Inflatable Kayak Blog

What I enjoyed most of our time on our trip to Destin was walking on the beach just far enough into the water to get my feet wet. We took long walks along the white sandy beach every day. We always passed people fishing from the shore and wondered if anyone ever caught anything as we hadn’t ever seen anyone with a catch. It was after the sun had set one evening and we were on one of our walks. As we passed a fisherman it looked like he just might have some thing on his line. After talking to someone that was in his group we found out that he thought he had a pretty big shark on his line. He had been out fishing in his kayak all day to catch some bait. Just before sunset he went out again in his kayak and sent out his line with the bait fish on it in hopes of catching a shark. We had never seen anyone catch a shark, so we waited around the hour that it took him to land the fish. What a sight to finally see the white fin cut through the water when it was pulled in close to shore. The shark was about five feet long and certainly worth waiting around to see. We got some pictures of the proud fisherman, a Destin native, and the shark and then he let it go.

Destin is a great place to take an inflatable kayak. There are so many wonderful places to get out and explore. One launching spot is at a little park that was on the bay near where it meets the Gulf. The water was a beautiful blue-green color and fairly calm which was good considering it was only our third time in the boat. We were getting better at paddling together and feeling a little more comfortable with the way the boat handled. We paddled along the shore checking out all the beautiful homes. There were pelicans all around and we loved seeing them flying over head.  At one spot we saw a blue heron on the shore and paddled closer to get a good look. We noticed that there were several more herons roosting in the trees all around this area. There were so many places that we could have explored, but still not feeling all that proficient in the boat we stayed close to shore and didn’t venture out too far or nearer the gulf. We’ll save those neat places for next time we’re in Destin.

After about 45 minutes in the boat we headed back to shore to pack things up. There was a neat restaurant, Dewey Destin, on the water that we were told had great seafood so we went there for lunch. As we were eating on the dock we noticed that there were dolphins swimming right in the area we had just kayaked in. How neat that would have been if we were out there when the dolphins were swimming by. That’s now become one of our goals … to paddle with the dolphins some day!