On our last day in Florida we spent an entire morning at Siesta Key Beach. It was warm and lovely. I got to read and look for shells, the kids mostly played on the water's edge building structures out of sand and trying to protect them from the incoming tide.But we knew a storm was coming, one that was predicted to cause more problems for the roads Georgia, and by the time we got moving on our way we could see the clouds to the north and feel the temperature drop.
However, we had one more stop to make on our way out of Florida: Weeki Wachee.
If you've been keeping score on this account of our Mold-A-Rama Road Trip, you'll know we had picked up 57 of the total 59 Mold-A-Ramas by then. The last two were to be found at Weeki Wachee, and we worked for those last two. (If you can call any experience that's essentially visiting a vending machine "work," but as far as this adventure goes we wrapped up with some suspense!)
Weeki Wachee is an old-school kind of Florida attraction. They have a natural spring that forms a big pool that they've dug theater seats down alongside so you can look into it like a giant fishbowl. Inside are fish and turtles, and during showtimes there are mermaids!We arrived at (the deserted looking) Weeki Wachee right before 3:00. When I asked at the ticket counter when the next mermaid show was, she said the last one started in three minutes. We hurriedly paid our admission and ran to the theater. We settled into our seats just as the curtains revealed the underwater stage and the performance of The Little Mermaid began.
Women in mermaid costumes appeared. They "sang," they swam, they smiled as their long hair floated about their faces in the water. During scene changes they ran bubbles up the windows to act as a curtain. It was all both silly and mesmerizing.
