2004 Tour home

May 1

We both had sessions with Mary Tigan, who did her subtle BodyTalk work and accupuncture on me and BodyTalk on Rob. Great work! I was able to stock up on the supplements I couldn't easily find for the last 2+ months. Afterwards, I wanted to go to the beach, but Rob's feet still hurt him, so we grocery shopped and ate and drove off to Orlando.

We got to the Turkey Lake State Park, now the Bill Frederick(pronounced Be-ill Freederick) State Park, just as they were closing. It is a beautiful lush park, just like the rest of the middle of Florida as evidenced by the drive here. The only down sides were the heat (about 90 and very humid) and a family of African Americans who had a "domestic dispute". That didn't last long. The heat, however, together with the road noise(3rd downside), didn't make for a restful night.

May 2

We went off to the Magic Kingdom, but ended up at Epcot, because MK was closing early. Epcot is about is "building a better tomorrow", which, of course, is very physical(nothing too wha wha). In spite of the glitz, or because of it, our favorite was a boatride through an experimental greenhouse. There were all sorts of vegies being grown, some hydroponically, some with mechanical watering and fertilizing devices. And, some critters: eels, alligators and fish. The emphasis was on a close cooperation with Mother Earth which included respecting and rebuilding the topsoil. The fact that it was mostly mechical and indoors, ah well. (Photos of Green House)

So much of the rest of Epcot was "Diswey Norld", according to Rob. "My experience ranged from 'hot damn' to 'why did they put that in'". Green houses were "hot damn", while the Mexico boat ride and "Journey into your Imagination" were in the later catagory.

This camera buff's "hot damn" was the seasonal flower and garden show. Let's face it, Disney does this sort of thing to the max! (Photos of Flowers)

It was a bit disconcerting to walk around "World Showcase" where each of about 12 countries gets to strut their stuff for about a 100 feet. You transition from Mexico into China into Morocco into Norway, etc. The people who work in these places are nationals. We dined Francais, charmingly attended by very French waiters, but the food wasn't up to its prices. However, a real "hot damn" was a balancing act outside.
A waiter chose someone from the crowd to help by standing on a chair on a table. He seemed suitably clueless until he did a handstand. By the end of the act he was on his hands 6-7 chairs up! The tension was upped by a broken chair with missing legs and the engagement of the tree branches overhead. Hot damn!! (Photo of French Chair Act)

So, it wasn't the Disneyesque stuff that impressed us, but these little side steps into something more real. When the countries made a Disneyesque boat tour or film to display their culture, it felt superficial, even though it obviously cost a lot. The French acrobats and doting French waiters did more in their little expressions than Mexico with its boatride or Norway with its 5-minute film AND boat ride.

Although hokey, it was fun to visit the sea exhibit where you go underground. Rob enjoyed trying out the divesuit controls. (Photo of Rob as Robot)

The heat made everyone not exactly cranky, but more uninhibited, in that they didn't mind bumping into you and talking loud and the monorail stopped working while I was trying to get back to check on Lucky. However, the late afternoon thunder and lightnin' and the RV's noisy air conditioner cooled us into liveability.

May 3

We awoke really war-torn by our Disney day. Our day at the water park, Typhoon Lagoon was rainy, a bit cooler and, as a result, we had the place nearly to ourselves.

Near to Seattle, there is Wild Waves, but Disney made their park far more beautiful. Everything was landscaped and because it is springtime, there were lots of flowers. I didn't take the camera, for obvious reasons.

High points included a freshwater "ocean" with concrete bottom and a wave generator which would periodlcally send a 6 foot wave which illicited whoops and hollers from the swimmers. Around the perifory was a "river" which was the transit system, although the park turned out to be small enough for us to walk to the different shoots, slides and snorkeling experiences. Yes, snorkeling, with real fish and a hideously imitation reef painted with metalic colors. They provided masks and snorkels and no fins were allowed-unless you were a fish, of course! This was the one experience of a salt-water environment.

After about 3-4 hours, we left for Vero Beach where my father's half-brother, Joe, and his wife, Grace, spend the winter in a nice condo. We hadn't seen them since Rob was about five, so it was fun to catch up. They gave us dinner and I gave them my two latest CDs. Uncle Joe is also my godfather.

We stayed in thetruly quiet (what a difference this makes!) Sabastien Inlet State Park, which faced the Intracoastal Waterway.

May 4

The day before, we had made a reservation for the 12:20 "insiders'" tour of Cape Canaveral, the center of the US space program and location for all the launches for 40 years. The drive took much longer than the park people had estimated and we were at a hot run to get through the complex on time. We did squeeze in at the last moment-without time for lunch.

The bus left a few minutes later, under the guidance of Mack, the driver, who knew as much as Rick, the guy with the mic. We started with the building which housed modules of the International Space Station in the "clean room". The tour was interesting in that you got to see stuff which was real and stuff which was designed to make things more real to you, because they really want the space program to have public support. So, before they showed us the real thing, they let us walk through models with the life support systems (food, toilet, etc) and science experiments (plants, etc) and then we could look down into the huge clean room to see the real things, named for renaisannce painters "Leonardo", "Raphaelo" and "Donatello", etc. Some of them had already been in space, some were temporarily "on hold" due to the grounding of the shuttles. (Photos of Cape C)

Next we road past the moving equipment, the launch pads, the assembly buildings (one is the largest single-floor building in the world) and then to the visitor display area, which meant two movies on the space program, one on early history, and the other in the actual command room for Apollo 11 and the first successful launch after the one which burned on the ground, killing three astronauts. They really needed a success!

The first launches, in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnick in the late 1950s, were dubbed "Kaputnick", as one after another "bombed". It occurred to me that they left out the dogs and monkeys who went up. I couldn't find anything on them, till at the late minute before closing, I was referred to a section on older history. We ran out of time and never saw it. It was ironic that in one of the stores, there were stuffed toys representing chimps in space suits, but no mention of the early 1950s launch of a reises monkey. (I had been curious to see if the display included anything from the 40s, when my dad worked on the first rocket engines. I understand we can see this in the Smithsonian.)

Mack was an expert in local flora and fauna and pointed to alligators, turtles' nests and even a 40-year old bald eagle nest on the way around the 140,000 acre wetland site. Rick was a retired airline pilot and told about the moving of the astronauts to a waiting launch, with a comment from an astronaut about the military copter over head for security. "Just reminds you you can't chicken out." The closest viewing possible of any launch was 4-5 miles-due to the noise. We wondered how many deaf eagles and alligators roamed these lands.

When we finally got admitted to the visitor display area, it was a huge building with a completed Saturn 5 rocket overhead, which was left over after the cancelation of the moon program. (Photos of Saturn 5) There was also LUNCH, expensive but very welcome by then.

This was an area purely dedicated to public space program awareness. A high point was a presentation on the first moon landing which included a re-enactment and a full-scale, 3-d simulation of the landing itself. I had forgotten the problems they had had with communications going in and out, the computers failing and the landing having to be made by the pilot with the last seconds of fuel. It was thrilling! It showed the people in the command center and all around the world cheering. We cheered too!

I love tour guides. The trend is to hire people who are more than just easy with crowds and knowledgeable. They are also entertainers. These guys didn't disappoint us. This must be the "creme" job for a retired pilot and space junky. I had always wondered how many shuttles there were. Five, altogether. Four originally, but Challenger was replaced. Unfortunately, not Columbia. There was a memorial to those who lost their lives as astronauts.

We took the bus back to the visitor center, where we got to climb through a model shuttle. (Photos of Shuttle) I had always wondered how large they were. Not much bigger than a 727. Cool to see it.

We found our way to the Jetty Camp Ground, a nice quiet place in the midst of Port Canaveral and its cruise ships.

May 5

We got up and went back to Disney for one last day. Magic Kingdom is basically all of Disneyland California done up more grandly. The train depot is fancier, downtown is grander and roads wider. Again, "nirvana" seems to be represented by buildings from the Victorian era.

The main reason we were here again was that Rob wanted to do the rides. I wanted to sit. I was having an "inner" day. I found myself drawn by the Disney wildlife, the beings they either invited to be there (only male mallard ducks, I guess because they are more colorful), some amazing long-billed white birds, butterflies and flowers. Enough on the cutesy-poo and emphasis on "tomorrow". Enough on perfect this and that. Enough on buildings which are one way on the outside and completely different on the inside.

Another experience which appealed to that need for the natural was the Swizz Family Robinson tree house. That was fun! (Photos of Tree House)

Our experiences included old California favorites, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Jungle Cruise, the Haunted Mansion. We saw the Hall of the Presidents, with all of them on stage and an address by Dubya (oh boy, he talks a good line). Rob went on the Barnstormer and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coasters and then we went to Tomorrowland. We sat through the Carousel of Progress, which featured the American home from 1900 forward. (It got more functional and uglier) AND, he had been working on me for days to try Space Mountain, one of the fastest, wildest rides and I finally succombed.

I cannot say I enjoyed Space Mountain. It was just too much on my delicate wiring. Too loud, too bright, too jerky, too fast. Right for the young, not so right for me. I guess it was probably worth my son telling me my coolness factor got a serious boost. My neck will get over it with a month or two of cranial-sacral TLC. This was our grand Disney finale. We left as the sun was setting and took the ferry back to the parking area. An extraordinary formation of ducks flew over on the way. (Photo of duck formation) We drove back to the coast and Jetty Camp Ground.

May 6

Time to head north, but before we hit the road, I walked Lucky along the jetty and discovered some lizards I just had to get on disc (ain't I modern?) (Photos of Lizards). Then, a large ship started down the channel and a dolphin was diving in front of the bow wave. My camera was already off and I missed that, but took a few of the pod fishing. Then, on the way back, a beautiful shell presented itself. It was a morning of miracles.

Mostly, we just drove today, starting with the A1A and Route 1, a short time on 95 and back to the coastal route. Scenery ranged from dumpy tourist junk to greenery to exquisite peaks at the shoreline. AND, a quick drive through the "oldest town", St. Augustine. It was beautiful! (I am beginning to wish we had unlimited time to explore).

Then, we took a very short ferry (4 minutes) to the extension of A1A and to the Little Talbot Island State Park (4-5 miles north). I had no idea that Florida had any undeveloped coastline and here it was. WOW! The highpoint of the day was an evening dip in the Atlantic just before the glowing red ball buried itself in the western dunes. White and beige sand, gloriously cool sea (it was a hot day) and beautiful native greenery with no human "improvements" visable from the beach at all - for miles! The campground was in the jungle which bordered on wetlands. When the sun was in its last glow, the little dock, the inlet...oh my.

May7

We made it into Georgia and then into South Carolina where we stayed at a quite fancy resort with a giant swimming pool. Location: Hilton Head. Oh my, have the rich Yankees gentrified this precious little isle. Once the home of freed slaves, now referred to bullahs, HH was full of gated communities. Rob and I found this so distasteful that the next morning, we left without even seeing the beach.

It was time for a judgement call. Do we take the quick route and go inland or the slower route and see the outer banks. Rob didn't have much input either way, not knowing the terrain. I had lived in Raleigh in the 1970s, but really didn't care to go there. I wanted to see the outer banks. Maybe we can get past the touristy crap and get a peek at local culture. This was the measure of which way to go. Can we have any sort of touch in with the local culture on either route? Will the longer route still allow us enough time in Virginia and DC?

Rob cooked dinner again, a sort of lasagna of his own design. Very yummy! Not much else to report today, except I got some fun photos of Little Talbot before we left. Quite a contrast to HIlton Head. (Photos of Little Talbot)

2004 Tour Home