The Dang's: Clearwater Beach Part 3: Last day on the beach + flight home

Our last day in Clearwater, we packed up and then hit the beach around 10:30. We walked down the pier, and enjoyed the view of the coastline.

Halfway down the pier is a little hut and you have to pay $1 to walk to the end (or $8 if you want to fish off it). We could have skipped this part as the end was full of bird poop and fishermen. Not glamorous at all.

After our walk down the pier, we strolled down the beach and found a quiet spot to lay out our towels for the afternoon. We enjoyed people watching and relaxing in the sun. Of course it clouded up and got foggy, but it was still nice and relaxing.

Around lunch time, Adam ran across the street and grabbed us a quick lunch from McD's. For dessert, we split some mocha crunch ice cream. Yum!

Then I did some shelling and frolicking in the waves while Adam napped.

We headed back to the condo at 3 for our 6:10 flight home.

Curt and Robin nicely gave us a ride to the airport, where we checked a bag so we could bring some fish back. My dad was bummed he hadn't brought any of his fish back from their trip the week before, so I had promised that if I brought any back for us I would bring his too. Poor Adam had to carry this huge cooler through the airport and got lots of weird looks. Going through security, they had a lot of questions and made him poke a hole in the styrofoam top to let out the dry ice.

We thought it would fit in the overhead, but oh no. And of course there was a rude lady behind us making a scene about it not fitting. I thought Adam was going to freak out. It didn't fit under the seats either, but he finally was able to wedge it between the seats and stick his coat over it so the flight attendants wouldn't notice that it wasn't properly stowed. I felt so bad for him and let him have some of my legroom on the flight. To add insult to injury, the lady in front of him reclined her seat. Oh, and the plane had been upgraded to a larger one so instead of having two seats and then the aisle (so me window, Adam aisle), it was 3 seats across and Adam was in the middle seat and a stranger on the aisle.Trapped! Let's just say it wasn't the most pleasant flight, but we made it!

Back at MSP, we landed at like the farthest away gate so had to walk forever just to get to the taxi stand. Our flight got in around 8:30, but we didn't get out of there until 9:15. It was almost 10 by the time we got home. We were exhausted!

Pupper had been staying with my parents (thanks mom and dad!), so they brought him back up on Thursday night when they came to get Christine for the weekend. It worked out great! Christine had a midterm that night, so mom and dad came over for dinner first. Dad cooked up some of his fish we had brought back. It was delicious!