I picked a little town called Lake Wales. It is just below I-4, midway between Tampa and Orlando. It's less than 3 hours away and wasn't too expensive.
What's there? Well, the first day we went to an aircraft museum in Polk City. This rich guy has a huge collection of vintage aircraft and restores them and flies them and displays them. We spent almost a whole day there just wandering around and looking. Loved the B-16, which was set up so you could walk through and see what it was like on a bombing raid.
The second day we were going to do "historic" Lake Wales. Well, never believe everything you read on the internet. The orange juice welcome center was closed, "historic" downtown had one store open and no restaurants, so that was a bust. We headed to the Chalet Suzanne restaurant and ended up having a light lunch there as Marcia spotted some sandhill cranes and a bunch of turtles right outside the window. They provided the lunch time entertainment. We did "Spook Hill" (twice--Marcia liked that) and then went to Bok Tower and Gardens to hear the concert and tour the grounds. Had time to hear the concert and see a very small portion of the grounds before the sky opened and DUMPED for the next three hours. We gave up and went back to the hotel. Really would like to do the Gardens again some day.
The next day I managed to hit a home run though. I had made arrangements for us to go on an airboat tour on a nearby lake. Neither one of us had ever been on an airboat before. There were four other people with us (a family from Scotland) and the Captain. It was an overcast day, not too hot, and there were lots of birds and gators out. We had two hours out on the water and saw lots of really neat stuff, including three different bald eagles.
After that it was a drive to Tampa to the Hard Rock Casino where we used my comps to have the buffet lunch and spent a couple of hours losing money in the casino before coming home. It was a great 3 1/2 day getaway!
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