When we arrived, I was standing at the back of our van in the unloading area of our condo. As I was waiting for my wife to come back with a luggage cart, a fire truck with lights and siren pulled up behind me. Two firemen jumped out and yelled at me to get out of the way (I wasn’t in the way).

After settling in, we went to the pool. While we were there, a Coast Guard helicopter kept slowly flying over the beach about 200 yards away.

As it turns out, somewhere between 50 and 100 people (the exact number is not clear) had to be rescued from the Gulf. Two people drown as we started our vacation.

In the morning, we noticed that the beach is crawling with manta rays. We were up on the 17th floor, so we had a great view. I put on the telephoto lens and started snapping.

As we watched them, we realized that they surf! This is the best picture of one surfing.

They would swim around and realize that a wave was over top of them. Then they would move up into the wave or to the front of the wave and ride it in almost to shore.

The rays would come really close to the shore at certain times of the day, especially when the beach was empty. I took this picture standing on the shore:

Later in the trip, we rented a pontoon boat and drove out to Shell Island. There were some amazing inlets and shallow bays. Even before we toss the anchor in, my youngest son spotted a puffer fish:

There was some amazing scenery on the island. I am particularly proud of this picture:

We found a bunch of anemones too:

Hard to tell in the picture, but they were alive and wiggling.

I found a few jelly fish floating on by whilest surfing:

Towards the end of the trip, one of the kids of a couple we knew at the condo found this fish:

It was quite odd. I still can’t identify what it is. The fish hugged the ground. It doesn’t fit the description of and of the flat fish that I have seen. I suspect it may be a fry of a much larger common flat fish.

All in all, it was an awesome vacation. Panama City Beach is quite nice. The new Pier Park area has turned out to be very cool. I hope you all get a chance to check it out some day.

I have quite a few more pictures of cool stuff from vacation here.