{"id":279,"date":"2020-06-09T20:19:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T20:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=279"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:03:16","slug":"2020-6-8-the-last-vacation-122419","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"The last vacation – 12\/24\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house, it was real quiet because we went on vacation. <\/p>\n

Possibly the best vacation I\u2019ve ever been on. And the last one of the year, duh. Probably the last one for a long time. Who knew how much the world would change just in the last six months. More than it ever has in my lifetime. And we\u2019re not over, not by half I think. <\/p>\n

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But just before Christmas we packed up and went on a vacation for a week. Christmas to New Years, just skipped both of them with any family besides the two of us. Which was perfect. No hassle of having to go to places you don\u2019t want to go, see people you care or don\u2019t care about seeing. No children, thankfully. Not my thing at all, being around screaming kids.<\/p>\n

I was much happier with our plan to head to the beach. We went down to Destin Florida, I had never been. Girlfriend had been several times with her family. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe World\u2019s Luckiest Fishing Village\u201d as it is called, and it is truly a beautiful place. I would never go there during the summer though. This was probably one of the best times to visit, it was very empty most of the time all the places we went. I would have liked to get a bit more history of the town and why they\u2019re so lucky, but when I thought of it and looked up the museum that was in the town. They were closed for the holidays, can\u2019t blame them. <\/p>\n

So, early morning trip we head out. 5 or 6 hours trip down, and we got there before we could get into the condo we were staying in. So lunch, wander around get some groceries because the next day we knew everything would be closed because it was Christmas. Finally get in, unload the car and headed right back out to the beach for sunset. But first I went out to the lake that was inside the complex we were staying in. Which by the way, was just an apartment. I don\u2019t know the difference between a condo and a two bedroom apartment. But I\u2019ve been living in apartments for 10 years. This was no different. <\/p>\n

On the lake was some wildlife which was great. Took a picture of this Mallard. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm – 1\/100 Sec – F4 – ISO 400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And then I turned around and saw this. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm – 1\/800 Sec – F4 – ISO 400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Just beautiful. <\/p>\n

But, to the beach! Where we arrived just as the sun was setting. The pictures that came out of it, just amazing. Never in my life have I seen a sunset like this before. Even the beach sunsets from growing up when we would take a Florida vacation. <\/p>\n

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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm 1\/15 Sec – F4 – ISO 400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm – 1\/25 Sec – F4 – ISO 800<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm 1\/60 Sec – F4 – ISO 640<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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So much orange, this is even what the raw pictures came out like. And for once it is what my eyes were seeing. Just amazing to see.<\/p>\n

And as we got ready to leave I turned around to a restaurant that we would take advantage of once. Couldn\u2019t afford too much of that, but it was excellent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 5D Mark II w\/24-105mm – 1\/8 Sec – F4 – ISO 1000<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house, it was real quiet because we went on vacation. Possibly the best vacation I\u2019ve ever been on. And the last one of the year, duh. Probably the last one for a long time. Who knew how much the world would change just in the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1807,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}