Orlando

23 Sept 2024

While I was on my way to Roatan, Matt started driving to Florida for his trip to Disney, where he’ll be for the next couple weeks.  I had to work when I got back from my trip, but then I had some time off again and Matt still had a few days left in Florida so I figured I’d fly down to see him!  My only real plan was to edit pictures from my trip and update the site, which I can do from anywhere, and I know I work better when there are fewer distractions, so I booked a flight and flew down.

…except that this trip won’t be super straight forward.  Sun Country originally offered 3 flights per week from our regional airport but recently it’s been more like 2 per week and this week, for whatever reason, they only have one flight, so I can fly down there but the next flight back isn’t until well after Matt’s checked out of his hotel which means I can either stay down by myself for a few extra days, or I can drive back with him.

I hate being in the car for long periods, but once I got this idea in my head, I couldn’t let it go, so I booked the one way flight.  I could have sworn previous Sun Country flights were on Tuesday, but looking back, I was wrong- early Monday morning seems to be their preferred flight time.  I left work Sunday night a bit late, which didn’t leave me with a lot of sleeping time, and the fog on my drive to the airport made me a bit nervous about delays:

Fortunately, the fog thinned, then completely cleared before I got to the airport.

Since I’m flying solo, I don’t really care where I sit and I’m certainly not paying extra to pick my seat.  There were maybe 2 dozen people on my flight but for whatever reason, they clumped a bunch of us all together:

I checked the app again right before boarding to confirm those rows were still empty, then boarded toward the end of the line and sat in 12E.

No one questioned it so I got that whole row to myself!  Perfect for catching an extra half hour of sleep!

I spent my short layover listening to final boarding calls and watching other passengers sprint to their gates- either security was exceptionally busy or all the construction around the airport caused arrival delays.  I’m only taking this trip because I could leave from my regional airport- there’s far too much construction around MSP right now!

The sun was awake for my next flight and, by the time I landed in Florida, had heated things up to almost 90°F / 32°C.  Oof, I will definitely not be working outside under a palm tree today.

But first, I need to get to Matt’s hotel.  Usually I take the Mears Connect bus, which costs about $20 and takes ~1hr from the time I board it to the time it gets to my hotel, but I discovered there’s a public bus that goes to Disney Springs for only $2!

Probably not my preferred option if I have actual luggage, but for this trip, I just have a small backpack and I was planning on stopping at Springs anyway for lunch so this seemed like the obvious choice.  It still took about an hour to get there from the airport (it makes a few other stops along the way), but honestly, it wasn’t terrible.  The only downside is that I had to go through security and have my bag searched before they’d let me into Disney Springs (and I somehow left my hat behind, though I wouldn’t realize that until tomorrow).

But this affogato was just the pick-me-up I needed after an early morning:

I grabbed a couple cookies to bring back with me, then hopped a bus over to Matt’s hotel where he gave me a tour of the layout- his hotel is attached to a conference center so there are several tables/chairs/couches to work from.  We grabbed dinner:

and I called it an early night.

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24 – 25 Sept 2024

The next couple days aren’t super exciting- set up shop somewhere with a view and get some work done:

and every few hours, get up to stretch my legs and wander the grounds looking for fun things to photograph, like all the little lizards running around:

This poor little guy lost his tail 🙁

or birds:

That crow in the back!

This guy insisted on staring straight at me and would not turn for a nice profile shot:

Ducks, also not interested in being photographed:

Giant millipedes!!!

these guys were both around 2″ long!

Fun plants:

So… don’t water the plants? or do they consume something other than water…???

or grab a bite to eat:

then come back and get more work done:

By midday of the second day, my trip log was was complete!

I had realized by this point that my hat was missing and after turning Matt’s room upside down a couple times, I figured I must have left it at security on my way into Disney Springs when my bag was searched.

So, I hopped a bus to Springs and unfortunately, security had turned in all lost items from Monday already and while there’s a lost and found at Springs, most items are held in some sort of central storage.  I described my hat and the worker there video chatted with someone in storage and they found my hat!  They told me to come back in an hour or so and my hat should be back, so I grabbed some gelato:

and wandered around until it was time to check in.  It’s really hard to kill an hour at Springs when you don’t really care about shopping and aren’t hungry, but eventually enough time passed and I was reunited with my hat.  They did send me an email with a claim number and I think if I had filed that online I could have had my hat delivered to Matt’s hotel?  But honestly, the whole process was pretty painless.

Back at the hotel, we grabbed one last dinner together which, for me, was this GIANT pretzel!

That’s a 12″ box- this became several meals for me 🙂

Then we packed up and prepped for tomorrow’s early morning departure.  We’ve been tracking a storm in the Gulf that has now become a hurricane that is predicted to make landfall sometime in the evening of the 26th.  We’d like to be gone before that happens (though I’ve heard that Disney is a decent place to ride out storms- they generate most of their own utilities and hold their buildings to higher standards than required; some Floridians even evacuate to Disney).

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26 – 27 Sept 2024

Calm before the storm:

Looking fresh at the start of our drive:

It started drizzling shortly after we left:

and got progressively worse throughout the day.  Fortunately, it wasn’t very windy, but the rain was coming down so heavily at times that it was hard to see the road.  I’m very thankful Matt’s car has new tires and good brakes, but the drive made me so incredibly nervous.  Water was pooling on the road in several areas (especially as we went through Atlanta) and we passed quite a few accidents.

We ended up in Chattanooga for the night; I was hoping to make it a bit further north, especially since the storm is predicted to essentially pass right over us, but today’s drive was about 10 hours and I don’t think I have it in me to ride through the torrential rains any longer.

But our hotel is in an elevated location, unlikely to be affected by landslides or flooding, and we parked out of striking distance of any trees or light poles.  Hopefully that’s enough to keep us and our car safe while we sleep because the storm will be nipping at our heels tomorrow morning.  We’ll definitely be getting an early start to try to stay ahead of it.

While we slept, Helene made landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane.  Even with our early start, we were battling incredibly heavy rains, again, until mid-Illinois.  I didn’t know it at the time, but the storm actually tracked east, which spared us from the worst of the winds (until we got to Illinois, but that’s only because the state is super flat and there’s no windbreaks).

However, when we got back to Wisconsin, the clouds lifted and blue skies returned!

I had every intention of taking a “we made it!” picture of us when we got home, but honestly, we were in the car for 15.5 hours today; we just wanted to be done.  Also, I totally forgot.

So this was definitely not our best roadtrip and being in the car for well over 24 hours is just too much for me.  But it was certainly memorable!