While I was Wandering it Rained

When people think of Florida they think of beaches, sun, theme parks, Space Shuttle lift offs, and driving the Overseas Highway through the Keys.

What people forget, and we neglected to remember a few too many times, is Florida is home to a very tropical environment. That means yes, it is sunny and beautiful for about nine months out of the year. But those other three months, well…let me tell you about some of our experiences!

• I have downloaded and printed out a lot of material for work to be prepared to work without power more than once when tropical storms or hurricanes are predicted to make a pathway though our hometown.
• Hurricane Irma…not going to say any more.
• We have decided to leave Disney’s Hollywood Studios when we saw dark clouds, and as we were walking to our car I’ve asked “Doesn’t that look like rain up ahead where our car is?” We tried to quickly get our raincoats out and on, but the wall of rain beat us and soaked us – and we still had to walk to our car.
• I’ve spent a whole birthday weekend in the house during a tropical storm.
• We’ve spent days and days with rain.
• We planned a vacation to Disney in May to avoid the rain only to have it pour every single day. This was OK, because one of those days we went and saw the Avengers Infinity War movie.
• And now last weekend. We made a day trip to Epcot. Well, the day started out very hot and humid, which should have warned us. But, no we stayed in the park until there was literally more rain than we ever saw before! We made it back to car drenched – even through my Gore-Tex rain coat. We tossed soaked shoes in the trunk and made our way home in our wet clothes and car. It took three days for our tennis shoes to completely dry out.

Now, you would think after this long list of memorable rain incidents we would be prepared. In general I have usually had a rain coat with me. That isn’t always the case for my husband. Like last weekend. We left two ponchos and three umbrellas in the car as we went into Epcot. There are now four umbrellas in my car as my husband had to buy an umbrella in the park in a fruitless attempt to keep dry. But, on the bright side one of our four umbrellas has a Mickey Mouse on it!

Are we prepared now you may wonder? Well, I now have four umbrellas, two ponchos, three full size towels, one hand towel, and a pair of flip flops for each of us to change into should we wind up with soaked shoes again. We are definitely prepared – plus we each have knee length Gore-Tex coats. I’m also the new owner of a water resistant backpack for Disney park days.

We will see if during our next rainy trip to Disney we remember that we have all of this and actually use it!

How many days until the rainy season ends?