Vacation 2017 - By The Numbers

Another successful Golden Family Vacation is in the books.  This year, we enjoyed the white sand beaches and emerald green waters of the Destin/Ft. Walton Beach area of Florida, with a side trip to Atlanta on the way home.  Rather than bore you with a play-by-play recap of the trip, I thought I'd tell you about it in a little different way.

Here's the story of our vacation, by the numbers:

Number of days away from home: 10
Number of miles driven: 1,944
Number of hours spent in the car: 39 hours and 55 minutes (that includes driving around Destin and Atlanta)
Number of states visited: 8 (MO, TN, MS, AL, FL, GA, KY, IL)
Number of different state license plates seen: 42 (including D.C. - the only states we didn't see were HI, ID. NV, CT, DE, RI, VT, NH, ME)
Number of days we went to the beach: 5
Number of days when there was a red flag (and big waves) at the beach: 3
Number of times I got knocked down by said big waves: 7
Number of pairs of sunglasses lost in the gulf due to said big waves: 1
Number of planes that flew past beach with advertisement behind them: Approximately 30
Number of planes that flew past beach with marriage proposal behind them: 1
Number of days we went to the pool: 6
Number of pools at our complex: 4 (kiddie pool, adult pool, pool with waterfall and lily pad/ropes course deal, and lazy river) - This is place is awesome.  Ping me if you want the name of it.
Number of tattoos seen at beach and pool: Too many to count (I'd say roughly 40% of the people had at least 1 tattoo)
Number of disturbing tattoos seen at beach and pool: 2   Allow me to explain.  One guy had a tattoo of Michael Myers, his knife and the jack-o-lantern from "Halloween".  Picture a combination of these two pictures, side by side:

 

 

Look, "Halloween" is my all-time favorite horror movie.  But I'm not getting a tattoo of a serial killer - real or fictional.  But what I guess what made it more disturbing was that he was at the pool with said tattoo while playing in the water with his two toddler daughters. 

 

The other guy had a full back tattoo of a big sword surrounding by skulls....and he was at the beach with his two kids under the age of 5.  I'm not a big tattoo guy, but whatever.  People can do to their bodies whatever they want to do; I really don't care.  It just struck me as weird to have such violent images permanently emblazoned on their bodies when they have little kids around them.  Michael Myers scared the CRAP out of me when I was a kid....I can't imagine what it would be like to then see that image on my dad's arm every day.



Number of rebel flags seen flying: 4 (which was honestly less than I expected to see; this excludes the miniature version that is still part of Mississippi's state flag)
Number of times we played mini golf: 2
Number of times we rode go karts: 2.25 (The first time we attempted to ride them, it started pouring down rain, so we only got to go around the track once.  We got a refund and went back the next night to ride them)
Number of times I had shrimp for dinner: 4
Number of times we went to the outlet mall: 1
Number of dollars spent at said outlet mall: I'd prefer to not say.  :) (Let's just say that there was a North Face outlet and they had a lot of stuff that was 50% off.)
Number of roller coasters my daughter and I rode at Six Flags: 9 (including a stand-up coaster and her first flying coaster)
Number of roller coasters my son rode for the first time: 5 (including his first stand-up coaster)
Number of bad sunburns suffered by Golden family members: 0 (woo hoo!)
Number of family members who caught a cold during our trip: 3 (boo hoo)

There you have it - a quick recap of our family vacation. Thanks for reliving it with me!