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Like many Michiganders, we headed south for our spring break. Our destination was Florida. Normally you don’t want to go to Florida during spring break, as it is overrun with crazy college kids, but this was our high school’s spring break which was a couple weeks after most college’s spring break weeks.

It takes long enough to drive there that we decided to take two days to drive it.

Day 1:
Not a lot to report here. We took the boys to a Waffle House for the first time. It was fine, and now they can say they’ve been.

Our destination this day was just outside Atlanta. We got there with some daylight left, and we had been sitting in the car for several hours, so we took a short hike after dinner.

There was a small parking lot and trailhead by the Chattahoochee River. We picked it because it had the remains of an old mill on site, which the boys liked scrambling around.

Then it was evening, then morning the next day.

Day 2:
Our second day was a little more exciting than the first day. Still a lot of driving, from Atlanta to Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay was not our actual destination, but it was on the way and I wanted to see manatees and TECO has one of the better manatee viewing areas.

TECO is an electric power plant that uses the water from the bay/channel for cooling. The result of cooling the power plant is that the water in the channel gets the extra heat and makes it cozy for certain wildlife.

We walked down the boardwalk to the end and saw that the channel is separated from the rest of the bay, all the way out. I think so that manatees that come for the warm water don’t end up in a boating area.

But despite all the great reviews and the whole setup, we did not see any manatees. All we saw were some fish, like this:

Someone at the viewing area told us “Due to the recent hot spell of weather, the channel got too warm for the manatees, so they moved out into deeper water. If you had been here a week ago, you would have seen a lot of them.”

So no manatees for us. We bought a manatee trinket at the souvenir shop as a reminder of this occasion.

On the plus side, the manatee viewing station also had a stingray tank, where you could try to pet a stingray as it swam past you. Maybe they called them just rays, because they’re not the stinging type. At least we got to do that.

Then we continued on our way to the house, had dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 3:
This was our first full day in Florida. Our plan was to go to Sanibel Island and enjoy the beach. And maybe find some interesting shells.

For those of you not familiar with that area of Florida, there are lots of beaches, and almost enough parking. And the parking is not free. It was only about $5 per hour, cheaper than most cities, but you do have to have your phone to pay online.

The groups of islands in that area are connected via bridges for the most part. Here is the view getting onto Sanibel.

We chose Sanibel because we heard it had a lot of shells. What was interesting was there wasn’t much sand – the beach was all tiny bits of broken shells. But the boys did find some shells, including a couple that were alive. Most of the good shells had been taken, the beach was full of other people also looking for shells.

Our first stop was right after the bridge, at the lighthouse.

I thought the lighthouse was rather bleak. I later saw pictures of what it looked like before the last hurricane and it was not so bleak back then.

And here’s what the beach looked like

For lunch that day, we had packed a lunch. We found another beach, this one with some shade, and sat in our beach chairs and watched the ocean. Here’s the view from our picnic spot.

We ended up driving to about 3 different beaches, trying them out and seeing if the shells were better anywhere.

Then we drove back to the house for dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, played Phase 10, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

To Be Continued…