We've been in Florida almost 4 years now. And the girls are getting OLD. It's scary to see how fast time goes by.
However, one of the coolest parts of aging children is that they start actually having their own thoughts and opinions about life and culture. One of Kaitlyn's recent favorites is a singer named Toby Mac. He used to sing with a band called DC Talk. They started as a band when I was in college, and were hugely successful. A few years ago they went their separate ways, and have all gone their separate ways in the music industry.
Toby Mac, who I originally thought would fail as a solo artist, simply because all he could do was rap music back then, has developed tremendously as a singer and artist. Kaitlyn LOVES his music, and it has caused me to really listen to his stuff too. I now have about 3-4 of his songs in my ipod as encouragement for my bike commute.
Anyhow, Chris and I splurged a few months ago, and picked up tickets to his show in Lakeland this month. And the day FINALLY arrived to go up there.
So, here are some of the highlights from our time up there:
First of all, you can see a couple pictures of us in line at the show, and inside the building here: The Joy FM sponsors Toby Mac in Lakeland Shots of us include #'s 2605, 2607, 2608, and 2818.
And then here are a few shots of us hanging out before, during, and after the show:
Another great thing about the girls new tastes in music, is that it has lead me to discover some bands that I would have never normally listened to.
Here are a few free tunes you might check out. These are some of the musicians that were with Toby Mac in concert.
This guy has the #1 song in Christian radio right now - called Something in your Eyes. Shon Lock - is the guy in the 3rd picture from the top (above) You can hear the ShonLock.com song here. Click on the "Enter" button at the bottom. The song auto-plays when you click through. You can download it on itunes here.
And another band that was pretty cool - was a new group called SuperHeRose, click their name and you'll be able to download a couple of their tunes. The girls really liked SuperFreak and We Got That. The first and second pictures (above) are a couple of guys from this band.
It was a great show, and we had a good time together. Toby puts on a killer show. Al
Now that the weather is starting to really heat up, here in Florida, it's time for most everyone to venture back out into the sunshine.
One of the newest, most-enjoyable places for kids to do that in Lakeland is at the Common Grounds park. This park, which was budgeted at almost $2 million dollars broke ground in October 2007. The park, itself, took almost 4 years of planning to come to fruition. It was scheduled to take almost a year for construction to be completed. It officially opened in January 2009. The park address is 1000 East Edgewood Drive.
Since it's inception, this park has seen heavy traffic from lots of local kids and families.
On the weekends, you can expect a really high turn-out by everyone in the neighborhood. If you want to have a bit of privacy with your family here, you should plan on visiting during a weekday, when other kids are at school. It's certainly not packed, like a Disney theme-park, but it can get pretty crowded on the weekends.
If you're looking for directions to get here, this is the Google map:
It's pretty easy to find: Traveling on Highway 37 (South Florida avenue), you would take Edgewood towards the east. Or coming from Bartow Highway, or Lakeland Highlands Blvd., you will head west on Edgewood.
The park itself is on the north side of Edgewood, just across from the Cleveland Heights Golf Course. The park is right next to the tennis courts.
There is no usage fee to play at the park. Kids can play for free to their heart's content. Common Grounds park was designed to accommodate kids of varying ages and abilities, including disabled children as well.
Some of the various features include:
A large tunnel, wide enough for wheelchairs, runs under a hill called Gopher Mountain.
The park itself is shaped like a giant butterfly, and it includes several sculptures of butterflies.
Many of the play structures are non-traditional, modern in design, which kids seem to really enjoy playing on.
It is a conservation park, in that it has artificial turf (instead of regular grass) so no water or mowing is required to keep the grounds maintained.
There is free parking on the south side, right next to the tennis courts. There is also parking along the streets running north beside the park (Buckingham Avenue).
The concept behind this park has even generated interest from other local communities around the country. It seems, lots of families with disabled children, are desperately looking for places where their kids can interact with their friends and peers.
Today, we continued our tour with visits to a couple more Springs.
A bit of editorial comment, if you want the story of the tour please drop down:
A strange thing to me, about Florida, is that some of the natural land features are owned by the State of Florida or the federal government, and some are owned by private individuals. And it's hard to understand why such nice locales are owned by certain citizens and not by everyone in the state. I know a lot of it has to do with profits and money gathering, but on one of our stops today, which I'll explain later, the privately owned piece of property was FAR TOO expensive for what it should have been. I won't say much more about this, but it just seems absurd to me that a place so spectacular could be owned and manipulated by individuals rather than offered to everyone, especially when you compare it to the other publicly owned properties around the state.
I am by no means a socialist... but I guess I'm not sure how forcing people to pay exorbitant fees to get access to a piece of property they should have much easier access to, is a good idea? In the Florida Keys, the land is OWNED by the State, but private businesses are allowed to operate in the Keys while the people still maintain ownership of the property. That seems like a much better idea to me. Let me know what you think after you read the rest of the story?
TO HERE, where we continue the story of today: After yesterday's visit to Ichetucknee Springs, we were excited to visit a couple more springs today. It's strange, living in Florida, because all you really want to do is get into the water, but because of the gators it's not feasible to swim in the rivers. The ONLY place where it is possible to really swim in rivers, safely, is to swim in the springs. However, in the Summer, they get PACKED with people. But they are sure are fun for swimming, and they feel SO cool and refreshing.
And we weren't sure exactly how far we had to go for the day. Unfortunately, the springs we planned to stop and swim at were really early in the day. We only had about 10 miles to get to the first spring. The first set of springs all lie along the Santa Fe River.
Our plan for the day was to stop at Blue Springs, which everyone we had talked to, had said it was a much better family location. When we got to the spot leading back to the springs, we discovered that the road went back for about a quarter mile (that we could see), and it was covered in sand. AGAIN! What's with the sandy roads? That doesn't work on a bicycle! If you own a business with sandy roads, this is a word of warning, we can't push our bikes down your sand covered road. It's not worth the effort.
So, after that discouragement, we pressed on to a place called Ginnie Springs. It was just a mile or two up the road. We made the turn off to the springs, and we actually were able to travel on a paved road for the mile or so to get back to the entrance of the springs.
**Side note** It seems everywhere you go, you have to travel mile or two off the beaten path to get to your destination. In cars, not too difficult. By bike, it's a little more daunting to make that one mile trip each way, especially when you have kids traveling with you.
Anyhow, we got back to the entrance to the springs, and realized they were going to charge us $12 for each adult. And I can't even remember what the kids cost? It didn't turn out to be a cheap stop at a swimming hole, like it should have been. Unfortunately, by being privately owned, Ginnie Springs does a MASSIVE business to scuba divers who like to dive in cave systems. There are miles and miles of caving for divers here. The property also has about 7 springs you can get into. So, it is a large, important, money generating, piece of property for the entire area. And it is all controlled by private business.
It wouldn't have been so bad, if they would have knocked off a few bucks, and let us just go swimming. But, nope, they have to charge the FULL pricing of the entire park just to go in and go for a swim.
After doing all that complaining, I hate to say this...
But Ginnie Springs is an absolutely amazing park. The springs are nice. They have a full-service campground. They have a clean general store (with prices that match their entrance fees in steepness). And there is ALL KINDS of activity going on here. Apparently, in the Summer season, the entire park is PACKED with visitors. It wasn't busy, at all, while we were there. But the water felt absolutely lovely.
I guess it might be a little cold for some people. There was an older scuba diver there, who said we were the steel family, for swimming in the frigid water. But, I am guessing, he has spent a lot of time in the equatorial regions of the world. Because, compared to the Pacific Northwest waters, this was still quite warm.
After spending a couple of hours at Ginnie Springs swimming, playing, and eating lunch, we headed off in a westerly direction. Our final destination for the night was supposed to be another privately owned spring with a campground.
Before we got there, we had to bike for 10-15 miles across Wacasassa Flats. Apparently, this area is even flatter than the lightly rolling hills we've been traveling through, so they get the honor of being called flat-lands. Although the trees and shrubbery seemed a little bit different than previous areas we had biked through, I have a hard time telling the differences between the different types of vegetation here.
After we traveled across the flats, towards the west, we then turned to the south. By this time, we had reached another section of the Suwanee River. And there was a series of several more springs here.
We had intended to stop at Sun Springs for the night, to make today a nice, light travel day. However, our instructions and directions hit a snag, and caused us to keep pushing on. As we rode south, we never even saw Sun Springs along the road. So, we kept on riding. And, the place where the next spring was supposed to be, there wasn't a single sign or indicator that we could find. I kept watching, and looking, and we kept rolling along the road.
Christy was like a freight train, she just kept steaming along, expecting to get to the next stop at some point. She was about a tenth of a mile in front of Keeley and I on the tandem.
Finally, after we had traveled WELL past the expected turn, I decided we needed to figure what in the world was going on. However, that meant I had to pull out some Lance Armstrong high speed sprint maneuvers to catch up to her. If you can imagine, seeing something big and clunky (like the Oscar Meyer hot-dog weiner mobile) in a full out sprint race, that's about what Keeley and I looked like trying to speed up and catch Chris.
When we finally caught up to her, I had to yell out to STOOOOOOOP, as we steam-rolled right past her. By that time I couldn't get the tandem to slow down any faster. So, Keeley and I had to roll up another tenth of a mile to slow down enough to turn around and come back to Chris and Kait.
All I can say is it's a good thing we stopped, because when I called the second spring we were planning to stop at, we had already rolled 2 or 3 miles past the turn. I call the guy and say... "Hey, we are on bikes coming south on ___ road. How do we find you?" He says... "Yeah, you'll need to go back and turn at that road. We had our sign stolen last week, and I haven't had a chance to get a new one yet."
Great! That is so perfect! Especially for all of your visitors, who might want to find your campground and visit. They need to be able to find the place if they are planning on visiting. Don't you think?
So, we finally found the right road to turn off of. The funniest part is that even though we made finally figured out which back road to turn on, we still missed the second turn, leading to the entrance of the campground and park. Not only was there NO signage for the park from the highway we were biking on, there was also no sign from the back road directing us to how to get into the park. We actually rode past the entrance road, before realizing... duh... that was the road we needed to turn down.
Talk about INSANE!
A message to all businesses in Florida... if you want us to visit your store, we MUST be able to see that you are there. I don't have business ESP. You need to advertise that you are there, or I can't find you. Make a sign that I can see from the road. Or have a sign on your building that I can see from the road. OK? OK!
And here's a quick video of Kait taking a dip in the main spring, at Ginnie Springs park.
This one took me a while to put up, but I finally got a chance to add a little bit more about the St. Augustine Cycling Festival 20th annual Endless Summer Watermelon Ride.
They had routes that passed thru St. Augustine. It is one of the most amazing historic towns, America's oldest continuously occupied city. Some of the special sponsors were:
SERF motorcycle escorts
Champion Cycling
About Bicycles
Lakeshore Cycling
Open Road Bicycles
Donovan Heat and Air
Bicycles Etc.
City Cycle
BikeFitters
You can visit the NFBC website for more details about the ESWR and the Cycling Festival. www.nfbc.us
While neither of these events are particularly life-changing, I thought they were pretty cool. So I thought I would share.
Image by eugene via FlickrFirst of all, life in the office has been insane for the last couple of weeks. So crazy, in fact, that I had the pleasure of taking off early one day. While I was riding home, this kid leans out the window of his car as they drive by me... and he yells... "Hey, Lance Armstrong!"
Of course, I didn't want to disappoint him, so I nodded my head and gave him a quick wave. I'm sure he probably figured out later, that I was not Lance. However, the comparison, as I was actually riding, was a GREAT compliment to me. So... I have to say, Thanks for calling me Lance.
Second: I have begun writing articles on a more consistent basis. I was attempting to write one article a day for 25 days. Starting on September 27th, I have published 16 live articles on a website called ezine articles. That website is one of the top 115 websites in the world, so it gets a lot of visitors, and some great interest from readers.
I was surprised to receive this in the mail this week, after publishing a few of my articles. I have reached the platinum level author status at ezine articles. While it is not a big deal, it was still pretty cool to get this gift pack from them in the mail. WOW! Thanks to ezine articles for a great platform to publish on, and for recognizing your authors for their input and importance.
And if you want to check out the articles I've been writing, you can take a look here: Kelson Spear Some of you may know, I've been a part of this topic for a while.
Not too long ago, we all ventured up to St. Augustine for the weekend. They were having a big cycling event and a bike ride. I was hoping for some great classes, vendors, and just maybe some great deals on some bike touring gear.
As part of the weekend, the Boy Scouts put on the Watermelon Ride that started at the St. Augustine amphi-theater. I had to drag myself out of be at 7:00 to get there for the start of the ride. But I did it.
Here is the opening parade of cyclists as they left the starting area. I can tell you the entire parking lot was PACKED with cars. There was barely walking room. I don't know many people showed up for the ride, but it seemed like several hundred cruised past me in this video.
I also grabbed some pictures out by Highway 95, in Elkton, FL as the riders sped by our hotel. I'll probably put a few pics up a little later.
If I got a shot of you, let me know and I'll add your name to the list.
This was a great, males only dolphin show at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. We all really enjoyed visiting this place. The animals were great to watch. And this show was one of the best.
One of our latest ideas, is to take a bike tour as a family. Finally, we're kicking around the idea, after 3 years off the road here in Florida. I'm not sure the girls are too excited about it? I guess we'll have to see how it goes when we get there.
Anyhow, here is a brief, 20 second clip of us test riding a Trek T1000 tandem bike. We're thinking about picking this up for our trip. It's a pretty nice bike. And, it's more expensive than any bike I've ever purchased before ... ouch!
Recently, Kaitlyn celebrated her 11th birthday. Please no comments about how old I am getting, I beg you! I already see it every morning when I get up, I don't need reminders from others.
Anyhow ...
As part of our celebration she asked if we could spend a day at an aquarium. Christy was able to get a great deal on the entry fees to Clearwater Marine Aquarium, so we decided that would be a great place to go.
Turns out, it is a fantastic marine aquarium to visit. While they have sea animals there you can check out, they are also, primarily, a rescue and re-habituate facility. Which means, they are trying to help these animals recover so they can go live back in the wild. And since the Clearwater Aquarium is right down the street from one of America's best beaches, you really can't go wrong paying them a visit.
Here are some of the highlights:
- A petting and feeding tank with rays (they feel like silky, soft, velvet to the touch) - An excellent series personalized touch tanks with live sea creatures (sponges, crabs, and urchins) - Huge sea turtles - And several dolphin tanks
One of the most important visitors to the Marine aquarium is Winter. She is a dolphin who was caught in a crab net at three months old, and had to have her tail fins amputated. She went on to re-learn how to swim without them. And the aquarium also had a new tail fluke donated and designed for her to help her swim again.
In the process of the amputation, she has become a worldwide inspiration to war veterans and other disabled community members who have found, in her, a spokesman who reaches to them across racial, social, and political boundaries. That may be a little over-dramatic, but it is definitely a cool story. So cool, in fact, that there is a major motion picture that will be starting next month based on Winter's tale. It will star Harry Connick, Ashley Judd, and Morgan Freeman.
Here's a video I took of Winter in her tank.
We'll put up some pictures and more videos in a few days, when we get the chance.
If you're ever in the area, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium is definitely a worthwhile stop along the way. Al
One of our primary goals was to get to the Florida Keys again so we could enjoy the great underwater environment with the girls. They seemed to LOVE it last time. So we were decided to splurge a bit and go back out snorkeling with them. But Chris was able to score some great Buy one get one coupons so we got half off our Snorkel trips! Always looking out for a deal!
These pics are from our trip down from a couple of months ago. I'm just finally getting the chance to share them.
Now, we've gone out with 3 different snorkel boats - and we even made it out BEFORE all the oil that BP has released into the Gulf hits the entire coastline and screws up most of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, it turned out to be fairly poor weather, so we had to put up with some super choppy water. However I would prefer vacationing out on the water over almost anything else - even if I had to put up with a little bit of sea sickness.
Here were a few pics from our trip this time: This is one of the boats that we went on.
One of the many Barracuda that we saw. And he is even one of the smaller ones. And this is one of the rare Kaitlyn fish!
As we explained a little while ago ... we were able to pick up some SUPER cheap visits to Disney's Orlando locations by donating a day of our time. On our last day, we decided to head back to Hollywood Studios for two key reasons.
They have two of the absolute best Disney rides - Hollywood Tower of Terror - The Rock n' Roller Coaster Both of these rides turn out to be our family's favorites. They are both absolutely awesome, adrenaline rush rides - for us and for the kids.
We all agreed that we had to take the Disney character drawing classes. We had taken two last time (the Toy Story alien and Bolt), and they were fantastic. On this visit we decided to take as many of these classes as we could.
Here are some pics from our trip. We'll start with the Disney drawing class pictures. As you can see ... in 20 minutes you learn to draw (with pretty amazing results) people's all-time favorite Disney characters.
Here's Dale
Here's the Genie
And Mickey Mouse
And Uncle Scrooge
Finally, here's Tigger Too!
And to top it all off, Keeley had the awesome idea for this sweet picture at Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror ride. The first time you get on this ride, it's an adrenaline rush because you're not sure what's going to happen or when? It really messes with your head, which is great. The lines to this ride are consistently shorter than most other rides because most people are afraid to ride it.
After five or six trips you come up with something sweet like this:
We have to thank Keeley for such a KILLER idea! Check out the guy right behind Kait. Yep! That's exactly how it feels the first time you ride the Tower of Terror. And his face absolutely shows it. We were laughing so hard at this pic, we HAD to buy it. What a great memory. The girls love it!
