TRIP REPORT DAY 6: HOLLYWOOD!

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Admit it when you saw the word Hollywood your mind burst into the old song from the black and white movies (and from the Great MovieRide) and now you have the chorus singing “Hollywood” in your mind.

What’s not to love about Disney’s Hollywood Studios? This park has it all, thrill rides, kiddy areas, lots of variety in food sources, shows, street performers and a wonderful night time show that includes all the best of fireworks, lasers, and showmanship.

That was our destination for this day six of our trip.  But first there were some minor camp chores to take care of.

Beds to make, sewer to dump (yech!  So glad that is dh’s job) and a campsite to enjoy a bit. I'll write more about this in another post.   Oh yeah and one other very important thing for our family.  Potato Heads to set up.  Another TRADITION! (Okay, so now I’ve segued to “Fiddler on the Roof” what can I say I love musicals!) 

This tradition started years and years ago when we discovered the Potato Heads to purchase at “Once Upon a Toy” at Downtown Disney.  Never checked them out?  Oh that can be an adventure in itself.  

When we purchased our first one it was a set price for all you can stuff in the box and still close the box.  I think it is the same way now.  We worked HARD at it and with some tips from a helpful cast member we came home with a LOT of Potato Head parts and one body.

The next trip we did even better and got Mr. Potato Head a mate.  

Here are a few helpful hints on getting the most for your money on this deal:

Start by filling the Potato Head body as tightly as you can, fill every nook and cranny with everything that will fit.  We tend to put in one or two larger pieces and then work things like eyes, ears, earrings etc in around the larger pieces until Mr. /Mrs. Potato Head is one overstuffed potato. 

 Then put the feet on the body and put on flat parts like eyes and lips, but nothing that will stick out very far.  

Fill in the gap below the Potato Head body and the bottom of the box that is caused by the feet with small flat things.  

Run larger pieces in the corners of the box and then once again use the smaller pieces to fill in all the small spaces left.  

After our initial purchase of Mr. Potato Head my son’s friend started adding to my son’s enormous toy collection with specialty Star Wars Potato Head figures.  After a while ds sold off most of his toy collection, but he hung on to the Star Wars characters.

Since we would be visiting Star Wars weekend later on in the trip he gave those Potato Heads to me for the camper as well.

Every trip we take somewhere the Potato Heads are dressed according to what our main theme of the location we are at.  Ie: Bluegrass festival will find the guitars, bolo hats and such brought out.

Since this trip would include the Star Wars weekend they got done up like “aliens”.

What can I say we are a little weird at our house.  

Once all the daily “chores” were done , the sunblocker applied and sunhats gathered  we were off to the Studios.  

This time I putt putted my little ECV down to the bus stop to wait for “Outpost Yellow” and when the bus arrived I had dh load the chair while I boarded with ds.

You have probably noticed by now I keep mentioning bus names.  This is how transportation is handled internally at the Ft. Wilderness Campground.  

 Each area is assigned a color, site 1616 is in the yellow group,  and it depends if you are going toward the marina and the settlement trading post (Settlement Yellow in our case) or to the outpost to grab a main transport bus (Outpost Yellow).  It’s a very simple procedure and quite frankly it’s easier than the flags they use to have on the buses eons ago.

At the outpost we boarded a bus that took us directly to Disney Hollywood Studios. 

Because we had made no Fastpass+ for the day, and didn’t really want them, we decided to just “go with the flow” and see how it went.  On our way to a late lunch we swung by StarTours.  The sign said it was a 25 minute wait so we joined the queue.  The wait turned out to be about 10 minutes. 

In this line ECV’s queue with everyone else and they are split off at the last minute for boarding purposes.  Because I could easily transfer this wasn’t a problem for us at all.  

 It did,  however,  put me in the “Rebel Spy” seat.  Which was fun in itself and gave my family a good chuckle when I pulled my floppy straw hat down over my face pretending to be a sneaky spy that showed up on the monitor.

The “ride” was just as I had remembered it, well maybe it shook me up more than I remember, but then I am older and rounder than I was last trip.

By this time hunger was setting in so we made our way to the area that looks like a big open air market where there is a variety of small food stands and a variety of foods. 

We ended up eating food from Rosie’s All American Café.  Dh of course had the Angus Cheeseburger, while I opted for the kiddy meal of chicken nuggets with apple juice, apple sauce and carrots.  

The nuggets hit the spot and I was very happy to say they were great, as far as processed chicken nuggets go.  They had a panko bread crumb coating on them.  

After we returned home dh was doing the weekly grocery shopping and noticed Tyson now had a panko bread crumb coated nugget, so he picked up a bag, remembering how much I liked the ones with that coating at the parks.  If they weren’t the same nuggets they were real close to the ones I ate while at WDW.  

Every trip I ride Tower of Terror with ds, this time was no exception.  Dh does not care for the ride so we left the ECV with him and went in the stand-by line for TOT.

The sign said it would be a 35 minute wait, but we entered our seats in less than 20 minutes. 

Okay, WHY do I ride this ride?  It scares the bejeebis out of me every time.  WHY?

It dropped us so many times ds and I both lost count.  It was like “let’s hear the fat lady scream!” time for the computer.  Cheez! 

Needless to say my very next stop was the little girl’s room to recover my dignity!

I will normally ride every ride ONCE just to say I did, when a new ride is added, there are a few exceptions and Rock ‘n Roller Coaster is one of them.  I have no plans on ever riding that thing!  Call me a wus all you want, it’s just a little too daring for me. So while ds joined the single passenger line to ride it I joined Gary in some window shopping. 

We were looking for the perfect thank you gift for our critter sitter’s three small children.  The most challenging turned out to be Elsa from Frozen.  We made the mistake of not picking up an Elsa doll when we first saw it and by the time we were ready to buy they were out of EVERYTHING Elsa.  More on this later.  Let’s just say if you are at a park looking for a character from a recent Disney movie, buy the item the minute you see it!

We’d planned on watching the Beauty and the Beast show, but it wasn’t scheduled to start for 30 minutes and Sean would be back to join us before then, so window shopping and a street show it was,during the 20 minutes it took ds to ride RNRC.  He caught up with us at the villains candy shop. 

We were all amazed I didn’t find something in there I couldn’t live without.  After all it’s candy, it’s the great Disney villains, and it was easy to navigate in the ECV. But I didn’t find a single item I truly wanted.  Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it’s because of the five years on the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover plan I’ve became less of an impulse buyer.

As we left there we caught the street show that was a competition of joke telling by the Disney street performers.  Some of the jokes were pretty good.  It was nice to sit in the shade and enjoy their performance. 

We went toward the Indiana Jones show, but decided we really weren’t in the mood for that same old story that day.  I’ll be frank, with my family this is one show they could replace with a Cars land or something.  It’s just not that interesting to us any more.  When the kids were young it was fun, but now…

After a bit we realized we were getting hungry so we decided to try our traditional favorite full service meal for this park and headed for the Sci-Fi Diner.  While there were people with Advanced DiningReservations aka: ADR standing around outside waiting for their turn in the diner we were given a seat within 10 minutes because we were a smaller party. 

Because of the ECV we were seated at the “picnic tables” at the back.  Luckily it was right next to an electrical outlet so I sat in a chair at the table to eat while my scooter refueled. 

I was pleased to see they had a Salmon BLT Salad sandwich on the menu because I love Salmon and who doesn’t love BLT.  I was less than thrilled with the sandwich though.  It did not have the tomato spread on it that the menu said it would have, instead it have a single slice of mushy tomato, there was in fact little to no dressing or anything on the OVERCOOKED salmon sandwich.  Dry, dry, dry.

By this time I was beginning to think it was really me that was the problem on the various meal dryness so I had ds take a bite of the salmon.  He said one word “over cooked.” 

We are foodies and we love good food, these meals did not fill the bill. 

It was so dry I ended up taking the salmon off the sandwich and trying it with ketchup on it to manage to even eat any of it. I gave up less than half way through the sandwich and picked at the sides that came with it. 

Dh had, you guessed it, the Picnic Burger, he said it was over cooked too.  Ds had the chicken pasta and yep, over done.  So none of us were pleased with our meal.

When it came time to pay I mentioned we had an annual Pass, for those of you who were planning on using your AP at Sci-Fi Diner, forget about it.  They no longer take it!

Based on the changes to their menu, which were numerous from our last trip to WDW, the quality of our meal and the lack of an AP discount this will probably be our last trip to dine at Sci-Fi.  I’m sad to say that because we love watching the old B grade sci-fi movies while we eat and eating in the drive-in cars has always been fun, but there are too many other places to eat at the parks where we would be happier. 

After such a disappointing meal we wandered around a bit until we found an ice cream cart and had Mickey Ears ice cream to console ourselves with the loss of a favorite eating spot.  

By now all the street shows had wound down for the day and it was heading toward Fantasmic time.  Since we didn’t have a Fastpass+ for this we decided to head over there a little early in hopes of getting in.

No problem, we were placed dead center of the stage in the handicapped area with me in the ECV and the guys sitting on seats nearby. 

 By the time the show got started I was thankful for two things.  My Brita water bottle, because I was very thirsty and the beach towel I had been sitting on all day.  It magically morphed from being a seat liner to being a blanket as the temperature dropped with the approaching nightfall.

The show was wonderful, did I expect anything less?  NOPE!  But still it was great to have such perfect seats where we could see all the action as the show went on.  The weather, albeit cool, was perfect.

While we waited for the crowd to clear we discussed Extra Magic hours at another park again, and once again decided we were tired (I actually think that because of my health both men claimed to be tired more than they were to give me a pleasant way to say “Let’s go back to the camper.” ) so camper bound we were. 

Once again we boarded the direct bus, and once again we had little to no wait in boarding.  This was the pattern for our whole trip.  Our timing seemed to be just perfect both going into and out of the parks nearly every trip.  Either that or they are running far more buses than they use to!

Back at the camper it was milk and cookies and a check of email to see if the critter sitter had seen any of the six cats yet.  Up to that point she had only seen Gypsy who was very loving and demanding of her time.  Nope, but we were certain all were safe, just not use to someone other than us in their domain.

The next day she verified this because she went on a massive cat hunt and found all but Sir Oliver Inkwell, who is extremely shy and with his dark color is very hard to see even when he knows you.  Basically two glowing yellow eyes only. So the fact that Gypsy was frantic about her “kitten” (we adopted him as a playmate for her when she was a year old) being missing made us certain Ollie was safe, just hiding. While he has grown into a large cat (as witnessed by the photo below, no it is not an optical illusion he is that much bigger than Gypsy) he is also terrified of strangers.

I know it seems like we don’t do much in each of the parks, but we’ve been there so often and have annual passes, not to mention 11-12 days in the park this trip there was no need to rush or stand in long lines.  We had plenty of time and definitely have plans to go back at least twice between June 2014 and May 2015.  So the more leisurely pace worked very well for us.

Jan who really enjoys the slower pace in OK

TRIP REPORT: DAY FOUR, TRAVEL NO MORE!

Sunday, May 25, 2014

After yet another night of sleeping in the heat and only spit baths available we were all tired and trying very hard to not be cranky.  I was handing out Pollyanna pills like crazy.

For those of you that aren’t on the Dave Ramsey list (Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com ) with me Pollyanna pills are something I’m known to disperse on a regular basis.  If you have seen the Disney movie Pollyanna, you already know that Pollyanna always found the silver lining in everything.  This is what I try to do not only for myself and my family but for those on the Dave Ramsey list that are taking Murphy hits right and left.  Of course no pill really exists, but I disperse them anyway.

It was a battle to be a Pollyanna that morning because I had discovered that despite my asking dh to check the tanks often before we left on the trip he hadn’t done it and we had ran  out of propane sometime in the middle of the night.  That meant not only no stove, but no refrigerator when we stopped for the night.  

Luckily we had left home with everything in the fridge surrounded by block ice, refroze the ice each night when camped and all was still safe for consumption.

My Pollyanna pill was we would be in St. Augustine later that day and would have air conditioning in the camper that night and a hot shower even if we didn’t arrive early enough to go to the sites we had planned on visiting that day.

It was that last part that was starting to wear on us.  We would be traveling way out of our way simply to camp for the night, and miss the sites we wanted to see.  Almost in unison Gary and I said.  “What if we went on to Walt Disney World today, do you think we could find a place to camp on Memorial weekend?”

Sean piped up “Even if we had to boondock again we’d be there the first thing in the morning.”

Of course we had those reservations for the St. Augustine campground and most campgrounds will charge you a cancellation fee.  We decided even with the fee it would be cheaper than the extra fuel to go out of our way so I called the campground.

The gentleman that answered the phone was very agreeable and said he’d have no trouble filling our site at all and wouldn’t charge us for cancelling both nights.  

My next call was to our wonderful Naomi Maclern.  It was Memorial Day, but she answered right away and I explained what we wanted to do and why.  She said the chances of getting into Ft. Wilderness on the holiday were pretty slim, but she’d try.  I told her we’d also be willing to park the camper in a WDW parking lot and stay in a value resort for the night.

Our decision made all of our spirits fly through the truck roof.  We were going into the Magic Kingdom that night come heck or high water!  God bless annual passes!

About 30 minutes later Naomi called us back and said the only room should locate for us was around $300 for the one night for the three of us.  I told her thanks, but no thanks we’d work something else out.  I had a plan and I had faith. A true Pollyanna through and through.

Like I said previously we’ve been to WDW numerous times and on more than one trip we have not always had the number of nights we wanted until right up to arriving, and one time after we arrived.  People leave early for numerous reasons and their accommodations become available to the first one that shows up.  If that doesn’t happen Disney has a list of offsite places they can recommend.  Even though it was a holiday, we knew kids still get sick, couples have to get back to work and sites open up.  So we went directly to the Ft. Wilderness gate, arriving about mid afternoon.

As we drove there Naomi kept looking and touching base with us, but she could come up with nothing on property.  I have to give her strong kudos for taking time from her family on a holiday to work so hard for my family.

I am so sorry to say that just recently, July 30, 2014, that I received an email from Naomi that she is no longer working with The Magic For Less Travel Agency.  She has recommended Carol Garcia to us and I plan on working with Carol in the very near future to book our winter and spring trips this year and next back to Walt Disney World.  If she is half as good as Naomi was to us she will be wonderful!

When we arrived at the gate the cast member was friendly and said I was right that most times they will have sites open up at the last minute, but they had a main water line break that weekend and had to move 300 campers OUT!  So they were actually in the negative for campsites already. DANG IT MURPHY! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

I asked if she could recommend other locations and she cheerfully gave me a long list of campgrounds that had their address, phone number and distance from the Magic Kingdom on it.  She said we were welcome to park in the parking lot to make our calls.

Our very first call was to the closest one Tropical Palms, and they had a site available for $55.  Take that Murphy!  

I called Naomi and updated her and thanked her for her time and we went directly to Tropical Palms.

On our way there we spotted one of the new, articulated ( hinged in the middle) WDW buses, it was the only one we saw the whole trip, but still it was interesting to see.  We took it as a sign of good things to come.

Tropical Palms is located in Celebration, an area we first heard about from a resort bus driver the year they were building the area.  I was expecting all the niceties of WDW and was a bit disappointed to see it was much like the area that Walt had wanted to avoid being around Disney World.  Over commercialized to the point of being borderline trashy.  I was concerned about the campground after seeing the area.

You have to really watch for the sign or you will miss the turn onto the side street that will take you down to Tropical Palms.  We had the gps going so we were alerted ¼ mile before the turn and prepared for it.  

I was somewhat relieved when we turned into the resort itself.  It was obviously one of those vacation club type campgrounds, something we stay at often.  Besides numerous campsites they had multi-colored vacation cottages and all was clean and nicely landscaped.

While dh checked us in I ran to the closest restroom to find it clean, well maintained and with decent size showers—I so wanted a shower at this point.

Before I get into what happened next let me say I liked the campground, it had an old fashioned going to the lake for the weekend feel to it, my guys did not like it for the same reason.  They like privacy and rules.

By the time I came back from the restroom dh was in line behind the golf cart attendant that would take us to our site, so the attendant had me just jump on the golf cart with him and we wound our way down to the end of the campground to a grassy site.   He warned me it might be a little difficult to get into, but he figured dh could do it.  

When we got to the site there were pickups parked in it so he started to get out of his cart to ask them to move them.  Before he could an obviously irate woman came and told him he was NOT putting another camper in that area.  

That they had reserved the area for the entire weekend for them and their friends and that because of breaker overload  eight families had to move to elsewhere in the campground and since they had moved those eight out the office had put two sets of strangers in.  She was NOT happy, and I must say I didn’t blame her.

My thought was, “uh, oh will they have another campsite, not Murphy again please!”  The park attendant got on the radio with the office and the grounds keepers to verify the lady’s  tale of woe.  When they told him yes there was a breaker problem in that area he told them to find us another spot immediately at the same price for the night in the “upper area.”

We went from a grassy hard to get into area to one with a concrete patio, and gravel parking.  Close to the restrooms too.  Sweet! (Mental raspberry to Murphy at this point.)

After a  quick camp set up that was basically plugging into the electric, turning on the fridge,  air conditioner and hot water tank we took our much needed showers then headed for the Magic Kingdom!

Since our first trip in 1980 we have only stayed offsite once, hated it and vowed never to do it again.  I know some folks adore staying offsite, but we are true onsite hardcore fans. So it had been over 20 years since we had to park at the Transportation Ticket Center aka: TTC.  Since we weren’t officially resort guests yet this was where we headed.

I knew annual pass holders got to park for free so I had our vouchers ready to show when we got to the gate and was surprised that the attendant was simply waving everyone through.  Not taking fees or checking paperwork on anyone.  We followed the crowd going to the right to find a place to park. This was around 8 pm.

We were surprised there was no attendant to show us where to park either, so dh opted for the end of a row far out where the hips of the dually would be less likely to be hit, Villians-Scar lot. Then we hiked toward the tram.

While we were back at the campsite the standard daily rain shower for WDW had moved through and the temperature had dropped quickly with it and the onset of darkness.  So the walk was pleasant enough, although it left me fairly winded with all I had going on. 

As we approached the tram pick-up point we noticed an attendant on the other side parking cars.  OOPS, guess we parked on the wrong side.  Oh well.

We waited about 20 minutes for the tram and when it finally arrived is when a comedy of errors started.  

Our pickup point was on the right side of the tram drive and since it was bringing people out it was on the left side.  The tram driver gave the usual warning to stay behind the lines and to not board the vehicle, which all of the people waiting complied with.  

Once his passengers disembarked the parking lot attendant told us to board, the tram driver screamed at us to get back behind the line, attendant barked his order, tram driver countered. This continued on for several seconds.  Some of the guests were bouncing back and forth like a yo-yo trying to figure out which to obey.  My family stood still waiting. 

Finally the parking lot attendant marched up to the tram driver, told him how the cow ate the cabbage and that orders had changed and that as a newbie he needed to obey those orders.  It was plenty loud enough for all to hear.  Bad non-Disney type form for certain.We had never seen such behavior with a cast member before.

Finally the tram driver told us to board, he did the turn around that would have taken him to right where we’d of been standing originally and then he went back up the other side to pick up other passengers. 

Once in the TTC we grabbed the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom and headed directly, more or less for Cosmic Rays and dinner. 

First stop, of course was the bag check station.  The guys were bagless so I sent them ahead to get in line at the “Will Call” window so we could pick up our annual passes I had purchased online months earlier while I had my belt bag checked.  That worked out well because right after I joined them it was our turn at the window to get our annual passes.

Hunger was calling so we went straight to Cosmic Rays.  For those of you who have never been to the Magic Kingdom this is a burger joint with different stations where you can order chicken, beef and pork items as well as a few vegetarian items.  The sandwiches come bare bones and you choose from a variety of fixings from the toppings bar. If you click on the hyperlink above you can find out more about Cosmic Rays.

I gave my order of a bbq pork sandwich to ds and I went off in search of a table near the alien, Sunny Eclipse so we could see if his “night club” show had changed any since it was refurbished since our last visit.  It hadn’t, same corny, but fun jokes.

By now I was feeling a little under the weather, so that might have been part of the reason that to me my sandwich was extremely dry.  It tasted fine, but far too dry for my liking.  I cut the sandwich in half, giving the other half to the guys to go with their meals and ate my half with my grapes and carrots.

Dh had the burger and said it was good, ds had the chicken and rib platter and declared it delicious.  We all drank sodas with Disney ice in them.

If you have never been to Disney, let me suggest right now you invest in self filtering water bottles, we have Britas, and generally simply drink water there.  Disney’s water is NASTY!  Therefore, so is their ice.

Naomi had warned us that the People Mover was scheduled to be closed for refurbishment part way through our trip and since we all like riding it we headed there after eating.

The ride seemed longer than we remembered it, but that was fine with us, because it gave us an overview of part of the park.  

After that our curiosity about the new Fantasyland got the better of us and despite it being well after dark we wandered over to see what we could see.  The Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride had only been open a couple of days so the lines were far too long for us to even consider.  Besides we had two fast passes for it later in our trip.  

After a bit we headed back to Auntie-Gravities for soft serve yogurt.  Once again I found a table while the guys got our orders.  I chose one that gave us a view of where the fireworks would show behind the castle.  

As we ate we watched our first fireworks of the trip.  Life was good! I caught Gary taking photos of me as I watched the fireworks.  He said it was because I looked like an amazed child.  I see the photo as I was content to be right where I was.  You decide.

We sat for a bit after the fireworks were over letting the crowds thin, a pattern we tend to follow, and then headed back through Fantasyland to see a little more and then head out.

For some reason, probably the fireworks, the path through the castle was closed, so we went around the left side castle and realized they were projecting a show on the castle.  We found a bench on the bridge and sat and watch it before heading on out of the park.

Back to the TTC and our truck, which seemed 100 miles away at that point, then back to Tropical Palms.

When we got back to the campground it was well after quiet hours, but there were campers enjoying games and kids playing in the street.  This was one of the things the guys didn’t like, and one of the things that reminded me of camping as a child.

 I will admit that some of the parents were a little rude about having to move their various game boards out of the street so we could get to our camper, but not bad.

Tropical Palms was clean, but has one of the most confusing layouts of any campground I have ever been to.  There are areas where you have to circle trees to go on the roads and if you go on the wrong side with your camper you could get stuck.  We made jokes while we were there that we may never find our poor old camper again.

So a day that had started out so weary and tense ended up being very good with us getting a little extra time in the park.

We slept in blessed cool air conditioning and rested well.

Jan who is glad we decided to not go to St. Augustine this trip in OK

TRIP REPORT: DAY 3 AND YOU GUESSED IT, TIRE 3

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Once again we woke early had a cold breakfast and headed for Wal-Mart in Birmingham.  We were headed for one on the far side of Birmingham when I spotted one just as we were entering the city.  It was already pushing toward noon.

Once again only one tire was available and once again the guys used it for the spare.  At this point all they wanted to do was get on the road because we had reservations booked for St. Augustine, Florida for that night and the next night.  We all wanted to sleep comfortably so bad.

To help make the day a little more relaxed we decided to play travel games like we had when the kids were little.  The first one I pulled out the road atlas and using the info in it had the guys trying to figure out the nicknames of all 50 states, thoughtfully supplied by Rand McNally.  

A side note here about the Rand McNally Atlas’.  I know using an atlas seems so old fashioned in the age of GPS, but don’t get me started on the errors on a GPS, let’s just say we’ve taken many an adventurous side trip depending on first Fiona, our name for the one that we ran on my laptop when we were mystery shopping full time.  

And you really don’t want to talk to me about Dora, what we call the one on my dh’s phone that uses google maps.  Dora has a real love for taking us on little side trips through not so good parts of towns, and always where there seems to be the most traffic and construction.  You’ll hear more about Dora on the blog post about our recent trip to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri that we went on just recently—after I finish all the posts on the wonderful WDW trip first. 

Anyway, we usually purchase a new Rand McNally road atlas from Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart every 2-3 years.  I am a good navigator when I have good Maps and their maps tend to be very good.  But even more important is an index they have in them of all the Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs across the nation.  

This info is very important to us because the index lists which ones are 24 hours,  the ones where we can generally boondock, and which ones have fuel stations, even more importantly, which of those fuel stations have diesel.   So we had purchased a new Rand McNally for this trip and it turned out it was a very good thing we did.  Now back to my narrative. 

Once we were out of states I told the guys a story about when I was traveling the Rendezvous circuit with some friends and we’d played the travel game where you start with a city and the next person has to name a city that starts with the last letter of the city you named, the third person then has to use the last letter of the second city to name a third and so on.  The only rule being you could not use the same city twice.

The thing was the woman who seemed to being having zero trouble in naming cities was, well not someone you would think to be that knowledgeable of US cities. 

I happened to look back at her from where I was riding in the front seat during one of her turns to discover she was using the index of the road atlas to find cities.

Both men know the woman well, so they got a good chuckle out of it.  Ds suggested we play that game with NO road atlas.

I suggested a Disney twist in honor of our trip.  The rules were simple, play the game the same as the cities version, only we could use anything Disney, movies, songs, theme park attractions, actors etc.  The only exception ds made was we could not use Star Wars or Marvel because while Disney owns the franchise to them now, they were not actually Disney products, yet.

Folks let me say right here and now the game was MUCH harder than we expected.  We started with Minnie, moved on to Elsa, then Ariel, and so forth.  There are certain letters that are REALLY hard to think of after the first few. 

We played for about two hours and the highway flew by as we did. 

I know some of you folks live in and love Atlanta, Georgia.  Not so with our family.  Our first trip back in 1980 I was driving through on one of your tall bridges when a bird smacked into the windshield, scaring me silly.  Another trip we saw a horrific wreck, with a body we will never forget, other times it has been awful traffic (is the traffic ever good in Atlanta?) and this time we were tense about tires. 

We made it onto and off the loop headed down the highway without getting lost and through awful traffic and of course construction and just as we were just about to join back up with the main highway …

You guessed it tire #3 blew, taking out the bumper of the driver’s side of the camper.  I had absolutely had it.  I told the guys right then and there we were buying TWO tires come hell or high water and there would be four new tires on the ground or I wasn’t getting back in the truck.

This time they had to change the flat on the side of the road under a bridge and we were all really nervous because the traffic was whipping the trailer around and zipping by so fast  I was afraid one of them would get killed.

While they changed the flat I looked up Wal-Marts on our route and found two within 10 miles and a Sam’s Club as well. 

As soon as we were back on the road we went to the first Wal-Mart, ZERO tires available.  But the tire and lube guy was nice enough to call first the other Wal-Mart, no tires there either.  

I prayed as he called the Sam's Club and they had two, exactly the number we needed!  So we cautiously traveled the 9 miles to the Sam’s and then I ran in to pay for the tires,  while dh took the trailer around back and to start removing the remaining tire that could still blow out on us 

I shop Sam’s on a regular basis and generally the greeter doesn’t even look to see if you have your card.  The greeter at this Sam’s was determined I was not going in without her examining mine closely.  I was not in the mood for her nonsense, and no matter how hard I dug through my belt bag I couldn’t find that elusive card.

So when she got a phone call I slipped past her and went to the tire counter a few feet away, where I told the gal who I was and that I wanted to pay for the tires that the man from the Wal-Mart had just talked to her about.  All the time I was digging for my card and the greeter was fussing at me. What was that woman's problem anyway, I mean if nothing else I could have got a guest pass for free!

Finally I called dh and told him to bring me his card so we could get the tires.  Turns out my son had my card because he had used it to get fuel for his truck a few days before.  Duhhhh, I remembered that as soon as I saw ds coming through the door.

We had to wait for the two tires to be put on the rims before the guys could put them on the trailer.  The wait turned out to not be the few minutes we were promised, but HOURS.  Sitting in the truck on the hot asphalt waiting on the men to put the two tires on the rims was agonizing.  I just wanted to get to a campground, have a hot shower and a cool night's sleep.

With this final trailer tire purchase we were now down $700 of the cash we had budgeted for the trip, but knew we had it in savings where we could easily transfer it when we could get on a secure server. I had made arrangements with our bank for just such an emergency prior to leaving for the trip.  Always let your bank, or if you still use them, credit card company know when you are going to be traveling out of state.  You will save yourself a lot of time and embarassment by doing so.  Nothing is more embarrassing than having your card declined while traveling and knowing you have sufficient money available.

Prior to being on the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover program such a huge expense would have wrecked our vacation and forced us to use credit cards, even if we didn’t want to.  This was not an option for this trip at all because we had closed  all our credit card accounts five years ago and have never regretted it.

After being on the program and without credit cards for five years we are not only very near the end of the massive debt we started with, despite being unemployed 18 months of that time, but we have sinking funds for things like tires that we keep fully funded.  It is from the tire sinking fund this money came. I thank God constantly for the freedom we now have by not using credit cards and highly recommend that everyone check out the book Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, your local library probably has it and it won’t cost you a thing.

Of course Murphy wasn’t through with us and our tires.  When dh tried to put the spare back up under the trailer where it belongs the mount wouldn’t work, naturally. Disgusted he threw the old tire spare up into the bed of the truck, vowing to work on the storage mount later in the trip. 

We left Atlanta with four new tires on the ground on the trailer and an old spare we wouldn’t trust very far if we had to use it.  We’ll buy a new tire for a spare, as is our habit, once the tire fund is refilled after we get home. 

By the time we left it was almost dark.  We generally don’t travel after dark because if you break down, you are stuck.  After a short bit it became very clear to us we weren’t going to make St. Augustine that night.  I tried to call and cancel that night’s reservation, but the office was already closed. 

We ended up boondocking yet a third night, this time in the parking lot of the Valdosta, GA welcome center.  A nice parking area, security, and HOT!  Miserable hot, none of us slept well at all.

Murphy was really being a brat!

Jan who agrees with dh that we will never boondock in the hot weather again if we can help it either away or in OK