Orlando - Jebediah Springfield

I'm still uploading and naming photos and videos.  I thought there would be almost nothing because we were at Orlando two years ago, so I should have photographed everything worth photographing.  And I should have had a reasonable amount of work to catch up on because I was mostly caught up on my laptop and phone.  Never seems to work that way.  We did a day at Universal Islands of Adventure, a day at Universal Studios, a day at Magic Kingdom, a day at Epcot, a day at Disney Animal Kingdom, and a day at Cocoa Beach and in the pool and engaging in karaoke (Eryn, not me).

I'll get some details out here starting in the next day, but in the meantime, something to keep my thread alive.  At Universal Studios, they've expanded the Simpsons area.  Here's my favorite picture of my wife and I at the park hanging out with Jebediah Springfield.

Favorite Moments of 2011

I have three favorite moments from 2011, and they're in order, despite that my family isn't first.  I suspect they'll understand, given that the first one is a.) bicycling and b.) with Ming.

1.) Bike the Border with Ming.
2.) Ride from Colorado to Montana with Grandma and Eryn
3.) Orlando with Jen and Eryn

This is not to say I like vacations with my wife the least, it simply points out that bicycling trumps all.

Blue Springs and the Manatees

Our last full day in Orlando, we rented a car and went to Blue Springs State Park. When I was younger, let's say it wasn't 25 years ago, Kyle, Ben and I did a summer trip from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., then down the coast to Florida, and back to Minnesota.  We were poor and operating mostly out of a car with a tent and some bicycles, so we did a lot of camping at ad hoc locations.  One place we stopped was Blue Springs, renowned as a wintering area for manatees.  Around mid-November they shut down the swimming because hundreds of manatees swim into the spring area to enjoy the relatively warm 72 degree water coming from the spring.  But on November 1 swimming was still open and there was a chance we'd see a few.  You're supposed to stay away from them as the rangers have had problems with teenagers carving their initials into them (yes, really) and pushing the babies away from their mothers, but even when you don't go near them, they like to come give you a shove and swim under you, and roll around in your space.

There are alligators in the area as well, although for the most part they seem to stay away from where the manatees are.  I suspect they lose to the manatees in any shoving match.  And the water in the spring area is so clear you can see everything in your space.  Over the "boil", the spring, which is like 120 feet deep and has a constant stream of scuba divers going to and from it even on a slow day like the day we were there, you can see down to where all the water is welling up to push you around which is a bit creepy.

Near the entrance to the spring area, where it joins the river and the water is more brackish and full of weedy places to hide, there are many warnings about the alligators.  They don't want you to miss them.


Although Eryn's not scared of any damn sign.  I think I see some eyes in the water to her right.


The water is even clearer than it looks in this picture.  All those brown things are big three foot long gars.


The staff pointed us at a geocache that doesn't seem to be in geocaching.com.  Perhaps it's because it's full of two kilos of cocaine?  I jest. Those are two bags of rock/sand, and the cache was some sort of Sea World cache.  Eryn grabbed a coin and bracelet, but there was no way to log the find.


Let us get to the actual manatees.  Here are the two that were swimming with Eryn and I.  A mother and her pup.


It's not well known that manatees are particularly susceptible to mind control.  Here I do my best to start my manatee army of evil by implanting the mental suggestion that they go forth and do my bidding.  If you're an enemy of mine, I'd stay away from any temperate waters and avoid any manatees dressed as mermaids.


They seemed to particularly like Eryn and would follow her around.  She was a little nervous when she was out in the open water where she couldn't touch the bottom, but there was a nice set of steps you could sit on, as well as some shallow areas with rocks.  In this picture she wasn't going under to look at them first.  They were definitely coming over to stare at her.


Go forth!  Do as I command!  In this picture do I look as cold as I felt?  72 degrees isn't freezing, but it's not exactly swimming pool warm, and there was a good breeze blowing branches out of the trees that added to the chill and called up goose bumps on my pasty white Minnesota skin.


Pooteewheet checking out the manatees.  They made it a point to wander back and forth underneath her.


The steps I was referring to and the manatees getting a close look at Eryn.  She says this was her favorite part of vacation.  Even better than the roller coasters and Harry Potter world.


My favorite picture was one I could have taken in Minnesota.  SQUIRREL!!!  I think it lends itself to putting a word bubble on it so I can add silly captions.

The Other Univeral

Between the days at Islands of Adventure, we went to Universal Studios.  The area with Shrek, Jaws, Terminator 2, the Simpsons, and the sorts of rides I remember from being a kid at Universal in California.  I think Eryn was originally dubious about why we'd want to spend time there when we could be going back to Harry Potter, but she ended up having a great time.  Particularly on the interactive rides like the "make a movie" ride with Christopher Walken (nice orange sneakers!) where they film members of the audience and make them part of action-adventure movie/train ride.  Or the MIB ride where you shoot at aliens with a laser gun.  She's all about laser tag.  My favorite was the Simpons' ride, where you don't really go anywhere, but the roller coaster car you're in shakes and rattles as the walls move around it, and giant screens make you feel like you're on a hell of a roller coaster ride that includes being chewed on by a giant Maggie.

Pooteewheet and Eryn not too long after the Jaws ride.


I got in trouble for spray painting on a wall.


Who's a dingus?  Eryn's a dingus!!!


After a day of rides, we went to Hard Rock for dinner.  Not my usual choice of faire, but Eryn wanted wings, and I was pretty sure that was the closest place with good wings.  This picture is for Kyle.  It's Alanis Morissette's harmonica, next to a picture of her playing a guitar.  And it says she used it for a hand in my pocket, but if you're playing harmonica, then your hands can't be in your pockets.  It's all very ironic.


Eryn wanted a picture next to Pete Townshend's guitar.  Or what was left of his '73 Gibson Les Paul.  I quote the Hard Rock Orlando description that it is, "a testament to the raw energy and aggression of The Who's brilliant guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend.  A landmark instrument, it was immortalized in the famous print ad for the film The Kids Are Alright.  The ad featured Mr. Townshend (at the Newcastle Odeon) with the guitar over his head moments before it was reduced to it's current condition.  The caption read, "This Guitar Has Seconds To Live."

That said, this isn't that guitar.  The waitress led us astray.  But it is pieces of a Stratocaster Townshend smashed in 2002 during a concert in which he played The Kids Are Alright.  Tomato/tomato.


The usual Universal Globe picture you have to take when you visit.  The stuffed animal is "Patch."  Eryn won it playing head to head whackamole against Pooteewheet.  No one else would play and they guy felt bad for her because she'd been there for ten minutes without a challenger.

Berlin Wall

One of my favorite things about geocaching is that it often takes me to somewhere new that I otherwise wouldn't think to visit, even when that someplace is a few feet from where I'm standing.  Our last day at Universal Studios, I made sure to catch the virtual cache (no box, just a location) in the shopping area before we left for the day.  What surprised me was that it was only a few dozen feet from where we'd been eating the night before.  Not just a few dozen feet from the Hard Rock itself, but a literally a few dozen feet from the back of the restaurant near where we'd been sitting.  You spend so much time looking around at the guitars and jackets on the walls that you don't think to just step out the back doors.

So while my wife and daughter were busy scoring a piece of banana cream pie from Emeril's, which she hadn't had since we went to New Orleans before we had Eryn, I got to touch a piece of the Berlin Wall.


Click through and you can select the large or original picture size if you want to read the plaque.

Kennedy Space Center

Our first full day in Orlando, it was scheduled to rain.  So we made the decision to rent a car (from the lovely, chesty, Welsh redhead at Enterprise Rent a Car, Jess...think Eve Myles, but much cuter, chestier, an no gap tooth).  The hotel we stayed at was only about a third of a mile from the rent a car location, so I just wandered over in the morning.  It made it very easy to have a car only on days we wanted one.  Anyway...I digress in more ways than one.  We assumed Kennedy Space Center would be more rain amenable and drove to the East shore to check it out.

This is Eryn with a fake astronaut.  He's giving her the thumbs up because she passed inspection at the metal detector.  I'm not sure what they were so worried we'd bring into the area.  Perhaps it's because after that checkpoint it was possible to get on a bus and go to the staging and launch areas.  The guard at the metal detector was very nice and gave Eryn a few photos - not prints, photos - of the last shuttle launch.


Eryn - and family - with a real astronaut.  Robert Springer.  He was incredibly enjoyable to listen to for the 30 minutes he spoke about the two missions he'd been on.  One "public" and one military.  He talked about how they reset the astronauts internal clocks for the military mission as those missions tended to launch at 3:00 a.m.  About how excited he was when he was up there and how much time he spent looking out the window.  Shared some of his own photographs from space.  Showed a picture he took of the oil fields burning during the Gulf War as the military had asked the shuttle crew to provide what pictures they could.  He was a great speaker to boot.  I got a signed photo for Greg, who was on my team before the reorg that happened as I was stepping out the door for two weeks of vacation, not knowing Greg had actually worked on Robert Springer's STS-38 military launch as an engineer.

And yes, yes I did wear my Marvin the Martian shirt to the space center.


One more astronaut.  This one was spying on us.  Creepy.  Maybe it's just a knowing look because he's sure we'll go see the Star Trek Live presentation, which ended up involving two Canadians - one of them Vulcan - doing a play about tribbles, time travel, and the last Star Trek movie.  Most peculiar, although it made Eryn very interested in tribbles.  Until now her old Star Trek experience has been limited to knowing that when someone shouts Pon Farr, you should respond, "dunt dunt dun dun dun dun dunnn dunt dunt da daaaaaa...."


Eryn in a Mercury capsule.  She would have been the right size to be an astronaut.


Eryn in another capsule.  This one had more leg room.


And yet another.  We talked about how creepy it probably was being in space in one of these things, particularly wearing a space suit that took up even more of the available room.


Quick cut scene to Pooteewheet and I getting amorous...and...rockets!!!  Hmm....that just seems perverse with seven rockets.


And isn't the rocket in the scene always blasting off, or blowing up on the launch pad?  Maybe adding a fountain to the scene with only one rocket center stage works more effectively?  Probably not - that's not the movie cutaway to symbolize gettin-it-on, that's the movie cutaway to symbolize I drank too much beer and I have to pee.


One more gratuitous rocket picture.


Eryn and I as astronauts.  I'm having more fun than she is.  She was worn out by this time.  She did frame her face better than I did.


In the faux shuttle with real shuttle wheels.  While walking around we passed an Amish couple.  It seems oxymoronic to see Amish folks getting on a shuttle, even a fake one with real wheels.  I'm reminded of The Chive's meme about presenting something totally crazy and then claiming "your argument is invalid." An Amish couple riding the space shuttle.  Your argument is invalid.

This guy creeped me out.  It seems very 2001 A Space Odyssey.  And don't focus on his crotch zipper too much, because that's really the creepiest part.


Eryn in front of a big, big, big engine.  I think this is the Saturn V they have on display.  Nearby, completely overshadowed, is the astronaut van.  I shit you not.  It's a van, with a few leather seats in it, and a sign that says "astronaut van".


The launching pad.  The tracks in the foreground are where the launch vehicle drives the shuttle (drove, although they had a new mobile launch vehicle there to take the new Mars rover to the launch site - I think Eryn just told me it's called Curiosity).  It was great to get out there and see the staging building, the launch pad, and across the water, the Cape Canaveral unmanned and private-public joint venture launch sites.  I can see why so many people would want to be there for a launch.  It has to be exciting.  We also saw a large alligator in the water from the viewing area.


Finally, the constellation ball that floats on water at the main area.  If you push hard enough, you can make it go in a particular direction.  Eryn thought it was exciting that she could move something so large.


I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the Space Center, but meeting an astronaut and the bus ride out to the viewing areas sealed it for me.  Well worth the drive and giving NASA some cash.

Two Signs and a Lizard

This sign was at Kennedy Space Center as you drove in.  Or out.  All I could think was, "Maybe I won't cache too much while I'm in Florida."  I don't have to worry too much about spiders and snakes here in central Minnesota.  I always have to remind myself the rest of the world isn't so benign.



I thought this sign combo near our hotel was funny.  Either you're too stupid to drive and plowing into the trees rather than the show entrance, or the show entrance is a do-not-enter zone, in which case you're just stuck at the signs, pondering how you're ever going to get into the building to take part in what looked to be an incredibly cheesy Pirate show, along the lines of Medieval Times.  See the trees decorated with lights for Christmas in the background?  Here's a closeup...


...infested with lizards!  You'll have to trust me that there were many more lizards than just this one.  One more geocaching hazard.  Reach for a cache, potentially squish a lizard.  Ick.

We Went to Cocoa Beach

After we went to Kennedy Space Center for a day - you have to deal with my nonlinear posting here - we thought we should try to see a beach in Florida, as we were close to the ocean.  So we went to Cocoa beach.  It was late.  It was raining.  Where we parked seemed to have people hanging out who weren't actually going down to the beach, but talking to each other through open windows.  I'm sure they were just exchanging beach towels. This is our picture from the beach.

It was far more comfortable inside the Pig and Whistle, where I had the delicious looking Shepherd's Pie pictured at that link.  Although mine was the steak version because it was on special.