glennbo123
DIS Legend
- Joined
- May 10, 2008
- Messages
- 10,233
Our band is on the run
We got back from New York City on Friday afternoon (June 19th) and I was back at work on Saturday (even though I don’t normally work on Saturdays). I had a full day’s worth of work to put in, in order to get caught back up and to get ahead of the game for the 2 weeks that I’d be gone to DisneyWorld and Hilton Head. I even went into the office so that I could work without distraction. But the good thing about it was that I could count it as a workday and take one less vacation day for the trip. Combined with a couple of holidays leading up to the July 4th weekend, I only had to take 7 vacation days for the trip. It’s so nice to have a flexible work environment, even if it means that I might have to work on a Saturday or from a hotel room on occasion.
While I was bringing home the figurative bacon, the rest of the family was doing laundry and packing and taking care of all those dozens of things you do right before a Disney trip. I joined in with those activities when I got home that night.
We’d be starting our drive on Monday, but we had one more big event before leaving -- seeing Sir Paul McCartney. This would be my fourth time to see him, and on the last occasion one thing that stood out to me was how many young kids there were in the audience. Meanwhile mine were at home, and I thought what the heck was wrong with me? My kids love the Beatles -- I’d made sure to infuse a heavy dose of Beatles, Wings, and solo-Beatles’ music into their consciousness while growing up. How cool would it be for them, at age 100, to be able to say that they saw Paul McCartney in concert? (And Bruce Springsteen too, as I took them to a concert of his last year.) So we were going to rectify that right now, even though his concert in Philly was Sunday night -- The Night Before we’d begin a marathon-drive to Florida. (Beatles reference in there for ya.) Judy was going to stay home...to save money, and to be rested for the drive the next day.
When we’ve driven to Florida before, I’ve always liked to get most of the drive out of the way on the first day (of 2) so that the second day doesn’t seem so bad. “Just a few more hours, and we’ll be in Disney! If we lived through that drive, we can live through this one.” So, following that mindset, I’d reserved a hotel room in Kingsland, Georgia, just north of the Florida line. Our original plan was to get up at oh-dark-thirty hours on Monday morning and start driving until we got there. But as I awoke on Sunday morning, I was thinking about the upcoming Paul McCartney concert and how difficult it was probably going to be to go to sleep after we got back, with our ears still ringing and adrenaline flowing. And consequently how difficult it would be to get up once we’d finally drifted off. I proposed to Judy the following: “What if...” (Met with an “Uh oh”.) “What if. If we felt up to it, of course. We got back from the concert, finished packing the van, and just started driving.” I could take the first shift, since I was on a concert-induced high, and she could take over sometime closer to dawn. We could conceivably get to our hotel in the afternoon and have plenty of time to unwind, have dinner, and get to bed early. She was up for it, but we were still going to see how we all felt upon returning from the concert. The kids thought it was a decent plan too.
The kids and I left late-afternoon for the concert. We got there crazy-early, but I’ve cut it too close before and once you get in that concert traffic, it’s just plain nerve wracking to watch the clock creep closer to showtime while you’re inching along on the highway. Plus, it gave us time to take this picture.
I took this next picture of the kids before the concert started. You can see how close we were. Not to the stage mind you, but to the last row of seats. Hey, we were at least in the building!
By the time Paul took the stage, Judy was probably already zonked-out. “I’m Only Sleeping” anyone?
The stage is quite a ways down there, so any future pictures that appear to be close are actually pictures of the video screens.
Even though we were pretty far away, they were fairly decent seats. A good angle to the stage, and we could see everything.
The only bad thing was that sitting in the upper deck, people were content to actually sit. We wanted to get up and enjoy the music, but if you did you felt like you were blocking someone’s view, and you didn’t have the excuse that everyone in front of you was doing it.
I like how in this one Paul’s knees are slightly bent, just like pictures of early Beatles performances.
The kids were loving it! We forgot to bring earplugs so James improvised with some Kleenex.
We saw Paul’s performance earlier in the year on the Saturday Night Live anniversary special, and we thought that he was losing some of his range, quite frankly. But not on this night, the guy has still got it. He was incredible.
By the time “Hey Jude” came around, I said “I don’t care about the people behind me who are so lame as to sit on their hands at a Paul McCartney concert”. We stood, wrapped our arms around each other, swayed to the beat, and belted out “Hey Jude” with Paul.
It was an amazing, memorable night. The kids had the time of their lives and it was incredible for me to be able to share it with them. As much fun as we’d be having over the next couple of weeks at Disney, these couple of hours may have eclipsed them all.
Of course (with the buildup that I gave you earlier), we decided during the drive back home that we were Flying high and would prefer to wake Judy up and hit the road rather than try to go to sleep. The task that took the longest was downloading pictures from my phone, since I wanted to go into the vacation with maximum available memory. With the final loading of stuff (Carry That Weight), we got started around 2am. I drove us south of D.C., with Judy occasionally asking how I was doing, and I’d reply, “I Feel Fine”. But eventually I gave up and said, “I’m So Tired. Baby, You Can Drive My Car”, since I had had such A Hard Day’s Night. And Judy (Judy, Judy, Judy, Judaaaay!) took over the driving duties. We saw the Good Day Sunshine appearing as we drove through Virginia, and hit a North Carolina rest stop at 7am.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the song titles. But I loved the great time we were making, driving at that time of night/morning!
We stopped at a Starbucks at Roanoke Rapids and redeemed some free drinks we had from the Starbucks app. I had to laugh because I asked the barista to read off the syrups they have, and I zoned-out after she said “Vanilla”. It’s just like when you have the waitress list the salad dressings when you know full-well (and she does too) that you’re going to get Ranch.
Then we hit Hardees for some sausage biscuits and made it to the South Carolina line around 10:30am.
We had lunch at a Mexican place called “El Pueblo” in Waterboro, SC. It was the closest thing we could find to something gluten-free, vegetarian-y, for Judy. Our assessment of it wasn’t very good, and the service was very slow, which didn’t work well for us in travel-mode. So, sorry but I can’t recommend it.
We got to our hotel, the Comfort Suites in Kingsland, Georgia at 4pm, which was way better than how the original plan would’ve worked out (I’m resisting inserting a song title here!), I’m sure. We like this hotel chain because they have enough beds for all 5 of us, and we liked the one we’d stayed at on a previous trip in Brunswick, GA, a little farther north. This one however, was pretty shabby. I made a note that the hair dryer didn’t work. Judy loved that, not. And the Front Desk guy was a one-man show. He was there at night, he was there in the morning. The customer service was a little lacking. We decided afterwards that if we make this drive again, we’d go back to the Comfort Suites in Brunswick rather than this one.
I’d picked this hotel over the one we’d stayed at in Brunswick for a couple of reasons. One, it was a little closer to Disney. And two, it looked like it had more restaurant options. There was a Chick Fil-A, Applebees, Taco Bell, Bonzai Steakhouse, Longhorn Steakhouse, KFC, Ruby Tuesday, Burger King, and McDonalds (and more). However...as we exited I-95 and approached the hotel, we saw one place that we had to try. It was a little shack on the lot of a Chevron station called “Malson’s BBQ”.
I’m sure the sign to the left of the window caught your eye.
Anyway, they offered pulled pork, pulled beef, chicken, and ribs, and you can see in the next few pictures that amongst us, we pretty much ordered across the menu. I got the pulled beef, and I chose...poorly. I thought it had kind of a strange taste. Somebody else, I’m thinking it was Marlene, let me try some of their pulled pork and it was really good. So, I’d recommend stopping here, but definitely go with the pork!
Bellies full, we tucked ourselves in early. After our Golden Slumbers, we’d make our final push to Disney tomorrow.
Coming Up (see what I did there?): And you said this wouldn't be fun
We got back from New York City on Friday afternoon (June 19th) and I was back at work on Saturday (even though I don’t normally work on Saturdays). I had a full day’s worth of work to put in, in order to get caught back up and to get ahead of the game for the 2 weeks that I’d be gone to DisneyWorld and Hilton Head. I even went into the office so that I could work without distraction. But the good thing about it was that I could count it as a workday and take one less vacation day for the trip. Combined with a couple of holidays leading up to the July 4th weekend, I only had to take 7 vacation days for the trip. It’s so nice to have a flexible work environment, even if it means that I might have to work on a Saturday or from a hotel room on occasion.
While I was bringing home the figurative bacon, the rest of the family was doing laundry and packing and taking care of all those dozens of things you do right before a Disney trip. I joined in with those activities when I got home that night.
We’d be starting our drive on Monday, but we had one more big event before leaving -- seeing Sir Paul McCartney. This would be my fourth time to see him, and on the last occasion one thing that stood out to me was how many young kids there were in the audience. Meanwhile mine were at home, and I thought what the heck was wrong with me? My kids love the Beatles -- I’d made sure to infuse a heavy dose of Beatles, Wings, and solo-Beatles’ music into their consciousness while growing up. How cool would it be for them, at age 100, to be able to say that they saw Paul McCartney in concert? (And Bruce Springsteen too, as I took them to a concert of his last year.) So we were going to rectify that right now, even though his concert in Philly was Sunday night -- The Night Before we’d begin a marathon-drive to Florida. (Beatles reference in there for ya.) Judy was going to stay home...to save money, and to be rested for the drive the next day.
When we’ve driven to Florida before, I’ve always liked to get most of the drive out of the way on the first day (of 2) so that the second day doesn’t seem so bad. “Just a few more hours, and we’ll be in Disney! If we lived through that drive, we can live through this one.” So, following that mindset, I’d reserved a hotel room in Kingsland, Georgia, just north of the Florida line. Our original plan was to get up at oh-dark-thirty hours on Monday morning and start driving until we got there. But as I awoke on Sunday morning, I was thinking about the upcoming Paul McCartney concert and how difficult it was probably going to be to go to sleep after we got back, with our ears still ringing and adrenaline flowing. And consequently how difficult it would be to get up once we’d finally drifted off. I proposed to Judy the following: “What if...” (Met with an “Uh oh”.) “What if. If we felt up to it, of course. We got back from the concert, finished packing the van, and just started driving.” I could take the first shift, since I was on a concert-induced high, and she could take over sometime closer to dawn. We could conceivably get to our hotel in the afternoon and have plenty of time to unwind, have dinner, and get to bed early. She was up for it, but we were still going to see how we all felt upon returning from the concert. The kids thought it was a decent plan too.
The kids and I left late-afternoon for the concert. We got there crazy-early, but I’ve cut it too close before and once you get in that concert traffic, it’s just plain nerve wracking to watch the clock creep closer to showtime while you’re inching along on the highway. Plus, it gave us time to take this picture.
I took this next picture of the kids before the concert started. You can see how close we were. Not to the stage mind you, but to the last row of seats. Hey, we were at least in the building!
By the time Paul took the stage, Judy was probably already zonked-out. “I’m Only Sleeping” anyone?
The stage is quite a ways down there, so any future pictures that appear to be close are actually pictures of the video screens.
Even though we were pretty far away, they were fairly decent seats. A good angle to the stage, and we could see everything.
The only bad thing was that sitting in the upper deck, people were content to actually sit. We wanted to get up and enjoy the music, but if you did you felt like you were blocking someone’s view, and you didn’t have the excuse that everyone in front of you was doing it.
I like how in this one Paul’s knees are slightly bent, just like pictures of early Beatles performances.
The kids were loving it! We forgot to bring earplugs so James improvised with some Kleenex.
We saw Paul’s performance earlier in the year on the Saturday Night Live anniversary special, and we thought that he was losing some of his range, quite frankly. But not on this night, the guy has still got it. He was incredible.
By the time “Hey Jude” came around, I said “I don’t care about the people behind me who are so lame as to sit on their hands at a Paul McCartney concert”. We stood, wrapped our arms around each other, swayed to the beat, and belted out “Hey Jude” with Paul.
It was an amazing, memorable night. The kids had the time of their lives and it was incredible for me to be able to share it with them. As much fun as we’d be having over the next couple of weeks at Disney, these couple of hours may have eclipsed them all.
Of course (with the buildup that I gave you earlier), we decided during the drive back home that we were Flying high and would prefer to wake Judy up and hit the road rather than try to go to sleep. The task that took the longest was downloading pictures from my phone, since I wanted to go into the vacation with maximum available memory. With the final loading of stuff (Carry That Weight), we got started around 2am. I drove us south of D.C., with Judy occasionally asking how I was doing, and I’d reply, “I Feel Fine”. But eventually I gave up and said, “I’m So Tired. Baby, You Can Drive My Car”, since I had had such A Hard Day’s Night. And Judy (Judy, Judy, Judy, Judaaaay!) took over the driving duties. We saw the Good Day Sunshine appearing as we drove through Virginia, and hit a North Carolina rest stop at 7am.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the song titles. But I loved the great time we were making, driving at that time of night/morning!
We stopped at a Starbucks at Roanoke Rapids and redeemed some free drinks we had from the Starbucks app. I had to laugh because I asked the barista to read off the syrups they have, and I zoned-out after she said “Vanilla”. It’s just like when you have the waitress list the salad dressings when you know full-well (and she does too) that you’re going to get Ranch.
Then we hit Hardees for some sausage biscuits and made it to the South Carolina line around 10:30am.
We had lunch at a Mexican place called “El Pueblo” in Waterboro, SC. It was the closest thing we could find to something gluten-free, vegetarian-y, for Judy. Our assessment of it wasn’t very good, and the service was very slow, which didn’t work well for us in travel-mode. So, sorry but I can’t recommend it.
We got to our hotel, the Comfort Suites in Kingsland, Georgia at 4pm, which was way better than how the original plan would’ve worked out (I’m resisting inserting a song title here!), I’m sure. We like this hotel chain because they have enough beds for all 5 of us, and we liked the one we’d stayed at on a previous trip in Brunswick, GA, a little farther north. This one however, was pretty shabby. I made a note that the hair dryer didn’t work. Judy loved that, not. And the Front Desk guy was a one-man show. He was there at night, he was there in the morning. The customer service was a little lacking. We decided afterwards that if we make this drive again, we’d go back to the Comfort Suites in Brunswick rather than this one.
I’d picked this hotel over the one we’d stayed at in Brunswick for a couple of reasons. One, it was a little closer to Disney. And two, it looked like it had more restaurant options. There was a Chick Fil-A, Applebees, Taco Bell, Bonzai Steakhouse, Longhorn Steakhouse, KFC, Ruby Tuesday, Burger King, and McDonalds (and more). However...as we exited I-95 and approached the hotel, we saw one place that we had to try. It was a little shack on the lot of a Chevron station called “Malson’s BBQ”.
I’m sure the sign to the left of the window caught your eye.
Anyway, they offered pulled pork, pulled beef, chicken, and ribs, and you can see in the next few pictures that amongst us, we pretty much ordered across the menu. I got the pulled beef, and I chose...poorly. I thought it had kind of a strange taste. Somebody else, I’m thinking it was Marlene, let me try some of their pulled pork and it was really good. So, I’d recommend stopping here, but definitely go with the pork!
Bellies full, we tucked ourselves in early. After our Golden Slumbers, we’d make our final push to Disney tomorrow.
Coming Up (see what I did there?): And you said this wouldn't be fun
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Somehow the desk guy assigned us a room on the 3rd floor but told us the 2nd. Boy was THAT guy surprised!!!! 
Small BBQ places are almost always good in the south. I think you made a good choice, but I'm sorry the beef didn't quite do it for you.
So glad to have you along. Roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour.
(No offense intended! I love going to the Kimmel Center too.) But I said to the kids on the way home, that I think Paul would prefer to have people up dancing and singing than just sitting there.
