Welcome to our Adventure!

Al and I are thrilled that you have found your way to our blog. We hope you enjoy reading our journal and viewing our photographs of the natural wonder of our United States of America. Let's hit the road together!
Homer, Alaska

Monday, February 9, 2015

Lots of Stuff

I can't believe its been a month since I last wrote!

The week that my sister, her husband and my brother were here just flew right by. Having so many hands helping made the task of cleaning out my mother's house so much easier. The hardest part was deciding what to keep and what to let go. Looking at the myriad of pictures also took a lot of time, and brought back many childhood memories, as well as several "who is this?" questions. At any rate, once we packed up our memorabilia, sorted out the trash, there was still a lot of used but functional items. I called the local Habitat for Humanity chapter, and they sent over a truck and took everything we didn't want to keep: furniture, clothing, kitchenware, knick-knacks. It was one of my mother's favorite charities so we felt good that so many of her things would be helping other people. After having the carpets cleaned, and the house and driveway powerwashed, the house is now ready to be listed for sale. A major hurdle is jumped at this point, and I am so glad my siblings were able to take the time to come down and help out.

Our Solitude fifth wheel spent almost three weeks at Lazydays being serviced and having some warranty items fixed. Unfortunately, we had to pick it up to leave on our Disney family reunion before everything was completed, so it had to go back today. The jury is still out on how satisfied we are with Lazydays' service; we are not happy with how long it took them to deal with Grand Design, especially as we had already laid the groundwork in communicating with their customer service department the issues we have been having with the light fixtures and the theater seats. Plus there were some items on the servicing that were supposed to have been done that didn't get done. Upon our return of our rig to the service department today, we made it known that we are not at this point satisfied customers, and expect all items to be completed promptly. We shall see.

I had all intentions of writing blogs during our family reunion at Disney World; it didn't happen :-)! I also had all good intentions of taking my camera along every day; didn't happen :-)!

We always have a wonderful time getting together with Al's cousins and our friends. Jim and Judy, friends from New York who have relocated to North Carolina, have survived the 2014 reunion and are now "adopted" into the group. And this year we had RV friends, Dan and Jonell Anderson ( Liv2RV) join us for our second week. They too are now officially "adopted"! Jonell is starting to write about their experience visiting Disney World as first time visitors, and I urge you to tag along with her, she is a wonderfully entertaining writer.

Disney seems like it is a perfect place to gather. The campground at Disney, Fort Wilderness, although pricey, is the nicest campground we've ever been to. Sites are big, spacious and private. The grounds are immaculate, comfort stations squeaky clean. We have a nice, 1.7 mile loop walk with the dogs twice a day, and for those puppies that enjoy romping in dog parks, there's a really nice large one here for them. Casey is too much of a chicken to run around dog parks, so we don't take him there anymore! We all enjoy spending time at each of the four parks comprising the World, and spend many a good meal together in the myriad of restaurants on property. We also have an enjoyable Superbowl Sunday get together at the campground, having a potluck dinner and watching the game. And Disney is pretty good exercise; for those folks following along the current activity of "counting steps", we averaged between 18000 and 21000 steps a day without really trying :-)!

The cast of characters: Al's cousins: Fred, Kathy, Bill and Denise. Al's sisters Ginny and Susie. New York friends Jim, Judy and Patti. RV friends Dan and Jonell. The Beast was our host for dinner at the Be Our Guest restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. Reservations for this fine French dining experience must be made 180 days in advance as soon as the phone lines open for the day and are difficult to come by. 

We all went on rides...

saw shows like Finding Nemo

and Festival of the Lion King.

The Safari is always a favorite attraction.

We enjoyed many great meals, like this shrimp tempura dish at the Yak and Yeti restaurant.

Several of our group got their thrills on roller coasters such as Expedition Everest...not me!!

One night a few of us joined Dan and Jonell over at the Magic Kingdom for the 

Main Street Electrical Parade. This parade has always been my favorite and I love seeing it.

Fireworks over the castle, a great way to end an evening.

But, one of my favorite things of all.....Disney cupcakes!!!

This was really just a quick, random sampling of all we see and do while at the World for 12 days. As an RV traveler who enjoys getting out into the country, hiking and kayaking the solitary trails far from the maddening crowds, it may seem a little odd that we love the crowded mass that is Walt Disney World. But for sheer fantasy, fun and letting go of the "real" world, Disney does it for us, for a short while. I guess that's why we keep going back :-)

9 comments:

  1. Looks like you had a blast at Disney! I hope all your service work gets completed to your satisfaction!

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  2. Disney brings out the kid in you! Looks like you had fun as usual. Sure hope all the work gets done to your satisfaction.

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  3. 3 weeks in the shop for a scheduled repair & they did not get it finished? Did I read that right? Not good...

    Sounds like you had a fine time at mickey land!

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  4. Always looks like a good time at Disney!

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  5. We had a good experience with Lazy Days when we bought our used coach a few years ago. I can tell you that you would do better getting things completed, if you would stay in the rig. Tell them you are fulltimers and they will accomodate you, and you won't get set aside for another person with a more critical need. What happens is another rig comes in for one thing and 6 other things come up, which causes everyone else to be delayed. If your rig is just sitting there empty, you get a lower priority. We found quite a few things that needed fixing or replacing when we got our coach, and they couldn't start another rig until we were finished. There was another couple there that had to wait for us. We felt bad for them, but we hung in there and waited until everything was fixed. We ended up with new tires, batteries, refrigerator, toilet, slide toppers, slide seals....and much, much more. Good luck with your repairs. Lazy Days treated us very well, but we had a wonderful service technician....and they are not all that good.

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  6. Love seeing your Disney pictures. It really is the Happiest Place on Earth. We go as often as we can even with all the crowds which I usually hate. I make an exception for the exceptional fun at Disney.

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  7. I'm really envious of all of you that get to do Disney in FL. I grew up on Disney in CA, but someday hope to get to Orlando again with $$ to go!
    You are lucky to have such a good family to help with your Mom's house!

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  8. We have already booked 2 more days of fast passes! Still sorting thru photos!

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  9. Disney World makes me SMILE:o)))) Just the happiest place!!! The original Electric Parade sets the bar for all other parades;-)

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