1st Camping Trip

This weekend was our 1st camping trip of the year. It was time for the Spring Picnic. Indiana geocachers have two picnics each year. Spring is always north of Indianapolis and the fall one is south. This time was at Tippecanoe River State Park. We had never been there before. It was a really nice park. My dad and step mom came and did the food. It was better than most restaurants. We had two other friends come to camp right with us. Several other friends were there but had cabins and didn't really sit with us much. I'll tell ya what though it was a really nice time. It was chilly and rained a few times but the laughs were so worth it. We had a heater in our tent and with the canopy it really helps hold the heat inside.

Jeremiah's best friend was there. It's so much fun to listen to them laugh all weekend. It was a great time indeed. Now we are home again. We might be going camping again this weekend. So I have a lot to get done. Maybe I'll find time to pick up my stitching needle again though. It's been over a month now.

Home Sweet Home

We are home! We drove through some rain but we survived. When we got here I pulled up the weather and where we were last night is under a tornado watch. So we are glad to be home and not there.

Izzy was very very happy to see us. She still keeps looking at me when she wakes up just in case she had a dream. Jeremiah ran and jumped on his Xbox pretty much before we had our shoes off haha. Now I have a DVR full of shows to watch haha. Funniest part about being home is I'm just in time to get ready to leave again. This weekend is our first camping trip of the year. I'm looking forward to it even though I would rather be sitting right here on my couch in front of my TV. It can wait though.

I just can't believe the things we've done in the past 28 days. I can't be thankful enough.

Day 27

Today was another nice travel day. We are back where we started haha. If you look back at Day 1 it's a ditto post haha. Since this is a perfect travel day to home tomorrow I planned it to stay here again tonight. Mostly because I get to have my favorite meal again...

For dinner that evening we got this little pizza place delivered. They had this delicious spaghetti. It was so yummy. So I just couldn't wait to have it again tonight. It was just as good. Today was my 35th birthday. I feel so old! I just can't believe I'm 35 already. Crazy. This has been such an amazing vacation. We were gone for Easter, Jeremiah's birthday, Mom's birthday, Mother's Day, and my birthday. Talk about covering it all haha. Tomorrow we will be home. I can't wait to see my dog. I do kind of miss my hubby now. It's been almost 2 weeks since I've saw him now I guess. But I did get to see him....not my dog. So just one more travel day.

Day 26

We survived another day of traveling. Nothing really interesting other than getting closer to home haha. Here by our hotel was a Texas Roadhouse so we got to have a really delicious meal when we arrived. We were hoping to avoid weather and we did. It's popping up west of us so we were really glad to stop when we did. 2 more sleepies!

Day 25

We woke up and said Goodbye to the ocean. Mom even got to see some Pelican's this morning. What a perfect mother's day gift from the ocean haha. We loaded up and hit the road. It was another uneventful day. We had a few rain drops but nothing too major. We got pizza delivered to our hotel when we arrived. That's always nice. No going out. Now it's relaxing and getting ready to hit the road tomorrow again. Just 3 more sleepies until we are home.

Day 24

Today started our trip home. It was torture cause we had to go back by Disney. We sure wanted to stop haha. It was a very nice uneventful trip....well almost. I have some ointment kind of stuff to put on my sunburn. This morning I put it on and everything was okay. We carried stuff out and got all loaded up. Right before Orlando probably 2 hours into the trip evidently the ointment wore off. My sunburn caught on fire. I was squirming around in my seat. Mom pulled over and into a parking lot. I looked around. When you are in pain you'll do anything haha. So off comes the shirt. Besides my bra is kind of like a sports bra. Most bikinis cover much much less.  Ahh I felt much better.

 I think maybe we drove through some bugs. What do you think? It sounded like it was raining a few times but it was just bugs hitting the van.

So we arrived safely. We are ocean front for our last time this trip. Somehow I have to pry mom away tomorrow but at least she can wake up and see it one last time for Mother's Day.

Day 23

Today was HOT. We woke up and went to eat breakfast at a place we really liked. Jeremiah got Oreo Pancakes again. Yuck haha. There was a little pond outside in the shopping area and we spotted a little alligator...

Definitely not something you find in Indiana haha. He was so cute. Probably a foot long little thing. We still thought it was pretty cool to see one in the wild. They are normally around the area more but right now they are moved to the fresh water rivers for breeding they said. So you have to look a little harder. After breakfast we did some shopping. We were going to go shelling but it was so hot we decided not to. Jeremiah sweat through his shirt even. It was about 88. The humidity was high too though so that didn't help. So instead we came back to the condo and packed up some things. We decided to go and have a nice set down dinner...

Yum crab legs!!!! They were delicious! We hadn't really had them yet so we figured we better get them while we can.

Day 22

Last night the wind howled all night. We woke up to huge waves. It was beautiful. Something we will definitely miss when we leave. We loaded up and headed down to another beach by the lighthouse...

We had hoped cause all the waves the shells would be extra good. We had no luck. So we loaded up and went back to the beach we had been the first time. We had so much luck there. Not very much luck today. The shells we like just weren't there. We figure with the waves being so hard they were being pushed down into the sand too hard. We had a lot of fun anyway. It was lunch time so we loaded back up and picked up pizza and salads on the way back to the condo. It was delicious. After we ate Mom and me walked down to our hotel beach and there were a lot of shells here but not really the type we are looking for. We did have fun almost being knocked down by the waves though. So after the wonderful long day in the sun guess what...

I'm just a little sun burnt. I hate sunscreen. My mom told me this morning I needed some. She was totally right but of course I didn't listen. Really other than being really warm and cold at the same time I'm not in too much pain....till I move much LOL. Tomorrow is our last day on the Island.

Day 21

We went to check on some boat tours today. Just happened to get there 5 mins before a time it went out so decided to go on that one. There was a little bit of time with a naturalist right before in a touch tank area. That was really neat. Here is the boat...

While we were out we saw a loggerhead sea turtle, several manatees, and a few dolphins. Of course they were all too quick for me to get pictures of. Still so neat to see. After we got back we drove through the refuge so Jeremiah could see a part that he couldn't see from the tram tour. Then we went to eat at Island Cow again. Their food is so good. After that we stopped at a little grocery. It's so funny to see the different food available down here like swordfish. I don't see that at our stores haha. Since all my muscles hurt from the shelling Mom walked down to the sand here at the hotel but I went on strike. We are going shelling again tomorrow though. Tonight I got the 4 hotels for on the way home booked. We hit the road Saturday to start the trip home. I have to admit I'm excited about getting home. I really miss my little dog. Oh I thought I would show you Jeremiah's funny sunburn spots...

Kind of hard to see but it's just two spots. Not too bad for his 2nd sun burn ever. Sometimes no matter how hard you try to cover him you miss spots.

Day 20

Today was a planned shelling day. We loaded everything up and headed down to Bowman's Beach. It was a beautiful weather day. Low 80's and bright sunshine. The shells were fantastic. Jeremiah had a blast playing in the sand. Mom and me worked hard. She had a net and kept catching shells and throwing them up by Jeremiah. I stepped out into the ocean about knee deep and was using a sand sifter and going through them that way. Here is all the shells from my bag alone...

It was so much fun but wow was it a lot of work. About 2:30 my back decided it wanted to be done bending over any more haha. We had planned to go eat and then shell at a different beach. I forgot how hard it is to get sand off! So we hurried and ran back to the room. Jeremiah now weighed at least 3 tons haha. We finally got clean and went off to eat. We decided on this delicious Italian place. We needed a half an hour for it to open so we stopped at an antique store and a cute book store. I found some things to give my mom for mom's day. Shh don't tell her. I started to realize my arms were hurting and then I noticed the sun burn. Even Jeremiah has two spots that got burned. We always make sure to bath him in sunscreen but it was just so bright and with the water it still got two spots. He's 16 now and that's the 2nd time he's a little sun burn so I'm not too upset haha. My neck and sides of my face and my arms are burnt. Mom's legs got burnt. Just shows how hard we were working haha. It was a long fun fantastic day.

Day 19

Today we headed out for breakfast. It was too yummy. Jeremiah had Oreo pancakes. Yuck to me but totally yum for him. I think he is finally all over his cold. He hasn't had medicine today finally. Poor kid took enough medicine for a small country. After that we went to J. N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. We took a tram tour...

 

We saw a lot of really neat birds. I took a lot of photos. I've posted several of my favorite to my Facebook if you would like to see them come on over there and friend me. We also stopped at a place called Crow...Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife. They do so much for animals in the area. I so wish I lived closer cause I would love to volunteer. Right now they have 60 baby opossums alone that need feedings all day long.

Day 18

This vacation has been so amazing. We've pretty much had three separate vacations. Tybee Island, GA. It went very nice. Kind of sight seeing and going to the fort. Disney which was amazing and fun. Now is the 3rd part the beach vacation. Today was the start since yesterday was kind of move in day and groceries. We did some driving around. We found another public beach area. Jeremiah's wheelchair refuses to move on sand. So we started walking down the path to see the beach. It was a long long walk. So we bench jumped. Jeremiah reached his limit before we got to the actual beach. But the last of the benches we stopped at was amazing. There was at least 300 lizards. We watched these two birds building a nest in a bucket ON a grill. (I don't think that's the best place for a nest.) We saw a millipede or centipede (basically some bug thing with a thousand little legs haha). Also all around us was shells. Kind of crazy to be so far from the beach and yet find a million sea shells. It was the ones we love to find too so that was really cool. We kept laughing about people thinking we were insane to be so far from the beach looking for shells but we were finding them in the shade at a bench so they can laugh away. I said they must mulch with shells down here cause they were just everywhere. Here is a pic of us at the bench spot...

 It was called Bowman's Beach...

We will definitely be back. There is a bike rental place down here that rents all kind of things. They even have beach wheelchairs. So we rented one to use for the week. It works so well!!!

Now we won't have any problems going back to that beach. We went out to test it by our hotel. There isn't as many shells right here. Well there is but we like the other kind we were finding down at the public beach. We can load up this beach chair and take it with us so that will be very nice. Here is a picture of our condo building...

We are on the 2nd floor but it's really the 3rd floor cause the bottom floor is called ground haha. Oh well all that matters is we can see the ocean out our window haha.

Day 17

Early this morning Fred got up and started the trip home. He arrived home safely at about 11am. Izzy was so glad for him to be home. He was able to even get the yard mowed this afternoon. We (Mom, Jeremiah and me) moved even more south. We've been to Sanibel once awhile ago I think it was 2007. It was so beautiful and since we were so close we thought we better swing by.

We are in a beautiful condo called Pelican's Roost. You can even see what our room looks like it's 204. We are happy since that gorgeous ocean is out the window again. Well I guess this time it's that gorgeous gulf but you get the idea haha. We saw several pelicans and dolphins while coming over the bridge to the island. It was a horrible rainy day. It rained so hard a few times on our drive here we had to pull over. But when we got here it pretty much stopped. We ran to a grocery store and decided to have dinner in our condo. So neat to be eating at the dinner table and look out the window to the ocean. Don't have that in Indiana. Mom and I ran down to the beach and found a few shells already. No pictures yet. I was just enjoying looking around. Gave the camera a rest for today haha. Poor thing has been working overtime.

Day 16

Today was a day I will never forget! We went to Discovery Cove. Unfortunately the weather acted up but it wasn't going to dampen our day. When you arrive you are assigned a time to swim with the dolphins. Our time was 11:25. We had a nice breakfast and then got our snorkeling gear. There are several different sections at this park. We started in the lazy river area. If you haven't heard of it let me try to explain. It's basically a pool in a river shape with a current that you float along and relax. We've done them before but this one was HUGE and it had 3 waterfalls you go through. Jeremiah got to practice snorkeling cause we knew there was another section of water with fish we could do later. We had a wonderful time just doing this. Then it was time to swim with the dolphin. Oh My Gosh. No words can describe this experience. I've had this on the top of my bucket list before the words bucket list even existed. I've loved dolphins as far as I can remember and always thought it would be beyond words to swim with one. Boy I was right. The rain started and cooled things down which made it interesting but it wasn't raining on our parade.

Our dolphin's name was Cindy and she was 50 years old! They said normally they live to 20 so they must be doing something right. She was 9 feet long and 500 pounds.

I was asking her if I could take her home with me please in this picture. I sure didn't want to leave when the time was up. After we got out and tried to warm up we ate a delicious lunch. Then we went to the swimming with the fish part. When we were getting in there was a HUGE sting ray. I didn't realize there were sting rays in there too. Jeremiah very understandably got a little worried. But then he jumped right in and went snorkeling...

What a memory! I will never forget today. I just can't stop smiling and feeling like the most luckiest person in the whole wide world!

Day 15

Our time at the parks was done. So today we got up and had a delicious breakfast again at Wave. The buffet was just way too good so we went back several times during our stay. We took our luggage out to the van and got all checked out. We rode the tram one last time and played a few games in the arcade. After all that we took a bus to Downtown Disney again. The last time we didn't get to do anything we wanted to do cause it was just way too busy.

First stop was World of Disney store. I got a cute little trinket of the castle for my shadow box. We got some t-shirts we just couldn't live without of course haha. Then we found my favorite store in the whole wide world.....the Lego store...

I was trying to be good and not buy a lot of stuff. Yeah right. Here is my guy with his 2 bags of Lego's that didn't follow us home haha...

Then we ate dinner at a restaurant called Trex Cafe. It's a lot like Rainforest Cafe but with dinosaurs. It was delicious. It was my mom's birthday so we got this HUGE dessert...

Chocolate cake and ice cream enough for 4 people. The middle steamed for a long time. It was really delicious and way too much fun. We got back to our hotel to pick up the van and drove to our next hotel. It's a Staybridge and right near Downtown Disney. It's a lot cheaper than the Disney Resort though of course. We are staying here for two nights. Tomorrow we will go to Discovery Cove. I get to swim with dolphins. I can't wait!!! It's been on the top of my Bucket List for as long as I know.