How I Spent My Summer Vacation

As many of you know, my family and I spend our summer vacations at the House of Mouse, also known as Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida.

If you have read my post from April about our Disney addiction, you already know the reasons why. If you haven’t read it yet, please follow the link, so I don’t have to take up everyone’s time with this.

Our vacation started on Thursday, the third of August. We didn’t do any traveling that day… I spent the day with our little one, doing laundry and yard work. My wonderful Mrs. had already done most of the packing, and was picking up the rented minivan from National Airport (I still refuse to call it Reagan National) so there wasn’t much else to do other than to load it up (and install the electronics)when she got home, which I did in fairly short order.

The next morning, after a decent night’s sleep, we were on the way!

Our itinerary was simple, drive to St. Simons Island, Georgia for a couple of days on the beach, and then move on to Orlando to hang out with Mickey Mouse and friends for two weeks.

St Simons was a nine hour drive (eight when I drive alone, but this is vacation…. Who is in a hurry here?) Which caused us to cross the Coosawhatchie River on I-95? There was no reason to tell you this other than to have the opportunity to use “Coosawhatchie” in a sentence!

Our stay at St Simons was great! We had a nice suite overlooking the ocean and right across from the historical (and still operational) lighthouse. Olivia thought this was seriously cool (and so did we!). There was a great beach there, called east beach, which is adjacent to the “old” Coast Guard Station. What made the beach so great was that it was wide, clean, and had a very low grade to it. No walking in three feet of water, dropping of to ten feet by surprise at this place! At low tide, the plates added another 100 yards to the beach, and also added some really great tidal pools ad places to collect shells.

While we were on the island, we also had the chance to go to the Fort Frederica National historical park. What fun! We had two days of history and relaxing beach fun before pressing on to Orlando, on Sunday, the 6th.

Oh… and if you ever get to St Simons, make sure you eat at least one of your dinners at “Frankie G’s Island Diner”, the food is to die for.

We made it to Orlando in about three hours with very light Sunday traffic (here in DC, traffic on 95 is even heavy on Sunday morning!).

We spent two great weeks at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club on International Drive, where I slept late every day, only getting out of bed before 8:30 once for the whole two weeks (heaven!).

I’ll spare you all of the Disney details, as I know that talking about Disney can send some people into seizures… but if you care to know them, please email me, and I’ll send you our detailed trip journal.

We spent our time between going to the Disney theme parks, water parks and our pool. It was great. We love to have our concentrated family time as it is often difficult to find in our busy lives.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and we arrived back home last Sunday, after a grueling 13 hour drive.

We are already looking forward to next August.

Vacations are good (expensive, but good). I highly recommend them.