Lake Wales Mall & Bowling

Today Frank & Joyce met us at the shopping mall in Lake Wales, about half way between Sebring and Davenport.

Father and sons rode the merry go round in the food court.

Here's the merry go round in video action.
Austin visited with Santa but was stumped about what he wanted for Christmas...at first.

This little girl enjoyed herself at the children's playground at the mall.

After a little shopping, we headed off to bowl at The Recreation Station.

Here's Aron concentrating on the pins.

Frank celebrates a strike...one of many.

Marlon aims for the gutter but misses thanks to the children's bumpers set up on the lane.

Joyce prepares for her approach.

Austin displays his unique bowling stance.

For a few more pictures of our outing, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/november/mall-with-frankjoyc/ .

To be continued...

Thanksgiving 2007

Today we drove about 60 miles south to Sebring. We were headed for Thanksgiving Dinner at Frank & Joyce's.

Frank was in charge of the turkey and had decided to deep fry it.

Austin was in charge of seat assignments at the Thanksgiving Dinner table.

Aron was in charge of the Gears of War video game...blowing up and decapitating anyone who tried to ruin our Thanksgiving.

Aron was also in charge of the card tricks in the following video.
Here we are just about ready to sit down for a feast. Joyce was in charge of the rest of the food and had prepared so much that we noticed 3 hours later that the stuffing was still sitting on the stove untouched.

That gobble gobble sure smelled good.

So did this oink oink.

After dinner, we headed over to nearby Highlands Hammock State Park for a nature hike.

We found this short hike which promised alligators and snakes in exchange for looking carefully and walking quietly.

As luck would have it, we walked quietly enough to happen upon this alligator...hard to see in the picture...but an alligator it was.

We weren't scared though. We were walking on a catwalk at least 3 whole feet above the powerful jaws of the alligator.

Frank's sister, Marlon's step sister, Laura, was so tired after the hike she took a nap.

For more pictures of Thanksgiving 2007, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/november/thanksgiving-at-franks-/ .

To be continued...

Spook Hill & Florida's Natural

Today we drove about 25 miles south of Theme World to see a couple of items of interest in Lake Wales, Florida.

The first place we found was Spook Hill...located on a street that appears to slope downhill initially and then turn into a steep uphill. When cars stop on the downhill part and shift into neutral, they will actually roll backwards up to the beginning of the street. Legend has it...

Looking at Spook Hill from a distance.

The street appears to be heading downhill up to the bushes, but cars will mysteriously roll backwards as if the street is actually uphill at this point. This picture doesn't quite do it justice.

Here's a video in which we attempted to capture the essence of Spook Hill.
As The Travel Channel has pointed out, there are several such Spook Hills around the United States. Each is actually an optical illusion whereby observers are somewhat disoriented by the surroundings into believing the street is going downhill in a certain place when in fact it is not. Thus cars roll in the direction opposite what the observer would think they would.

After Spook Hill, we headed over to Florida's Natural Orange Juice Visitor Center for some free orange juice, raspberry lemonade, grapefruit and grapefruit cranberry juice.

Neither of us cared for the grapefruit juices. All the visitor center's interactive displays and movies were not operating due to a recent lightning strike. So if we really want to know about Florida's Natural Orange Juice, we will have to return in the future.

For a few more pictures, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/november/spook-hill-floridas/ .

To be continued...