End Of The Day

 Staying at Fort Wilderness Campground in our Airstream has several advantages.  First of all, we can stay in the campground for three weeks for what one of the luxury hotels would cost for four days.  This is a big advantage.  Secondly, there is a boat that runs from walking distance here straight over to the Magic Kingdom…no busses and no waiting.

What we have learned to do is to time our days at the Magic Kingdom so that we are departing on the return boat just as the eight o’clock fireworks are starting.  The boat ride is about fifteen minutes and the fireworks show is fifteen minutes.  That gives us the perfect ride home with the perfect viewing spot for the fireworks…on the boat and over the water.

We get a great show on our way to bedtime at the end of a good day.

Friends at Disney World.

 For our second week at Disney World we were joined by our good friends from Jonesborough, Tennessee, Sandy and Terry Countermine and Barbara McBride-Smith.  Barbara is, of course, a long-time fellow storyteller.  Terry is the founder and leader of the Jonesborough Novelty Band with whom I am privileged to play at National Storytelling Festival time each year.

Besides days filled with rides and food, our special highlight of this week was going to the Cirque du Soleil performance at Disney Springs on Thursday night.  The Cirque du Soleil was closed by COVID when Trish and I were here at this time last year, but, fortunately, they have reopened.  This was a totally new show featuring multiple groups of talented acrobats and centered around a Disney themed story.  We loved the show.

Trish and I are back on our own now and we have just one week left on our time here.  The weather this week promises days up into the eighties, just what we need before heading home to face the last of winter at home.

Epcot Fireworks.

 After two years of construction, the new Epcot fireworks show is up and running.  Last year we were watching as the first of the giant floating pieces were being out in place in the World Lagoon.

It is misleading to call this day-ending show “fireworks” since it is so much more than that.  It includes lights, music, colors, water, lasers, in addition to giant fireworks.

We had a perfect viewing position from the Rose and Crown Pub where we ate dinner.  We were right on the edge of the water.

The show lasts a full twenty minutes. Then the day is finished and time to go home.

Disney World

 By the time February comes, Trish and I are tired of winter.  We want to go somewhere that it is not cold and stay long enough that when we return home there are signs that spring is coming.

So, each winter we hook up our Airstream and go to Florida for a month.  Out favorite destination is the Fort Wilderness Campground at Walt Disney World.  We have spent a month here each winter since we got married.  We buyAnnual Passholder passes and are free to spend as much time in the parks as we wish, or, we can just sleep late and do nothing but rest.

This year is the 50th Anniversary year for Walt Disney World. I think I have been here about thirty of those years.  There are lots of plans for this year and we are enjoying our time.  

Still, Disney is very serious about safety and masks are required and actively enforced indoors and on all rides.

 

There is also a lot of distance maintained with cast members; no up close contact as you can see here.  

By the time we go home, spring will be in the air.

Dublin, Georgia

 Our next stop on the road was Dublin, Georgia.  Two of our good friends, Natalie and Will Curry live in Dublin.  I have known Natalie since she was a child in LaGrange, Georgia where she grew up with the Azalea Storytelling Festival there.  She and Will now live in his home town of Dublin with their daughter, Caroline.

Natalie owns a wonderful 110 year old jewelry store called Smith’s. Several years ago the store started sponsoring an evening of storytelling.  The tickets are free, but, you have to get the, at her store.

The event is held at the old Carnegie Library Building, now a lovely performance space in Dublin.

We had a wonderful audience with some COVID safety limits.  After missing the past two years, it was good to be back in Dublin.

Back on the Road

 After a wonderful holiday season, Trish and I are back on the road again on the storytelling trail.

This past weekend we were in Newnan, Georgia, for a wonderful event organized cooperatively by three Newnan churches. The Presbyterian, Eposcopal and Central Baptist church’s have for twenty-nine years come together one weekend each year for a shared community program.  They have a speaker in the Christian tradition for a Saturday night banquet and for shared services on Sunday Morning.  It was my privilege to be their guest this year.

Since we were already going to be there, I asked whether we could do something for children and families on Saturday morning.  We had quite a gathering of families with their school-age children in the old Carnegie Library, right beside the church, where I had fun telling family stories.

The Saturday night banquet was in the brand new Central Baptist Fellowship Hall that they informal call the COVID Building as it was constructed during these past two years.  This was their first community event in that new space.

This event was also used to raise money for the Samaritan’s health clinic serving uninsured and underserved people in Coweeta  County.  The weekend was a model of how churches can cooperate for community good as well as their own.

Winter Yard Work.

 This is the time of year to get things trimmed and cleaned up outside while nothing much is growing or going on outdoors.  Summertime heat here plus dry spells in the summer mean than we don’t have very much luck with summer grass in the yard. But, we have lots of green in the wintertime.  We sow winter rye in September and then we have a nice green lawn all around the house until it gives up about the middle of June.

There is a lot of trimming and general cleanup to be done. Our little truck works hard (along with Trish!) to haul away the results of lots of work.  

This year’s asparagus gets trimmed back, all the roses are pruned, the grapefruit tree is trimmed, and the garden area is generally cleaned up.  Once all this is done we can look out the windows and begin to imagine what things can look like when warm weather returns starting in March.  We love our seasons.