Sept 17: Doing Whatever

To me, that's one of the great things about any vacation. The chance to just do whatever. As in, "whatever I and my vacation companion happen to feel like." This week, I'm enjoying a staycation on the Fort Lauderdale beach, a very close-to-home vacation indeed. The hotel is all of 15 minutes from my condo. But as I've said during previous staycations, I feel a thousand miles away whenever I'm settled into a local hotel - a tourist in my own town. Yes, I'm popping into my office now and then for a bit of work. But it's no big deal, mostly because I know I'll be back at the beach soon. Tuesday and Wednesday, though, Gwendolyn and I decided not to worry about doing any work at all. These were both lovely "whatever" days for us.

On Tuesday, we stayed pretty close to the beach area. But on Wednesday, we wandered a bit farther afield. True, our breakfast on Wednesday was at a lovely oceanside café just a few steps from our hotel door. But then we hopped in my car and headed to the Museum of Discovery and Science, which sits near the New River just west of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Our visit there was a hoot.

The first thing you notice when walking toward the museum entrance is the delightful Great Gravity Clock, as it's called. This Rube Goldberg-like contraption tells the time using a wacky assortment of balls and pulleys and chutes and water and whatever else. Once inside the Discovery Museum, we headed upstairs and soon found our way to the flight simulators. Very cool. We hopped into cramped cockpits to fly simulated missions in both F-18A and F-22 jet fighters. As someone who's flown in a real military fighter jet, I found that the response of the stick felt very realistic to me, honestly. We also liked the museum's Mars Rover ride, a nine-minute exploration of the Red Planet. Then we checked out the Florida EcoScapes exhibits with their mini-landscapes of mangroves and swamps and forests. And their live creature collection, including baby alligators, sea turtles, scorpions, bats and lots more. The Discovery Museum really made a nice whatever-day thing to do. So did scarfing down a great dish of Kilwin's ice cream on Las Olas right after we left the museum. And savoring Happy Hour cocktails in our room and a wonderful late dinner at H2O and a very late swim and hot tub at the hotel. See what I mean? Not one of these things was planned more than 20 minutes before we did it. And really now, isn't that the whole point of a staycation anyway?