Our next stop was a little north of Tampa in a small town called Odessa. One of my oldest and best friends, Jenny moved there about a year ago. They had a great house on a lake with a pool in the back yard. The kids were in heaven. We were able to catch up and watch our kiddos play. It was pretty amazing.
The kids got along great. How cute are they?
Emma fell in love with Mackenzie. Poor Mackenzie tolerated Emma following her around for a weekend. She was such a good sport.
Emma insisted that Mackenzie put makeup on her.
everyday......
On Saturday, Matt took the boys and Josh fishing on the Gulf.
They both caught some fish
Jenny, the girls and I met them out on the water for lunch
We went out to an island off the town of Tarpon Springs
The water was amazing
There were tons of fish and aquatic life in these grassy patches
To make things even better, the ice cream boat pulled up
How wonderful! It even played music like an ice cream truck
Ice cream in the water
Grady caught all sorts of creatures
Spider crab
Needlefish
Josh spent some time throwing the kids around
Flying Myles
Gavin the human cannonball
On your mark, get set....
GO
Heading home
What a fun group of kids
Getting a ride back to the cars
Thank you, Jenny and family! Visiting you all was the best part of our trip
Our next and final stop was to Gennie Springs located in the north central part of Florida. Josh has wanted to check out the springs in Florida for a long time and since it was Father's Day, we made a stop.
They were absolutely beautiful
The water was freezing! Maybe the coldest water I have ever swam in.
Notice that I am standing above the springs, not in there. Burr
This was Josh's glorious Father's Day dinner. It consisted of pancakes, sausage and blueberries cooked in very tight quarters by one highly annoyed wife. Ha! Happy Father's Day.
To make matters a little worse, Josh wasn't feeling very well. He managed to celebrate a little bit but it wasn't the greatest of Father's Days
The next day, we woke up and rented some tubes. The campground had completely cleared out since it was a Monday. We had the springs to ourselves which was fantastic. When we arrived, the place was overrun with rednecks. There were giant trucks, beer bottles, rebel flags, half naked people, and litter all over the place. We were disgusted when we first pulled up. The nice kid at the check-in desk must have seen the look at my face and reassured me that it would clear out after the weekend. Thank goodness he was right.
Heading to the springs
Ahh, that's more like it. It was just us and a few scuba divers. Unfortunately, the springs were still trashed. We saw beer cans, cigarette butts, old flip flops and other bits of trash all over the springs. It was so depressing that people had no respect for such an amazing natural area.
The tubes kept us out of the freezing water.
It was breathtaking but I couldn't get the image of 200+ rednecks floating in swan or unicorn rafts, guzzling Bud Light Lime out of my head.
Josh and Grady did a little snorkeling
Myles and Emma preferred to perch on top of the tubes
It was a little too cold for this skinny boy
Emma didn't last 2 minutes in the water. We played on the deck
She made me walk around in flippers while she took pics. Good thing no one was around.
Grady loved it
We decided to leave Gennie Springs a day early. It was too depressing, the weather wasn't great and the kids didn't want to get in the water. Also, when we pulled into the campsite, we ran over a razor....yup, a razor. You can tell how classy the place was. So we had a flat tire on our camper. Josh changed the tire and put on the spare. We left the campground and were on the road for about an hour when our spare tire shredded. Josh thought it looked a little rough so we were looking for a tire place anyway. Luckily, we found a tire store 7 miles from where we were broke down. I have to say, some times I love technology. I googled "tire shop" and found one right away. We got our old tire plugged and were on our way.
Josh noticed that the camper wasn't pulling well and thought it might be the tire again. When we were about to get on 95 we found a Walmart with a tire store and purchased 2 new tires. Whew, nothing like a blown tire to wrap up a vacation. It took 12 1/2 hours to get home when it should have taken 8. That being said.....it was an awesome vacation. I love that we visited parts of Florida that I have never seen. We met up with friends, had a lot of water and sun time and saw amazing wildlife.
Check out one of our favorite animals of the trip....armadillos. We don't have them near us so we were pretty excited. I guess to Floridians it's like seeing a squirrel but we loved them
Look at the baby armadillo we had in our campsite. The boys keep talking about all the cool animals we saw and they made a list. Here goes: armadillos, spider crabs, horseshoe crabs, hermit crabs, dolphins, various birds including some parakeets, geckos, anoles, frogs, needle fish, catfish, and various other fish. The only thing that we didn't see that they really wanted to spy was an alligator. We will have to go back soon.
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