This year NANOS was in Orlando Florida.
Jen's parents came to stay with the kids and Jen and Scott got away for the week.
First, we went to New Smyrna Beach to visit Scott's parents.
 |
They can drive right on the sand there. We arrived as the tide was coming in and everyone was in a hurry to get off the beach.
We had dinner together with some great seafood including fried gator bites. |
On Sunday we attended the local ward in Davenport, FL and Scott attended the NANOS conference. He submitted a case for the Walsh meeting this year, but it was not accepted. Oh well, it was still a great conference. We met up with some of the Iowa alums on Sunday evening.
On Monday we went to Haines City Florida to visit an orange grove.
 |
| I knew we were heading to Haines City, but when we saw this cute sign we pulled off the highway and did this touristy photo-op. |
 |
| The orange grove tour was cut short when a torrential rain began. |
 |
| At least we got a free homemade orange ice cream while we sheltered during the rain. |
 |
| The next day we took a walk through the woods. |
 |
| We could only make it so far, because parts of the trail were completely flooded from the prior rain |
We did some swimming at the Orlando resort.
We also visited Scott's parents in the Villages. We went golfing. We had a blast.
 |
| As you might predict, we spotted an alligator from the golf course. They take water hazard to a new level. |
This is the closest we got to Mickey while we were in Orlando:
 |
| I guess theme parks are just not our thing. |
We broke up the trip home with an outing in South Carolina. We canoed 13 miles on the Edisto River on Friday, spent the night in a treehouse then canoed another 10 miles back to our car on Saturday morning.
 |
| The river was moving great. The weather was beautiful. The scenery was gorgeous. |
 |
| The company was perfect! |
 |
| Most of the paddling was just to navigate around bends and avoiding downed branches. The river did the rest of the work. |
 |
Super cute tree house. But don't let it fool you. It was still a rustic outdoors experience.
|
 |
| Being out in nature was so delightful. |
 |
| We made dinner on the grill. Pizza Rustic Style. |
 |
| While there was both a loft and a futon, we opted for the lower level because we found a couple of wasps up in the loft that we had to escort out of the tree house. It rained during the night, but we were cozy and dry. The gentle rocking of the trees and the gurgling of the river and patter of rain was a good combination for sleeping. However, at 4 AM there was a crashing/ splashing sound when one of the nearby trees fell into the river. |
It was a wonderful trip, worth remembering.
