orlando and checked into our hotel...
The next day we spent at Universal Studios, the first of our long tour of theme parks. We went on the incredible Hulk first, I was really happy with the way the lines were set up, so that it told you the story as you went along. The only thing worse than being in a long line, is being BORED in a long line. The ride itself was good, though I kept trying to black out on the first... loop? incline? I couldn't tell because my vision kept going out and all I could really see was a dark impression of the track in front of me. Fortunately I never lost vision completely, though it still would probably have been a good idea to avoid going on it again. We also rode Spider-Man, a 3-D virtual reality type ride, which was REALLY good. I mean, no upsidedowns or anything, but really impressive as far as action-storytelling goes. I can't remember much else of what we did, I know we did Poseidon's Fury, which was fun... I think this post has gone on long enough though, and I haven't even gotten to Disney yet. Maybe I'll write more later... today or tomorrow.
