Saturday morning we packed up slowly and headed out to see the Comiskey family just east of Orlando. Jon had responded to our post last year and invited us to come by, so we did! Let that be a lesson to you all, that if you invite us, we will come! 🙂
It was wonderful to see him and meet his family. Jon was about 5 or 6 when I started at the Dale House, and now he’s got a wife and two kids. And their house is a revolving door of friends, family, and random visitors from Colorado! It was super kind of them to have chili waiting for lunch and to sit down and chat for a while. What a great crew!
From there we stopped at a Best Buy to deal with an issue with Claire’s computer, stopped by a Walmart for some supplies, and then parked at a Cracker Barrel for the evening. Their apple streusel pie is quite tasty for anyone wondering!
The next morning we headed to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but it was a hoot! Read more about it here, but it was like you were transported back to the 60s. We watched live mermaid shows in an underground theater built at the mouth of a super deep freshwater spring. They’ve explored down 400 feet and still haven’t found the bottom of the spring.
There were peacocks wandering, Christmas decorations going up, a ranger show to watch with live, local animals, and a boat ride down the river to see wildlife. Even with all that, one of Claire’s and my biggest highlight was swimming next to a manatee! It was in the swim area. We didn’t bother it, but we were able to get pretty close. A very cool experience. But no good pictures, sorry!
From there we went down to the KOA campground we had booked for several days. It was super nice! Pool, leisure sports (cornhole, putting green, tetherball, ping pong), gorgeous landscaping, and even complimentary continental breakfast!
On Monday we did school, went on a plant walk with a campground staff around the campground (Reece climbed up and picked a papaya), and went swimming. Overall a relaxing and productive day.
(that I ate because no one else really like it)
Matt decided to use some of his rental car points and rent a Tesla for our couple days here. So Tuesday morning we picked up the car, did some school in the morning, and then met my Uncle Al and Aunt Judi at their condo. After Matt eagerly troubleshot a heating issue they were having, we went to the beach for lunch/snacks. It was a lovely visit.
We stopped by the nearby Seabird Sanctuary Center on the way home and saw a myriad of birds close up. It was very educational and fun!
The next day we did more school and then headed down to Fort DeSoto Park. We enjoyed some beach/swimming time and found a lot of live sand dollars out off the shore a bit. We were excited because we had seen dead sand dollars at the Bay of Fundy, but when we had looked it up, we had also seen pictures of live ones. And now we got to see them alive!
From Fort DeSoto we drove to my cousin, Nate, and his wife, Kandis’s house in Largo. We met Uncle Al and Aunt Judi there too and had a lovely evening making pizzas in their pizza oven, catching up, and playing table shuffleboard.
We got an updated picture of the birthday twins – Reece and Nate before we left. (The last one was a little old.)
We’re really enjoying seeing friends and family. Heading to see more friends and family over the next few weeks too! Reach out if you’re in the South and want visitors from Colorado! (You may already be on our list!)
Leave a Reply