Today Karen and I went with Rami and Emilia to Everglades Holiday park so we can go on an airboat ride. We took a private tour which went out for about 1.5 hours. We saw a few alligators, snakes, birds, and even baby alligators. After we saw an alligator wrestler and walked around the park for a bit. Then we went to Pizza Fusion in Weston for lunch.
Day 3
Today Karen and I went to Epcot where they had the International Flower & Garden Festival. Everywhere you look there are Disney characters made out of plants and flowers. We walked around a lot, went on some rides to include Soarin' and had lunch in Mexico. After lunch we walked around more looking at all the different displays they had. We also went over to where they have the Segway area and got to try riding one. They are really cool once you get used to it. They also offer 1-3 hour Segway tours where you get to ride around Epcot on the Segway.
We headed back to the world showcase for dinner. We ate at Teppan Edo in Japan, which is a hibachi place. The dinner was just ok and no where near as good as Japan Inn or Kobe. Next time we want to eat at Germany. After dinner we show the fireworks show, which was really great and then it was time to leave and go back to the hotel.
Day 4
The next day we woke up and checked out of the hotel. Before heading home we went to the Florida Mall and walked around for a bit. Then once we got home we went to dinner with Karen's parents and her brother Rami and his girlfriend Emilia. After dinner the parents went home and the kids went to Jaxson's Ice Cream for dessert.
After Medieval Times Karen and I went to Ice Bar located on International Drive. Yes this bar is what it sounds like. A bar made from ice. It is basically a huge cooler where the walls, bar tables, and even chairs are all made out of ice! It is 27 degrees inside and they give you gloves and a heavy jacket before you go in. They also don’t let you in for longer than 45 minutes. And yes, we did last that long. O even the glasses and mugs are made out of ice. When you come out of the “ice bar” you enter the “fire lounge” which feels so good after being in 27 degrees for 45 minutes. It wasn’t too crowded, which was nice, so we hung out for a bit and then went back to the hotel to go to sleep…….and keep warm!
Tonight we went to Medieval Times Dinner show where we got to do Karen’s favorite thing. EAT WITH YOUR HANDS! The dinner included soup, garlic toast, chicken on a bone, and spare ribs; all eaten with your hands! What a fun mess. We sat in the yellow team area and got to cheer on our team. We didn’t win but it was fun anyways. The yellow night even gave Karen a flower!
Today Karen and I went to Magic Kingdom where we decided to walk around and look in the shops instead of doing many rides. Although we did do a few, we spent most of the day just looking around. Karen tried on many tiaras and I tried on many different hats. Karen also got her face painted with a swan and got so many compliments on it. We watched the parade go down Main Street USA and also played the Buzz Light Year Game.
Today we arrived in Orlando at about 6:00 pm. We checked into our hotel, The Country Inn & Suites and got settled into our room. We booked the Jacuzzi suite, which had a big Jacuzzi whirl tub right in the middle of the room. After we were settled in we went to Downtown Disney to eat dinner.
We decided to eat at T-Rex, a restaurant kind of like Rainforest Cafe, but themed around dinosaurs. The inside is amazing with moving dinosaurs and lights that make entire rooms change colors. Since there was an hour wait, we walked around the shops for a bit until it was time to eat. We finally ate dinner around 10:00 pm and it was very good. Dessert was even better. The portions were huge and we suggest going there with a bigger group because when we were done we were stuffed and still had leftovers. After dinner we walked around a little more and then headed back to the hotel.
Today Karen and I took went to the Seminole Indian Reservation with Mimi. I have never been out there and we decided today to take the hour drive and see what they had to offer. Initially we were going to go on an air boat ride, but then we decided to go on the swamp buggy tour. The Indian reservation is really cool and has lots of animals including a black bear and panther. It was a fun day but I still want to go on that air boat ride.
The last day of geocaching started out with a C.I.T.O. event. CITO stands for Cache In, Trash Out. Basically it means you always leave a cache site cleaner then when you found it. You can clean up a little at each cache site while you are geocaching, or you can even have C.I.T.O. events where lots of people get together to clean up an entire area. This particular C.I.T.O. event was put together to clean out all the vines and weeds that have been taking over the shore line of the Loxahatchee River. About 50 people showed up and we all started to pull out vines and weeds from along the river. In about 2 hours we pulled out almost all of the weeds. You could actually see the river now. After the event we hit the trails again to find a few more caches.
Everyone who camped out had to leave that afternoon but Karen and I stayed in Jupiter and extra night. So after we were done geocaching we headed back to the hotel and I took Karen to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant overlooking the intercoastal and the Jupiter Beach Lighthouse. We had a really great time and met lots of really great people. We got a total of 67 geocaches even though there were over 250 in the entire park. We plan on going back a few times in the next few months just to get some more geocaches that we couldn't get during the event. We also can not wait to go to Cacheapalooza 5!Saturday was the main geocaching day. We started early and head out to the trails. It rained all day long, but that was OK because it kept us nice and cool. We ended up riding our bikes 15 miles thru the woods and found about 45 geocaches. For dinner everyone that attended the event got together for a pot luck dinner and BBQ. About 150 attended and we had so much food. There was also a raffle going on during dinner and although we bought tickets, we didn't win anything. After the dinner we headed back to Steve and Sharon's camp site and lite a fire. It was freezing out so we kept warm by marking shmores. Later that night we attended another night cache which required us to use flashlights and find little glowing markers in the woods. We followed these markers for about 3 miles until we found the cache. We were the first people to find it out of a group of about 50 so we got to keep the actual cache container which was an old ammo can. At around 1:00 am, we made it back to the hotel, took nice warm showers and went to bed. One last day of geocaching awaited us.
Cacheapalooza is a big geocaching event held every year in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound. Since Karen and I just started geocaching we decided this was a must do event. A friend of ours Steve is also into geocaching and he was going to attend the event too with his son, Steve Jr. We also planned on meeting a few other local cachers at the park that we had met and talked to online. Steve and everyone else was camping out in tents for the weekend, but Karen and I were staying at the Jupiter Beach Resort and Spa just up the street. After we checked into the hotel we went to the park and met up with everyone. We all hopped on our bikes and headed out to grab some caches before it got dark. We had a nice bike ride and got about 15 caches.
Later that night there was a night geocaching event, where we had to look around for caches using flashlights. This event was really fun and was a different kind of geocaching experience for us. We then headed back to the hotel and called it a night since we had a long day of geocaching ahead of us.
