One of the greatest surprises happened to me a couple of weeks ago.  My mom and step dad called me up to the dinner table, along with the rest of my siblings.  They gave us all a piece of paper that was turned upside down, they told us not to turn it over until they said so.  After we were all in our seats confused and curious, they told us to flip over the sheets of paper.  The pieces of paper were a map of a route, but not just any route, this route was from our house to Florida!  We were all very excited with the news that we would be going to Florida for spring break, but that wasn’t the only surprise, the next part of the surprise was that we would be going for two weeks instead of just one for spring break.  This had me a little nervous at first because, I have never missed that much school before, and since I'm obviously in high school, I was little worried about all the homework that I would have to do while I was gone.  After I talked with my teachers I learned that the homework that I would have over my break wouldn’t be that bad, I would just have to put in the time to get it done. 

Finally, the time had come to pack up.  When I came home on Friday I had to pack all of my stuff in just 30 minutes because, I was too lazy to do it the night before.  It was still pretty easy. I just grabbed a bunch of t-shirts and shorts and put them in a bag.  After we got everything packed in the van we took off! We were all so excited to get to Florida but, we still had something standing in our way.  The 1600 mile, 24 hour trip just to get down there.  We all thought that it would be the worst since none of us had traveled over 6 hours in a car before.  It turns out if you just put your headphones on and look out the window, it's not even that bad.  Don’t get me wrong it still isn't fun to be in car for 15 hours in one day, but it wasn’t bad until the last night when we all decided to go for 9 more hours at 10 P.M.  Which would put us at our location in Florida at around 7 A.M.  This was a very long night because, it's very hard for me to sleep in a car.  Especially if it’s a very packed car with almost no room for my legs since there were 5 other people in the car, and all of their stuff.   The car was packed all the way up to the back window with all of our bags.  Anyways, we had finally made it to my Grandma and Grandpa’s which is where we would be staying while we were down there. 
     Once we got down there, we were greeted by our grandparents.  We had not seen them since October, so it was nice to finally see them again.  After we got all of our stuff unpacked we all went to bed since none of us really got a lot of sleep in the car. 
After we got up we went and walked around our grandparent’s park, and looked at all the different types of plants and trees that you never see in Wisconsin.  Some of them had really big leaves, and some had really smooth flat trees. 
The first thing I noticed about Florida is how hot it was compared to Wisconsin.  When we first got there it was 73 degrees, and when we went for a walk it was 81 degrees.  It was very hot to us, but to our grandparents said it was average temperature.  After we came home from the walk we decided to go swimming at the club house.  In my grandparents "community" they have a clubhouse where they play cards or pool during the day.  Outside of the club house there is a pool, hot tub, shuffle board courts, and tennis courts.  It is a very nice park for the elderly because, it has all the things they need to keep them happy and, it keeps them out of the bad community’s near their park.  After we got home from the pool we started to plan out what we were going to for the time while we were there.  I personally didn’t really care what we did as long as we went to the beach at least twice.  So we decided that the next day we would go to the Clearwater Aquarium, which is where Winter, the dolphin from the movie Dolphin Tale is held.  I wasn’t really that interested until they said that we were going to the Clearwater Beach after the aquarium.  I was really excited because I had never seen the ocean before.
     Therefore the next day we got up really early so we could get started with the trip, since the aquarium was about two hours away from my grandparents' house.  Thus we left the house at 9 A.M. and got to the aquarium around 10:30 A.M.  We toured around it for a while, looking at all the different sea animals that they had there like dolphins, sea otters, sea horses, crabs, sting rays, and whales.  It was alright but, not really anything special in my opinion.  We went to both facilities, but we had to take a trolley to the other one since they were on opposite sides of town.  After we were done touring around both of the facilities, we took a boat back to the main aquarium where we were parked. 
Once we got back we had lunch at our car before we went to the beach.  It took us awhile to find parking but once we did we were so eager to hit the sand.  We changed into our swim suits quick and then went out to the beach.  The sand was so warm and white.  It felt so good on our feet, almost like a memory foam pillow.  It was 82 degrees, and with the breeze coming off of the waves, the weather was truly perfect.  The waves were really crashing that day so the boys and I decided to go wade out in the water and get pushed over by big waves.  It was really fun just sitting down on the sand and having wave after wave push you closer and closer to the shore.  It was like having someone push you into a ball pit over and over again. After that, I decided to just lay in the sun and try to get somewhat of a tan since I was pretty pale and white when I first got to Florida.  Near the end of our day at the beach I just decided to sit and watch all the beach babes pass.  Overall it was a very fun "first" day in Florida. 
     The next day we decided to go to the Kennedy Space Center.  This is where all NASA ships get launched from.  Again, this place was pretty far away, about two hours, so we got up early so we could get there at a decent time. We would try to see all that we could in one day since our grandparents said you can't see all of it in one day due to the mass size of the place and all the buildings it has.  When we first got there we were all in awe because, of all the space ships that were standing straight up.  They were taller than almost everything that I've ever seen before, it was truly impressive.  The first thing we did was take a bus tour around almost all of the launch pads and build centers.  Our bus guide was so nice and he really knew everything there was to know about all launch sites and the build centers.  Another thing that was really impressive was the size of the build centers.  NASA's build center has the biggest garage door in the world, coming in at 474 ft. The building itself is the third largest building in the world, in terms of volume.  It was too big to explain.  After the bus tour we toured in some of the buildings that had real spaceships in them.  The most memorable one that we saw was the Atlantis.  This was an actual spaceship that was used on over 20 different missions in space.  There were different parts of the spaceship that were actually opened up so you could see inside the ship better. Overall the Kennedy Space Center was probably my favorite place that we went during our vacation other than the beach.
     The last thing that we did before we left was go to Fort Desoto Beach.  This is our grandparent’s favorite beach to go to because of all the shells that wash up on shore.  So again, we got up really early so the beach hopefully wouldn’t be completely picked over by other people.  Once we got there we were really surprised by the amount of people that were there.  My grandparents had never seen this many people at this beach before.  When we got out and actually went to the beach, we realized that it was completely packed with people but, that wasn’t going to ruin our beach day.  We started setting up our blankets in a shady part, and then went out to the ocean.  Unfortunately the waves weren't crashing as much as they were at Clearwater, but we still made the most of it.  The water was so clear that you could see all the way to the bottom, even if you were four feet in.  My step brother and I started playing catch with a football in the water.  While we were doing this, my mom went out across the beach to find some sea shells.  While she was doing this, she suddenly felt a stab on her foot, and then a shooting pain all the way through her body.  She was stung by a sting ray! We didn’t know this for a while since the lifeguard's saw it all happen so they brought her to the beach hospital to look at it.  The reason why they didn’t tell us right away is because her safety was more important at the time.  She was fine 20 minutes after, but she still had a swelled up foot and some pain to walk on it. So, that pretty much wrapped up our last beach day, but it was still fun in all.
     Overall Florida was an amazing vacation, and I am so glad that we decided to drive down there instead of fly, so we could do a lot more things that we wanted to do while we were down there with all the money we saved by driving.  I loved every bit of it and I can't wait to go back soon.