When we last left-off, we had just gotten our first look at our Vero Beach suite. After several trips of carting all of our stuff up from the van, the next order of business was to get something to eat since we were mighty hungry, having driven through the lunch-hour and arriving at the resort a little before 1 o’clock. I had gotten us through that hungry time on the road with promises of pizza once we got into the room. Being a good DISer, I had read that a lot of people get pizza after arriving at Vero, and it seemed like a perfect plan to me. But I dropped the ball in the planning department, since I had neglected to make a note of the actual
place they usually go to get said pizza. No problem! I had a brand new iPhone with the Yelp app loaded onto it, to help me find a local pizza joint. I soon found one that was only a couple of miles down the road and we headed out to the van. Once in the van I fired up the GPS and instead of punching in the address, I had it look for a Point of Interest of “pizza” and it came up with one that was…500 feet away! We switched our plan to go with that one, but should we walk or drive? It seemed silly to drive, but we were in a fenced-in resort and I had no idea how to get there other than follow the GPS, so that’s what we did. I probably drove just as far to get out of the resort as I did to get to the pizza joint. Within seconds we found Orchid Island Pizza, on the corner at the intersection at the north end of the resort. We parked and went in.
We had planned on eating in the restaurant (whatever restaurant we ended up at), but we quickly realized that this place was more of an order-and-go place, serving the beach-goers. So, we ordered a pizza and decided that Judy and the kids would head back to the room to work on settling in, and I’d wait for the pizza. They walked-off to find their way back into the resort while I tried to find some things to do to pass the time while waiting for the pizza.
First I took a picture of our newfound pizza joint, Orchid Island Pizzeria.
Then I figured that I might as well walk over to the public beach access area and check it out, since it was so close. I walked down a ramp to the beach and took a picture of the Vero resort from that vantage point.
Ooo, red flag….bad! Just beyond the lifeguard shack is the beach cottage that was in front of our building.
Later on I played with that picture on
Instagram and made it look like this:
Then I traded some texts with Dan FauntleroyFAN07, telling him that we’d just arrived. For some reason, he accused me of taking pictures of girls tanning.
From there, I went back to a gate that I’d noticed on my way to the beach. It looked like it led to the resort so I wanted to see if I could get in through it. It had a card reader and sure enough, it let me through. The only problem was, the card reader wouldn’t let me back out. So, it was going to be a long walk through the resort to get back to the pizza place. That was okay, I was having fun exploring.
I quickly found the firepit, straight ahead from the gate. Then, as I continued down the path, I saw our building, with the beach cottage right in front of it. I called Marlene’s cell phone and asked her come out to the balcony. I waved to her from the ground, and then I continued on to the front of the resort so that I could go get the pizza. At least I’d get to drive back!
So here’s a map, in the style of the
Family Circus, showing my journey that day. The yellow line shows the drive to Orchid Island Pizza. The green line shows my walk up until I waved to Marlene on our balcony. And then the blue line shows my walk back to Orchid Island Pizza.
You can also get a sense of the Inn, the main section of the resort, and where our building was. You can also see the pool and the beach access for the resort, which I’ll talk more about in this chapter. In a later chapter, we’ll have adventures across the road at the pond in the lower-left of the picture, so stay tuned.
Oh yeah. One more funny story. After walking back to Orchid Island Pizza, when I tried to pay, I accidentally handed the guy my DVC member card rather than a credit card. I don’t usually carry that card, so I had just stuck it in my wallet before we left home. The poor guy tried to ring it through a couple of times and then handed it back saying, “Ahh, we no-a take-a this here.” (No offense, he really talked that like.) I was like “What? Oh! Oops.” “Here, try this one instead.”
Once back at the suite, the girls ate at the kitchen table, but James wanted me to join him in dining on the balcony.
James thought that our local pizza place at home has better pizza, but Judy and I didn’t agree. We thought this was awesome, especially the crust. We loved it.
With our stomachs fed, we wanted to hit the beach! Even though it was a red-flag day, the weather forecast wasn’t any better for the next few days. In fact, it was supposed to get worse, so we needed to get some beach time in today.
Suited and sunscreened, we were setting up shop on the sand at about quarter after 3.
You can see James in that picture in the yellow and maroon tie-dye shirt, heading down to the water.
One nice thing about Vero Beach resort is that they provide towels that you can use on the beach. They’re the tan and white striped ones, like you can see draped over that chair in the picture above. It’s really nice not to have to worry about beach towels.
Within moments, everyone (but me) had their tootsies in the surf.
We look like we could use a tan, don’t we?
Oh, you’ve probably noticed that the beach was pretty littered with seaweed. The bad weather had really churned it up and there was just as much in the water also. I don’t think it’s usually this bad, and later in the week it seemed better.
I’m not sure of the order of things, but I know I eventually ended up in the water, not just taking pictures.
Considering the red flag flying over the lifeguard shack, I gave the kids a rip current discussion, drawing in the sand to describe what a rip current is caused by (a break in an underwater sandbar), and how to get out of one (swim up or down-shore, don’t fight to get directly back to the beach). My sand-diagram wasn’t this professional looking, but was essentially this:
Then I took some more pictures of the beach.
Here are some more beach cottages at the southern end of the resort.
The rest of the family was walking along looking for shells and critters.
I tried to get as far out into the surf as I dared to take my camera, in order to get a picture of the whole resort. I had a similar, borrowed picture in my PTR, but I think it was taken by boat!
The kids were having fun finding those little crustacean creatures that go into tiny holes in the sand with every wave.
Then we went back to our home-base beach blanket and James and I made it a point to play with all of the beach toys that I’d bought before the trip. We tried out the Frisbee, the paddles and ball, and the football. We definitely liked the football best….James isn’t too great at throwing a Frisbee and neither of us are very good at racquet games, so the football was easily the winner. It threw really nicely and being made out of that beachy-fabric material, it didn’t matter if it got wet.
After about an hour on the beach Judy wanted to head back to the suite to get ready for a grocery run, but I wanted to quickly check out the pool first. Here’s another picture to give you a sense of the beach access area. On our first day we used this ramp, but later we noticed that there are stairs on the other side of the Green Cabin (straight ahead in this picture), which is where you rent cabanas and umbrellas. If you wanted to set up directly in front of the resort, it was closer to take the stairs than to take the ramp.
Up that ramp to the Green Cabin, and after taking a 90-degree turn to the left and a few steps forward, I was looking at this, the pool.
Another shot, after moving a little further right. The little pavilion-type building on the left side of this picture houses a pool table. I don’t think I ever took a picture of it itself though.
I tried out the slide at the pool and came out of the water proclaiming it “the Nascar slide”. (All left turns). It wasn’t bad, but Kidani’s is better.
Then we let the kids hang out at the pool while Judy and I changed and went on a grocery run. We wondered about letting them stay at the pool without us, but heck, Lauren’s 18, and there were lifeguards there. We said that the beach however, was off-limits.
Oh wait, one more order of business before the grocery run...we went to the gift shop to buy our drink mugs. I asked if there was any discount for DVC members or anything and the cast member said no, but realized that I was using a Chase Disney credit card and I could get that discount, so…score! She handed us a Sharpie pen and advised us to put our names on each of them for safekeeping. Judy knew exactly who would want each color so started writing names on the bottoms of the mugs and immediately put Lauren’s name on the wrong one. She crossed it out and corrected it, and then we took the mugs back to the kids at the pool before we got going.
For the grocery run, in contrast to the pizza run, I had made notes of where to go and as we drove there it seemed pretty far. Judy kept questioning whether I’d gotten it right…I wonder why she didn’t have more faith in me? We went to a plaza that had a Fresh Market and a liquor store, and there was a Publix in another plaza across the street. We found that the Fresh Market was probably a little more upscale than we’re used to, and also more limited, so we ended up having to go to the Publix to get everything on her list. Later in the trip, Judy asked a cast member for advice on where to get groceries and she pointed her to the same place as where we went. She said, “there’s a closer Publix, but you don’t want to go there.” So, I felt somewhat vindicated.
When we got back to the room, the kids informed us that the Sharpie ink on the bottom of Lauren’s mug had bled onto the kitchen table. Try as we could, we couldn’t get that ink off! But hey, it wasn’t even our idea to write them on there!
Dinner that night was rotisserie chicken from Fresh Market, broccoli, and salad. Then, peaches (bought at a South Carolina gas station) and strawberries for dessert. Sorry, no pictures! During dinner, James told us that he was disappointed in the Community Hall. It wasn’t like the one at Kidani, where he would spend hours playing foosball and video games. This one was “lame”.
We had a couple of phone messages. One (which we got every day), asked us to close our blinds by 9 o’clock for the benefit of nesting and/or hatching sea turtles as described on this card in the room.
The other message let us know that the movie for the evening had been moved from the lawn (the grass-area between the Inn and the beach) to Community Hall. I think it was moved due to the weather. The kids went down to see the movie, but soon returned saying that it was too full. We reminded them that as DVC members we get free movie rentals, so they went down to the gift shop and came back with a DVD of “Dead Poet’s Society”.
They watched that while I took a couple more pictures…
More art in the room.
Their first-day collection of shells on the kitchen table.
Instagram version of the shells.
And Judy and I made an assessment of a couple of issues that we saw. I don’t know when else I’ll work these into this trip report, and since they’re on this days’ notes, if I don’t list them here, I possibly never will, so here goes:
- The suites need more places to hang wet things, like towels and swimsuits.
- 1 bathroom at a beach place like this, is not enough. With five of us trying to change into and out of suits, there were only so many places for privacy. (Not the resort’s fault, obviously.)
- It was a long walk to fill our drink mugs, and there was no shortcut, you had to go through the pool area.
And with that, it was bedtime. But I’ve ended so many chapters like that, and I probably will again, so I’ll end this one by going back to a brief discussion at dinner. We asked the kids if the resort “felt like Disney”. And they all agreed that it did. It was “different”, but yes, it was definitely “Disney”.
Up next: An early-morning photo stroll
Link to next chapter
