Who Could Ask For Anything Moore? ...: On the Road Again

I woke up early Monday morning to start packing and to go for a swim before getting in the car again for the 7 hour journey to Orlando. I started by doing laps in the hotel pool and I was disappointed in how out of breath I felt in the water. Michael Phelps, I am not. After warming up a bit, the swimming got easier and I decided to go for a swim in the ocean to see how it felt. I was pleasantly surprised at the buoyancy I felt in the salt water. My swim coach told me that it would feel easier, but I just didn’t believe it, I guess. I only swam in the Gulf for 5 minutes or so because I had to get back upstairs to shower and finish packing to make our 10:00 a.m. check out time.

After rushing to get everything packed in the car, we managed to check out on time (turned in the keys before actually leaving the room) and we ended up leaving the Condo property around 10:30 or so. It was a rainy morning after two beautiful days, so we didn’t mind leaving the beach.

Before leaving Destin we went to Fudpuckers (a local restaurant) to see their Gator exhibit. They have over 100 live alligators and you can feed them and even hold one and take a picture with it, which we did. It was a fun little side excursion that Andrew really enjoyed.

We hit the road for Orlando around Noon. Florida’s time zone changes from Central to Eastern around Tallahassee so we lost an hour on the way to Orlando … on top of the hour we lost because we followed the GPS directions instead of common sense and ended up taking a smaller country highway to Orlando instead of I-75 the whole way. We didn’t even realize the mistake right away until Doug noticed that we were one of the few vehicles on the road and he said, “We can’t be the only people driving to Orlando”. Oh well, it probably extended the trip (in time, not distance) but the boys were being good and Doug and I had a good laugh about it. Plus, I decided to pull out the laptop and start blogging, which has allowed me to stay on top of the posts!

We finally got to Orlando and checked into the Sheraton. I am proud to report that I got 3 free nights using my Starwood Points! After checking in we headed to Downtown Disney for dinner and to start getting Andrew excited about being at “Mickey’s House”. Parking was – get this – free. Side note: I was shocked that parking was free, but it is not the first time that Disney has surprised me. I am impressed that Disney doesn’t charge for children under 3 years old (I would have expected 2 years to be the cut off) and that they let you bring coolers to the park with drinks and food. After walking around Downtown Disney we decided on dinner at Earl of Sandwich, which we both really enjoyed. Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for a full day at the Magic Kingdom. This is when we realized that from now on we have either get a suite or a room with a bedroom and a sitting area (separated by a door) because it was tough to get Andrew to fall asleep while we were up getting things ready. He didn’t fall asleep until midnight (yikes!), which means that I was up far too late as well!

Andrew and Daddy holding an alligator