A Week on the Gulf Coast

Since summer in the Gorge is so perfect, we thought we'd take a week of it and go someplace else. ;)

Every year, we have planned some sort of get together with a group of friends from our MIT days. And now that the entire group isn't as concentrated in the Northeast as we once were, we've starting planning a trip together. This year's just happened to end up on the gulf coast of Florida, in August. (Yes, we're crazy.)

The house was right on the beach in Destin, FL, and as it turned out, the weather the week we were there was much less oppressive that we had feared. And for a week (or part thereof), the 12 of us just did whatever we felt like: rented jet skis, walked on the beach, played lots of games, golfed, bowled, cooked, or just talked and relaxed in each others company. A perfect vacation.


Jet skis in the bay.


View of the beach at sunset.


Malinda and Jean, preparing a gourmet meal. Each day for the week, a different couple was responsible for breakfast and dinner. That way, you only had to 'work' on one day, and on the other days, food was just prepared for you. Worked great, and the food was wonderful!


Corinne, pool shark. There was a pool room in the house. Can't get much better than that.


Corinne and Judy, relaxing on the screen porch, now just a porch. Hurricane Dennis arrived several weeks before us, knocking out all of the screens and destroying the walkway to the beach.


Remnants of the walkway from the house to the beach. (Thank you very much Hurricane Dennis.) As a result, we had to walk a block down the street for beach access.


Brian, Judy and Corinne (and me taking the picture), wading in the surf. Brian got some saltwater in his eye, so he decided to cry. We had to watchout for jellyfish in the water. Several of us were stung, but Brian got stung on his back the worst.


Golf lessons from Brian at the driving range.


Becky & Gordon, enjoying the fruit of their dinner labors.



Looking forward to the next trip together!

- Mike (& Corinne)