Tuesday, March 28, 2017

We are in Wolf Run State Park, Caldwell, Ohio.

We spent a week with my dad in New Bern, NC.  He’s 89 and still living on his own.  Here he is with his new hobby, model trains.  He actually painted the mountain backdrop. 

While there we experienced what we hope was our last snow of the year. 

Dad’s looking for another dog.  He’d like a female Maltese (white fluffy dog) but he’s also looked at a Chihuahua.  If you know of any Maltese available, please let us know.

We left Dad’s and headed for Winston Salem, NC, stopping in Raleigh to have lunch with my niece, Jamie.  She works in IT and seems to be doing well.

Winston Salem has a great county park, Tanglewood.  We love staying there.  This was the view from our window.

The park has great walking trails, a dog park, horseback riding, golf, and the campground.  Until this visit, it’s been pretty empty, which isn’t unusual for this time of year.  But this year it was almost full.  There were two different groups there.  One was a group of small trailers, mostly teardrop trailers.

We stop here because it’s a good halfway point between New Bern and Johnson City, TN, where friends live.  It’s also the home of Steve’s nephew Bryan and his wife, Katie.  We had a nice visit with them.

In Johnson City, we visited with Molly and Nick and their kids, Will, Clara, Fritz and Katie Ann. We were there for almost a week and the only picture I took was one of the water tower near our campground which is painted to look like a hot air balloon.

But we enjoyed visiting with the kids and getting their impressions of their trip to China to pick up their sister, Katie Ann.  Big conclusion?  The great wall is BIG.

Molly said the trip was an eye opener for all the kids and has changed their perspective of the world.  I’m sure that’s true.

Katie Ann has been with her family for almost 2 years.  She’s made great progress in that time and with the exception of her speech skills, is pretty much a normal 3 year old. 

She decided I was okay and we climbed the backyard (it’s terraced) to swing several times.   She started experimenting using a regular cup during our visit and I don’t think it will take her long to ditch the “sippy cup”.

We left Johnson City and headed for Milton, West Virginia.  It was a stop on our way to The Wilds, a conservation project in Ohio.  Milton turned out to be a pleasant stop and we extended our stay a day to visit a glass factory there.

After gathering molten glass on the blowing rod, the craftsman shapes it to the rough shape of the item.

In this case, he’s creating a heart shaped jug.  The next picture shows him shaping the neck.

Then, with the help of an assistant, he places the molten glass into a mold, blowing through the rod to push the molten glass into the crevices of the mold.

Returning to his bench, the craftsman prepares to hand off the jug to another worker.

  

The other craftsman has collected some glass on the end of a rod and attaches that to the bottom of the jug.  With a tap in the right spot, the original craftsman breaks the jug at the neck, releasing it from his rod.

The second craftsman moves the jug into another furnace to heat the neck of the jug so it can be shaped.

   

Then the jug is placed in a cooling oven.  The glass has to cool VERY slowly or it will shatter.

I’ve always been fascinated by glass, liquid at high temperatures, solid at normal temperatures.  We’ve visited glass studios in Colorado, Seattle and Kokomo, Indiana.  This factory, however, had an additional attraction.  In a garden behind the visitors center were no fewer than 5 species of waterfowl. 

I have no idea what kind of bird the one with the red face is, but he had the oddest waddle!

Time for bed.

Deb

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

We are in Wilmington, NC.   I apologize for not blogging more but we haven’t done a lot of traveling this winter.

We’ve mostly been busy on grandparent duty with Maria in Plano and Orlando.  It’s a tough job, but somebody gets to do it.  Maria’s other grandmother, Olga, received her permanent residency status in the US in September and had some things to take care of in Russia, so we spent most of November, December, and January in Plano being active grandparents.  It was a blast!

And, as anyone who has spent any time with an active toddler, that doesn’t leave much energy for anything else.

In February, Natasha had a conference in Orlando where she could obtain her needed continuing education credits, so we headed for Disney World.  We were camped there for 3 weeks, the first week for Natasha’s conference, a week of rest and then a week for Mike’s only break in the NBA season, the All-Star break.  Mike likes to take a family vacation then, so everyone was at Disney World for another week.

After that, we visited with friends and family who are in and near the Villages in Florida.  If you haven’t heard about the Villages, Google them.  It’s a retirement community that actually works.  I’m intrigued by them from a management aspect.  If you like to be active, it’s the place to retire.

We visited Steve’s sister, Nancy, who’s building a house near St. Augustine, FL, and then hopped on a plane for a last visit with an old friend back home.  He passed away this past Saturday.

We’re headed to my Dad’s in New Bern, NC, visiting family and friends along the way.  We expect to be home by the first of April.

I’ve had a request to blog about our Disney trip, so here goes.

Those of you who know us well, know that we are Disney addicts.  We first traveled to Disney on our honeymoon in 1973.  At that time, it was just the Magic Kingdom and the only hotels on site were the Polynesian and the Contemporary, although the Fort Wilderness Campground was also open.  We stayed at the Polynesian.  

There have obviously been many changes over the years and we’ve lost count of how many times we’ve actually been there.  These days, we rarely plan a trip ourselves, tagging along with our “kids” when they plan a trip.  I must say, after years of doing all the planning, it’s quite nice just to be along for the ride!

So, what was new in February?  Well, Maria was tall enough to go on some thrill rides.  She was all excited by that, until she went on them.  She went on the Seven Dwarf’s Mine train and said it was too fast and too many people were screaming!  

And even with a poncho on and hiding behind daddy’s shoulder, she got soaked on Splash Mountain.  She was not a happy camper.

However, Dumbo and the Teacups were favored rides and most things she wanted to go on again.  Here she is, looking cool with Steve.

 She’s pretty good at waiting, although got a bit bored waiting for the Muppets in Liberty Square.  It’s an unusual show, taking place in the second floor windows of several buildings.  The Muppets tell the story of the Declaration of Independence as only the Muppets can.

The opening ceremony each morning at the Magic Kingdom used to be done in front of the railroad station.  Now it is done at the hub in front of the castle, so there are actually a few places to grab a quick bite for breakfast along Main Street.  Both Casey’s and the Ice Cream Parlor have breakfast items to munch on while you wait for rope drop (opening time when they drop the rope holding back the crowd).

There’s also a new sit down restaurant in Adventure Land, Jungle Skipper Canteen, themed after the Jungle Cruise ride.  We didn’t eat there this trip, but have before during its shake down.  It’s fun and the food is good.

Epcot’s big news is the new version of Soarin’.  In the old version, you took a hang glide ride over California.  The new version is around the world, including the Matterhorn.  There are now three theaters for Soarin’ so the lines seem to move a bit faster.

We managed to get a reservation at Le Cellier Steakhouse in the Canadian Pavilion one day while we were on our own.  It’s a great restaurant, but expensive and hard to get into.  We had some gift certificates, so we used them there.  It’s still very good.

Disney Hollywood Studios news at this point is what is gone.  The Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground is no longer and the Lights, Motor, Action show has disappeared to make room for the new Star Wars Land and Toy Story Land.  Construction has begun, but I think it will be two years before we see anything.  They have added a second line in the Toy Story ride, which is identical to the original.  This is another ride that Maria loves!

They are on their second version of the Star Wars fireworks at the Studios and I think I like the first one better.  The new version uses lots film images projected on the buildings and unless you are in the right spot, you’ll miss some of it.  But it’s still great John Williams music and fireworks.

We did manage to be in the right spot for the fireworks show.  Before Christmas, I saw mention of a Star Wars tour of Hollywood Studios.  It’s a 7-hour tour and includes a snack, quick service dinner and the dessert party before the fireworks, along with a tour of anything related to Star Wars and/or George Lucas in the park.  So we got front row seats for the 10-minute film, Path of the Jedi, rode Star Tours with a bunch of Star Wars fanatics (what fun!), front row seats for Star Wars, A Galaxy Far, Far Away (a stage show), participated in the March of the First Order, had a guided tour of the Launch Bay and reserved standing room for the fireworks.  It was Steve’s Christmas present, extra special because he hadn’t heard about the tour ahead of time.

Animal Kingdom’s big news is their nighttime show, Rivers of Light.  Animal Kingdom has been trying to make itself into a full day park and this will help.  It reminded me most of Epcot’s closing show, without the fireworks.  It’s beautiful.

But the new “land” at Animal Kingdom, Pandora, is set to open in May and will have all kinds of new things.  Animal Kingdom was originally imagined as having past, present and imagined animals and this will fill in the imagined animals.  

Animal Kingdom is also offering evening safaris, but we never stayed late enough to try them out.

One new experience we did try out was the campfire at Fort Wilderness.  Every night, they light two campfires for roasting hot dogs and/or marshmallows, have a sing along and show a movie.  Chip and Dale show up and greet everyone during the sing along and then dance with the kids (of all ages).  Then they depart and one of the Disney movies is shown.  All for free if you bring your own hot dogs and marshmallows.  We took Maria twice and she loved it, except she wasn’t able to take Chip and Dale home with her.

We had a family from Brazil sit next to us one night.  I couldn’t convince them to let me take their son over to roast a marshmallow (not enough English on their part and of course, no Portuguese on mine) but as the sing along started, the guy started belting out You Are My Sunshine and knew She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain, too!  They weren’t staying at Disney, but the campfire is open to everyone.  We ran into them the next day at Mickey’s Philharmagic. 

After Natasha’s family left, we ended our stay with the Hoop De Doo Revue dinner show at the campground.  We saw it about 30 years ago and hadn’t seen it since.  It’s on the expensive side and we’re cheap.  But we put another gift card to use and enjoyed ourselves.  This meal is an all you care to eat set meal where they bring out bowls of beans and corn and chicken and ribs, etc. so I wasn’t sure what they would do for me.  Well, as usual, Disney took care of me.  This is what the chef brought out:

That’s a quarter of roast chicken on top, ribs, potatoes and corn.  And I had a strawberry sundae for dessert!

The show is a family friendly old time show you might expect with a name like Hoop de Doo.  Bad jokes, puns and audience involvement, all as expected at Disney.  We had a good time.

Our plan is to be home for Easter and then head for Alaska again.  We’ll be meeting up with 4 other couples from our tour two years ago.  We’ll meet up in British Columbia and then head for Alaska.  Although we’ll follow much the same route (there are only 2 roads in and out of Alaska), we’ll be spending more time in some places and less in others.  It should be a great trip!

I’ll try and get this uploaded tonight, so you can see it Wednesday.

Take care,

Deb