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You Are Here: Home » Things to Do » Attractions and Family Fun » A Series of Fortunate Events »
by Chelle Koster Walton,
member of the Society of American Travel Writers
Dear Reader,
Prepare yourself for the most funsome adventure one can imagine as you follow three happy siblings down the path of friendly villains – pirates, sharks, ghost crabs, bugs and more.
Valerie, the eldest Voltaire, is 14 and revels in the scientific side of things. Hans, freshly turned 8, prefers to be constantly outdoors and active, while Suzie, the baby of the family at age 4, is wide-eyed and prone to bouts of whimsy. Follow along, dear Reader, as the three take you on a wild, whirlwind tour of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area.
Valerie's Tour
"Serendipity" is defined as "finding valuable . . . things not sought for." Valerie, with her scientific mind, doesn't believe in serendipity, yet she finds herself pleasantly surprised in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area. Her scientific thirst gets quenched on biological and environmental encounters throughout the region, as she meets plants and creatures rare and ill famed.
She begins deep in the city where beauty flowers out of the risk of an ancient sinkhole at Sunken Gardens. Her tour around the paved trail helps her identify plants native and exotic she will meet on her environmental forays: orchids, palms, crotons and more. In a metropolitan St. Petersburg neighborhood, she discovers Pinellas County's Science Center, a haven for eco-heads such as herself who want to study the creepy creatures – alligators, lizards and bugs – that inhabit this strange and wonderful subtropical world.
Valerie once feared stingrays and mammoth creatures of the deep, but at Clearwater Marine Aquarium, she actually pets de-stingered rays and learns more about the 200-pound loggerhead turtle, dolphins and river otters during live demonstrations.
Millipedes, ant lions, weevils, whirligigs? What are these strange creatures? At Brooker Creek Preserve in Tarpon Springs, Valerie discovers the magic of natural minutia with hands-on and video exhibits. She even faces a rattlesnake as she tunnels through a gopher tortoise burrow.
Hans' Adventures
Hans has heard tell of pirates in them there waters of Clearwater and he's ready to do battle. And sure enough, Captain Memo's Pirate Cruise not only introduces Hans to pirates, it turns him into one, complete with hat, squirt-gun weapons and face-painted moustache. From playing pirate, he advances to acting the soldier at Fort De Soto
Park, where he shoots many more imaginary troops with a 19th-century cannon than ever happened in real life. (The fort, he learns, was built for the Spanish-American War, but never came under fire. The only shelling the park has ever seen happens daily on its seashell-strewn beaches.) Hans rents a bike and hits the trails and sands.
For more biking, he proceeds to the Pinellas Trail, a 34-mile paved path that follows an old railroad bed from St.
Petersburg to the Greek community of Tarpon Springs. Hans ends his series of fortunate events by playing castaway on an un-bridged island at Caladesi Island State Park. The park ferry drops him off and he spends the entire day on the pillowy white sands.
Suzie's Perspective
Little Suzie thinks big sister Valerie's preoccupation with science silly and boring. She doesn't realize that at Great Explorations in St. Petersburg she is learning the principles of motion, music, technology and more as she climbs a wall, plays a laser-beam harp and builds a race car. At Children's Arts Museum in Dunedin, she fantasizes in a castle, pyramid and teepee.
Suzie does share with Valerie a love of animals, but she prefers to look at pretty ones, like the multi-colored fish (there's Nemo!) in the big tank at Tarpon Springs Aquarium. (She tries to ignore the toothy sharks with which they live.)
At Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, on the beach in Indian Shores, she stares in wonder at big-bird sandhill cranes, wood storks, pileated woodpeckers and other local birds on the mend. But best of all she loves the butterflies at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve in St. Petersburg. In the environmental center, she learns about some of the native creatures that make her squirm – wolf spiders, black snakes, alligators and cottonmouths. After a visit to the aviary, she retreats to the playground shaded by grand old live oaks.
And here, dear Reader, the Voltaires' series of most fortunate events draws to a close, with Valerie, Hans and Suzie all equally happy with the circumstances that have steered them on unparalleled adventure, overcoming all obstacles and fears of this land's intriguing mysteries.
For fortunate events in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area, call the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau at 877-352-3224.
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