Emily Kalshoven

Spring break! My spring break was a little lame, but it was still great. My dad travels for a living so my brother and I rode along with him while he did business in Florida along the gulf coast. While he went to work, we went and did touristy stuff, but it was kind of cold and rainy so we didn’t get much beach time during the week. We started out in Venice, Fl and my brother and I did some shopping and ate some really great food. We then went to Sarasota and visited the Sarasota Jungle Gardens where I got to hold a boa constrictor and pet an alligator. I also got to run away from some very angry flamingos. We drove to Tampa next where I discovered I really hate Florida traffic. We visited the Florida Aquarium and got to see everything from jellyfish to oysters to seahorses and much more. We got to watch a school of fish dodge different types of predators for about twenty minutes without losing a single individual. We also went to the Lowry Park Zoo that day, which was the most amazing zoo I’ve seen in my whole life. This zoo had really great exhibits and seemed to give their animals a lot of space. My favorite animals there were the monkeys. These two brother monkeys chased each other around their tower setup and tried to push each other off and kill each other – this was kind of scary but it was funny because neither of them actually died or got hurt. We then went to visit my dad’s cousin that lives in Tampa and took him on a tour of Cigar City Brewery. After that, I went to meet my second cousin and he showed us around the comic book store that he owns. After that, we went to Orlando and did some exploring around Downtown Disney. Overall, it was a decent trip.