Today was an exciting day, since it was time to go to Disney! Not Disney World, but Disney Springs, the free-to-enter part of the park that is more of a large mall than a theme park. While free to enter, it’s the inflated prices inside that get you in the end. We only really had one goal there though, the Rainforest Cafe. I’ve been wanting to go to one for a long time, and now I finally had the chance. We were meeting up with a friend of Kyle’s there, who had already got us in line for a table while we were driving over.
I’ve been to Universal City Walk before, the Universal Studios version of Disney Springs, and experienced some really rigorous security there and so was expecting the same at Disney Springs, but surprisingly it was just a simple metal detector and we were done, didn’t even have to take items out of our pockets. It also wasn’t as busy as I expected for a Friday.
We walked through the park to the Rainforest Cafe, where we got to see the outside of the restaurant. It was designed like a volcano, complete with fire shooting out the top at random intervals. Kyle was pretty surprised to see the fire since the Rainforest Cafe’s he’s seen before have been much more boring. Though I was under the impression they were all like this.
The food was pretty good, though I got a double patty burger which I could barely fit in my mouth, but I finished it eventually. We ate and talked for about an hour before it was time to say goodbye. We all walked back to the entrance of the “park” together, and parted ways. Kyle and I still had time, so we decided to check out a bit more of Disney Springs, starting with the Coca Cola Emporium, which is pretty much what you’d expect, it’s just a massive store with Coca Cola merchandise and a family-friendly rooftop bar serving all kinds of Coca Cola concoctions. We even got to meet the Coca Cola bear!
After that, we walked over to the Lego store which was extremely busy. We didn’t plan to buy anything, but rather just looked around and tried to find the most expensive set in the store. We found one that was $600 for a massive Lord of the Rings set. We asked a staff member to confirm, and she said that the Millennium Falcon is more expensive at around $800, but they didn’t have any in stock and so the one we found was indeed the most expensive. As we left, an employee noticed Kyle’s Pokemon hat and said “Hey, have you heard?”, having not heard, we enquired further and he told us that there was Pokemon Lego coming out sometime this year, which is exciting for Kyle I’m sure.
We got back to the car as Kyle was on the phone with his dad to catch up, and we saw a security guard repeatedly screaming at the top of his lungs at some guy standing by his truck. The guy seemed really calm too, asking why he’s yelling and such. We didn’t see what started it, but I feel like that amount of screaming isn’t really needed in any situation here. We moved the car to the other side of the parking garage to not be near that while Kyle finished his call.
We drove to St Cloud, Florida where Kyle’s friend lives so we could see the nearby East Lake Tohopekaliga, a bit of a mouthful, but also a very round and very pretty lake. We parked by the beach and walked over to the water, playing Pokemon GO on the way since there were a lot of game elements in the area.
We took our shoes off and decided to wade into the water, which was very warm and shallow even dozens of meters out into the lake. I got the standard male impulse to start digging in the sand, and so I did just that. I ended up building a little island, much too small to stand on, but enough to break the surface and for Kyle to plant a little “tree” on the top of.
We were also able to see a lot of smoke on the horizon, which I looked up on Florida’s wildfire map and found that it was a 0.5 acre fire, just seemingly producing a massive amount of smoke.
We headed back to the car, but on the way Kyle found out there was a geocache nearby, so we solved the riddle and found it! It was a riddle about signs, and it ended up being tucked in behind a pedestrian crossing sign.
After waiting out rush hour traffic in St Cloud, our next stop was a rest area in the Miami area, so we got back on the road and headed towards it, the sun having now set and giving way to a much cooler evening and more pleasant driving. On the way there, we discovered that the rest area was actually a “service plaza” on the Florida Turnpike, which are much like rest areas but don’t allow overnight parking. Darn. No worries, we just changed to another rest area a bit further away that did allow overnight parking and carried on our way.
We stopped in Palm Beach to do some DoorDash, which was not a comfortable experience. It’s a much larger city than where we typically like to dash and had some pretty confusing roads. There were a few close calls with wild Florida drivers, but we made a good amount of money and eventually called it a night and headed to the rest area. On our way to the rest area we were passed by a number of different bikers and groups of bikers all going way too fast. I usually don’t care too much about bikers going fast, but we got passed by a group of bikers that must have been going over 200 miles per hour, and that’s not an exaggeration. One mistake at that speed and you get turned into a fine mist, taking whoever you end up running into with you.
The new rest area was also on a toll road, named “Alligator Alley”, but it allowed overnight parking. As we got to the toll road, it wasn’t until we were going through the toll plaza that I realized there were no signs for “Pay by Plate”, which is what we rely on given it’s unreasonable to get a toll transponder for every single toll company in all the different states. So, we may or may not have commit a toll violation, and if we did, sorry Florida.
It was only another 20 minutes to the rest area, where we quickly got ready for bed and turned in for the night.