Erik has been home from his mission for just about 16 months now and finished up his first year at Utah State -- first semester was living at home doing school online and second semester was living in Logan doing school in person.
The original plan several years ago was for Erik to come home in September, head to a niece's wedding in Georgia in October and then continue on the Florida to see his mission sites. But COVID disrupted all those plans, including the wedding. March 2021 came around and Covid seemed to be doing okay. We thought for sure by October things would be even better. So we booked our trip to Florida, a year later than originally planned.
The Saturday before we left, Ash went to Homecoming and the next Monday we caught the red-eye to Orlando.
This was Alex's first time on a plane, and he was pretty excited. Our early morning arrival gave us the chance to rush to the beach to catch the sunrise, something Erik had done several times when he was serving in the area.
We enjoyed our beautiful morning, but our late flight also tuckered us out a bit. So after driving through one of Erik's areas and stopping for lunch at a Wawa gas station (one of his favorites), we found a park to have a snooze before checking into our hotel.
The next day was Sea World. And this is where things went a little south for Ash. Her date from Homecoming texted her to say he tested positive for Covid. And despite being vaccinated, later that day she began to feel very tired.
Thankfully our hotel was pretty central to most things we were doing. She ended up being okay for the first half of the day but then needing to go back to sleep.
Universal with Harry Potter World was on our agenda along with Gatorland and my favorite, the Kennedy Space Center.
I grew up watching Space Camp and the Challenger explosion. I would often play astronaut in our unfinished basement with my dad's motorcycle helmet on, pretending I was going to the moon. I spent one summer checking out books from our library (two blocks from my house) about space. I was going to be an astronaut one day. The Space Center was a dream come true for me. And an even bigger dream was seeing a rocket take off. They happen a couple of times a month and we happened to be in town the day one was launched. We set our alarms for 5:30am and got to see it from our hotel window against the dark, night sky. That was a pretty awesome experience.
On Sunday we went to one of Erik's last wards located in Sanford and afterwards visited the Orlando Temple site. We headed back to the beach with Ash (at this point she had missed several days of activities). The crowded Sunday afternoon beach was a much different beach than the quiet early morning beach we were used to.
Our last day was Disney's Animal Kingdom. Pure magical is all I can say. Disney definitely knows how to do things right. This park had such a different feel than Universal. While we were there, a park ranger (not sure what to call her) approached us to tell us that is was national Okapi day and would we like to go behind the scenes and meet one. Tyler and I both looked at each other like what was the catch. How much was it going to cost us? Was it really national Okapi day? There was no catch. She took us behind the gates to where they keep the animals and we got to meet an Okapi up close and personal. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow us to take pictures, so you'll just have to take our word for it. We easily spent 45 minutes where no other tourists were talking to these keepers about Okapis and feeding him his lunch of leaves and tree branches. It was really quite an amazing experience.
And just like we began our trip with a beautiful sunrise, we ended our trip with a beautiful sunrise. Florida was an amazing trip. I'm so glad we were able to make it happen.
