Dolphins, dolphins and more dolphins

Now that I've gone through the cathartic experience of posting about the horror that is USAirways, I can move on to much better things - our Spring Break vacation. In a word, awesome. It's been great and it's not over.

Monday was spent at Sea World, which remains our favorite park, whether it's in San Diego or Orlando. Great time. Huge crowds. Clearly, the recession that we are in as a nation has skipped Orlando. This place is packed. We'll be back to Sea World a couple of more times while we are here.

Tuesday was all about Discovery Cove. Call it a water park, call it a marine life adventure. I call it amazing. We spent the entire day there. You have an opportunity to interact with marine life, snorkeling with all manner of fish and sting/manta ray. You get to observe sharks from a safe distance. Your meals, snacks, drinks are unlimited and included. The staff, of which there are thousands it seems, are all graduate from the perky (bot not annoyingly perky) school of service. They seem genuinely interested in you having a good experience (are you listening, USAirways?....I thought not).

The weather was amazing. Sunscreen was a must:
I think the ghostly white is to remind you that you'll be a corpse from the skin cancer you'll get if you don't use this stuff.

The snorkeling was great fun:

However, the piece d'resistance came with the dolphin swim which happened late in the afternoon after a very typical brief thunderstorm. CAL and the Boy had the opportunity to spend some time with Roxie, a ten year old dolphin:


It was pretty amazing to watch the kids interact with these animals and to see the power of the relationship that the trainers had with the dolphins. Their time also included a ride:

We had a pretty good view of the action as well:

Now I'm sure some people will complain that penning in dolphins like this is some kind of cruelty. I would argue that it is not. These trainers are so sensitive to these incredible creatures. If the animal doesn't want to play, that's it. There is no play. It's got to be better than fending for your life, day in, day out.

It made for a great day and we're looking forward to more great days as Spring Break rolls on! We miss having Our Lady of BYU with us, but if you check out here latest blog entry, you'll see that she's having a pretty darn good time as her Winter Semester winds down.