07/04/2003 - Friday

After getting ready to go, we got Sammi and Louie into the back of the Tahoe, and took off. Traffic on the toll road was heavy, as it was the holiday, and we hit some snags in the construction zone on I-69 between Marshall Michigan and the toll road. Eventually we got to Flint about 3:00PM EST. We got unloaded, got the birds into the house, and settled in. After Lynn’s grandparents Frank and Emma Klitzke, her Uncle Lyle and Aunt Nell, and Grandma Lannin had a nice dinner, steaks, salad, fruit, rolls, corn on the cob. We tired Ranch with bacon in it, yummy!

Afterwards, everyone left, and we sat in the basement and were happy the air conditioner was running. I worked on getting things ready for the trip, and we relaxed. I ended up playing Super Mario 64 after everyone went to bed, with the birds, and Morgan and Poncho were not too happy about it.

07/05/03 – Saturday

Saturday morning I got up early, and got ready to go, we had a few items to pick up, and I needed to stop by my mom’s house to see how she is doing, etc. After rousing Lynn, we drove over there, and visited for a few hours. My niece Nicole was they’re as well, and we had a decent time. Afterwards, Lynn and I drove back to her parent’s house, where we ate lunch. We had a nice cream cake for Lynn’s grandmother, whose birthday is Tuesday. Afterwards, we took off to Meijer to get a few locks for the suitcases. Little did we know……

We got back, Lynn took a nap, I investigated where we were going, and how to get there. Lynn got up, and we got ready to go to the airport. We went to Ryan’s to celebrate Lynn’s grandmother’s birthday, and we went to Bishop International Airport.

We parked, and we went in, and we waited for the Northwest line. We got there about 6:00PM. We were told to go the automatic check-in, where we got our boarding passes and the like, very keen I must say. Then we had to go to the Federal Screeners line, where we had to take off our locks! D’oh! They went through our bags, and checked them in, which I think is a good thing. Afterwards we said our good-byes to Milo, Lynn’s dad, and her grandmother, and we went to the gates. Lynn and her mom got through OK, and then it was my turn. I put my bag up, and he wanted me to take out my laptop, which was at the bottom of the bag, which was filled with stuff, and I took it out eventually, and got my shoes off and sent it through the line. I was really hot and sweating here anyway, so that is never a good sign. As I passed through the metal detector, it went off, so I went to the side check area. I did forget to take off my wedding ring, I didn’t even remember I had it on. So I went to this side area, and sat down, I had another guy come over, ask me about the metal detector, got wanded, he wanded my wallet, but didn’t find anything, and concluded that my ring must have sent it off, since I was a big guy anyway, and I almost scraped the sides of the detector.

So I finally got through, and got my shoes together, and sat down. I needed a drink, so I got a MD for 1.75! I finally cooled down enough. We got on board the Northwest link, which was a small jet, a RJ-85, and got ready to go. We took and off and landed in Detroit about 20 minutes, which was totally sweet. We got off, and started finding the Northwest terminal, and saw the monorail Chris, a friend from MichLUG, told us about. It was sweet! We rode on it to our gate, and waited. Unfortunately, we had to wait in the hot sun, and I was hot again. We all were playing games until we got the call to board. We got on, and Lynn’s mom and us were separated, which kind of sucked, but we volunteered for the emergency seats, but they were too small, so we had to change seats again, but fortunately, I got the aisle seating, and we were ready to go. We took off, and played a lot of games until we arrived in Orlando about 11:45PM EST. We got off, and started following the baggage claim signs. We ended up riding another monorail type train to the main terminal, where we got the luggage finally (NOTE TO SELF _ BIG SMILEY FACE STICKERS FOR LUGGAGE NEXT TIME) and we went down to the Hertz bus. We got on the Hertz bus, and after a wild ride, we got to the Hertz building, and went in to get our car. Nancy, Lynn’s mom, told me that she got a mid-size. I teased her about the ad for the Expedition, the Excursion, the Range, Rover, etc. We ended up with a gold Chevy Malibu, and drove on for our next adventure, finding the time-share!!!!!

We drove down various highways until we got the 192 road, which is a big commercial / hotel strip right before you get to Disney, and we started looking for the Olive Garden, which was our key to turn into the hotel. We are staying at the villas at Fantasy World, and we started looking. After driving past Interstate 4, and going into the Magic Kingdom, we turned around and tried to find it. We ended up going to the Comfort Inn where we asked the lady at the counter, she was nice enough to open the doors even though they were closed. She didn’t know where it was, and we finally located the Olive Garden and found the hotel. We got into our timeshare about 2:30AM, and we finally got to sleep.

07/06/03 - Sunday

Sunday we slept in late, as we were tired from the earlier mornings shenanigans and we eventually roused ourselves up and got going. We got unpacked, and got a few things together here in the timeshare. We were hungry, and needed to get a few supplies. We wanted to get breakfast, but everywhere we tried to go on 192 (The main strip before Disney World) was packed. We tried Perkins, and there was no parking available, so we tried Waffle House, and there was a line to get in there, so we drove on. We saw McDonalds ahead, so we finally went there. After that, we needed some groceries, so we went to this little one near McDonalds. It ended up being over 50.00 for what I thought was about 30.00 worth of groceries, if that. Ouch! We drove back home, and just relaxed. Lynn’s mom played Gameboy Advance a lot, while I got the PS2 hooked up and operational, and got some of the camera things ready to go. Milo gave us his newest digital camera, a HP 812, and I got the software loaded, etc. Lynn took a nap after lunch, so we just sat around most of the day and decided to go get dinner. We went to Pizza Hut, which was pretty nice here. We asked the waiter if there was a Wal-Mart or anything nearby, and he told us, so we went there.

I have never seen a store so busy in my life. There must have been thousands in that store, it was so packed. We had to sit and wait to even move sometimes. I have never seen a store this busy, even at Christmas. I tired to walk through the LEGO aisle, but even that was packed, so we moved on. We got a few shirts, a watch for me, a small fan, and some more pop, and drove off. We went tot he Nike Outlet store nearby, and they did not have much of a selection, so we went to the other on farther on 192. Lynn’s mom got a pair for herself, and Lynn got a pair for her work. I just sat there and noticed they got a 100% diversity rating from all of their pictures on the walls, etc. We drove back home afterwards, and we went swimming here at the pool for awhile (Not too crowded at 9:00PM. We watched Spiderman on the PS2 and went to bed.

07/07/03 - Monday

Monday was the first day we went somewhere touristy I guess. We decided to drive to Busch Gardens, mainly to see the animals. We hopped on I-4 and drove down there, it was about an hour, and traffic was pretty good. The highways seemed in a lot better condition then in Michigan and Indiana, go figure. ; ) We stopped by Perkins on the way and had a decent breakfast, mostly eggs and omelet’s. We drove on, and got there about 12:30PM. I refuse to get up early and get there as soon as it opens.

We parked on the other side of the park, and I was already hot by the time we walked up to the trams. Basically, they are like trolley cars with regular car wheels. We rode on over to the main entrance and got off, and had sticker shock! 51.00 for a ticket! We paid and got in, and I knew I was going to have a lot of problems today in terms of heat, it must have been close to 100 degrees with the heat and the pavement. We wondered around awhile, we didn’t seem to get a map, so we had to wing it. We went to an Aviary first. We saw lots of great birds there, everything from cranes to flamingo’s and a bunch of other ones I can’t describe. We exited, and thought it was pretty small. We then walked around and saw a bunch of lizards, and dragons, from everywhere. They had a train station, with a pretty big passenger capacity, so we got in line for that, and eventually boarded. We were entertained by a squirrel and a crane finding a yummy dead  frog to crew on. We got on, and had to endure some dopey announcer, but we did get a nice cool ride around the park. I got some good footage with the camcorder, and we saw a variety of animals, from Rhino’s to camels to Gazelles to everything in-between. We rode around the park completely, and got off near Rhino Rally.

This was a vehicle ride, where it looked like a Range Rover, that carried people around the animals along a dirt trail. The driver narrated. The bad thing was the wait, it was about 40 or 50 minutes, and it was awfully hot. They did have some shade and some fans and even water fans. But I was dying. We finally got on, and took off. It was all right, but I would not do it again. We got off of this, and I needed something to drink, so we got a blue raspberry slushie, and I guzzled it down. We then tried to get to a bird show, but we missed the train, and we missed the show! So we tried to race over there, but the distance was too great, and we were very hot and tired. So Lynn and Nancy rode on the Montu, and Lynn said it was better than Cedar Point’s Raptor. I sat in the shade.

After that, I saw there was a show called World Rhythms on Ice, so we walked over to the theater and waited for that to open. We got in, and it was air conditioned, and it was really nice. We enjoyed ourselves and the show started. It was a bunch of different themes, Africa, England, etc. and it was pretty neat. After that, we left, and got back onto I-4 on the way home. We stopped by Burger King, and got dinner, which they totally screwed up the order, but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, we hit a huge block of traffic, going about 15 MPH. Two police cars were in front, going this slow. We must have been doing that for at least an hour and a half, We did not get home on Monday Night until 9:30 or so, so it was pretty bad. We ended up watching Star Wars Episode I and went to bed.

TUESDAY 07/08/03

Tuesday morning we decided to go to Cape Canaveral, and see NASA, which I wanted to do when I first went to Florida many moons ago. We drove out east and eventually got there, through many of the highways and other roads, and got there eventually. We decided that we didn’t want to go on the guided tour, and we went ahead. I also decided not to take the whole camera bag, but I could have. They had metal detectors, and I got through it this time. I had to turn on my camera and eventually got through. We arrived around 11:30 or so, and we decided to get some lunch there. We scoped around, and found the cafeteria. What a mess. There was a line about 50 long, just to get a hamburger, and the prices were horrible. 9.00 + tax, and then 4.00 for a drink. So we ate, and sat in those hideous chairs, and finished. 

We then went on the bus tour to see the various sites. We drove by the Vehicle Assembly Building, and the crawler, and we drove on to the Observation Area, where they had a short film on the shuttle. We then went on to the exhibit area, where we saw a lot of things that explained how the shuttle worked and the like. We went on to the Apollo / Saturn 5 Center, where we saw more movies on the program, and eventually saw an actual Saturn 5 rocket, which is just awesome. We saw another movie on the Apollo missions, and then one with the actual moon landing. Then they had a bunch of kids saying things like, "I want to find alternative energy sources." Ugh! How about a better space program first, kid? We walked by the gift shop, but it was crowded, so we went back to the visitor's center. We went to the gift shop, where we found some stuff for a few people, and a NASA shirt for me. We left at 6:00, when it closed, and drove back to Orlando. We ate at home, went swimming, and watched some games, and then we watched X-Men.