Please see part 1 below if you're just tuning in to our vacation recap. As Leigh mentioned, the weather was not on our side for the first 24 hours of our vacay. As usual, we made the best of what was handed to us and found a pretty amazing drinking opportunity afterall. I'd actually take drinking beer in a fake British pub over sipping pina coladas by the beach anyday, but that's just me. Needless to say, Epcot rules in a far less dorky way than I remember. So after a long car ride back to New Smyrna (thanks Elise!), a detour at a rest stop, and at least 6 hours of quality sleep we awoke to sunny skies and miles of clear water. We tossed on our suits, grabbed our sunscreen and headed down to the beach. For me personally, I have a hard time really getting into beach time. I decided to forgo the layout for a little while by taking a long leisurely walk on the beach. There is nothing better than looking out and seeing nothing but ocean for as far as you can see.
I tried to find a giant conch shell or an old bottle containing some sort of treasure map, but the early morning walkers must have scooped up all the good stuff. After realising that I wasn't going on a treasure hunt and the sand was too wet to build a castle and there weren't any museums, malls, or karaoke bars within a 50 mile radius I decided to lay down on a chair next to my completely relaxed traveling partners. (At some point in my complete relaxation I forgot to put on sunblock...I might just go as a lobster for Halloween on Friday.) I could hardly hide my excitement when Leigh said "Does anyone want to go boogey boarding?" We grabbed our boards and headed down to the surf for some serious boarding action. I hadn't attempted the boogey board since My Little Pony bathing suits were the norm, so imagine my shock when the first wave knocked my bottoms completely off. Thankfully, we were the only three people within seeing distance, so the Girls Gone Wild moments were kept completely private. Elise didn't fare so well on her first few tries either. I could hardly stand up in the strong current without falling over laughing at Elise's popped top or Leigh's full moon action riding by me on a wave. Needless to say, our bikinis were not made for surfer girls. I think the only purpose our suits served was to collect piles of sand in places that sand should never go. I left the ocean that day feeling exhausted, exposed, and sandy...you know, the usual day at the beach.
Allow me to race through a few more activities in the following series: beach yoga instructed by Elise, pool swimming, ice cream for lunch, chips for dinner, horror movies till 2am, pillow fights, and long leisurely dinners. Then there was the crab hunt. I have never experienced something as close to nature as the New Smyrna Beach crab hunt. Leigh apparently is a frequent crab
hunter and has even named several of them Chuck. I'm always up for an adventure, and a drunken night time crab hunt is as textbook adventure as you can get. We grabbed a couple flash lights, tossed on our flip flops and headed down to the dark cool shore in search of Chuck and his friends. I'm not versed on the habits of crabs, but in New Smyrna they really like to chill on the beach at night. It didn't take us long to find a few cousins of Chuck, and boy were they ever pleased to see us shining our flashlights and jumping up and down in excitment. The first photo is of an extra grumpy crab. He didn't appreciate us poking him (we wanted to see them run sideways), so he squiggled down into the sand and shot up his claw arms to scare us away. Instead we captured this amazing photo of a crab on attack. I think his claws could take off a small toe, so we smartly moved on. We found several baby crabs and more angry adult crabs running around hanging out. We thought we would never find big daddy Chuck when out of the darkness we spotted him. My first thought was "that is one huge crab", my second thought was "that is one huge crab getting it on with another crab!" Yes, we witnessed one of the miracles of nature, crab sex. As you can see by the picture it's really no different than the human variety. In the most traditional sense, it is conducted between two consenting crabs (in this case it appears to be a male and female) covered by the romantic darkness and soothing wave sound. I almost 
felt guilty for ruining their special moment with my giant flashlight and Leigh's digital camera. Big daddy crab and his woman didn't mind our flashing lights however, because they carried right on doing their crab love thing. It appears that they are enjoying what is typically known as "crab style" in this photo. It's supposedly all for the male crab partner, but there are rumors that with the right amount of time and attention the female crab has been known to enjoy it. I can only hope that we captured one of those moments. We're thinking about submitting this to the Planet Earth documentary people.So our beach vacation had to come to an end and this was a nice way to wrap it up. Now we're freezing our arses off up here in the great cold North and it's not stopping anytime soon. I'll cherish the warm sunny memories all winter.
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