Monday night, we finalized our plans for Tuesday morning. Shawn's parents arrived at our hotel at 9:30 am to pick us up in Papaw's special red van. (We had a leisurely morning before that, enjoying chai and hot coffee along with bagels and half a coffee cake muffin on our balcony overlooking the beach.) We headed to the nearby town of Naples to check it out. There were cute shops and gorgeous houses, complete with impressive landscaping, to see. It started to rain while we were out, so we stopped at a restaurant to eat lunch. And we enjoyed the conversation and the food - or at least I did! I'm the only one in the crowd who enjoys seafood, so the rest got burgers and fries. [Hopefully Papaw will email me the pictures he took that day.]
We stopped by a pier and were amazed to see a school of dolphins eating their lunch. They were jumping out of the water and swimming all around. It was really cool to see. And the view from the pier was amazing! We loved it.
On the way back to our hotel, we stopped by the DQ for some ice cream and then we parted ways. Mamaw & Papaw got back to the boys and we went back to our little slice of paradise. We immediately changed into our swimsuits and headed out to the beach. I took my third book out with us since I had finished the other two, and much to our surprise and pleasure, the chairs were free. A young man brought them down to exactly where we wanted them on the water. We were enjoying the gulf breeze and the beautiful scenery as we dove into our books. What seemed like only a few minutes later, Shawn sharply caught my attention. I looked up at what he was looking at - a HUGE gray storm cloud had come and settled right above us and the ocean. In our reading, we had missed its coming. (And I know it was more than just minutes after we had gotten settled). The cloud was moving quickly, so we decided to wait and see what would happen. Soon enough, we found out! It started to pour on us, so we headed back to our room. Luckily, it was only steps away. We went onto our balcony to enjoy the view and continue reading... only Shawn couldn't keep his eyes open so he decided to catch a quick nap. Before I knew it, I had finished my book. Less than two hours had passed since going down to the beach, and I was done with the final novel I had for this trip. I knew that was okay, though, because we were leaving the next day. I would highly recommend the books by Francine Rivers!
Shawn woke up when I went inside, and we talked about what to do next. Since the weather had cleared, we decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was GORGEOUS out! The shells were beautiful - I saw so many cool shapes and colors, particularly ones that looked perfect for hermit crabs. There weren't many people on the beach, so we felt like we had it to ourselves, other than a couple birds that followed us as we walked. We had hopes of dining somewhere overlooking the ocean to watch the sunset, but since it was still a little cloudy, we didn't think we would get to see the sun anyway. We got dressed up for our final night together and headed to a place called CJ's on the Bay. We just had lite sandwiches, but enjoyed the view overlooking the water. We walked around the boats a little and then a surf shop before heading back to the room. Once there, we watched a recorded glee on Shawn's netbook before turning in for our last night of vacation. It had been another nice day together.
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