I’m in a bit of a Zen place right now. Trying hard to hold onto the peaceful calm that settled over me while we were on vacation, soaking up the rays on the beach in Florida. I know if I give in and really “get back to it” that my stress levels will jump again, and I’m just not prepared to do that! Maybe I’ll take up meditation…

So anyway. We had such a nice vacation. We always drive to Florida (been there more times than I can remember now), which is a nice 2 day drive through the Eastern States from Toronto. We stop when we want to, enjoy listening to music… it’s interesting; when we first started our treks to Florida many years ago, finding a strong radio signal through the mountains was futile most of the time (and most of what we found was… ugh… country), but now there are very few places we have to resort to our own iPods and CDs. We enjoy driving, and having our own vehicle with us that we can cram full of luggage (and shopping!!) is a bonus.

We left a day early to get a jump on things, with the blessing of Wee One, who was going to miss yet another Hallowe’en at home! On the way down we stopped in Erie, PA to have new tires put on the van (great deal!), then further down at a place I found online called “Musik Innovations“, just on the north end of Pittsburgh, so I could browse their massive amount of sheet music.

I spent a euphoric hour – just an hour, because the Hubby was literally breathing down my neck, and not in a good way – going through and pulling music for our Quartet’s music library, and ended up with 23 pieces. Happy happy, joy joy!! Their address is now saved in my GPS, because I’m definitely heading back there in the spring – maybe a Quartet road trip is in order, eh ShaMoo??

The rest of the trip down was uneventful, really. We spent a couple hours at Downtown Disney (we’re not much into Disney, and frankly, Canada’s Wonderland is bigger and has more rides than Disney does, for a LOT less money, and less disappointment) in Orlando’s Kissimmee area to do some shopping and kill some time because we were a day early for our reservation, then continued on to Fort Myers.

We like Fort Myers because it’s quiet, a few degrees warmer than the more northerly beaches, and we often have the beach mostly to ourselves!!! You rarely see other kids (mostly leather-backed senior citizens who are begging for skin cancer they’re so darkly tanned) – it’s definitely an older community, and if you want excitement, Fort Myers is not for you. The only drawback is that it adds a few hours to our drive time, but really, it’s no big deal.

We spent time on the beach, doing exactly what I was craving – absolutely nothing. Well, nothing besides floating, collecting sea shells, reading, and baking in the sun. Wee One was actually sick with the flu (not the dreaded H1N1, just a garden variety flu) most of our whole trip, but Tylenol Cold and Flu is our friend, and she weathered through it just fine and managed to have a blast. I think the sun and salt water helped her get past it more quickly than she would have had we been home.

One day we decided to do “Alligator Alley” via the Everglades, and head for Miami… let me just tell you that it was a huge waste of time.

Wee One is too little and timid to do the (very pricey) air boat tours, and frankly I can’t imagine any other reason to even venture into this area, now that we’ve experienced it. I managed to glimpse a few alligators that no one else saw, save one. It was a let down. Miami… well, I’ve never been to Miami where I didn’t see a crime being committed or investigated, put it that way. We stopped at the Mall of Americas, which is not that great, and when we went to leave, found that one of the posts on the van’s battery had come off (which is really weird – never seen that happen before!) – so Hubby had to trek over a couple of blocks to an automotive store and pick up a new one. It set us back about an hour, but was no big deal really. Can I just say how wonderful it is to have a man who is awesome with his hands? Erm, mechanically speaking that is ;) We didn’t even bother calling AAA because we would have been waiting a long time. Anyway, lesson learned, and we won’t be making that trip again. Complete waste of a day.

Next day we spent some time at Everglades Wonder Gardens in Bonita Springs, and THAT was really interesting. Had we known we’d be wasting a day doing Alligator Alley, we would have just done this for a morning and then hit the beach again! Ah well.

At first glance, this place is just not that special. It does offer guided tours though, which are the best part of this attraction. The mammals and birds, I have to say, are not in good situations, as their cages are far too small to allow for any kind of quality of life, but the alligators and crocs were what we came to see, and they did not disappoint.

Alligators and crocs are nothing new to anyone, but seeing them in action, this close, was a real experience. Wee One became enamored of alligators at this exact moment in our tour…

…and spoke of nothing else the rest of the day! In fact, this pretty much sums up the remainder of our days at the beach:

I think it’s my favourite picture of the entire trip. Classic Wee One.

The girls really enjoy chasing these:

The water was so warm and wonderful… only once was Wee One a little nervous:

And that was because of the Sea Monster:

The dolphins played happily off shore – a bit too far for my lens to catch them clearly, so sorry, no picture of them this time. We also had the very cool experience of swimming in pools of young pompano fish – who were so unafraid/friendly that they rubbed up against our legs and bums, and tried really hard to get inside the Hubby’s swim trunks. Who knew a grown man could scream like a little girl?

We saw dozens of tiny brown anoles, including these two at the Everglades Wonder Gardens (the first is a female, the second a male – can you guess what massive critter it’s standing on?!!)

and we also saw a good many of these, which move surprisingly fast when a 5 year old is attempting to cuddle it:

We saw each and every one of these, most of them whilst sitting on the sand:

All it all, it was a pretty terrific vacation, which included gem mining in Franklin, NC on the way home (I’ll blog about it another day), and maybe even a last stop at Musik Innovations again, where I *might* have picked up another 40 or so pieces of music… you know… maybe…