{"id":19336,"date":"2022-09-25T06:20:41","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T12:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=19336"},"modified":"2022-09-25T19:07:43","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T01:07:43","slug":"travelling-the-50-states-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/travelling-the-50-states-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Travelling The 50 States \u2013 Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Over my 47 years, I\u2019ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States.\u00a0 I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn\u2019t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning.\u00a0 Working in alphabetical order, we start today with the 27th state to be added to the Union: Florida.<\/p>\n

State:<\/strong> Florida
\nJoined the Union:<\/strong> 1845
\nVisits:<\/strong> 10 (at least)<\/p>\n

At some point in the mid-1980s, my grandparents bought a condo in Clearwater, Florida, which has helped make the Sunshine State one of my most visited states.\u00a0 I’m fairly certain my first trip there would have been in the summer of 1988 and my most recent was last year, with a number of visits in-between.<\/p>\n

From what I can recall, my first trip to Florida came the summer of 1988, following my eighth-grade graduation.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure a collection of seven family members got in the car the day after Mike Tyson’s 91 second knockout of Michael Spinks for the two-day drive to Clearwater.\u00a0 I’m not clear on exactly how long we were there, but I know there was a one-day excursion to Disney World.\u00a0 Aside from that, we saw all of the tourist attractions that my grandparents thought were interesting.\u00a0 Which means nothing that was really all that interesting.<\/p>\n

We made another trip two summers later.\u00a0 I don’t remember much of this trip, aside from the trip home where we came up through southern Illinois and listened to the White Sox somehow beating the Yankees 4-0 despite being no-hit by Andy Hawkins.<\/p>\n

My sister and I made a return trip over Christmas break in 1991, our first time on an airplane.\u00a0 Again, I don’t have many vivid memories of the events of this trip.<\/p>\n

My fourth trip to Florida came during March of 1997.\u00a0 I had an interview with GTE Data Services and turned it into a mini-vacation during spring break, staying with my grandparents.\u00a0 The highlight of the trip, aside from nailing the interview and getting a solid job offer, was a trip to Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota to watch a spring training tilt between the White Sox and the Twins.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After a break of thirteen years, I next returned to Florida for a Thanksgiving week foray to Universal in 2010.\u00a0 We split time between Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, enjoying the then new Harry Potter land.\u00a0 On our last day, we took a sidetrip to Downtown Disney for some shoppping followed by geocaching.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To celebrate Angelina’s grade school graduation in 2013, the family returned to Florida for a quick six-day visit to Disney World.\u00a0 We spent parts of three days at Magic Kingdom<\/a>, two days at Hollywood Studios<\/a>, and portions of a day at Epcot<\/a> and Animal Kingdom<\/a>.\u00a0 We also got in some much-needed pool time at the resort and a shopping trip to Downtown Disney before heading home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Three years later, I took an ill-fated road trip with Jeff and Val for a work Reach for the Stars conference.\u00a0 I’ll skip the drama of how we got to Florida, through Virginia<\/a>, and start with our arrival at Disney at about 4:30.\u00a0 We got in the room about 10 to 5, local time, with the night’s gala set to start at 6:00.\u00a0 There was only one problem: we didn\u2019t have our luggage.\u00a0 After two phone calls down to the front desk, our bags arrived with a half hour to spare and, a few quick showers later, Jeff and I arrived fashionably late to the gala with Tom and his wife.<\/p>\n

After dinner and the awards ceremony had concluded, the event was opened up to all guests and groups of characters were brought in for photo opportunities.\u00a0 We managed to sneak Val in and managed to get some group photos with Mickey and Minnie and the Beast and Belle.\u00a0 The night ended with drinks, more drinks, and an argument about breakfast.\u00a0 To make an extremely long<\/a> story<\/a> short, Over the course of the next three days, we’d spent approximately six hours in the parks and the rest of the team dealing with Val’s sudden onset of anxiety and Jeff’s feelings of oppression by being offered free food and drink.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A mere nine weeks later, the family and I returned to Florida for a week at Universal<\/a> to celebrate Danny’s grade school graduation.\u00a0 Based out of the Hard Rock Hotel, we split out time between Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, the hotel pool, and the Citiwalk, taking in all things Harry Potter, Scooby Doo, TransFormers, and Minions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A year later, Angelina and I took a day trip to Disney World as her high school graduation gift, flying down in the morning and back home at night.\u00a0 We spent the day at Magic Kingdom, getting as many rides as we could before we had to head back to the airport.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My most recent visit to Florida came last August, my first non-theme park visit since 1997.\u00a0 With the corona virus still thriving, despite what everyone thought, I drove down to St. Petersburg for some fun in the sun.\u00a0 I had rented a condo on AirBNB that was right on the water, which, thanks to the spacious deck, let me enjoy the view while relaxing and reading.\u00a0 I also managed to make my first two trips to Tropicana Field, as the White Sox were in town to battle the Rays.\u00a0 Those experiences, sadly, did not turn out quite as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over my 47 years, I\u2019ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States.\u00a0 I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn\u2019t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning.\u00a0 Working in alphabetical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3268],"tags":[81,10175,3493,275,3374,298,3495,8377,3492,6712,1909,3494,6633,4641,3480,10174,3509,10173,6710,255,6581,3678,6614,687,9757,118,2319,5111,6582,49,51],"class_list":["post-19336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-1959-pennant","tag-andy-hawkins","tag-animal-kingdom","tag-arm","tag-disney-world","tag-dlm","tag-downtown-disney","tag-ed-smith-stadium","tag-epcot","tag-hard-rock-hotel","tag-harry-potter","tag-hollywood-studios","tag-islands-of-adventure","tag-jeff","tag-magic-kingdom","tag-michael-spinks","tag-mickey-mouse","tag-mike-tyson","tag-minions","tag-rays","tag-reach-for-the-stars","tag-scooby-doo","tag-tom","tag-transformers","tag-tropicana-field","tag-twins","tag-universal","tag-universal-studios","tag-val","tag-white-sox","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19336"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19408,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19336\/revisions\/19408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}