Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

The hot tub at the hotel. Because it's winter.

These are some pictures that Grandpa took during the visit. The dinghy ride was the first time Mom drove the dinghy. When we get back, Conrad runs to Dad and says, "Mom drove the dinghy. With NO crashes!" Thanks for the vote of confidence, son.

 

 

Rub a dub dub

This is the pool we made on the dock with a storage container. Mark and Conrad got to spend a couple days in a real pool at Grandpa and Grandma's hotel. They loved hanging out together and were sad to see them leave.

Manatee hee hee

We see a lot of manatees but this was the first one with a tag. We were surprised that the tag was so big and basically just tied around the manatee's tail. It didn't seem to bother the manatee.

Dinghy ride

We took a long ride on the dinghy. It will be our new "car" when we get underway. We went down to the New River. It was fun to see the same route we had biked from a different angle. We went under a bridge that went up for a bigger boat. The waves from other boats are fun to ride over. We had an early dinner at the pirate restaurant. We tied up at the restaurant's dock and ate at a table next to the water. There was a live parrot, a mounted alligator, and numerous realistic pirate statues. Arrrgh!

Parks and recreation

Here's one of the rafts we made today.

It floats!

It feels like summer vacation. The weather in Ft. Lauderdale has been warmer than normal and we keep forgetting that it's winter. Today we went to a park and built rafts out of sticks and vines. We saw a banana plant in the wild, a soft-shelled turtle walking across the road, and climbed down an embankment to walk along an abandoned boardwalk.

Field trip

The Museum of Discovery and Science rivals any of the children's museums in Chicago. It has lots of hands on exhibits (there must be more kid-friendly flight simulators than anywhere else in the world). There is a big climbing maze, some live animals and insects, and a thrilling fake air boat ride through the Everglades with wind and mist. There is an IMAX theater where we saw coral reefs in 3D. There was an orange picking exhibit where we spent 2 hours (it is a lot cooler than it sounds). And the best part is that it was almost totally empty.

Watering the manatees

The pictures are from Brookfield zoo in November. The sea otter kept coming up to Conrad and playing with him through the glass (we think), trying to bite him. We haven't been to the zoo since then but we have seen lots of animals.

Today we sprayed the hose into the water near a manatee and it came over to lay on its back and drink from the hose. It was big--maybe 8 feet long--and had one of the propeller scars on its back from being hit by a boat motor. It really liked having the water run over its body, especially its belly. It hung around for a long time, even after we turned off the hose. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures because it was already dark.

Yay--bikes!

We saw a raised bridge up close. The
bridges open a lot to let boats through

We finished loading everything from our moving pod into the boat. Almost everything fit, including Mark and Conrad's bikes, which they rode along the New River Walk. They remembered how to ride. Re-learning how to stop took a few tries. Tomorrow we will be taking several boxes to Goodwill, mostly filled with stuff that came with the boat. There were a lot of pillows on the boat. And candles.

 

"Take a picture of me pulling my face. Now let me see!"