Racing. One the second day we arrived in Florida, Ramin and Babak went to drive Indy cars at the Walt Disney Workd track. This was the gift that Ramin bought for Babak this past Christmas and they finally got to us it!
Dirt Track. Next, our little family drove from Daytona over to Pensacola where the family reunion was taking place. It's a good 5-6 hour drive. We arrived at our cute little condo and unpacked. Ramin and I decided to head to the local dirt track that night since there were no large family activities going on that night. This was a fun place! And it was totally southern and redneck! The people were SO nice though :)
Naval Aviation Museum. Once of the activities for the family to do while near Pensacola was to visit the Naval Aviation Museum AND watch the Blue Angels practice. It was freakin awesome I gotta say!
Navarre Beach. This was the beach that the entire family stayed out. We would get together every night for a big dinner and just hang out. It was pretty fun! Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of the rest of the family because there were lots of other people around taking pictures. If I get any of those I will post them. The pictures below were taken on a beautiful night at sunset!
Fort Matanzas and St. Augustine. After we returned home from Navarre Beach, Ramin's mom wanted to take us to St. Augustine to check it out and I'm so glad we did! Fort Matanzas is a smaller fort south of St. Augustine that helps to protect the inlet. We took a small ferry to an island where the fort was located. It was pretty cool.
St. Augustine. This was seriously THE coolest place I've been to in a long time. If you know Gardner Village here in Utah, then imagine that only 100 times larger and older! It was awesome with so many shops and little restaurants. It was extremely hot and humid though while we were there. First we visited the actual fort called Castillo de San Macros. A really cool fort to see! Then we strolled through the streets of St. Augustine and visited shops and had some lunch. It was a super fun day!
Grandma. And finally, on our last day in Florida, Ramin and I drove the 3 hours from Daytona to the Tampa area to visit my Grandma Ceil. One the way there we did take a small detour and tried to visit Fort DeSoto near St. Petersburg. I had been there before when I lived down there but Ramin had never seen it and we were on a fort seeing mission this trip. We got all the way there only to see that it was closed due to renovations. We were seriously disappointed but I'm sure we'll have more opportunities in the future. So we drove the hour back north to my Grandma's house. It was so great seeing her and her friends - and of course her dog Patty. We took her out to lunch and then headed home. We were only able to stay for about 3 hours because we had another 3 hours to drive back home. I know it was a short visit but I'm glad we had the chance nonetheless.
The End. That was the gist of our trip. We relaxed a lot and got tons of sun :)
