Landon and I recently took a little trip to Tarpon Springs. Tarpon is the quintessential beach town. It is located by Tampa and Clearwater. You can't help but fall in love with a town that has purple pipes running through it!
I fell in love with Tarpon, especially all of the activities that the town has to offer. Beaches are everywhere and that is how we spent several of our days there. Not only are the beaches nice, but the drive to the beaches is amazing. The ocean was right off of the road.
Landon preferred to swim in his daily attire....his underwear! I think we all wish we could be as carefree as a three year old at times!
The rest of the time at the beach Landon remained clothed. He showed a lot of restraint and always wanted to remove his bathing suit because he considered it to be dirty once it became wet. He really does prefer to swim au naturel. I think he hates the feeling of having sand in his bathing suit so he just prefers to do without it.
Aunt Keyko (or "Coco" as Landon calls her!) surprised Landon with two dogs one afternoon. Landon was able to look after them for a little while. I think it helped with his sadness over not being around Tink. He seriously asked for Tink several times while we were there. He even went as far as yelling to her on the phone to walk to Coco's house. He really thought she was on her way to us. The poor kid! Aunt Keyko saved the day and had two little dogs for Landon to play with. I thought this was a cute picture of them at the beach.
The boy knows how to dress for the pool!
We did many things while we were visiting. Landon is still talking about the dolphin boat cruise. We took a boat out to see dolphins. We saw a couple of them, but they never emerged from the water long enough for a picture. Landon still enjoyed it and is still talking about the dolphins. We were then able to walk an island along the beach for half an hour to find shells. We were on a missing to find a sand dollar. I had never found a sand dollar in its entirety before, just bits and pieces of one. We found one. Actually we found three, but only one survived the trip back home. The sand dollar that made the trip back lost some pieces around the edges in the suitcase, but it has still held up fairly well.
I kept telling Landon that we were on a mission to find a sand dollar. He kept searching the beach for "clues". Every couple of seconds he would run up to me with a new shell and say that he found a clue. It was really cute! We may or may have not been late returning back to the boat causing them to have to wait for us....I refused to leave without a sand dollar and we took as long as we needed to find one. We knew the boat couldn't leave without us!
Landon and Keyko before departing on the dolphin boat tour.
Landon and Mommy in the Gulf of Mexico!
Landon strolling along looking for clues!
Another favorite part of our trip was a splash park that we came across. It was located at a regular park and was by far one of the best things that I have ever seen for children. We made several visits to the splash park during our stay.
We also had a great time at the Primate Sanctuary and the Lowry Park Zoo, but I think I'll make those into another post. I don't have the zoo pictures so once I get those, then I will be sure to post those. The Tampa Zoo is really something that everyone should experience at least once. We had a great visit and I can't wait to do it again. Thanks for everything Aunt Keyko!
