swimming – The Wandering Whippersnapper

Since our last blog we have moved from our holiday home in Orlando to exploring the coast. First we travelled to Sarasota. We took the scenic route as you can see where I have drawn it on the map.

We stopped at a shopping mall on the way so it was quite late when we got to the hotel. We went for a Chinese and we got to use chopsticks to eat our dinner. It was really fun but it took ages 😂

When we got up we decided to go to the beach but there’s loads of beaches so we picked the first one we came to. There was a sign to tell you about what the different coloured flags mean and if it is safe to swim. The flag was green so it was ok to swim but if it’s blue it means there might be sharks in the water 🦈 It was really fun and wet. I liked body surfing on the waves but it wasn’t deep enough to swim very well. The sand was white with lots of shells and it went on for miles and miles and miles and I thought it went on forever.

Then we went to get a drink because it was getting really hot.

Mum had found somewhere on her phone that was good for spotting Manatee’s so we walked there but we didn’t see any. We went along the coast a bit further to a nature reserve and found a park so Eliza and I had a play.

After this we we went on a walk through the nature reserve. We still didn’t see any manatees but we did see lots of geckos 🦎, some little burrows but we don’t know what lives in them and lots of other cool things like a giant seed or fruit and big tortoise burrows.

Just as as we were getting back to the car we saw 2 cheeky raccoons scavenging in the bins. One was eating a packet of crisps and the other got a Burger King.

Tonight we went for a swim in the pool at the hotel then went to a local restaurant on the beach for dinner. Mum says it’s a fisherman’s shack. There was a sign in the car park to look out for alligators but we didn’t see any. I’m really tired now so goodnight xxx

Today we started with a swim in the pool. We tested out my underwater camera and it was really good fun. Then we drove to Clearwater but the traffic was terrible so we went to the aquarium before the beach. This is where the Winter the dolphin from the film Dolphin Tale lives. She has a prosthetic tail that helps her to swim. We saw lots of animals and I touched a stingray and a sea urchin. It was really cool and the sea urchin felt like the tips of a hairbrush. After that we went on a boat trip to see if we could find dolphins in the wild. We didn’t see any but we saw lots of pelicans and an osprey nest and it was still fun because we got to play games too. We played bingo to find the things we could spot and I won a prize. We went to the beach and we couldn’t find anywhere to park because of all of the traffic. Eliza and I jumped out with Mum and had a play in the beach. We were still on the beach on the dark playing in the sand and it was sooo much fuuuuuun! There was lots going on at the beach when it got dark. There was a street market on the pier and lots of singers. We saw Elivis singing but it wasn’t the real one because Elivis Presley died on the toilet. Epic!