Fort DeSoto Park, St. Petersburg, Florida

The kids worked on homework most of the day yesterday, with Laura finishing up her Earth Science course and Brian completing Literature. Brian also completed his first chapter in pre calculus. The promise of visiting Busch Gardens Amusement Park later this week was a powerful motivator!

The man who owns the trailer parked next to us arrived via cab yesterday just after lunch. I could hear him talking to himself as he realized he didn’t have his keys to the trailer. A couple minutes later he had cornered Brian out by our truck and was enlisting his help to try to get into the trailer. I went outside to see what was going on, and was able to reach through one of the windows and unlock the deadbolt. But the main lock was set also, so the man ended up climbing through the window far enough to get his keys off the bed and open the trailer. He thanked us explained that the trailer was making him ill, so he was picking up his stuff and moving somewhere else! The ironic thing was he spent the next 30 minutes searching for the key to his bike lock so he could take his bike back with him in the taxi. He must have tried a dozen keys at least five times each. Finally the taxi driver determined that the chain wasn’t even around the bike frame, it had just been draped over the seat! The man said “Don’t you ever tell anyone!” Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed!

Around 2:30 we headed for DeSoto County Park, at the tip of the peninsula on the north side of Tampa Bay. Our main objective was to visit North Beach, ranked the #1 Beach in the US back in 2005. After a 35 minute drive along the condos and hotels that line the Gulf of Mexico, we arrived at the park. A campground sits at the north end of the park, which was recommended by a couple we met in Vermont, but was completely booked for the week. The sites back right up to the beach, and would be great fun on a future visit. We drove a little further to North Beach, a beautiful white sand beach that stretches for miles in both directions. The kids dug in the fine white sand while Teressa and I strolled along the beach looking for shells. We also had fun bird watching – brown pelicans, sea gulls, white herons and sand pipers accompanied us. Teressa made the mistake of throwing a piece of popcorn to a seagull, and instantly we had clouds of gulls following our every move. The kids thought it was great fun, as you can see by the pictures.

Fort DeSoto has a rich and varied history. Named for the Spanish explorer that visited the area in the 1530s, the fort was used by the Union Army in the Civil war in the blockade of Tampa Bay. It was also used in the Spanish American War, and still has several vintage cannons from that era. More recently, the pilot that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima used the island for target practice before his mission, which explains some of the large “holes” in the sand flats around the island, which ironically now provide great fishing!

SeaWorld, Orlando, Florida

Yesterday we visited SeaWorld. The kids did a price performance analysis of the Disney parks versus SeaWorld (Orlando) and Busch Gardens (Tampa). They decided it was a better bargain to do the 14 day pass at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, as it cost less than half a similar Disney ticket. As you can see from Laura's write-up below, I think they made the right choice!

The large machine slowly made its way up the tracks. I looked down to see tiny little ants crawling down below us. One of the ants looks a lot like my mom… With Brian and Dad by my side, we start to descend down the tracks, and then… WHOOSH! We’re flying as we loop up into the sky and back down again. We soar past little people watching us as we sail past them. I can feel the water in my eyes leaving streaks against my skin from the amazing speed that we have reached. Then we make our way up a hill and start to slow down when suddenly we shoot downwards like a rocket. Again, we loop and drop and twirl through the crisp autumn air. Finally, our cart comes to a sudden stop, and the ride is over. We had just faced one of the top ten rollercoaster’s in the world: Kraken.

Yesterday at SeaWorld was one of the best days of the year. We started out by going directly to the Kraken without a second thought. As soon as we got there, we made our way through the empty waiting halls, until we came to the ride. There wasn’t a single person waiting in line, so we hopped onto the ride at least 3 times before we decided to go see the dolphin show. At the show, we made sure NOT to be in the splash zone (which was good thinking on our part) and watched as the lights flashed and the dolphins flipped as the music surrounded us with a beautiful melody. Then, we wanted to go try out a water ride near Kraken which looked pretty dry, for the most part. We wound our way through a dark and spooky tunnel until we saw some light from ahead. Then, without any notice, our boat soared downward, making a large tidal wave. Luckily, and amazingly, we didn’t get too wet, until someone decided to squirt us with a water gun. We thought the ride was over, but we were in for a surprise. Our boat went up another hill, and then we started to sail through another tunnel, going on rollercoaster tracks! It dropped us again into some water, but dad and I managed to stay dry. Brian on the other hand got his shoes soaking wet!

After that, we all were very hungry, so we went to a restaurant near the water. We were too late for the next show, so we decided to wait a while and go to the Pet show. The Pet show was very cute because ordinary animals like dogs, cats, and even rats were all in a cute little show. Plus, skunks, ducks, pigs, and much more were there too! Everything was like a domino effect, because as soon as one cat climbed up a ladder and into a window, a dog would come out and run to the other side of the stage, and so on.

When the Pet show was over, we had about 30 minutes to go look at the shark exhibit. They had a ton of sharks, and in one area, they had a moving sidewalk that had you in a hall surrounded by sharks. Some had large, sharp teeth, while some had noses like saws! There was so much to see, and tons of different kinds of sharks swimming around us! As we walked outside, we were looking into a little pool full of smaller sharks, when my dad pretended to grab me and push me in! Lucky for him, I let him off with a warning, but he’ll regret ever messing with Laura!

After the sharks, we went over to the show “Believe”, staring Shamu the whale. We were in the splash zone this time, but lucky for us we didn’t get wet! We had great seats though, so we got to see all of the people up close as they swam with the giant killer whales! It is truly amazing that people can swim with the greatest predators of the sea!

Once “Believe” was over, we quickly headed over to a Pirate show staring two Sea Lions! Before the show started, a mime came out to entertain the people who were there early. He was so disrespectful sometimes, you just had to laugh! The show was very entertaining, and the Sea Lions were simply brilliant! You could tell that the people just loved to do what they did. Once, the girl stuck her hand in a hole, and below her, someone else was supposed to stick their hand out of another hole. When that person did, they had a blue sleeve while the girl had a red sleeve. She looked down and started laughing. Finally she said, “You forgot to roll up your sleeve!” while holding back laughter! It was a great show, and very funny!

At the end, I made the family make a run for the Kraken before it closed. It still wasn’t very busy, so we went on at least three more times! We finally found where they took a picture of you on the ride, so we got some great pictures! Overall, it was a great day, and I’m hoping we can go to SeaWorld again!

Wet 'n Wild, Orlando, Florida

This definitely isn’t the mid Atlantic anymore. The fall colors in North and South Carolina have been replaced by palm trees, live oaks, and green grass. While Florida is currently experiencing a cold snap, with temperatures in the mid 60s during the day dipping into the mid 40s at night, there is abundant sunshine. The promise of amusement parks has provided the kids with ample incentive to get ahead in their homework. Brian is a week ahead on his plan, and Laura is even further ahead than that. Today we visited one of the famous water parks in Orlando, Wet 'n Wild. When we arrived at park at 10 AM it was 58 degrees. It reminded me of an early May trip to Canyon Ferry Reservoir in Montana – the initial exhilaration of practically having the entire place to yourself on a beautiful sunny, and then reality setting in as you smear sunscreen over goose bumps! Here is Brian’s account of the day:

I'm standing in an enclosed capsule on the top of a six story structure. I feel like a cartoon character from a futuristic society, standing in a tube waiting for it to blast him off to some strange location. I'm smiling, half in adrenaline, yet half in terror. A man outside the capsule calls: 'sir, I need you to stand behind the red line.' I look down; there is no red at all on the surface beneath my feet. I look up and begin to say, 'what red li--' *SHOOOOOM* A trap door falls beneath me. I attempt to let out a muffled scream as I plunge almost vertically downward, without enough time to even take a mental photograph of what was happening.

This was the scene today as I took on theme park Wet and Wild's tallest slide, a nearly 80-degree waterslide called the "Bomb Bay." Topped with a structure resembling the latter end of a missile or atomic bomb, you stand in the middle with your arms and legs crossed as the operator presses a button that lets you freefall down the slide into a watery explosion below.

We had a fantastic day at the water park here in Orlando. I commented a few times on how we seemed to rent the entire park for 40 bucks! There were literally only 100 other people there for the entire day. We never once had to wait in line for any of the slides, and we were some of the first people to enter the park. It's an odd scene, seeing an entire amusement park completely empty yet open at the same time. As one can imagine, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

I'm trying to pick up some accents around here. I can almost use a southern accent, but usually only in a joke; in standard conversation I stick out as a Northerner as easily as you could distinguish fire from water. But I've been really happy with how friendly the folk are around here. Guess I'm being exposed to that good ol' southern hospitality.

Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida

After leaving the campground in Brunswick, Georgia at 9:30, we stopped at a Flying J to fuel up. The cost of diesel is down to $2.89, almost half what we paid at the beginning of the trip. I have to take my hat off to the oil companies and OPEC for finding a way to cut their oil production costs in half in six months – they must be getting much more efficient getting the oil out of the ground these days! You don’t think there might have been a monopoly and they were just keeping all that profit for themselves before, do you? ;-)

We made one stop on the way down the Florida coast at St. Augustine. The city is the home of Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort and best preserved example of a Spanish colonial fortification in the continental United States. Shaped as a hollow square with diamond-shaped bastions, it stands as a memorial to the glory days of the Spanish empire. Completed in 1695, the fort is made from coquina, a limestone found on a nearby island. As you tour the fort you see all the tiny sea shells still intact in the original limestone. It proved to be an excellent material, as the cannon balls were absorbed without doing much damage. In fact it was such an outstanding design that the fort was never breeched in battle, including a 50 day siege by the British in 1702, even though the town of St. Augustine was burned to the ground.

The historic downtown area has a number of cute shops and small cobblestone streets that reminded us of a European city. We did a little window shopping, and then hoofed it back to the trailer and continued our journey to Orlando. Arriving at 4:30, we set up camp and got started on five loads of laundry. The office had just closed and we didn’t have enough quarters, so I went in search of a car wash with a change machine. Unfortunately all the car washes in Orlando use tokens instead of quarters, so after checking my fourth one, I bought groceries at a Target Superstore and got quarters there.

Brian barbecued chicken burgers while we finished the laundry. After dinner the girls watched Desperate Housewives, while Brian and I caught up on email.

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

This morning we took a quick trip out to see some of the plantations near our campground. Having watched the beginning of the miniseries “North and South” the night before, we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Boone Hall Plantation, where many of the outdoor scenes were filmed. As we pulled up to the stand that guards the entry road to the plantation, we found that it would be almost $20 per person to tour the plantation, and since we didn’t have much time, I told them we just wanted to drive in and look at the outside of the building. In a very polite southern accent the gate attendant said, “Sir, if you drive past this gate, it costs $20!”. We promptly turned the car around and drove back down the road to find the free National Park Service site honoring Charles Pinckney.

Charles Pinckney was a southern gentleman from Charleston, the youngest member of the South Carolina delegation that attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787. One of the first to speak out against the ineffective Articles of Confederation by which our country had been governed since 1781, he is credited with significantly shaping over 30 of the articles in our current constitution. Snee Farm, his country estate north of Charleston, has been preserved by the National Park Service. While none of the original buildings remain, archeological digs of the area have uncovered more than 150,000 artifacts dating back to the late 1700s. The existing house was built in 1820, after the farm had changed hands, and provides an example of early plantation life. Live oaks (the leaves never turn brown) covered with resurrection ferns and Spanish moss, surround the home. We watched the movie about Charles Pinckney in the visitor center in the house, the kids obtained stamps in their passport books, and then we returned to the campground to prepare for the drive south.

Charleston, South Carolina

We had a great day in Charleston today, in spite of locking my keys in the truck. Here is Teressa’s detailed account of the day from her journal:

Kids were up by 8 and studying by 8:30. Gary and I walked Rocky and prepared to go into town. It was short sleeve weather from the get-go and very humid. Around 10, we drove the 10 miles or so into Charleston. Along the way we passed many little, shabby stands where ladies were selling their West African baskets.

Our first stop was the visitor’s center in the historic district. We signed up for a 90 minute greyhound minibus tour of Charleston. Our guide was a native Charleston man with a very thick southern drawl and some strange and quirky mannerisms. Boy, did he know his history. He took us through the college of Charlestown which was a beautiful old campus. Their common area, where graduations take place, is a large grassy park with a pavilion at one end. At graduation, only the professors wear caps and gowns. The graduating girls wear white dresses and carry half a dozen roses and the men wear white tuxedos. The tradition began when the first girl to attend the school graduated and received roses from her father.

We cruised down King Street, past shops and churches. Charleston is known as the “holy city” because pre-revolutionary war they would allow anyone with 7 members to start their own church. Many people moved to Charleston to escape religious persecution by the Puritans and Evangelicals of the Northeast and elsewhere. We saw all of the main tourist attractions in historic Charleston. Cabbage Row, later named “Catfish Row” was the location of the Dubose Heyward story “Porgy”. This story later became the basis for George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess”, a fictionalized glimpse of black life in Charleston during the 1920’s. The Battery is the area where many shipping businessmen lived and where Charlestonians watched the attack on Fort Sumter. Rainbow Row is a block of historical houses that were preserved but painted with bright colors. One thing we found interesting was that many of the homes had two front staircases—one going up from the right and one from the left, meeting at the top center. The ladies in their hoop skirts would walk up the right and the men went to the left so that they would not see the ladies’ ankles when they lifted their hoop skirts. These same women wore very low cut dresses with lots of bosom showing, but the ankles remained covered!

At the end of the tour, we walked to a Thai restaurant on King Street called Basil. It was just what we needed—healthy, great-tasting food. We then drove to a parking spot near the market area and Laura and I wandered through the multitude of vendor booths. A craft/art that comes from this area is coiled sweetgrass baskets. After talking with one of the black ladies who weaves the baskets, Laura and I learned what to look for in a quality basket. The skill has been passed down from Africa to the slaves and now to African American descendents of slaves. They are woven only in West Africa and South Carolina with most of the basket work being done in Mount Pleasant (which is where our KOA is). This is because the materials are only available in those locations. The baskets are made of sweetgrass, bulrush, pine needles and palmetto. After shopping around, we found a pretty basket that we liked and purchased it. Brian bought a crystal paperweight with the South Carolina palmetto tree etched inside of it.

Our last stop was the visitor center for Fort Sumter. We read the displays in the museum and Brian and Laura got their passports stamped. From the deck, we admired the bridge between Charleston and Mount Pleasant and looked out at Fort Sumter. When we arrived back at the truck, we discovered that the keys were inside. I had left my set of keys home to lighten the load of my purse. Fortunately AAA was able to send someone out in about 25 minutes. Laura and I took about a 12 block round trip walk and got a closeup look at some of the homes. The houses are built sideways. The side facing the street is very narrow and has just a few windows. The British used to tax people based on how many windows they had on the street side of their home. So, the southerners would build the house narrow but deep. Along the south side there was a porch the length of the house downstairs and a balcony the length of the house upstairs. Windows had shutters and could be opened up to allow the ocean breezes in during the summer time. Many of these homes fell into disrepair after an earthquake they had after the Civil War. To restore them so they could be used (since people didn’t have much money to rebuild) they inserted metal rods the length and width of the homes. At the end of the rod on the outsides of the home, they would place decorative end pieces. So we took some photos of those on our walk.

Back in the trailer we ate up our meatballs and potatoes and watched the first episode of the miniseries “North and South”. In the movie, the Mains’ home was actually the Boone Hall Plantation which is right down the road from the KOA. The Hazzard home was one of the mansions we saw today in Charleston.

Myrtle Beach, North Carolina

It was dark when we arrived at the KOA last night, so all we saw of Myrtle Beach were the golf courses and restaurants along the road on the drive in. Sometime in the middle of the night it started to rain, and when it rains in South Carolina, it pours! The main storm hit around 3AM. While lying in bed just before 6, I had the sensation that little drops of water were hitting the bottom of face. After convincing myself this was impossible, since gravity insures that water would fall down and strike the top of my face, I started wondering if Teressa was flicking something at me as a joke. I put my hand on the mattress between our pillows and found it was soaked. We sprang out of bed to find water dripping down the cabinet at the front of the bed. In looking at the roof of the RV as daybreak broke this morning, all I can figure is there must be a crack in the seal right along the top front. One more project for when we get to Orlando and it dries out.

After the rains stopped around 7:30, I took Rocky for his morning walk. There were puddles of water everywhere, and to Rocky’s delight, squirrels! We treed five of them before we were even 100 feet from the trailer (see the picture of our squirrel hunter on guard duty). The day was looking up! As we rounded the lake on the other side of the RV park, it sounded like a semi was approaching from the southwest. The semi turned out to be another tropical cloudburst. Initially we laughed as the warm rain drenched our bodies. Then Rocky started to whimper – either a flashback to when he was a stray, or stirrings of more recent memories at the groomer. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped, and we meandered back to the trailer. I’m sure the squirrels were laughing at him from the trees, as he now looked more like a drowned rat than a fierce Pomeranian.

When everyone was up and showered we jumped in the truck and went to a local pancake house for breakfast. I ordered grits so everyone could try them. Brian and Laura think it will also be the last time they ever try them. They don’t taste bad, in fact they don’t taste like much of anything, it’s more the consistency that is offensive. The rest of the food was excellent, and the waitress showered us with genuine southern hospitality which really impressed the kids. “She is like our new best friend”, Laura declared.

After filling the truck with diesel, we parked along the main drag in Myrtle Beach and walked down to the public beach access just as the clouds were breaking up. We understand that Myrtle Beach is a twenty mile long strip of sand, although we could only see a mile or so in either direction. Hotels, condos and restaurants line the entire length of the beach. The kids were thrilled to find a wide assortment of sea shells, some up to six inches across. A woman told us they were so plentiful because of the dredging and beach restoration project that is currently underway.