Fort Myers and Sanibel Island

After Orlando my parents went home and our family drove to Fort Myers on the Golf Coast for a last few days of beaches and warm weather. The first afternoon we stopped to see manatees who congregate in the warm waste water from a power plant. There were a lot of manatees.

 

It looks like we got there none too soon; the poor manatees are having a rough time of it this winter and spring due to algae blooms. We rented a kayak and got to paddle around them out in the river and among some mangroves, which was very cool. Manatees would surface just feet from our kayaks then disappear.

 

One of the main tourist draws in Fort Myers (other than the recently popular basketball team of Florida Gulf Coast University) is the adjoining winter estates of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. I wasn't exactly sure why until we visited; the estates are absolutely lovely. The homes themselves are simple and classy, but the grounds are just wonderful. Edison grew all sorts of tropical plants on the estate that is situated on the river, and everything smells and looks refreshing and relaxing and beautiful. If I had a zillion dollars and felt like spending money on property and a gardening staff, I would want to winter somewhere just like this.

 

 

There was also a very interesting Thomas Edison museum across the street. He had lots of triumphs and lots of failures, both personally and professionally, which is good to remember. Life goes up and down. Sometimes you invent the light bulb and sometimes you pour your entire fortune and ten years of your life into a mining project that never pans out.

Just over a bridge from Fort Myers lie Sanibel and Captiva Islands, land of nature-loving wealthy retirees and wealthy vacationers who get a (perhaps the tiniest bit self-satisfied) kick out of riding bikes everywhere for a week. Also, probably the spot in the US with the most nature preserves per capita. We went to a different nature-preserve-sort-of-place every morning, and the islands aren't that big. Ben liked cuddling this stuffed manatee at one.

 

Touch tanks were very popular. Poor little crabs, scurrying around all the livelong day just trying to find a little peace and quiet from the relentless little fingers poking around.

 

Ben was very excited to see the stuffed owl, as evidenced by his enthusiastic hooting.

 

We went on some hikes. In Florida you need towers to get a view.

 

The palm fronds found along hiking trails in Florida are far better than what one can find here in Colorado, however.

 

And it's just an interesting experience to hike through different landscapes.

 

 

The largest, most famous, and most important nature reserve on the island is J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, a birding mecca. This picture doesn't capture anything at all about how really impressive the experience was there. So many interesting birds stretching over the enormous tidal flats.

 

The wackiest place we visited was in Fort Myers. It looked like an old school, and inside were abandoned and rescued animals, which makes for a really motley crew. A lot of reptiles. Quite unnerving.

 

 

There was a big tortoise just wandering around free!

 

A group of high schoolers gave a presentation and passed around a de-scented skunk for people to pet. There was a planetarium show and a hike and large cages with birds of prey. Just something random and surprising and interesting around every turn.

After mornings at a nature preserve we spent the afternoons on the beach. Fort Myers beach has the most beautiful, fine white sand I've ever seen. It felt like powdered sugar on my feet (I'm guessing here). Unfortunately, along the whole beach is the gaudy, Hooters-laden, cheap t-shirt, mega-tourist scene that is wont to spring up along beaches in the absence of snobby, restrictive zoning. Needless to say, Sanibel and Captiva island beaches had a different, Hooter-less vibe. Also, amazing numbers of seashells and much coarser sand. We tried out several different beaches and enjoyed every one.

 

  

 

 

 

Our last night on the beach a pod of dolphins came right up to shore at sunset. Magic.

 

And just as magical, Benjamin fell asleep on both plane rides home, marking the end of an excellent two weeks.

 

Disney!!

My kids have the incredible good luck that, despite being born to two stick-in-the-mud, no fun, killjoy Disney haters, they have a Disney loving Grandma. And since we just happened to be in Florida with said Grandma, Disney it was!! Three days at, as they say, the Happiest Place on Earth. To be perfectly honest I was totally dreading it and literally started having nightmares about getting stuck in endless lines for Space Mountain, but SPOILER it turned out great. I got really concerned when doing the extensive research necessary for a Disney vacation I discovered that we were planning on visiting during three of the busiest days of the entire year. Crowd level: 10. Color level: red. Ugh. But our dates were set, and we were going. I got several books from the library about Disney vacations and got some “touring plans” from them – suggested itineraries for each park to help avoid crowds as well studying the fastpass system. But then, someone mentioned Ridemax.com had made their Disney vacation a total success, even in the busy summertime. I was casually interested, but not nearly as interested as I should have been because Ridemax is MAGIC. More about that later.

The first day we went to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and because we were driving from Fort Lauderdale we broke the cardinal rule of Disney vacationing which is to arrive when the park opens. We got there in the late morning, and we had a few mix-ups with meeting my parents, so we actually weren’t able to follow our Ridemax itinerary and thus didn’t fully grasp the magic. But we were able to see all the main attractions with minimal line waiting thanks to fastpasses: Expedition Everest, Kalahari Safari, Dinosaur, the Finding Nemo show, the Festival of the Lion King show, playtime in the Boneyard playground, and three magic rides on Triceratops Spin which was Benjamin’s Most Favorite Thing Ever. As soon as he saw those shiny happy green triceratops spinning around, he started reaching for them and couldn't take his eyes off them. It was adorable. We saw a parade and ate a really delicious meal at Tusker House restaurant. The safari was well done and you got very close to the animals. Here's us on the safari:

 

The Finding Nemo show was truly an excellent compact musical with top notch performers, costumes, and puppetry. And the Festival of the Lion King was amazing – an over-the-top music and dance extravaganza that included jaw dropping acrobatics, fire dancing, and ballet. Much of the time there was so much amazing stuff going on I just couldn't decide where to look. I think this show was my favorite experience of the three days. Any time there were live performers involved with something Disney they were world class. So our day really was a success. It was also the only day we were all at a park; the next two days Nephi and Benjamin stayed at the house we were renting. Two-year-olds who need to nap and super busy theme parks don’t mix well, and Nephi was very happy to miss out. He and my Dad actually had a friendly showdown about who got to miss out on the Fun and stay with Ben.

That night we made our Ridemax itinerary for the Magic Kingdom. Taking into consideration how busy the park was going to be, we selected all the rides we thought we would be able to see and it made our itinerary for us. It said we’d be done by 10:19 in the morning. We laughed. We were done at 10:18 am. We saw everything we thought we could see in a whole day by mid-morning, waited in no lines, and had very little walking to do, plus the kids rode Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride twice, which was Isaac's favorite part of the whole day. It was flabbergasting how well the plan worked. We spent the afternoon doing whatever seemed fun at the time and walking around getting fastpasses, and waited in line to go on It's a Small World. But it was a great day too. Joseph rode Space Mountain several times, and Caleb was very brave and rode it once. We all rode the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Pirates of the Caribbean and spent a good long time running around Tom Sawyer's Island and saw a parade with all the princesses and characters. It was a bit exhausting, though. This is where I'd put the picture of all of us in front of the Magic Castle except I didn't bring my camera. I know!! I really regret it now. It just seemed like such a hassle to carry it around all day. But we should have gotten that picture. We did get a balloon for Benjamin on the way out, however. It cost the ridiculous price of $10, but it seemed like a steal when he saw it and almost died of happiness. He didn't stop playing with it for about two days.

 

And the last day we visited Epcot, put our full faith in our Ridemax itinerary, had an exceptionally smooth, not-exhausting day and saw pretty much everything in the whole park without waiting in any lines for more than about ten minutes. It was truly amazing and surreal. All day we just cruised by lines of hapless people who had been waiting for several hours. Sometimes being a planner is a hassle and a burden, and it would be a relief to just be spontaneous on vacation. Disneyland is most assuredly not the place to be like that. Highlights of the day included Soarin', Test Track, Mission: Space, and a delicious lunch in "France". My favorites were Turtle Talk with Crush, a somehow simultaneously live and animated show in which a turtle interacted with the kids in the most wonderful, funny, and affirming way, and the Chinese Acrobats who were absolutely astonishing as they twirled large tables on the bottoms of their feet over their heads and flipped saucers onto their heads off of long boards rolling across barrels that they were also balancing on. See, I can't even write a sentence to describe the complexity and amazingness of what they were doing. Again, the live shows were far and away my favorite.

Ok, so if you are a Disney lover and are planning a trip there sometime, here are my tips for a successful trip:

1. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING BY FAR is to get to the parks as soon as they open and go directly to the most popular rides. You'll think that since every single book and planning web site says to do this that everyone else will and it won't work. Not so. Everything will be totally empty for at least an hour or two. Strange but true.
2. Use Ridemax.com. Seriously, do it. It costs $16, I think, which is a rounding error when you consider how much the tickets cost.
3. Think a lot about how much you care about where you sleep. If you're into resorts and stuff, drop the (very large amount of) cash to stay on Disney property and have a blast because I hear they are great. If you don't care very much, it seems that about half of Orlando consists of shockingly affordable rental houses that you can find on Airbnb.com or homeaway.com. We stayed in a three bedroom house with a private heated pool that was an easy 15-20 minute drive to the parking lots, and it cost in total $420 for three nights, which seems like an incredible deal to me. It was nothing fancy, but we spent all our time in the parks anyway.Here's my mom with Benjamin in the pool one night.

 

SO in conclusion, it was a wonderful three days. My kids had a terrific time, and it was as positive as it could possibly be. Many, many thanks to my Mom for making it happen. My kids are lucky to have her for a Grandma.

 

The Everglades

One day that we were in Fort Lauderdale some of us took a trip to the Everglades National Park. One day in a national park is enough to get just a taste for the area. Here's what a taste of the Everglades looks like:

 

It is very flat and boggy and grassy. Grass as far as you can see. It is kind of a romantic landscape if you get in the right frame of mind, and kind of boring in another frame of mind. In either case, it is much better in December when it is a pleasant 80 degrees with low humidity and hasn't been raining for two months than it would be in August.

The greatest thing we did that day was take a walk along the Anhinga Trail. By the end we were sure they were paying all the wildlife handsomely to put on a good show for the tourists. Everywhere we looked there were exotic animals doing interesting things like ten feet from the boardwalk. First off was this anhinga who spent more time than we were willing to watch trying to swallow a fish that was too big to fit down its throat. It was really quite dramatic and tense. On our way back we saw the abandoned dead fish lying on the grass, so I guess everyone except the tourists lost in the end.

At the end of the trail is a little lookout. About five feet from the lookout were like six big alligators. You'll notice one to the left of us in this picture of us. (Joe came along and was the one taking the picture).

Close, right?! And here's one with my young children hanging over the railing getting even closer to them. Probably close enough that one of them could have jumped up and gobbled up one of their heads if it was so inclined. But they did not. But this picture does make me nervous and I don't know why I let them get so close. I guess I was busy taking pictures. (Did you see that one picture a few weeks ago of the nervous looking woman standing alarmingly close to the rhinoceros, and immediately after the picture was taken the rhino charged and seriously injured her? Happily this isn't a picture like that.)

Here's my children with a nice non-vicious looking bird.

 

Another very interesting part of our day was a tour we took of the former Nike Missile Site located in the Everglades. Our tour guide had actually been stationed at this site for awhile, ready to defend Florida from an attack from Cuba after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reading just a little about the Cuban Missile Crisis makes me very, very grateful this place is a historical site now. The world was really this || close to full on nuclear war, even closer than people realized at the time. Bad.

So, it was a good day at the Everglades. The boys got their junior ranger badges and we saw alligators at very close range. Success.

Fort Lauderdale

My parents' actual 40th wedding anniversary was on December 30th, and to celebrate we all gathered for a few days together in Fort Lauderdale, Florida over Christmas. My sister found us a terrific house and we had an excellent time. To start with, here's Christmas day with the whole group - my parents, Nephi and me and the boys, and my sister Laura and her boyfriend Joe:
Nice! So nice! We were able to walk to a wonderful beach, and Christmas on a sunny beach with family is very nice indeed. There was, of course, much digging.



Much chatting and catching up.

And, somewhat dramatically, spearfishing. Joe is an accomplished spearfisher, and was extremely generous with his gear and knowledge. Spearfishing, in case you didn't know, is seriously hardcore. You swim down to the bottom of the ocean, than wait there until a fish swims by at which point you shoot it with the speargun. (You haven't breathed the whole time.) Nephi and Joe went out most afternoons for a few hours, and Joseph went out once. They had to swim way out to a reef (like, it took at least a half hour to swim out to it) to get to the fish. They (specifically, Joe - it's not the sort of thing one can pick up in a few days) caught at least one fish each day, and they were delicious with our dinner. He posed Joseph with one of the fish because he's such a nice guy.

 

 

Christmas morning we exchanged some gifts. Santa found us in Florida and brought some Wii games and junk food, and Laura and Joe decked the boys out with some coonskin hats and outdoor gear. They were excited and adorable.

  
We also had plenty of time to just relax. The boys spent as much time as possible tending to their Smurf Village on my Dad's iPad then played in the hot tub when we kicked them off, Laura and my Mom tore through the smart and funny book Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and we played some games.

       

 

 

The end of each day looked a lot like this, with good food being prepared and wet bathing suits and towels all over the place.

 

Overall it was a really wonderful way to celebrate our family and my parents' 40 years together.