Vero Beach Trip

This past week we went to Florida on vacation. Harrison wasn't able to be with us as he was required to be at Band Camp in Jacksonville, Alabama (more on that later). Here's what we did:

Saturday:
We left Saturday morning and stayed the night in Orlando at Disney's Beach Club Villas. We ate at two of our FAVORITE restaurants while there--Beaches and Cream at the Beach Club Resort and 'Ohana at the Polynesian Resort. It was so yummy. We also swam in Stormalong Bay, the Beach Club pool (it has a sand bottom).

Sunday:

We ate breakfast at the Beach Club counter service restaurant, checked out, and headed to Downtown Disney (I know it was the Sabbath. Normally, we attend the Windermere Ward across the street from the Orlando Temple, but not this trip). We left Downtown Disney around 12:00 pm and headed toward Vero Beach, Florida (about a 2 hour drive from Orlando).
We checked into Disney's Vero Beach Resort and went to our room. We found this little guy waiting for us when we walked in. We then made a quick trip to Publix to pick up our groceries for the week. We came back to the condo; and I made dinner. After dinner, we explored the resort. It's a nice resort. There is a lot of greenery and shrubbery around the resort. You can't see the beach from the sidewalks...you have to actually go down to the boardwalk and access the beach that way. The reason? Sea turtles. I'll tell you more about that later. The resort is nice. They have a great pool, too. Speaking of, Hannah got her bathing suit on that night and jumped in the pool to watch "Cinderella 3" at the "Dive-In" movie. Harry and I just sat in the pool chairs. We thought they should have showed "The Little Mermaid," or "Finding Nemo," though--something water related. It was pretty cool, though.

Monday:

We slept in. Then, we got ready and headed to the beach. It was a really beautiful beach, too. I noticed that there were absolutely no sea gulls anywhere to be found. There were some pelicans, though. We stayed at the beach for almost 3 1/2 hours. We figured out later on that evening that it was WAY too long. We were all burnt! Even Hannah was sun burned; and she NEVER burns. We did have fun, though. We all took turns boogie boarding. Of course, the waves were VERY big and VERY powerful. We took more than one wipeout off the boards. We had our clocks and our sinuses cleaned out by those waves. Hannah still has some beach rash on her backside.

Tuesday:

It rained like 3/4 of the day. It was like a tropical storm. It was pretty cool to watch from the back porch. I stayed out there for a while just reading my book. I decided that when the wind started whipping and the lightning started popping all around that it might be a good idea to come inside. We stayed in the rest of the day and got addicted to the Style Network Channel on TV--"Clean House," "Split Ends," "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?," "Dress My Nest," and "Peter Perfect." It was pathetic, but we had fun watching.

Wednesday:

Hannah went to an archery class in the morning; and then went to an Un-birthday party at the Community Center. She had fun decorating cupcakes and hitting the pinata. After I picked her up, she got a hair wrap done on her hair. It looks really cool. Then, we went to the beach. This time I got to see close up the turtle nests that are marked all over the beach.

Vero Beach is a sea turtle nesting area. The Sea Turtles come onto the beach at night, dig a deep hole, lay their eggs and go back out to sea.

The baby turtles hatch and use the reflection of the moon off of the sea to find where they need to go. So, to keep the turtles safe, all guests are asked to close their blinds to their rooms by 9:00 pm each night, there are no straws on
property, and you can't go onto the beach at night with flashlights. We didn't see any turtles while we were there, but we did see quite a few nests.
There were TONS of shells. I haven't seen that many shells since I was a little girl. There was one family that had more very large conch shells than I've ever seen lined up in rows on their front porch. Finally, we asked how they found them all. They said they'd go out about waist deep and dug around with their feet and found them. We never found any really big ones, but we did find quite a few really nice shells. We also found this little guy in our room.

Thursday:
Hannah and Harry got up REALLY early (7:30 am) for the Turtle Troop activity. They take the kids out to the beach and they survey the nests and the turtle tracks. If they find a new nest, the mark it with stakes. If they find a nest that has hatched, they dig up the nest and count the eggs to see how many have hatched and how many haven't. The nest Hannah's group found had 100 eggs! Only 95 of them hatched, though. I thought that was amazing.
When the got back, we headed back to the beach for our last day. When we got tired of the beach, we went to the pool and rode the neat waterslide they have. They were even offering scuba and snorkeling classes in the pool for an extra fee. It was kind of unusual to be swimming around and seeing a scuba diver swim by your legs.

Friday:

We checked out and were gone by 8:30 am. We were home by 4:30 pm. We made good time.

We had a great time, but we sorely missed Harrison (Since he was at Band Camp all week). We can't wait to go back to Disney in January when Harry runs the Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon.