Gutoski-James Family Fun: March 2019

One of the advantages of coming to Charlottesville for the winter is that it brought us 10 hours closer to Naples, Florida where Gus's parents usually spend their winter. They have been bugging us to visit them for years. We were finally close enough that we decided to make the crazy 15 and a half hour drive to visit them.

Everyone had a great time. The kids were most excited by the first palm trees they saw out the car window on our drive down, but getting to stay the night at a hotel was a close second. We even got a terrible all you can eat hotel breakfast the next morning which the kids thought was second to none (well...except the palm trees of course).

Kids in front of the hotel palm tree

Grandma and Grandpa live in a lovely golf community in Naples. The kids were very excited to stay with them. They got to ride the golf carts, see alligators on the golf course and spent a great deal of time diving for golf balls in the condo pool. Plus they got 5 whole days of Grandma and Grandpa's undivided attention.

Our second day in Naples we went to the beach. The best part about the beach were the shells. I have never seen so many shells in my life. The beach was literally made of shells. The "sand" was ground up shells, some fine enough to walk on; the rest was coarse enough that you needed shoes. The kids collected pounds of shells to bring home. Darwyn met a woman that taught her the best technique for collecting shells and came home with a beautiful selection that I had to clean and sort and cart back to Charlottesville. Max and Grandpa enjoyed searching for critters under the "sand". If you dug up a shovel full you would always find a few live shells that would burrow there way back into the sand.

After the beach we visited the docks where the fishing boats come in.
Apparently the fisherman feed the fish guts to the pelicans.
Unfortunately the boats were early that day and we missed it,
but the kids still got to look at some pelicans up close.

Day three we visited the everglades national park. Grandpa took us to a tourist center right along the highway that was nothing special, but it had a short boardwalk along a ditch that was littered with Alligators. An interpreter came out with Alligator skulls, skin and teeth to show off. Unfortunately, the Alligators really just sit there. I hoped to see them eat something, but apparently it is not warm enough in the winter for them to digest food quickly so they rarely ate. We did get to see a lot of aquatic birds catching and eating fish.

Lazy alligators

We took a lot of pictures of our kids being eaten by fake alligators
(I believe you saw some on Gus's previous post). Just to be clear, this is not
indicative of any particular fascination on our parts. The kids clearly
believe this makes an amazing picture. "Hey dad! I bet no one has ever
taken their picture being eaten by the fake alligator!"

Day four was my favorite. We visited a local parrot sanctuary where we got to hold, feed and learn about a variety of different parrot species. They were fascinating and very loud. They mimicked some of the things you said and also certain body movements. Max found this fascinating and kept bobbing up and down and then grinning with delight when the parrot did the same.

The tour guide had a small parrot she carried with her that she called a love bird. It was full of personality and loved to be pet. Whenever she stopped paying attention to it, it would cry for her to cuddle it. My kids were instantly in love with this bird. By the end of the tour Darwyn was convinced she wanted to work there. The tour guide told her she could volunteer for up to 6 months and live on site once she turns 16. Darwyn now has a life goal. She told me only 10 years left to go. She was quite depressed when she realized that is longer than she has been alive.

Ada spent the whole visit to the sanctuary picking bits of leaves and grass off the ground and appeared not to notice there were parrots at all.

Best picture from the whole trip

Darwyn spent a great deal of time performing songs and dances for the parrots.

It was pretty adorable.

The final day we were in Florida we went kayaking through the mangrove swamps. We hoped to see dolphins, but unfortunately we didn't see much wildlife at all. Max did learn how sharp the barnacles that lined the shore were though. Grandpa picked one up to show him and instantly cut his thumb. There is no getting out to pee.

On our trip home we were lucky enough to intersect with Jose and his mother who were also visiting Florida. We visited a orange orchard where we hoped to pick oranges off the tree. I have to say I was disappointed by the quality of the oranges. They weren't that much better than oranges I get from the store. I've never had any fruit picked right from the tree that didn't blow my mind....but fresh oranges are underwhelming. After our short stop at the orange orchard we drove through the night and arrived home at 4am exhausted, but it was worth it to avoid another hotel breakfast :)