Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Fun in the Florida (chilly) sun

It's been pretty cold here, so no beach play for us :( Looks like swimsuits will go home unworn.

Yesterday, the Lovely Daughter and I went with my mom to the next town over to go thrift store shopping. I scored a major haul of work clothes, with 6 pairs of pants, three vests, and a cardigan. The Lovely Daughter found a couple of really nice sundresses, and of course some other stuff. Also a quilting ruler, of all things!

Today the plan was to go to the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium. On the way there, TMOTH pointed out that we'd get there about 11, and what would we do about lunch?

I thought about other things to do, so turned into the Manatee Park. This is a little park just outside Ft. Myers whose only claim to fame is that it's next to a canal that picks up the warm wastewater from one of the FPL power plants, which attracts manatees in the cold months. I'd never stopped, but since there's been such a cold snap, I figured we'd stop and maybe see one or two, so we paid our $2 and parked.

Well:
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It was amazing. Probably at least a hundred manatees, lots of babies. I think you can see a mother and baby in this next picture:
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Kids had fun:
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And then we went and had super pizza, were joined by the Brother, and on to the nature center. That was also fun - nature hike:
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I love the palmettos:
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There were also animals - natives and invasives. These included an albino raccoon, who clearly wasn't happy about being caged :(

The planetarium was actually really good - their fancy computer display wouldn't start, so they used the old-fashioned one narrated by one of the people that run the planetarium, and it was WAY better than the computer one that came after.

Burgers for dinner, and Transformers II on video for the evening. Ah. Life is good.

1 comment:

Barb said...

Don't you just love seeing the Manatees? I think that's one of the things I'll miss most about Florida ~ going to the springs and watching the manatees (and the gators). We must have passed each other on my way up!