Beaches and things

I can’t quite pin down the year, but it would have been 1975-ish that my parents decided to buy a casita in Florida, on the Gulf Coast, so they could spend the winters away from the cold of PEI. I remember thinking, “omg (except I doubt if omg was as ubiquitous as it is now), that is such a cliché”. They were younger than I am now, and spent 16 or 17 years trekking back and forth down I-95, eventually leaving a car in FL and flying back and forth, to spend 6 months in the sun.

miles of Atlantic beach between Ormond and Flager

and the water isn't cold

I quickly got over my snobbery about Florida and made my own annual pilgrimage to visit them for a week for Spring Break (the caps are deliberate because, believe me, it wasn't spring in PEI in March and the break was beyond needed). It’s now 35 years since my first trip here and while Orlando is ridiculously different than the country town it used to be, much is still the same in Florida: nice climate, palm trees, ocean on all sides, good shopping, easy life-style, and tropical vegetation. I know why they liked it here. So do I.You know I love the desert, but I feel antsy if we are just parked in an apartment in the Phoenix area. Not so in Sedona because we hike every day, but in Phoenix/Scottsdale I wonder why we are there. I’m a bit that way here in wherever we are (Orlando, Buena Vista, Celebration?) but at the beach it doesn’t occur to me to be antsy. I can easily spend a day or a month at the beach, just hanging out, but it has to be salt water. Lake, river, and pool are only okay. We’ve made 2 excursions to the coast, east and west, not to spend any time but as we were doing other things; if we ever come back to Florida I don’t want to stay here in the middle.Yesterday we went to St Augustine, 2 hours from here, and along the way we drove through real jungle and typical east coast 'lowlands' to get to the barrier islands. It was a lot of driving but such an interesting place to see. And then we spent a couple of hours at the golf Hall of Fame which is maybe why Jim was keen to make go to St. A, but if so he didn't mention it. The golf place is also very interesting with a lot of personal memorabilia. It was another good day.

 pedestrian mall in St Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited  town in the US: 1565

in St Augustine, this used to be the biggest hotel in the world

the golf Hall of Fame - it was interesting even for this non-golfer

Btw, Florida is still a cliché, full of retired and overweight people, until you look beyond  the obvious. Did I mention it’s going to be 82F today?

A Nod to Florida Theme Parks

You can’t come to this part of Florida without going to a theme park or two. Well, I’m sure you can, but you wouldn't come to this part of Florida unless you intended to go to a couple of parks. That’s what this area is: theme parks, one big carnival; and lots of people. The big parks are enormous and have several sub-parks within them, hoping to keep your dollars with their operation instead of someone else’s. It’s big money! For a visitor the most economical, and I use the term loosely, deal is to commit to one park and buy a multi-day pass because the entry is less expensive for each extra day. A single day entry runs $80-$90 per person with add-ons if you want and express ticket or fast-pass (it’s a license to cut the queue) and $10-$20 for parking. It’s no wonder it’s a “once in a lifetime trip” for families. The parks take a lot of stamina too, for standing in lines, walking miles, figuring out how things work. We were amazed and curious to see families with very young children, wondering how they were coping. 

Adventure Islands: Dr. Seuss land! 

AI: Marvel Comics super heroes section

every park has a ridiculous roller coaster

The Harry Potter section is very popular

We’ve been to two parks so far: Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios, and Epcot at Disney. For me the best rides were Spiderman at Islands of Adventure, and the Green Line at Mission Space at Epcot. We didn’t do either park justice in the few hours we were there; especially Epcot which should be 2 parks really, the future side and the international pavilion side. It’s been Thanksgiving week, and the crowds certainly attest to the attraction of the parks as a holiday destination. One staff person said that the only busier time is New Year. Despite the throngs, the workers were cheerful and helpful, the parks were clean, there were lots of restrooms, and people were having a good time; including us. These very few pictures barely represent the places as they truly are amazing.

entrance to Epcot

the Epcot icon, Spaceship Earth

BC was well represented in the Canada pavilion

parked strollers!

Starting backward

My preference when we are travelling is to explore flora, fauna, geography, and history. Being in the center of Florida there is much of that to see and do but mostly we are surrounded by theme parks and a LOT of people on Thanksgiving holidays. I actually don’t know if where we are staying has a name. We aren’t in Orlando, nor Kissimmee, (pronounced Kissimmee by the very few locals, not Kissimmee) rather in a limbo area of resorts and theme parks. Our resort, Marriott Cypress Harbor, is just about perfect; about 2 seconds from SeaWorld, and 5 from Disney.

We have a big and very nice apartment, in a central location, and it’s very quiet. I don’t know how many acres the property covers, many for sure, and there are lovely pools, ponds, and gardens as well as lots of space between the modest sized buildings. There is another Marriott nearby that must be 30 stories high, not my style.

We’ve been to a couple of tourist attractions (I’ll get back to them in another post) and enjoyed them well enough but yesterday we had a brief stint as Swamp People on the edge of Lake Kissimmee, which I know you are now pronouncing correctly. Lake Kissimmee is the 3rd largest body of water in Florida and is at the top of the Everglade water system. What is unique is that it is surrounded by cattle ranches and a nature preserve so there are no houses, high rises, resorts, shops, etc. I found Kissimmee Swamp Tours on the internet and loved their attitude: if you are looking for speed and thrills, don’t call us. Finding the place was an adventure in itself, and it is run by honest-to-goodness locals with real Florida accents, (I hope you can hear that I am writing this with a Florida twang) with a real passion for “old Florida”. 

bathroom art

the boat. seriously

We learned a lot from CW, our captain/guide, including that there are 1.5 million gators in Florida (who counted them?) and that about 70,000 eggs are removed from Lake Kissimmee every year to control the population. (The eggs are sent to farms and gators are raised for leather and meat.) CW was as interested in the birds, maybe more, which I loved because he was showing us there is more to Florida wetlands than alligators, although he did say that any body of water bigger than a bathtub has at least one gator in it. And he hates that Florida has a pest control spray policy.

Btw, if you get a chance to go on an airboat sometime, they are pretty amazing. Nothing protrudes below the boat, so they literally skim across the top of the water and even on dry-ish land. They’re smooth, fast, and fun. Also noisy so we had industrial strength headsets on so we could hear ourselves ask and answer questions.

they always look like they are smiling

apparently vicious predators

Bubba and Bubbette

 

It was a sunny day, in the low 70’sF (the only thing I’m bilingual in is temperature), but windy. On the water, whipping along in the boat, there was a pretty good wind chill. Camo seems to be the style choice in that part of the state so Jim & Barb were decked out in camo jackets, with broken zippers (don’t know if that’s a requirement), and I had a blanket for my bare legs. We had a great time and then stopped in St. Cloud at the Catfish Place, 10% off if you mention my name, for a deep-fried heart-attack-inducing lunch of turtle, gator, shrimp, scallops, and catfish. Yum; except for the catfish, which, of course, I didn’t try. Oh yeah, the in-house hash browns? Fabulous.
For more photos check my Facebook album.