We left Mustang on Thursday afternoon at about 4:00PM and arrived in Gulfport Beach at approximately 5:00AM Friday! It was a VERY long drive but actually wasn't too bad. The kids slept a good portion of the drive and, to be totally honest, so did I!!! When we first pulled into Gulfport we stopped and ate at a Waffle House and then headed to our cozy beach house...the Cast-A-Way! It's a very cute beach house complete with seaside decor, lots of windows to let in the sun and absolutely NO cable TV! All distractions were put aside and we were ready to relax by the ocean...
As soon as we unloaded all of our luggage we headed straight to the beach! I think we were there before 8:00AM! It was well worth it, though, and so BEAUTIFUL! The sound of the ocean was so peaceful and the breeze was cool and calming. We explored the West Side Pier and walked up and down the beach to let our toes get used to the sand!
The boys were SO excited to finally see the beach!
Before we left that morning we suddenly started seeing fish jumping clear out of the water!! It was the craziest thing I had ever seen!! Once we pointed it out to Brandon's Uncle Bill he began looking out into the water and then spotted them...DOLPHINS!!!! They were pretty close to the beach and were jumping out of the water. Uncle Bill said they were hunting the fish! If I had seen what you can see in this photo I would have thought I was seeing something else (S-H-A-R-K!) but, nope, it was dolphins! There were several of them! I tried to catch one of them in mid-air but wasn't that lucky! If you look real close in this picture, though, you can see the fin of one of the dolphins sticking out of the water! How lucky were we!?!? A dolphin sighting on the very first morning!!
After a trip back to the house for a snack and short rest we stopped by the local "surf shop" to pick up a few essentials! Noni chose each of the boys a body board to surf the waves and we also got the boys each a pair of water shoes! When we got back to the beach (for the second time in the same day!) the boys were ready to try out their new beach gear. Ashtyn took to the ocean water VERY quickly! In fact, I think he has a little beach bum inside! Maddox however was a bit more cautious and didn't venture out into the water very often. Brandon tried to get Maddox out into the ocean but, as you can see, he clung to daddy's shirt for dear life!
This is about as close to "surfing" as Maddox got! He sure had fun though...
Ashtyn, like I said, is quite the little surfer dude! Besides getting a bit of salt water in his mouth from time to time, Ashtyn wasn't afraid of anything having to do with the ocean!
Look how deep he is!!! All by himself!!!
Later that first day afternoon, we made one more trip to the beach to watch Brandon's uncle (Uncle Bill) do some fishing for bait! He mostly caught these little bitty fish but also caught another "surprise"...
on one trip out, he caught a STINGRAY!!!!!
He wasn't a very big stingray (if you ask me though he was big enough) but he was quite angry and certainly didn't enjoy being up on the beach! Ash got just close enough to him (while he was still in the net) for me to take a picture!
I don't think daddy got any closer then Ash did! HA!!
Uncle Bill wasn't afraid though and poked at the stingray so that we could see his "stinger" and then picked him up by his tail and tossed him back into the water!
Day one at Gulfport Beach was wonderful! We made three trips to the beach that day and even though we were totally exhausted from our long drive the night before we enjoyed every moment at the water and when we went to bed Friday night we were more then anxious for what the beach had in store for us on Saturday!!
1 comment:
Oh what fun! Dolphins and sting ray. That's quite the welcoming committee.
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