Thursday, June 12, 2008

Courage on the beach

Hooray for weekends away! Honestly, I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. I know it's a Father's Day gift for DH and my dad, but I'm gonna enjoy the heck out of it! I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to beach time, hotel time or eating out the most, but I'll take all three, thank you very much!

I have a budget goal of $500 for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This covers all meals out for us plus my parents. It might be a little tough, but I hope to squeeze two decent meals out into this budget. My mom is cooking a brisket to bring, so that should help a lot as we will get several picnic meals out of it. I will also go pick up drinks and snacks tomorrow before I begin packing. The cooler is definitely in on this road trip. Once we're in Corpus Christi, I'll pick up milk and breakfast items to keep in the room.

Friday, we are meeting my parent's at the hotel around the 3 pm check-in time. This will give us a little time to settle in and unload the car. We hope to eat at Joe's Crab Shack for an early dinner around 4:30 or 5ish. I hope to hold dinner to around $120 for the five of us including the tip. I will use my AAA card for a 10% discount, which will help cover most of the tip.

After dinner, we will head back to the hotel, change and hit the beach. Unfortunately, I'm not sure which beach we will hit now. Our usual spot out on Mustang Island is possibly a no go. A sperm whale washed ashore near our favorite access road on Tuesday afternoon. Several marine biologists examined it and decided to euthanize it. Unfortunately, they did not have enough chemicals to totally euthanize it, so they sedated it and bled it out. This caused the beaches to be closed as the blood can attract sharks. The story can be read here.

Ah, sharks. A magical word in our household. Oh, thank you Discovery Channel for your twenty years of Shark Week! It took me years to get DH into the water, Peter Benchley! ARGH! Steven Spielberg, I hold you and your Bruce accountable for DH's complete and utter transformation into Courage the Cowardly Dog every time we wade in salty water past our knees. And just to cap it off, DH went off to bed rambling on about the whale being bled out onto the very beach we have been talking about for over six weeks. His last mumblings sounded close to those immortal words from Police Chief Brody "Come on down here and chum some of this ****!" Which is the line just before popcorn rained down from the top of the theater for those of you old enough to have seen Jaws on the silver screen. But, I digress....

On Saturday, we will hit the beach again early in the day. There's just no sense in us getting roasted by the sun and tossed about by high tide in the middle of the day. So, we'll either eat our picnic on the beach or back at the hotel. Then, I hope again for an early dinner somewhere in a slightly cheaper venue before a third trip out to make DH shark bait.

Since I have already paid for the rooms, I know the total there is $170. With meals out being around $190, that leaves me $140 for gas, groceries, and any souvenirs. It should be doable, even with gas as high as it is.

I'll post how we come out... if we come out! LOL!

No comments: