Ocala and the Drive North to Georgia

I have two work events while we're on this trip. The first is in southern Georgia. So, after landing in Tampa and renting a car we headed north. We stopped off at Ocala, the "horse capital of the world," because we'd heard about a hotel there that had a resident Clydesdale. While we were driving I told Soren we'd be staying at a special hotel that had a horse named Buddy and that you could feed cookies to Buddy.

"Why does Bunny eat cookies?" he asked.
"No, not Bunny. Buddy. They have special horse cookies for him."
"Are cookies good for Bunny?"
"Buddy. BuDDy. Buh-Dee. The horses name is Buddy. And, yes, these cookies actually are made especially for horses. So they are good for him."
"Will Bunny be awake when we get there?"

Sigh. I gave up.

For the rest of the trip (about 10 minutes) I heard Soren talking about all sorts of things that would happen when he met the horse.

So, we arrived at the hotel and Soren ran up to the front desk and asked "Is Bugs Bunny awake?"

I guess he remembers details on his own terms.

Anyway, Buddy wasn't awake when we got there. But they did give us cookies that we could give to him the next morning.


Then Peter and Soren spent awhile relaxing in the whirlpool.
This included Soren twice, not just once, stepping off the shallow edge to plummet like a rock under the water. Peter was close at hand both times and so could quickly pull him up. But it makes me wonder if we should change those soccer classes to swimming lessons. After some relaxing, we headed off to Georgia. Along the highway we saw huge signs proclaiming a quick detour to see "A 13 foot gator!"

Who could resist, right? So we made a point of stopping. We got a good laugh over the fact that this 13 foot gator was stuffed! It was just a ploy to get people to stop and buy oranges.