Fun in Florida - Day 5 & 6

Sorry, I've been overwhelmed lately with work and personal stuff... also went to B.C. to my niece's wedding over the weekend...will post more on that later.

Back to Florida.

Day 5 was definitely my least favourite day of the trip and I don' really have any pics to share so you'll have to put up with my ranting. We got up early (I'm not a morning person) and drove from Clearwater to Crystal River (hour and a half drive). We were going on a snorkeling tour to swim with manatees.

Manatees swim into Crystal River when the weather is colder in the gulf to feed. Well it was unseasonably warm so there were limited manatees on this day. Blah! The tour guide would drive the boat up and out of the inlets looking for signs of manatees...there weren't very many and if there was a pod to be found they were tucked up into the manatee sanctuaries (boundaries set up by U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife - or something along that line)...when you would find one or two manatees ALL of the other boats/tours on the river would head in that direction...like 300 people trying to swim in the water to look at one manatee in cloudy water. Not impressed at all! I was really disgusted by this! No wonder they need sanctuaries. I was really shocked that the number of tours isn't limited in this area.

My husband did have an encounter with one manatee, he managed to see its body and tail as it swam by...didn't see the face but it did touch Sid as it swam by. I was totally pissed off by this point b/c we were the only boat around this manatee and the young kids that were on our tour kept pushing past me to get to the manatee. Rude little buggers! No concept of personal space and keeping your distance. I totally missed it. I left the water b/c you couldn't see anything anyway and I had had enough. What a waste of a day and money!

We drove back to Clearwater and the only saving grace to this day was that we were going to shop at Target...Target!!! I LOVE TARGET! When we arrived at Target I looked in the trunk for my purse and realized I had left it that morning in the restaurant back in Crystal River. The nausea subsided only after we phoned the restaurant and were assured that someone turned it in and all the money and credit cards were still in my wallet. How incredible is that? I was so worried about getting my purse back that while in Target I really couldn't focus and it wasn't as fun as I had hoped.

We decided we'd drive back later in the evening b/c there was no point at that time due to rush hour traffic. We ate another awesome meal at my aunt's and then headed all the way back up to Crystal River to get my purse. I couldn't think straight the entire evening until I finally had my purse back in my hands with all its contents in place. Phew! What a relief! I was so happy to get to bed that night.

Day 6 Kennedy Space Center

We drove about 2 1/2 - 3 hours east to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center. The best part of the day were the alligators you would see in the ditches on the side of the road. Wild alligators! They were incredible! At the end of the day I noticed that there was a ditch full of water in front of our car in the parking lot. I thought 'hmm' maybe there's an alligator in there and lo and behold there was!!!!! It was watching us, all you could see was the top of its head and its eyes poking out of the water staring at you...we were about 6 cars away from the car and we started running across the side of the ditch towards the car and Sid took some video but most of it is just of the ground while he's running to get into the car. Hilarious! If I can how I will try to post the video (we got a new digital video camera for Xmas and we don't really know how to work it yet - these things take time, lol!).

Here are the pics at Kennedy Space Center. Because I really don't remember anything about the day I'll just use this opportunity to post "Wordless Wednesday"...don't want you to get the same glazed over look I did that day...just joking...sort of. LOL!

Oh- one more thing...we were told that the next launch is February 12th and the shuttle is docked on the launch pad about 30 days before the launch...this means we missed it by about 2 weeks. Shoot!