After a week of spring break, I wanted nothing more than to get the “Mouse” off my back.  As any parent will tell you, it’s hard to top time spent at Disney World.  I was determined to show my seven year old that fun exists outside the Magic Kingdom.

Like Tinkerbelle, I believed that I could sprinkle some pixy dust on my dollars and stretch them until we reached Never-Never Land.  So I hooked my arm around my child and flew to the nearest GoLine bus stop.   Although it was not “Walt-worthy”, it had the basics to make us believe that we were heading to another version of the “Happiest Place on Earth!”

Fortunately for our community, the transit system is free.   We had never traveled on this bus before.  One look on my son’s face and I knew that I had found a new thrill ride.  He loved it!  We saw places we passed in our car every day from a different perspective.  Who knew our little kingdom in the paradise of Florida could be so beautiful from another angle!

After two buses and nearly an hour of riding, we both were excited for the next step of our adventure.  We arrived at the local mall and took in a coin operated Thomas the Tank Engine ride (.75), a chocolate milk in the food court ($.75) and then saw a matinee of Miley Cyrus’s latest movie ($4.25 each).

After exhausting our “pot of gold”, we found that we had spent our ten dollars.  In a magical instant, I asked my son what he really wanted to do next and he said, “Go to the art museum!”  Ta-da!  In a brilliant moment I knew my son had caught on!

Like all fairy tales, there is a life lesson.  Mine was that I had not read the fine print on the bus schedule.  We had missed the last bus.  So we called my husband.  In true monorail form, he had been circling the mall waiting for us to call!

In one last stroke of poor planning, we arrived too late to tour the museum.  Still determined to carry out the theme of our magic carpet ride, I convinced my son that there was nothing better than peaking through the gates of the sculpture garden. I told him that fairies turned small fruits and vegetables into gargantuan sculptures!  In true voyeuristic form, we sneaked peaks through the tall and lush gates.

As we stood by the side of the museum’s waterfall, I remembered a sign I had seen the previous weekend.  It proclaimed, “Celebrate Today!”    Indeed we did!   A family adventure for only ten dollars? Dreams really do come true!