Friday August 11th

Woke up this morning and had promised Walker that we would go to the driving range so we headed out just after 8am. We headed over to Tupelo Bay and I got him the medium bucket and they let him borrow a driver. He had such a good time and if I thought yesterday made me jealous watching him was worse. It took him about an hour to go through the bucket, it may have gone quicker but he was having to hear a little bit of instruction with each attempt (something I learned watching Ron and Leo at Man-O-War) They have seats behind the tee boxes and one porch swing that I found and enjoyed since I wasn’t hitting any balls. When we left there we ran back by Hudson Flea Market but was unable to find anything that I had to have. We headed back to the house, had some lunch and down to the ocean for our last full outing. The strangest duo of the week and maybe the scariest(my baby girl) Sloan and Daniel . Digging for the buried treasure?
No it was over here. Sloan could sit here and do this the entire week.
Here I sit thinking if we moved down to Myrtle Beach we would have to live in this house and have our friends down every weekend.
Sloan, Daniel and the "H" man in the surf

Did I say scary? not because of Daniel but she is my baby girl. The funny thing is they are more like brother and sister, two minutes later she was upset because he knocked her off the raft and went out to catch some waves by himself.
Surfer dude!
What's up big guy?
If you can see the dot out in the ocean, that is Walker and I "bobbing" in the waves before they break on the beach.
Thunder wantes to dig a deep hole too.
Walker, Baby Olivia and Sarah going into the ocean for the last time.

It started to sprinkle but that did not chase us off and then the sun broke and turned out to be beautiful. We stayed out until 430 and then headed inside to clean up and go eat. We stopped by Surf Harbor and found a nice teenager to take our annual picture.Tonight the restaurant was the Seafare at 544 and 17, we made it just before 6 and had about a ten minute wait before getting a table. Crab Legs, crab legs and more crab legs we ate at least 4 plates each and even the kids had a few. We barely had any room for anything else on the large 120 seafood bar, we only had a cookie for dessert. The kids loved seeing the mermaids swim around and they were even given a set of beads for their smiles.
When we left, the line outside was standing room only and I asked some what they were told their wait time would be and they replied “60-90 minutes” The skies were cloudy but no dark clouds so we wanted to get another round of golf and the kids voted for Mt. Atlanticus. Mt. Atlanticus is located just behind the soon to be “Old Pavilion site” the one with the tiki huts that look 3 or 4 stories tall. It has two courses, one called “Conch” goes through the caves and the other called the “Minotaur” which goes by the lakes. We choose the latter and walked over to hole #1. Now if you play here, make sure you pay attention to the signs or you could be like the family behind us that started on one course and finished on the other. They never cross each other but they come close a few times. Here Mandy and I found the fountain of youth. . . . .
and this is what it would look like if it worked.
It looks run down from the street but was actually very nice and well kept. Did I tell you that it goes by the lakes? Well the family behind us looked like the grandparents with their grandkids and around hole 9 one of the boys dropped his ball on the bridge and it rolled into the blue water. I tried to see how deep the water was with my putter and could not feel the bottom. A boy with the group in front of us saw the entire thing and then gave his ball to the little boy. That was a very nice thing to do and he heard about it from everyone around. The next hole I smacked by golf ball right into the drink. At first I looked around to see if anyone would give me their ball to play with and had no luck not even my own kids. I thought about what happened before but decided to check anyway and stuck the putter down in the water and actually saw my little yellow golf ball so I laid down across the rock and manipulated my ball to the side and out of the water. In my search I found a second ball and retrieved it and had the pleasure of giving it to the gracious boy who had donated his ball to the little boy two holes back. Mandy was having a great game and had 4 holes in one and was kicking everyone’s butt and would have to score a 5 on the next 2 holes for me to catch her. As we near the end of the course we climbed up to the top and reached the 18th hole and Mandy came away with a win shooting an incredible 36, I finished with a 41 and the kids shot below 50 each. From up here we could get one last look at the Pavilion when we heard Walker our youngest say “Goodbye old friend” We then thought about all of the good times that we had there like riding the roller coaster Category 5, Mouse trap, the rainbow, the log flume, the old cars. Thinking about the kids rides like the little fire truck and the frog hopper, eating funnel cakes, cotton candy and Dippin Dots. We then climbed down 3 flights of steps and headed to 19th hole where you need to hit the ball down a straight elevated green with water on both sides. If you make a hole in one you have a Lifetime pass to Mt. Atlanticus. I thought it would make for a great story if anyone in our group could do that but we all missed and landed in the drink. Mandy and I were close but rolled pass the hole just inches from the cup. They have a large wall with all the people that have been successful with names and hometowns. We headed back with one last wave to the pavilion because when we come back next year it will be gone and new construction will be taking it’s place. We stopped by Dairy Queen for some soft serve and a blizzard. We arrived back to the house and had to do some packing because we were heading out early in the morning. We cleaned all the beach toys and loaded up the suburban. Just before going to bed we went out to the beach for a walk, the moon was almost full and the tide was coming in. We talked about wanting to come back down here because we were so spoiled this week. Just like everything else all good things must come to an end. We finished packing and went to bed.