We’ve done the Disney/Universal shuffle; I’ve been at the park as it’s opened and watched the firework as it closes. This trip was planned to NOT be those trips….we *might* go to one park one day, but, most likely, that would be a water park. The rest of the trip was planned to be activities at the resort or trips in and around Orlando.
The main pool at Cypress Harbour; there is actually a pool that we spent more time at closer to our room. We only came over here once; played some volleyball but then had to cut the visit short due to lightning and thunder…
Went to the activities center during the rain where Suzanne and I continued our long-running Ms. Pac Man battle. I thrashed her this go-round. We don’t play Galaga….that’s only for me when I have more than 30 minutes to spend….
They wouldn’t let us play basketball during the light rain, but, would let the boys play shuffleboard. Christopher seemed to grasp the concept and the strategy quickly and was getting the best of Matthew early….Matthew finally got the right touch and the game was more even near the end
On Sunday, we drove out to Tampa/St. Pete to hit the beach…..we made sure to drive over the Skyway Bridge; this picture is from the south side.
The Pink Hotel, the Don Cesar, near St. Pete Beach.
The plan was to go to Fort Desoto park and North Beach, ranked America’s best beach in 2005. Suzanne and I came away very underwhelmed; there wasn’t a lot of beach to set up your ‘stuff’ on…..
Matthew set up his towel in front of us to ‘soak up the sun’. Here he’s being kind of stupid, trying to drink his Mountain Dew while lying down…as you would expect, he sat up quickly after choking and spilling blue liquid everywhere.
The water was warm, the waves were a little rough, but not bad. Shells were few and far between, but, when you did find them, they were huge. A lot of big shells are coming home to Michigan with us…..
Left here mid-afternoon and drove up and around St. Pete Beach for a while. Had dinner at Dockside Dave’s, and then headed back to St. Pete Beach in the evening for more swimming, and, more importantly, to be there for sunset.
At St. Pete Beach….this boy didn’t do a great job of applying sunscreen and is a little red at this point
The sunset pictures are Suzanne’s; I’m out in the water with Fric and Frac. The waves here were a little rougher than at North Beach, and, they were a heck of a lot more frequent. Very hard to find shells in the water with that many waves coming in…..
The beach here had layers of small shells on top of the sand, and we found more than a few big ones out in the water, but, no shells were as big as we found at North Beach. Ended up giving a lot of the smaller big shells to some girls colleting shells along the shore….
Sunset was kind of a bust….these clouds wiped out the show about 15 minutes shy of actual sunset.
Suzanne flew home Monday evening leaving me and the boys here for the rest of the week…Monday night was drinks, chips, and Risk. The boys brutally eliminated me from the game (reluctant to attack each other, but gleeful in attacking Dad).
One of the big reasons we chose this resort as opposed to another Marriott property in Orlando was that you could fish…and Matthew has been dying to fish all summer. Tuesday morning, bright and early, he’s over renting a pole and purchasing some nightcrawlers and doing his thing.
I could not have done this when I was little, I certainly don’t have the patience to do it now. He spent ALL DAY Tuesday fishing…I had to walk over and bring him lunch! Christopher had fun at times, but, this was not the do-all-and-be-all thing for him…we watched The Price is Right together while I worked in between Cpher’s fishing breaks.
So what did he catch? Some tarpon, some baby bass, some large-mouthed bass. And when he went back at night, he pulled a catfish out of the pond as well. Yes, he went back at night after dinner
Turns out this boy pulled the biggest fish out of the pond……Matthew probably caught 15 to 20 fish over the course of the week and Cpher caught less than 5….but Cpher at the end of the day Thursday pulled two almost foot-long bass out of the pond.
Matthew has some pictures of his fish on his Itouch…I’ll grab them at some point and post them here.
