I dont remember where I left off so Im going to start from the beginning. We left Alabama on Friday and decided to drive at least half way. I made it a whooping 70 miles from home to Guntersville AL. I was sitting at a stop light when BAM!!!! Rear ended by a truck pulling a horse trailer. Traffic was crazy, it was a young kid (probably shouldnt have been pulling such a huge load) and he was nothing but apologetic, yet, who wants to start their vacation by getting smacked in the rear?? Err..well.. you know what I mean LOL. The damage to my vehicle was minor, we exchanged numbers and I kept on trucking. We made it to Macon GA before mama gave out and the baby boy was getting cranky beyond reason so we stopped at Super 8 somewhere along the way, small, clean, did the trick.
I have to tell you Im throwing my Garmin GPS out the freakin window next time I go to FW. It lead me through every back road, into every sub division between GA and FL. It kept telling me I was close but I seriously couldnt believe I had come within 2 miles of Disney and not seen one sign, no I have no idea what road I was on.. so please dont ask ANYWHO, right when I was about to U turn and head back towards the LAST subdivision I drove through.. I saw a metal sign with mickey shaped ears.. I heard the halleluiah bells go off!! I was in a CM parking lot somewhere but heck I was at Disney. We managed to find FW and got in line to go through the little guard shack thingy. I was only a few cars deep and it was around noon time on a Saturday so not to bad. When I got to the guard I mis interpreted his go this way wave and took the first right that lead into the over flow parking area.. geeshhh.. took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get out of there, back around to the guard gate and THEN finally to check in.. seriously gentlemen, stop giggling.. Im horrible with directions and my GPS was possessed by the devil.. (I think a lot of women can understand my dilemma..)
Our site wasnt ready but the CM was as sweet as pie and set us up for a text when our site was ready, she saw the disappointment in my face no doubt when she let me know it would be a while, she gave us all First Visit buttons and it made it all better She also reminded me that I had ask for something next to a comfort station and that they were working hard to accommodate me. So we pulled out and was heading to the gate to find a
walmart when the text came in.. yes seriously, less than 5 minutes. So again I made the loop back to the guard shack and the guy looked at me like I might be crazy.. this was my 3rd time through there.. LOL in less than 15 minutes.
We managed to find site 2048 and low and behold it was right in front of the comfort station as I had requested. I have learned my lesson on that, close is good, directly in front of not so much. A lot of people keeping odd hours and Im a light sleeper so I heard every body that went to potty at 2am every day of the week we were there. I did like being able to let the kids go potty without me having to cart them on the golf cart however. I could see them the whole time which was nice.
Now about the golf cart.. here comes a HUGE Kenny and Tee Time plug. So because we actually checked in a day earlier than I had golf cart reservations for I didnt expect to have a cart til Sunday. When we got to the site and I realized how far everything was from our loop I thought I would take the chance and see if I could get ahold of Kenny and have the cart dropped off that night. Sure enough, not only did he get me a cart there within 2 hours, he delivered it my site because he knew it was me and 4 kids and I would have had to take a bus from my site to the front and he didnt want me to have to deal with that. What a wonder man! We talked for quite a while, he was intrigued by my last name, he knew it was from the islands and he use to be a flight attendant for ATA and few the Maui route for along time. I will not even try to deal with anyone other than him ever when I do FW. Of less of course I get my own cart , thats on my daddy mama wants wish list to..
Ok, so I have already given you a snap shot of the set up, this is one of the pictures of the inside of the canopy with my kitchen area. As I said before, I took enough to survive a cold war if necessary. Some things I can honestly say I wont ever camp without, but somethings I could have lived without and saved on space. Ill save that info for my lessons learned post. One thing that I did that I highly recommend for tent campers is lay down painters plastic under my tarps, this stuff saved my tent. Im pretty sure that I would have tossed the $300 coleman at the end of the week had I had to clean all that sand off it. It wasnt just sandy but almost like a padded mud.. it never rained while I was there so I can only assume it was condensation but ewwww.. what a mess! I did actually toss one tarp because the plastic had came up and there was no getting that stuff off easily. About the rain, I really liked my set up a lot, however Im sure that if we had hard rain, I would have gotten soaked. The canopy was sitting directly in front of the tent opening with a gap which basically would have been a gutter.. Im exploring the idea of either 1. Finding a canopy that completely goes over the top of my 19 x 12 tent or 2. using a tarp somehow to redirect the rain. I just dont like the look of all the tarps hanging around.. My honey gave me sooooo much grief about taking the outdoor carpets, but I can tell you it was so nice to walk out in the morning, Im keeping those on my to keep list for sure! I had a rv type mat down in the tent so it didnt really feel like it was on the ground. I dont mind camping but I need to be comfortable! LOL
I wanted to get some lime green undies for my clothes line but I ran out of time so I just used it as a clothes line was meant to.. I did have a touch of Mickey everywhere you looked though.. I didnt want the kids to lose sight that we were at Disney!!
So thats about enough about my site, me and my 12 year old son got everything up and organized in about 2 hours, not to bad for first timers.. my girls had the duty of keeping baby boy busy.. trust me, me and the big boy had the better end of that deal!! LOL
Tomorrow I'll give you the low down on the parks and such, I can tell you.. we didnt stick to a strict agenda, we let the little guy be our guide. I didnt want to be that mom dragging a screaming kid around.. stay tuned!
need to figure out how to change the signature to.. baby steps!
Baby number 5 is 4 months old and mama decided it best to leave the little princess home with daddy. AND sadly.. I didnt have anything green to hang on the line but I did have this glowing green..
