Fort Myers To Tampa
Derek, Mr Edison, and Adam
Listening to the guided tour
Mina Edison's Moonlight Garden
There was a museum with lots of Edison's inventions
The lab
The bridge has a hump in it that made it feel like a roller coaster going downhill
Saturday June 6, 2009
We spent the night in Fort Myers so it was only a short drive to the Edison and Fort Winter Estates. The kids loved the huge banyan tree in front of the museum entrance. It was a beautiful day to walk the grounds as we listened to the self guided audio tour. We were given a map with numbers on it. You just had to punch in the number on the audio device to hear the information. The kids had fun searching for new numbers all over the grounds and then they were cute as they punched in the number so they could listen to the information.
The grounds are filled with wonderful trees and plants. The staff warns you not to eat any of the fruit. They said that mango's contain urushiol, the chemical in poison ivy. We had not heard that and thought they were just trying to scare us, but found out later that it is true that the mango peel contains urushiol. We were asking one of the staff horticulturists about various things and then asked about the mangos. She winked and said that if we really wanted some good mango's that we would find them on the Ford estate next door. With that tacit permission, it was game on. I ate a number of mangos while walking around and we filled our pockets and back pack with mangos and ate them for days afterwards.
We really enjoyed the grounds and learning about the accomplishments of Edison and Ford. It was one of those experiences that makes you wonder "what am I doing with MY life." We bought a number of inspiring books for the boys from the book shop. We started that tradition last year when we bought books about Davy Crockett at the Alamo gift shop for the boys and wrote personal messages in the books to each of them to commemorate the trip.
After Fort Myers we headed north to Tampa and crossed over Tampa Bay on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a truly wondrous sight. We made our way through Tampa to Busch Gardens. We were hoping for one of those buy 1 day get the next day free deals and we were in luck. We had a bit of a rough start finding change for a locker to store our backpack (some mutterings about we would never have this problem at Disney), but then got it going. We started off at Gwazi, a dueling double wooden coaster. It was fun, but it knocked us silly. Adam was beside himself with laughter. He couldn't hold his head up at times against the force, but it didn't seem to bother him. He wanted to ride it again immediately, but we were too beaten up. We all loved that there were minimal lines and we got to ride a lot of rides in a short time. A nice change from the crowds at Disney.
We closed the park down and found a hotel nearby for the night.
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