For the next couple of nights, we hung out in Jacksonville, Florida. We started by hiking along the beach on Big Talbot Island. This is one of the state parks on a barrier island off the northern coast of Florida. They have a nice paved trail for biking or walking and one section that’s a boardwalk over the swampier section. We ran across all sorts of birds and crabs.
Afterward we headed to the Kingsley Plantation. This is a free historic National Monument. It was an interesting story about Anna who was enslaved at 13 and became the wife of Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and plantation owner. He granted her freedom and she became a plantation owner herself. She was free in Florida under Spanish rule until Florida became a US territory. She fled to Haiti to avoid being enslaved again and returned again to Florida after the Civil War to claim back her land.
Near the Kingsley plantation is a waterfront seafood restaurant called the Sandollar. It looked to be popular and we decided to give it a try. I had the grilled seafood platter, yum, yum.
That night we went to watch the Jacksonville Sharks. The Sharks are an arena football team. Neither of us had seen a game before and thought it was a fun, fast-paced game. Unfortunately, the Sharks lost to the Streets. The Streets are a brand new start-up based in NYC. They’ll be playing at Madison Square Garden. So, if you get a chance check out a game.
On to Orlando to meet up with the grandkids for our week at Disney. We had a great time. And were at a park almost everyday, except for one when we declared it a pool day. Did you ever think that Walt Disney was a little twisted and dark? I mean look at some of the older stories there’s an evil queen, an old witch, and Peter Pan has a man eating crocodiles. Ari (the 3 year old), spent half the time gripping my arm, but she was always ready for the next ride. We started out one day at Hollywood Studios with the Frozen Sing-Along and then the Live Beauty and the Beast show. After that Ari said this park is boring because there are no rides. Well, strictly rides for that girl. Gracie spent the majority of the time asking if things were real. She loved the roller coasters and had a great time on the new Slinky Dog coaster screaming along with Papa, “I’m freaking out”.
The girls did great. Did we spend sun-up to sun-down at the park? No. Really, if you have younger kids you need to set different expectations. You want to tire them out, but not so much that they have a melt-down. What seemed to work for these girls is getting there around 9:30 or 10 and leaving around 7. Had we been there in the heat of summer, we probably would have gotten there early, went home for a nap or pool time, and back to the park in the evening. Do what works for your family. The girls still say that all the parks and all the rides were their favorites. It was a busy week, we spent 4 days at Disney and 1 at Universal.
Well, time for this trip to end. We made it from Orlando to Albuquerque in 2 long days of driving. Where to eat when traveling through rural Louisiana? Why at the casino/gas station/restaurant, of course. Gator Gold even came complete with booths where you can plug in your land line phone. How convenient. Seriously, our food options seemed to be limited to fast food or the casino combo places.
