A Three Hour Toooooooooour

Oh, I love my and Mr. Mormon's spontaneity. We are the kind of folks who will drop everything and jump on a cruise ship. We're the kind who will book said cruise with no babysitter, but just know we will find one. Mr. Mormon regularly wakes up and announces he's playing hookey from work and wants to know what fun thing we will be doing that day (which means the kids are now playing hookey from school.)

For the most part - it serves us well.

On Saturday, I decided it would be fun to go see the manatees. They're a couple of hours north of here and won't be here much longer with the warm weather we're having. Of course, I developed this idea as we were walking out the door to go get 2 of our kids from a gym sleep over and then we were straight on our way to Meet Your Teacher Breakfast at church. Mr. Mormon quickly googled where the heck we were headed, I threw some clothes in bags for kids, and we were off.

After the breakfast, we On Star-ed where we were headed. The first directions didn't sound right to Mr. Mormon based on what he had briefly read online. Mr. Mormon questioned Mr. On Star further, and quickly got us updated directions to the address Mr. Mormon remembered seeing online. I love that he's a genius who can remember what he barely glanced it.

And then we drove and drove and drove while On Star carefully lead us on. The kids slept - we chit chatted - the weather was gorgeous - and before we knew it, we'd arrived. It was different than I'd remembered. More, well, white-trashy. The entrance to the state park was a sand road and there were run down swing sets and trailers lining the park entrance. But who cared? We were going to see us some manatees!!!

We pulled up to the guard gate and the man came out (from his single wide trailer) to welcome us. He had discovered an inventive way to keep cool on a warm day!



He smiled and flashed us both his teeth and asked how long we'd be staying for. ???? He also explained he wasn't set up to run debit cards for our park entrance fee. He told us he'd just take whatever we had for admission.

0_0

I asked which way to the manatees and he said there were none there. He did point to a rickety wooden footbridge through a swamp that we could walk on for the low-low price of $26. We did end up braving the swamp bridge, and we lived. Although, several times, in my head, I calculated what I would do to keep from breaking my neck if said bridge collapsed. I think I saw a shrunken head between some cypress trees -and it's not every day you can say that!



We excused ourselves from the park (I use that term loosely), returned to the safety of our car and immediately called ON STAR. Seems Mr. Mormon, genius man that he is, remembered correctly what he had googled - the location and street names and all with no more than a fleeting glance! Only bad thing was that he'd googled Blue Springs Park, Inc. and we needed the state park. We were still a good 2 hours away from some manatees.

But - ya know - perky people such as ourselves will not have our happiness thwarted by driving 2 hours out to hillbilly heaven and not seeing anything but a swamp and a rickety footbridge! We reckoned we would still have a blast driving back home and (this was my vision) perhaps even stopping in random small towns along the way - exploring Florida Mormon-style. We'd eat at some hole in the wall restaurant and see the sites all the tourists miss, now that we were in "real" Florida.

First, we stopped at a little place folks around those parts hung out at called Mc-Donalds. It serves little papery burgers and chicken nuggets and has a playland - which makes miniMormons extremely happy. It's good to see how others live!

We kept cruising down the Ronald Reagan Turnpike and what to our wondering eyes did appear but....



That's right! A ginormous traffic jam. Ohhh - color us excited! We got to sit for over an hour on the road. The miniMormons took turns standing out of the sunroof trying to see if they could tell us how many cars ahead of us the jam was. Eventually, we took out blankets and sat on the pavement and read books. We watched the medi-vac arrive and everything. It was like a free show. The highlight of that adventure was Mama's McGyver-ing. Oh yes - I'm not just a mom - I'm an inventor!!

3.0, about 45 minutes into sitting in gridlock, announced she needed to make a potty. That's when my Mama-McGyver instincts took over. I cut holes out of the bottom of a Target bag, so that her legs could go through the holes and make a Target-bag "panty." Then I lined the bag with Kleenex and napkins. I announced it was time for her to tinkle in this make shift potty/diaper.

Dang I'm good.

Sometime post-turnpike stop and pre-home, we pulled up behind a car that had a Florida manatee license plate.

See - we saw a manatee after all!

We finally made it home about 8 pm with some doggie droppings left about the house to welcome us home. awwwww

So - that was my Saturday. It wasn't exaaaaaactly what I was hoping for, but truth be told, we had a blast. And I don't want to give up our spontaneity just because something didn't turn out perfectly. I loathe the planning part of trips (it stresses me out) and I'd rather deal with dramas as they happen then plan plan plan. It was nice to spend the day with my favorite people and who else can say they read Chrysanthemum on the Ronald Reagan turnpike asphalt?