SPI Part 2

Day 2 started out windy, but not too chilly (considering).  Make that VERY windy- this day had gusts up to 50 mph!  DMP and the girls still braved the beach to look for shells and treasures. The girls even played in the waves a bit.  Bear was still scared of the waves and wind, so he and I went back to the room after a bit.

After playing on the beach it was off to the sea turtle rescue center.  It was really neat!  We learned all about sea turtles and saw a lot of them in real life! The rescue center has some permanent residents- turtles who have lost two or more fins and can't survive in the wild- and some temporary residents.  

This is Birdy and a turtle turtle named "Merry Christmas" because she was found on Christmas day.  She was friendly and kept coming over to check us out and say hi.

The rescue was started by the "turtle lady"- a woman who helped with the rehabilitation of the kemps ridley sea turtles.  This guy's name is "Gerry" and he has been at the center for 30 years. The turtle lady used to dress him up (they thought he was a she, so her name was Gertrude then- apparently you can't tell if a turtle is a boy or a girl for something like 20 years...).  Click here to see some pictures- it is pretty funny. She'd take him/her on TV shows and stuff.

 We got to even see some tiny babies! This little guy was only 2 months old. He'll stay at the center until he is about the size of a dinner plate and then they'll release him.

This is a hawksbill turtle. They are endangered because people use their pretty shells for tortoise-shell combs and other stuff. This guy is obviously a lifer (only one flipper) but that shell is so pretty!

We grabbed some pizza lunch and then drove to find a good spot to fly DMP's "Tigerjet" kite.  It was really fun and we were happy to finally have some use for all that wind!

Birdy's favorite part of the whole trip was probably the 3-4 mermaid statues in our hotel!

By the afternoon of Day 2, we had pretty much exhausted all the things you can do in SPI that DON'T involve being outside or on the beach, so we implemented plan B- go to Walmart and get some games.

For the rest of the day/evening we played domino's and "Would you Rather" and watched movies. Not quite the "building sand castles and collecting shells" kind of vacation we envisioned, but it was still fun together-time anyway!

Here are the girls modelling their new sea turtle shirts.  In spite of the 6 or so t-shirt shops, kids shirts were hard to come by- especially when you added in the fact that they really wanted one with a turtle on it.  We lucked out that our hotel sold these. So what if they are super-big?  They love them anyway!