Sometime I just wish I had my Invisiblity Cloak...

After the beach it was time for us to take on the Universal theme parks. By this point Andrew and I were almost always on the brink of exhaustion. The morning we had planned to be the first day of going to the park I wasn’t feeling very good. Lack of water mixed with intense heat and humidity made my brain feel like the different lobes were playing bumper cars every time I moved my head. I figured it would go away and we braved the park anyway. No sooner than we had entered the park then my head tried to explode. I was finished with the day and wanted to die. Maybe if I just held still for a while it would go away…. The Men in Black ride looked like it had a long enough line to let my head simmer down. I honestly can’t believe I was gullible enough to think that. The first red flag should have been the words ‘long line.’ Long lines lead to board kids who then turn into annoying pains in the neck while they are trying to find something to do. Also the length of the line meant that it would be forced outside into the muggy heat. Long story short, after standing in line for over an hour we finally got to the ride. My head never had a chance. The ride seemed determined to try and give me an aneurism. Andrew and I promptly went to guest services and asked that the hour and a half that we had been there be over looked so that we could go home and still have three full days on our passes. They were very understanding and gave us the extra day.
The next day was much more eventful. We went back and jumped in the single rider line of the Men in Black. There was this crazy guy who had been on the ride a million times in front of us. The moment there was a pause in the movement of the line he spun around and started telling us all the secrets of how to shoot the aliens to get the most points. He talked Andrew’s ear off the whole time we were in line. Good thing the single rider line only took fifteen minutes to get through. Surprisingly the man was right! Crazy… but right! Andrew and I dashed around and jumped back into the single rider line. Just ahead of us we heard the man going off to someone else about the ideal targets during the ride. We just smiled. After that we took on the Mummy ride. The line was forever long but the roller coaster more than made up for it. I rode it once before when I was twelve but, as I did with almost all the roller coasters at that age I had covered my eyes and ducked wishing the ride would end. I had only ridden them because I knew my sisters would have never let me hear the end of it if I hadn’t. Now though, I really enjoyed it! I had forgotten about the fire part. Of course that was when the ride camera took the picture. Andrew laughed pretty hard at the expression the picture had caught on my face. We rode the Mummy again in the single rider line then moved on. We made our way toward the new Harry Potter area of the park. It was amazing! I knew that they had built a Harry Potter ride but I didn’t know that they had converted an entire section of the park into the wizarding world depicted in JK Rowling’s books. Andrew and I had Butter Beers, walked around Hogsmead, went into HoneyDuke’s, saw the owl post office, and went into Hogwarts. It was so fun! The line for the new ride was never under an hour wait but we finally sucked it up and went. The line was surprisingly enjoyable. It took us through corridors of Hogwarts, through Professor Sprout’s green houses, the defense against the dark arts room, Dumbledore’s office, and a huge room covered with moving/talking pictures. Before we knew it we were at the ride. Oh wow that ride was amazing! I don’t know if my description can do it justice… so I will just highly suggest that anyone and everyone go and ride it! We liked it so much we turned right back around once we were off and jumped in the single rider line. That line was a different story. It took forever to get through. Andrew and I started talking to the lady and her daughter behind us. When we had finally gotten up to the front I was in a conversation with the mother and the girl when the mother pointed and said that Andrew as going on the ride, I had forgotten that I was in a single rider line so the girl and I ran to catch up with Andrew. One of the female workers dressed in Hogwarts robes turned and yelled at us. “Hey! You two get back here!” then under her breath as she stood in front of us at the line she muttered “Ya, nice try.” The girl and I turned and looked at her mother who was trying hard to hold in an outburst of laughter. When she finally got control of herself, she whispered (because the worker was still right there) “At least she didn’t put you in detention!” Her daughter and I felt retarded but laughed about it as soon as the grumpy worker left. So yes, I got in trouble at Hogwarts. We rode the Dueling Dragon three times in a row and had to go home earlier than we wanted because we were both motion sick and had brilliant headaches. The next day we repeated the day before and again had to go home early. Unfortunately we found that we had lost our camera. It had all our pictures from the beach and everything we did at Universal on. We’ve been trying almost every day to find it. Even now we keep calling them. Sad days! At least I know what I can get him for Christmas!
Our Florida trip had come to an end and we packed up Toothless to bursting point. I drove most of the day and Andrew took the night shift. I took over again in the morning and let Andrew try to sleep off his car sickness. At one point, just outside of New Mexico we hit absolute insanity. We were laughing at nothing and singing All American Rejects at the top of our lungs with the volume turned almost all the way up. I have never been so happy to get out of the car as I was at my sister’s house in New Mexico. We spent two days there then set out for Rexburg. We drove straight through and made it home at 11:00 that night. We walked in the house, went to our room, and crashed on the bed without even changing our cloths. But we were HOME!

The real 1st America settlement

St Augustine is the Oldest settlement in the Continential US. This will surprise many, but it was founded some 60 years or so before Plymouth Rock. Settled by the Spanish in North East Florida it was the first stop on the their trade route. It grew in prestige and was attacked several times. Thankfully the Castillo de San Marcos, this huge fort made of ‘coquina’ (or something like that), a sort of concrete rock made of crushed shells, is there to protect the citizens. The fort has never lost a battle. Ok, enough with the history lesson… But St. Augustine is really cool. It has been a family favorite for a long time. My Mom loves old stuff, so this place is right up her alley. Erin, my Mom and I all took off up there when we left Daytona to spend half a day there. Our first stop was the fort of which I used as such a splendid introduction. They have a cannon demonstration, and 5 guys in thick wool suits (remember this is mid-day in Florida…), march out and shoot like 3 pounds of gunpowder off, with unfortunately no cannonball. They shortened the demo to 5 minutes, from the historically accurate 10 minutes to fire the cannon. Crazy, I know, in the shows its only like 10 seconds. We walked around the Fort and took in the sites around, and then headed to St George Street. It is kinda the main street of Old St Augustine, with loads of old buildings that have been converted into money making museums and shops. One cool thing about it is that the road is super narrow so they converted it to a walking only street. So we walked around and checked out the shops and sites until we were too tired to move. We had a long drive ahead of us back to Orlando so we weren’t looking forward to it, but had to trudge on in our adventure! Check back for Erin’s telling of our fun times at Universal.

O' Brother Where Art Thou?

Last week was Beach time. We went to South Daytona Beach and spent a couple of nights at an old family favorite. Its right on the beach and is a lot of fun. My sister and her family as well as my Mom all made it out. We had a blast. The waves were a lot calmer than the last time we went to the beach and Erin was able to handle it a little better. She claims she learned a little more in Ocean 101 now. Our first day there, we all started to build a big sand castle but the tide interrupted us with its own idea of what it should look like. So, we went out and played in the water. We decided to go running early the next morning on the beach and watch the sun rise. It was beautiful! I haven't been a big fan of running for many years now, but I've changed my mind and we both enjoyed it. On our run we saw several dolphins making there way up the coast, it was postcard worthy with the sun rise behind them. As surprising as the dolphins were, we saw a very large group of people, hundreds in fact, congregated tightly on the shore. We first thought a dolphin was beached, as many were waist deep in water. But as we neared, I saw a man dunk someone in the water and another from the queue walk up to him. A baptism? Sure enough as we got closer we saw several men in the water baptizing this large group. "O Brother Where Art Thou?" flashed in our minds. Come on in boys, the waters fine! Oh the South...
Later that day we swam with dolphins! We were out body boarding and suddenly a dolphin surfaces and Erin freaks out. As the dolphin approached within 20 feet of us, I had to reassure her, it was a dolphin and not a shark. Erin added dolphins to her list of things she's swam with. We finished the trip lounging around the pool, throwing footballs and Frisbees around, and playing Rumikub.