Before I forget completely, I need to write about going to Florida.  Zack, Josie and I flew down about two and a half weeks ago.  Jay had gone down a few days before because he had the time off, he needed to get away from certain cretinous knuckleheads and the son of a dear friend was graduating from high school, which offered Jay the perfect excuse to skip town early.

All this merely means that the kids and I didn't have to go through the tedium of picking up the rental car as Jay already had it when he met us at the baggage claim.  We went to Cheeburger Cheeburger for lunch before we even dropped our bags off at the house.  Experience has taught me to skip the burger and just concentrate on the onion rings and chocolate malt.  Zack said the key lime pie was good too, but I know my limits.

The house we've stayed at is a lovely little three bedroom rambler on a sandy road just off one of the island arteries.  The entire backyard is a pool.  It's a very un-touristy way to vacation, which makes it my favorite way to vacation.  I usually do some watercolors while on the island but this year it was so windy that I couldn't really work, which was fine.  The wind kicked the surf up a bit and frolicking with the kids was better than painting, anyway.  The fires in the northern part of the state turned the sky pink on a few occasions and the smoke ate the sunset a few times, but it was the least humid it's ever been while I was there and because it wasn't unbearably hot, we were able to ride bikes all over the place.  In the past, it's been too hot to ride past mid morning.  We rode all over the island.  If we'd had really good bikes, I would love to ride all the way out to Captiva, which is ten miles from where we stayed.  I'm not complaining, the bikes were great but they were all garage sale bikes, which are never like riding your own.

We ate out a few times but mostly cooked at home.  There's a grill out by the pool.  One night Zack made us burgers and they were delicious.

We didn't leave the island very often.  We drove over to Ft. Myers beach once and did some outlet shopping on the way back in.  Mostly the week was just one lazy day after another of riding bikes, walking beaches and playing in the rolling surf. 

A perfect vacation, in fact.

 

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