Campground Review: Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground

In May we were lucky enough to spend a week at the mecca of all campgrounds: the DISNEY campground called:

Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground

We had an amazing time and will definitely be back. It is hard to NOT have a good time while anywhere on the Disney property, but I'm going to try and only review the campground here. Maybe if I get my crap together I will tell you about our whole Disney trip in another post. Don't hold your breath though.

This was actually our second visit to this campground. Our first visit was in 1995, so OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO. We had very fond memories of our first trip and had always wanted to return so we finally made it happen. Quite a few things changed in those 20 years, but both times we left certain that we would come back again. 

We made our reservations online through the Disney website. As a telephone hater you know this is something I prefer. Not many campgrounds have the ability to make online reservations so this is a plus. We bundled our park tickets and campground reservation all together and we were able to make payments on it for the year leading up to the trip. It had to be paid off 30 days prior to check-in, just like if you were to make reservations at any other Disney resort. So this is not so much a campground specific item but a convenience nonetheless so I'm including it.

The rates at this campground aren't really comparable to other campgrounds but let's be real. This is DISNEY. You don't expect them to be comparable because your experience won't be comparable. I still thought they were very reasonable though - ranging from just $53-$90 a night. They have four levels of campsites - the cheapest being for tents our pop-up campers. The Premium sites are the most expensive   and are large enough to park your biggest RV. But, the difference in price between their top two tiers of campsites was only around $5, so in our opinion there was no need to NOT select the Premium sites. These sites are fully paved and are mostly all surrounded in trees and shrubs so you have privacy. 

Forgot to take a picture of our site until we were packing up, so the trailer and golf cart take up a ton of our space and make it seem so much smaller. We had plenty of space though! This is site 1447.

One thing you are not able to select online, however, is which loop or site you prefer. I am certain that you can call and request a certain area but I did not do that. I read some reviews which suggested the best loops for premium sites to be within loops 400-700 so that was what I had in mind to request upon arrival. However, our really friendly gate agent told us our site was in the 1400 loop and instead I decided to just go with it.

I'm actually really glad I just went with it! After checking in and doing some exploring, we did make note of a few favorite sites to request for the future (sites 725, 407, 423, 1410, 1419, 1421 if you are interested), but we were really happy being where we were! Our loop was very close to the pool and Meadow Recreation area and was close to the Settlement area and a playground too.

In a campground this size transportation is important. There are nice sidewalks throughout, but sometimes you need to move quicker than that to catch an early morning bus to a park or to get the overtired children home ASAP. We brought my parent's golf cart to be our main source of transportation and that was perfect. They also rent golf carts and there are several areas where golf carts have their own parking area. If a golf cart isn't available, you won't be stuck walking around the massive campground. They actually have 3 different bus routes within the campground to get you where you want to go. These buses stay within the campground and just do different loops all day long. There are bus stops outside of each loop but we never actually used these buses during our visit. There are also boats that take you directly to Magic Kingdom or to a couple other resorts. SO awesome to be able to hop on one of those boats after a day at Magic Kingdom when the line for the tram or monorail has thousands of people in it.

 

(One thing that did change from our first visit 20 years ago was that the bus stops are for internal buses only now. Before, the buses for each park made loops throughout the campground so you just walked to the end of your loop and waited for the bus for Epcot, for example. Now, you would need to catch an internal bus, walk, or golf cart it to the front of the campground to transfer to the buses that take you to other places within the Disney resort.)

 

The amenities here are endless. Of course there are pools (we just visited the main pool in the Meadow area, but there is another one in the cabin area also) which has a fun slide and there's also a splash area. There's a sand volleyball court and tennis courts near the pool, and tether ball and basketball courts and playgrounds all around. We took advantage of the pool/slide/splash pad on several occasions and visited the playground (which we had to ourselves) a couple times in the cooler evenings.

 

There's an area for horseback rides, and at the other end of the campground a ranch and stable you can visit where the smallest visitors can take pony rides. Charley had a pony ride one afternoon. It was only $6 (I think), cash only, and I had to lead the pony around myself. It was a quick and fun little activity. My one complaint though is that it was hard to find! The horses up front are easy to see so I assumed this would be the location of the pony rides also. But, these horses are just for the horseback trail rides. The ponies and bigger horses are at the complete other end of the campground. If you take an internal bus there, they would be easy to find. But if you are on a golf cart or bike, it was really hard to find which parking lot was near them and exactly where to go. No signs, no direction, nothing. After we finally found the ponies, we couldn't figure out WHERE to go to pay and get our own pony ride. Another parent leading his child around on a pony was finally able to tell us what to do.

After we did that we were able to go into the large stables to see some of the horses that Disney uses for parades or wagon rides or to pull Cinderella's coach.

There were tons of other rentals and things to do though. Here's one menu board of some of the stuff you can rent or do:

Let's talk about food. Normally while camping you cook your own meals each day, but Disney's campground actually has several other options too. There are two dinner shows hosted here that you can visit whether you stay in the campground or not, but there's also a buffet restaurant which has a separate entrance for take-out. We utilized the take-out place a couple of times for dinner or for a quick pizza. Food was good and prices were as you'd expect at Disney. Pizza wasn't that bad in price or taste. Not that good, either, though. Ha.

Something we believed that the campground was lacking was a place to get a sweet treat! The restaurant had a couple of small options which we were not very impressed with. There's also a food truck each evening at the campfire singalong thing, but it had NO DESSERTS. There are two camp stores which each stock the same things so the best we could do when our sweet tooth called was to get a candy bar or a packaged ice cream. Meh. If Disney allowed us to open an ice cream shop within the campground we would be millionaires.

There was an arcade near the pool and by the restaurant. Charley and I spent an hour there, spent $10 and played every game. Not too shabby for an hour's worth of fun!

We never did the campfire singalong and outdoor movie thing. It started at 8:30ish each night and since we did theme park days every other day, we were either at a theme park at that time, or getting to bed at a decent hour to gear up for the next day's theme park. An 8:30 start is pretty late for my smaller children.

The entire campground is very wooded and nature-y and therefore you'd assume buggy. My children and I are BUG MAGNETS. We are eaten alive all summer long. But, Disney won't have that. They spray for mosquitoes often and none of us ever got a single bug bite. It was amazing! And, if you are still getting bug bites they would supply you with insect repellent for free!

The camp stores weren't my favorite. It was hard to find prices on so much of it, for one, and for two we were unable to find what we were looking for on 3 different occasions. One time we were looking for a forgotten ingredient for our dinner and they didn't have it. Another time I wanted dive sticks for the pool and despite having a section of pool things there were no diving sticks so I had to find something else in the store that would work. The third thing was camper lights (the decorative ones you hang from your awning). We saw another campsite with Mickey lights and thought they would definitely have them in the store. But nope! Nothing like that at all. Tons of souvenirs and things like that though so you don't have to waste time in the theme parks shopping.

The picnic tables at the site were very nice. They were that molded plastic material, square with 4 benches and sat 8. I wanted one for myself until we Googled it and saw they were around $700. (speaking of Google - WiFi was also great here!)

 

Some sites even come equipped with themed clothes lines! ;)

Since the campground is very close to Magic Kingdom, you are able to see the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the beach each night. Even without being able to see the lights on the castle, that fireworks show is pretty great so that's another perk. They play the music that goes along with the fireworks from speakers along the dock. There's a little electrical parade out on the lake each night which is pretty cute too.

All in all, I give it a 10 out of 10! Charley proclaimed that this was her best vacation ever and I know we will be back when Laney gets a little older too. (That 8+ hour drive was brutal with at 2 year old that doesn't nap on the go very well.) I don't think you can go wrong at any Disney resort, but I do love the outdoorsy aspect of this one.

Have you been here? I felt like there was so much to do that we couldn't get to it all. What was your favorite? I feel like you either need to be counting down to a Disney vacation, on a Disney vacation, or need to be planning the next one. I'm ready to plan the next one!

 

Campground Review: Andrew Jackson State Park

Last May I decided I would start keeping track of which campgrounds we visited and what we liked and maybe disliked about each. Hotel reviews and excursion reviews and reviews for basically anything else are so easy to come by. But for whatever reason campground reviews are not. And the ones you do find are typically negative so it makes booking a new place nerve-wracking because the negativity scares you. I'm not sure why this is - maybe people just aren't campers and their expectations are not realistic.

And then, I didn't even keep it up. Since last May, we've visited 5 other campgrounds that I could have reviewed - but I never did. So this is me giving it another go as this year's camping season begins.

Our first camping trip of 2017 was to:

Andrew Jackson State Park in Lancaster, SC

This was our second visit to this campground. It is a very short drive from our home so it's easy for a quick weekend trip. The drive for us is just 35 minutes so we are able to not take any time off of work and still enjoy a little weekend away without much trouble at all. It's far enough away though that it doesn't feel like we are taking the camper 5 miles down the road. 

Both times we've camped here we've stayed at the same site - site #21. Our ideal sites would be #16-#19, but those 4 get booked well in advance in my experience. Those 4 are more waterfront, which as I've said before, is a major consideration for our family. We always prefer campgrounds WITH a body of water, and then we'd like our site to be BY the water as well. 

However, 21 is actually pretty decent also, despite what it looks like on the map. The path to the water is wide open from the back of our site and is still very visible. This was Charley on our trip in 2016 walking back to the camper from the lake. The reflective area in the background is the water. So, still very accessible and visible.

All sites are spacious and semi-private though. It didn't seem that anyone had much trouble due to grade of the land or just space in general backing into their lot, either. A few sites were also pull-throughs.

This year we spent a Mid-March weekend here. The weather was rainy a couple times and in general, unpredictable, as weather typically is during the month of March, but we were comfortable in jeans and hoodies most of the day. During the afternoon we could lose the sweatshirt and just wear a long sleeved tee, but sweatshirts and a warm fire were needed in the evenings. Last year our weekend visit was in May and was very warm . I still think we needed sweatshirts and pants in the evenings, but during the day Charley was playing in the water and wearing sleeveless dresses.

Another thing we look for in potential campgrounds are amenities. Whether in the campground or near the campground - we at least want a couple options of things to do rather than sit around the entire day. This campground doesn't have much of anything outside of it, so I'm glad there are enough things in the campground itself to keep us entertained for a weekend. Here are the activities we've tried:

• Boat Rentals (just aluminum fishing boats/oars)
• Geocaching (we've found all 7 in the entire park!)
• Playground
• Ranger Informational Programs
• Hiking
• Fishing
• & just playing along the water's edge

There are also horseshoe pits, but we haven't used those. I don't remember seeing horseshoes in the pits, so you may need to pick them up from the little museum/store, or maybe just bring your own.

There is a very easy trail all the way around the lake. The only difficulty is the length of it, especially when carrying a temper-tantrumming almost 2 year old. Or so I've heard. ;) There are several other hiking trails as well. I would think there would be a trail map somewhere, but I never saw one.

The playground is great and often times we were the only ones on it. But, on Saturdays when people are likely to rent the shelter next to it for a kid's birthday party you do end up sharing the playground with the birthday party children. I prefer to go early in the morning and take a towel to wipe the dew from the slides so that my kids had the playground to themselves. Then again, I am an introvert so take that for what it's worth!

Last year we saw a sign for Bird Program at 1:00 or something like that. We had NO IDEA what it was, whether we'd need to bring our own personal bird-watching binoculars or what, but me, my mom and Charley showed up anyway. It ended up being a kid's program about local birds and we were the only three in attendance. So, my mom and I got to color and make pipe cleaner bird feeders too. Ha! It was pretty informative, too!

This year Charley insisted we try out the boat rental also. So, at 4:15 on Saturday afternoon I drove to the museum/store within the park to rent the boat/oars. However, I found out they closed at 5! They did hourly rentals, so I told the guy that was fine, we'd just pay for the whole hour anyway. That cost us a whopping $3! Haha. John and Charley got about 30 minutes of rowing around before it started to pour down rain. It was the perfect amount of time anyway so we did not request a refund for the $.75 they missed out on. ;)

The Geocaching was a lot of fun, too. There are 7 total hidden throughout the 365 acres. Last year we found 3 of them, and this year we were able to find the remaining 4. I will say that the two that were the most difficult and furthest out were REALLY FAR OUT. I'm used to taking a marked path through the woods until you get pretty close to the actual cache, and at that point stepping off of the trail into the woods for just a little bit until you find the hidden treasure. However - there are two in this park that were SO FAR OFF OF THE TRAIL! One time we crossed an actual road to make our way to the cache and walked for what seemed like a pretty long distance. When we finally found the cache and went to return to the campground, we came back to the road we crossed on our way and instead decided to call my dad to come and retrieve us with his truck since we were next to an actual road. Ha! So, we cheated a bit on the hike back but we definitely weren't expecting to walk that far into the woods. Another note - we would not have hiked that far into the woods either had it been snake season yet.

Back to the actual campground itself - all sites have water and electricity, but only 3 sites have a sewer hookup. Those three full hookup sites are on the inside of the loop next to the bathhouse, so we opt to not book those and instead use the dump station on the way out. The sites are paved and have little to no grade. They all have a nice sized picnic table and fire ring. Also, I appreciate the actual picture of each site on the website and the fact that you can fully book online. Each site rents for $18/night.

And finally - this is more a personal experience story, but just goes to show the level of customer service here. My parents joined us on this year's trip and booked the site directly next to us. They were able to arrive on Friday morning while we had to wait until the evening after we got off of work. While they were setting up, my dad talks to a park ranger and mentions that we were arriving later that evening. Then, the next day another park ranger came up to our site and said another person was claiming they had booked our site for that evening. I thought that was impossible because I booked both sites (while separately) myself for Friday and Saturday nights. Immediately after the ranger left I pulled up my booking email, and, whoops - I accidentally booked Thursday and Friday instead of Friday and Saturday on our site. Argh! So, while we waited we talked about having to go home a day early or if we'd just stay with my parents in their camper or what. I was pretty certain the campground was fully booked. But, when the ranger came back he said the other ranger, the one my dad talked to while setting up, said he could tell it was an honest internet booking mistake and he wasn't going to make us move. He apologized to the other guy but he did have a site by the bathhouse open for him. I felt really bad for that guy, but at the same time grateful for not having to move. It's not a quick process to move a camper and set it all back up again.

We didn't utilize the bathrooms or showers so not able to give a review on those.

Overall, it is a beautiful place to enjoy the outdoors for a couple of days! I would recommend!

For the remainder of 2017 we have 3 more camping trips scheduled, and several more months where nothing is scheduled yet so we will likely book some more - I like to go once a month in the warmer months. If you are local and have a favorite place I'd love to hear about it!

Week In Review

This is for the week of March 12-18, 2017.


The highs of the week were:

• Making Disney Fast Pass Reservations. 
• Going on our first camping trip of the year.
• Having a play date with friends we hadn't seen in a while.
• Going on a work outing to an escape room and actually getting out.

The lows of the week were:

• Charley has had some MOMENTS since Sunday. Coincidentally Sunday was when we changed the clocks for Daylights Savings Time. My children had not really ever shown any signs of being affected by time changes, so I guess I was due. We've had a major MOMENT per day. Whew.
• The rest of us were also so very tired all week. Can we fast forward to that magical time of year where we get earlier sunrises and later sunsets?
• Just the all around busy-ness of the week. March has been so crazy. 
• Also, I accidentally booked the wrong two nights at the campground this weekend. I booked Thurs-Fri nights instead of Fri-Sat. So, someone came Saturday afternoon claiming they had our site booked. They did. I felt dumb. The park rangers eventually figured it out though without us having to move, thankfully. 

The best money I spent was on:

I didn't really spend much last week. I did sign Charley up for a week of camp this summer at an art studio which I think she will absolutely love.


The TV shows I watched were:

• This Is Us finale. Which, wasn't as finale-ish as I was expecting. Still good though.
• Survivor 

The meals we had were:

• Sunday - Baked Chicken, Rice, Asparagus
• Monday - Taco Night
• Tuesday - Grilled Cheese (Tuesdays are tough because Charley has gymnastics from 5:45 - 6:45)
• Wednesday - Chicken Pasta Alfredo
• Thursday - Wendy's (Thursdays are also tough because Charley has swimming at 6:30)
• Friday - Hot Dogs over a campfire with chips
• Saturday - Cajun Catfish, Rice, Brussels Sprouts - well, they had Brussels Sprouts

My favorite picture from the week was:

There were several. But I love this one of my sweet Charley girl who LOVES camping.

Disney Day!

 

A couple weeks ago we took a little 4 day vacation to Daytona Beach Shores, Florida. Since it is only a little over an hour away from Orlando and we have children, we had to abide by the Florida law that anyone within a certain distance visit Mickey while there. Dems da rules!

We picked Thursday, August 18 to visit and hoped that many children would be back in school already to lessen the summer crowds a bit. We also watched the weather pretty closely and debated switching our visit to Friday instead when we saw there was a 60% chance of storms that day (which seemed a little higher than the normal everyday chance of storms in Florida), but ended up sticking with our original plan so we wouldn't lose our Fastpasses and all that. It ended up being a perfect day to go! We had the best day! I mean, Disney makes it hard to have a bad day, but crowds and weather can definitely make a huge difference and we lucked out in both departments that day.

I had reserved our three Fastpasses 30 days prior to our visit. (Since we weren't staying on property and were only doing a day visit, that was as early as we could reserve them.) I wasn't expecting much since people staying on property are allowed to make Fastpass reservations 3 months in advance, but I was actually pleasantly surprised at what was left. I used a site similar to this to pick which are most advantageous to reserve, and went from there. I also wanted to pick three that we'd be able to use as soon as we got there so that we'd be able to reserve more Fastpasses for the rest of the day. (You can't reserve any more until your first 3 are used.) I REALLY wanted to ride The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, but the first one wasn't available until 8:00 that night, so essentially we'd give up an entire day of Fastpassing to snag that one. So, I passed on that Fastpass (ba dum ching!) and hoped for the best.

I ended up choosing:
The Jungle Cruise
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
Peter Pan

Our first Fastpass was valid from 11:45-12:45 so naturally we entered the Magic Kingdom gates at 1:00 p.m. Doh. Missed that one. So maybe our day didn't start as expected but we didn't let it get us down.

From there, we Fastpassed, we lunched at Cosmic Ray's, and we Fastpassed some more. In the middle of the afternoon the sky got dark and we heard thunder in the distance so several rides closed for a while, but it didn't slow us down. We chose new Fastpasses for rides that WERE still open and just moved on. It never rained at all, and then the thunder moved on and everything opened back up. We got to do SO MUCH this day! And mostly ALL with Fastpasses! Our ride order looked like this:

Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

Lunch at Cosmic Ray's

Peter Pan

Under The Sea (during the "storm")

Teacups (during the "storm")
Carousel (during the "storm")

Dumbo (storms over!)

The Barnstormer, twice, with rider swap

Mickey's Philharmagic

Magic Carpets

Tiki Room

Dinner at Pecos Bill

Pirates of the Caribbean

It's A Small World

Haunted Mansion

Jungle Cruise

Light Parade

Splash Mountain, where we caught the beginning of the fireworks right as we came out of the cave and went down the big hill - so magical!

Winnie The Pooh

Guess I should mention that my BFF Amy was also with us, and was riding with Charley in front of us. :P

So, we missed a few in Tomorrowland, Big Thunder Mountain was closed for refurbishment, and we sadly never got to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. But I think we did awesome! We never waited longer than 20 minutes for any ride and both Charley and Laney were so good! And sure, it was August in Florida which means H-O-T, but I truly didn't think it was bad at all. Disney must have a way of making the heat not as intolerable, apparently. Oh Disney, how do you do it?! We left around 11, after a visit in the gift shop and the sweets shop while Laney slept in the stroller.

We definitely deserved a redo after our last visit when Charley was sick and this day more than made up for it. We are doing a week long trip in 2017 so I'm hoping for the same crowd volume and luck.

I opted not to take my good camera either based on John's suggestion, and that ended up being good advice. It is big and clunky and a lot to keep up with, and I can't tell you how many times I've almost knocked out my children from it swinging down while I lean over to pick them up. So, my pictures of the day aren't as good, but I enjoyed my time more by not focusing on keeping up with the camera and trying to get good shots. I did buy this one picture for $15 at the end of the night to make up for it, though.

Worth it!

At the end of the night we had one sleeping baby in the stroller and one sleepy baby that we were carrying on the ferry boat back to our car. She may be 43 pounds, but when your almost 5 year old falls asleep on your shoulder and you think to yourself that this may be one of the last times she does that EVER, you get super strength and hold her and soak it all in. It was a perfect ending to a perfect Disney day.

We'll be back, Mickey!

Geocaching

(For you, Heather!)

Before there was Pokemon Go, there was geocaching. Geocaching is an activity that uses the GPS on your phone to find hidden treasures in parks, along trails, or even in shopping centers. We are VERY new at this, so if you are a more seasoned geocacher, feel free to leave extra tips and tricks in the comments or feel free to correct me. I tend to get on board with things way late, so since Google tells me geocaching has been around since 2000 and I'm just now joining in in 2016, I suppose I'll get on board and begin Pokemon hunting in 2032. I'll eventually catch 'em all!

So, geocaching. In my limited experience, these things are everywhere. Lots in parks, lots in touristy areas, lots in shopping centers. It can be completely free to do, or you can go straight to Geocaching Nerd level right off the bat and subscribe for a year like we did. Subscribing gives you more geocaches to find, and who knows what else, but for $6 a month or $30 for the year I figured we'd just go ahead and do the year.

Ok, let me back up to the basics.

Alright. So, to do this activity you need the following:

• A GPS enabled phone (or you can use a compass I think, but I have no experience using that method so I'm not going to talk about that here)
• A pen
• The Geocaching App
• Some little trinkets to leave behind if you plan on taking something for yourself

You download the app and sign up for an account. (This is free). Once you've done that, you are taken to a map within the app which should show your exact location. From there, you just scroll around to see if any geocaches are located near you. The circles that are dark green are geocaches that are available for you to find. If there are any light green dots, you are using the free version and those light colored ones are only available to super nerd Geocaching Subscribers, like myself.

 

Find one that looks appealing to you and click on it. You can see the difficulty, terrain and actual size of the container you are looking for here. If it all sounds like something you'd like to attempt, push the start button and the app gives you the mileage or the number of feet you are away from that geocache.

 

A compass is also shown on the screen, with a red indicator at which direction you need to maneuver to get closer to the cache. Sometimes you can tell that the geocache is going to be off of this trail that you are walking on, but since the trail may weave back and forth you may actually walk against the direction it tells you to go in at some points. Does that make sense? Ultimately, you are trying to get close enough to the geocache that your phone buzzes and tells you:

Once you get to within 30 feet of the geocache they give you a warning that the GPS may not be accurate to the exact location. Like, once you find it it may say you are still 15 feet away, for example, just because GPS isn't that accurate. In my experience though, I'd say it has been pretty accurate from 5-10 feet out. 

So from there? You just look! We have a whopping 8 finds under our belt, but there are at least 2 others (maybe 3? I can't remember.) that we never found. When Charley and I went geocaching last weekend though, I did feel like we were getting much better at this than we were when we started. You sort of start to learn what to look for. 

A few times it has been hidden under some sticks that are placed just so at the base of a tree.

Sometimes they take advantage of little hidey holes in trees to hide the cache.

That one above was really cool - the hole was in the middle of the tree where two trunks split apart, and instead of having you stick your hand down there to get it - because ew snakes and bugs and such! - they had a rope tied to it wrapped around the tree so it rested right in the hole. You just pulled it out by the rope and dropped it back in when you were done.

And some are even in just plain sight. This one was called "Bienvenidos" and was a fake rock next to a welcome stone at a nature museum. Turned the rock upside down and voila! 

So what do you get when you find it? Mostly just the pleasure of finding hidden treasure! But, some geocaches are large enough for little trinkets too. So the idea is to bring something to leave, and to take one thing with you as well if you wish. This one here was the best we've seen so far for actual stuff to trade. Stickers and little toys and magnets and all kinds of things. 

If you are stuck wandering around and just not finding the darn thing, there are sometimes hints you can use on the actual app, and if those don't help, you can go through the comments of those that have found it before you and try to pick up hints from those. Sometimes there are even pictures attached to the comment which can at least point you to the right tree or right area. We definitely used the heck out of those for our first few finds. 

Another 'hint' is to pay attention to the name of the geocache. Some have boring names that don't mean a thing, but often times they DO mean something. Like the "Bienvenidos"one I mentioned before was right next to a welcome stone, and this one below was called "Sea Turtle" which didn't really help until we actually found it and saw a turtle (not even a sea turtle!) on top of the box but worth mentioning as well. Sometimes the titles help, sometimes not so much.

 

The last thing to do is to sign the log. Many geocaches are too small to include a pen in them also so it is usually a good idea to bring your own if you want to sign them. Sign, date, put everything back in the container and hide it just as you found it. Done!

On the app, you then log your find (or log that you didn't find it) and it places a smiley face over the green dot so you can remember which ones you've found and which you haven't. It is important to log those you don't find also...one of our first ones that we didn't find we searched and searched and searched. Finally we gave up and logged our DNF (did not find) and moved on. I went back to check on it a week or two later and saw that many people after us had the same results so they took the listing off the site completely until the owner could go back and either reset it or hide one again in the same spot. Made me feel much better that others didn't find it either! 

That's really it, I think! I know there's tons more that you can do with these but this is all we are doing so far and it is perfect for Charley's age. We enjoy it, it's free to try, and it gets us out and walking. Of course we completely forgot to look for any last week on vacation, but that's usually when we look for them - makes it easy to explore a new place. Let me know if you try/have tried it! Give me all the tips! 

Week In Review

Haven't done one of these in a while. This is for the week of July 3-9

The highs of the week were:

• Visiting the NC Zoo on Sunday. It was a perfect day weather wise, we had a brief lapse in children sickies, and we had ourselves together enough to get there right at opening so there weren't many people there at all. Charley and Laney were so well behaved too. It was a great day!

• Taking Charley and Laney to Carowinds' (our local theme park) water park solo on Friday night. I got to skip out of work a little early Friday so I scooped them up and went straight to the water park. We had SO MUCH FUN. I was pleasantly surprised with how well I did solo with two kids in a water park. ::pats self on back:: Good times had by all, and followed by good sleep had by all!
• So yeah - that good sleep I was talking about. Laney slept the next morning until 9, and although Charley got up at her usual 7 something, she's figured out the TV and how to get to Netflix and all that so she can entertain herself in the mornings until the rest of us wake up. 

The lows of the week were:

• Sickies. We finally got through a stomach bug thing on Tuesday, but it lingered (infected and reinfected) for an entire week before we finally figured out how to get rid of it. Blah. John and I managed to avoid it completely, thankfully.
• And then once we were all through that, 3 of the 4 of us (no man cold yet, thank goodness!) have a cold now. 
• I had my one work-late day of the month this week. So while that sucks, I'm glad it is usually just one (sometimes two!) (sometimes none!) day a month. Still got home in time to see my babies before bed though.

The best money I spent was on:

I love a photo booth so much. I was pretty happy to spend the $6 at the zoo and add to our collection of these on the side of our fridge.

The book I am currently reading is:

I've been reading Jojo Moyes 'One Plus One' in an effort to get back on the reading train. It is good so far, I'm just so slow in reading it.

The TV shows I watched were:

We finished season 2 of Bloodline and anxiously await another season. We then started the newest season of Orange is the New Black.

The dinners we had were:

Sunday: We were camping and had grilled chicken and fruit, followed by lots of s'mores. 

Monday: Charley's FAVORITE, chicken and dumplings.

Tuesday: I had an after work thing, so I had awesome chicken strips from a local wing place, and John and the girls had chicken fried rice

Wednesday:  I worked late, so John made them chicken alfredo pasta

Thursday: Domino's pizza with more chicken alfredo pasta

Friday: I took Charley and Laney to Carowinds this evening, so we grabbed Wendy's on the way home.

Saturday:  Grilled chicken, baked potatoes and sauteed squash and zucchini 

Reading this back over and I just now realized we had chicken EVERY SINGLE NIGHT this week. Hahahaha. We like chicken! And obviously we did not meal plan this week at all.

My favorite picture from the week was:

Not one picture stands out to me as my absolute favorite this week. My pictures on my good camera from the zoo aren't that great because it was SO HUMID out that day that every time I put the camera up to my face everything would fog up. Not even joking. My glasses, the viewfinder, the lens. I swear, all of it. So, with all that said, the next day at home I tried to recreate my favorite picture from the 4th last year and I just don't love it as much. I forgot to use flash to get rid of some of the shadows, there was a smudge on the lens right over Charley's face (likely from the constant fogging from the day before) and it just isn't my favorite. But, these people ARE my favorite so I'm choosing it anyways.

Cruisers We Are Not

Look at me following through with a promise to blog about our cruise! I'm pretty sure this is the first time that's happened over here in the last couple of years. Life of Lacey = broken blogging promises.

Before I start telling you all what we thought of the cruise and what we did and all that, let me give you this for your frame of reference. I have done a total of SIX "big" trips. Meaning saving up, flying there, and usually passports are required. I only consider this cruise a "big" trip because we went to another country. Of those six trips:

(3) were to Europe - (2) bus tours, and (1) I just planned/didn't plan myself.
(2) were to the Caribbean - (1) all-inclusive resort and this (1) short cruise.
and
(1) was to Alaska - which I planned myself.

So that gives you an idea on how much you should rely and trust my extensive travel knowledge. (::whispers:: you shouldn't!) It is very clear that I spend most of my vacations in a trailer, after all.

So, with all that said, we went on a 4 day cruise courtesy of my place of employment. It was a Carnival cruise out of Charleston, SC on their ship Ecstasy, with one port day in Nassau, Bahamas. So, days 1 and 2 were boat days, day 3 was in Nassau and day 4 through the morning of day 5 were boat days.

Beware - there are a ton of selfies in this extremely long post. You've been warned.

DAY ONE

On the night before we left, we got a message that the cruise ship was late in returning from the previous cruise to Bermuda due to a storm, so our cruise would now be delayed as well. Instead of a 12:30-2:30 boarding time, we were now being told to board from 3:00-5:00. That was a bummer, but nothing you can do about the weather. The next morning we woke up and tried to get all of our remaining things together, as well as get everything together for Charley and Laney's weekend. They were bouncing from house to house while we were gone (my sister's, my parent's, my other sister's, then back to my 1st sister's) so packing for them was a bit difficult too as I had to make sure each house had what it needed as well. It was a very frantic and frazzled morning. Finally though, we dropped Charley off at preschool, took Laney down to my sister's and we were on our way. Later than we originally planned, but that was still more than okay since the boarding time was delayed anyway.

It looks like John is saying "DOH" about his passport right as I took this.

We get maybe 15 minutes down the road and I say something about our passports. John immediately panics and says he forgot his. I sort of laugh and tell him not to worry, that I packed his for him earlier in the week. We both think it is a good idea to pull over and double check though and I was right - I DID pack his for him earlier in the week. BUT, I didn't pack my own. Idiot. Our passports were in two different locations when I grabbed his because he recently had his out when booking a flight for a different trip. I'm thinking that after I grabbed his I got distracted and never made it to get my own. So, we turned around and headed back home to get mine. Again, not a huge deal since the cruise was delayed anyway. It takes 3 hours to get to Charleston from Charlotte so we still planned on arriving around lunchtime.

 

Finally - we are on our way and feeling slightly less frazzled than we were that morning. I did realize that I left my phone charger at home, though, so we made one more stop to pick a new one up and arrived in Charleston with plenty of time to spare. We found a restaurant for lunch which ended up being SO DELICIOUS and left there to arrive at the cruise terminal at 2:45p.m. We followed the signs and ended up in a huge line of winding cars in a giant parking lot.

Right when we got into the winding line - we probably wouldn't be smiling if we knew we were going to be in this line for 2 more hours.

   

We followed this winding path and the huge line of cars for TWO HOURS. I'm not sure if this is the norm for a cruise departure, but it sucked. It was rainy and grey and it wasn't until 5:09 p.m. that we finally got to our stateroom.

Not so bad, really!

There were so many misconceptions I had about cruises in general coming into this trip. I'd venture to say that most people I know have been on a cruise so I'd heard lots of things about them. One thing I'd heard many times was how incredibly small the rooms were. And sure, it was small, but not as small as I was expecting. We weren't tripping over our things or anything like that. There was enough space for both of our suitcases and plenty of closet space also. Maybe I'm used to smaller vacation spaces with our camper and having traveled to Europe and all, but I was pleasantly surprised in this aspect.

In particular, I'd heard many people talk about the itty bitty bathrooms, also. So naturally I went to check that out next. A coworker was just telling me how one of her friends who happened to be 6 foot something and 200+ pounds really could only fit half of himself in the shower at a time. But, again, I didn't think it was so bad once I saw it for myself! I've told you before our shower at home is terrible and is so small so maybe that clouded my judgement, but I thought the shower size was just fine for a small bathroom. Plus, the smallest shower I've ever used was in a bathroom on a train from Prague, Czech Republic to Stuttgart, Germany and that shower shared the faucet with the sink so I don't think "small shower" will ever compare to that one. This cruise ship was so large that it even had separate faucets for both the sink AND the shower! Wow! Ha. So again, pleasantly surprised here too.

After we dropped our things off we went to explore the boat and all that there was to do. We stopped at the pool deck to get a drink at one of the bars there and sit under the covered area because it was still rainy and yuck outside.

I was less than impressed at the beer selection offered. But I managed to find something to drink to sit and people watch for a bit. Afterward, we continued walking around the boat to see everything and made our way back to the center of the boat where we started. I stopped right there and said to John "that's it!?" I wasn't sure WHAT we were going to do to fill up the next 3.5 days.

Dinner than night was delayed too thanks to the delayed boarding and was open seating instead of following our assigned table number that was listed on our little on-board credit card thing. We found one of my coworkers and her boyfriend luckily, so we at least had someone at our table we knew and we were sat with 5 other people that we didn't know. All 5 people ended up being pretty great and we continued to talk with them anytime we saw them over the next few days. Yay! Socially awkward me didn't ruin it for everyone!

Dinner though was only okay. Again, based on what I'd previously heard, I was expecting great food. That food was definitely NOT great. I wouldn't even say good, really, just okay. The chocolate lava cake for dessert was pretty good, but not so good to make me forget about the rest of the meal. Since dinner didn't begin until after 8:30, it was close to 10:00 when it was complete so we called it a night and went to our room to sleep.

DAY TWO

We woke up the next morning refreshed! We slept pretty great on the rocking boat and woke up a little before 8, I think. Another thing I was worried about was getting seasick due to the location of our stateroom. It was on the highest floor of staterooms, and was towards the very front of the boat, maybe only 4 or 5 rooms back. I read that those rooms can be the rockiest so even though we have sleeping-on-a-boat experience, I was still a little worried. So far, so good though. Neither of us felt nauseous at all.

We headed down to the breakfast restaurant and some muffins and bread were brought to our table. The muffins were DELICIOUS. SO delicious. There was one chocolate muffin that is tied for one of my two favorite things to eat on the whole boat. My pancakes however, weren't very good. Instead I ate all of the things in the bread/muffin basket and all of my bacon and that was enough. John had an omelet and seemed to like it.

 

We went out to do some more boat exploring and wound up outside at the front of the boat. It was a very pretty day out and the wind felt great. I remember thinking this was the best part of the boat I'd seen yet. We stayed out there for a while before deciding to head to the pool deck.

Everyone on the boat is around this pool it seems. There are no chairs available at all except some regular chairs (not the lounging type) at tables near the bar. We sit here for a while and get a bucket of beers while we chat and people watch. The people watching on this boat was.....interesting, to say the least. At some point we had lunch (I had chicken fingers/fries covered in cheese sauce - which wasn't as good as I'd hoped and John had some Asian noodle something or other which he said was great!) and we eventually see a couple of people I work with and make our way up to the deck where they were sitting and had found chairs. We spend the rest of the afternoon drinking and talking with them and a couple other coworkers as well.

At some point we all decide to head to our rooms to rest some before dinner that night at 8. I want to say it was a little before 6:00. When John and I got back to our room and realized we had 2 full hours to shower and get ready for dinner, we said "forget that!" We don't need that long to shower and get ready so we put on our swimsuits and headed to the hot tub. We had hoped that since the first dinner began at 6 that the pool deck would be cleared of most people - and we were right! There was only one other couple in the hot tub. And calling it a hot tub is being generous, it was definitely more of a "warmish tub". We had yet another drink and sat in the hot tub for a while before going back to the room to get ready for dinner.

Our dinner was at 8. Our table was assigned to us and was among all of the rest of my coworkers on the cruise. We got our menus and decided on our appetizer and main course. I was not impressed with any of the choices, but eventually decided on ordering some crab ravioli for my main course. It was a little adventurous for what I normally order, but I just went with it. I was the only one at my table of 10 that chose that dish, but, I was NOT the only one that deemed our meal inedible and didn't have another bite. Several of us just couldn't eat what we had chosen. Y'all - it was awful! Even John - who is basically Mikey and will eat ANYthing - tasted my food and said "Nope. You cannot eat that." So, I had some bread and butter and waited until the main course portion was winding down before we made our escape. Dessert wasn't even worth waiting for, and that's saying a LOT coming from me.

And the dinner show that the waiters participate in left a lot to be desired. Cheese with a capital C. Like, not even the entertaining kind of cheesiness, either. Another thing I was told prior to this cruise was that the service would be impeccable. Yeah. Not at all. As we left and made our way to the pizza place, we decided we were not coming back to the dining room again on this cruise. We ended up eating there that night and the next 2 nights as well - pizza ended up being my other favorite food item on the boat.

We had some drinks with my coworkers that night at the casino bar and were in our beds by midnight. I just read back everything I wrote about this first full day, and it is full of negativity, especially about a cruise we were on for free. Y'all know I'm the furthest thing from negative, so just know that even though there are lots of complaints, we actually did have a lot of fun on the pool deck and at the casino bar that day. I'm just so glad that we had fun people to hang out with because they really made this trip for us.

DAY THREE

So the next day was our port day in Nassau. I had told anyone that would listen about the place we were headed called The Tiki Bikini Hut. In my informal surveying of people on Facebook and by word of mouth, it became really clear to us that we did NOT want to do the Atlantis thing while in Nassau. Eventually I went on trusty Trip Advisor and saw that this place was the number one thing to do in Nassau and I was sold. It wasn't expensive, we could walk there, it gave us a casual, relaxing beach day and had free wi-fi. That covered my entire wish list of what we wanted to do while on the island. Done and done.

Since we had no way to communicate with any of my coworkers, we weren't sure if anyone would be joining us at all. We were up early enough for breakfast and to get ready for disembarking by 9:15. The skies, though, did not look promising.

We got off of the boat and made our way through the pack of people trying to get us to do this excursion and that excursion. They were annoying, but once you told them "no thank you" they left you alone. I didn't have exact directions to the place we wanted to go, but I knew it was on the beach so that narrowed it down quite a bit, and I knew the general direction it was in. So we decided to just mosey our way through the town and a few shops on our way to the beach. It was pretty early to go to the beach and have a beer, plus the skies were still looking pretty bad so we didn't want to be stuck on a beach with no roof over our heads in a downpour.

We went into some t-shirt shops to find a couple little souveniry things and before we knew it, the bottom completely fell out. It POURED down rain. We left the shop we were in and tried to decide what we would do to wait out the rain.

We  passed a bar that advertised free wi-fi on our walk to the shop we were at, so we decided that was the best place to go until the rain stopped. Apparently 9:15 was too early to go to the beach and drink, but 9:47 was perfectly fine. I mean, we HAD to buy something (in my opinion) so we could use their free wi-fi, after all.

I was pretty happy sitting there in the open air bar catching up on my children through messages with my sisters and catching up on Facebook as well. Eventually, the rain stopped so we started to make our way to the Tiki Bikini Hut.

We were about halfway there (I think the walk straight from the ship would have been 15-20 minutes to get there) when my coworker and her boyfriend spotted us. Yay! The four of us then made our way to the beach.

The servers were very accommodating as soon as we got there. They weren't super pushy or salesperson-y, but offered us (2) chairs, (1) umbrella, (2) lunches, (8) beers and (8) shots for $65. (Looking on Trip Advisor, the reviews are all over the place with what you pay/what you get. So I bet you can barter a little bit, but I didn't feel the need to argue with that price.) I mean, sounds like a pretty great deal to us so we were sold. Apparently that was the VIP package so the beach boys immediately started setting up our chairs and umbrella right at the water's edge.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Beach day.

There were a couple more passing thunderstorms that we waited out underneath our umbrella, but overall the day was perfect. The shots did not contain much alcohol (thank goodness!) so we weren't completely drunk - because usually that much alcohol would for sure knock me out. And the water was just perfect. Crystal clear, NO waves thanks to a sandbar/peninsula thing, and the perfect temperature. It was also saltier than I was used to, so it was very easy to just float on top of the water. Truly - I loved this day! Had we been bused to Atlantis and been with the crowds (4 other cruise ships were there that day too) I KNOW I wouldn't have had a good time. I bet Atlantis is really cool, but maybe one day we'll actually stay there so we can enjoy it when thousands of other people are not also trying to enjoy it at the same time.

So! It was time to mosey our way back to the boat. The combination of sun and alcohol had me super happy (::coughmaybestumblytoocough::) so it was a pretty enjoyable walk back to the boat. We boarded at 4:30 and a nap was definitely in order for me. John, however, decided he didn't need a nap (he was wrong) so he went and found coworkers to hang with on the pool deck.

A few hours later John came back to the room and we decided to go get some pizza for dinner. My coworkers met us there as well. All of us were boycotting the dining room apparently.

After that, we went out to a piano bar on board and OH MY GOODNESS that was right up my alley. I loved that place. The pianist played my request (Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody) and that tiny little bar was so energetic. We stayed there for a few hours before going to meet other coworkers at the casino bar.

This was our latest night - I think it was just about 2:00 a.m. before we made it back to our room.

DAY FOUR

We slept really great again and I was SURE this time that I'd slept in. I was so proud of me! So I picked up my phone to check the time and....

7:30. Ughhhhhh. I think I laid there for at least another half hour and finally decided to just get up. John, however, was struggling this morning. He never took a nap the previous day like I did, just continued having fun and drinking, so he was paying for it this morning. He didn't want to eat. He didn't want anything but water and sleep. And lucky for him, we had already finished both giant bottled waters that they "gave" us in our room. We had the hardest time finding water on the cruise ship. The water in the bathroom was nasty tasting (we tasted it when brushing teeth) and bottled water was never offered anywhere. You could get a glass of water from the pool deck restaurant, but John and I both drink a lot of water so it seemed like a whole lot of effort to bring back one whole glass of water to the room that we would finish drinking in just a couple of sips. I did take our giant water bottle and fill it up in the restaurant, but ice wouldn't fit in it so it was warm water. Better than nothing, though.

So, since John was needing his rest, I went exploring by myself. I went to get some more of those chocolate muffins for breakfast and went outside to the front of the ship in the sunshine and wind for a bit. I went to the disembarkation instruction show thing that was going on so I knew what to expect the next morning. I considered playing some bingo, but ended up passing on that. I bought a couple little things for Charley on the ship. I just wandered around for a while. Finally I decided I'd grab my book and put on my bathing suit and go to the pool for a while. When I got back to the room, John was coming out of his funk and decided he'd go too. So we both made our way to the pool deck. He didn't want anything to do with any more drinks, though. I think I had a beer or two, and we found lounge chairs under an umbrella which was perfect for me and my pale skin.

Later we found a couple coworkers again, and then found lounge chairs near them too so we relocated. It was a very quiet day though, and the most exciting thing I did was to try out the water slide. Twice. It was pretty awesome!

That evening we did go to one of the live shows - it was something about the British Invasion so included some Beatles songs and Rolling Stones, etc. It........was just ok if I'm being honest. Then we went back to the piano bar, but the energy just wasn't what it was the night before. It was still fun, and the pianist did play my request again (Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back To Me") but with the trip winding down, neither John nor myself really wanted to stay up late or drink much at all. We called it a night around 10 and went back to the room to pack up for the next morning.

DAY FIVE

Our disembarkation time was 7:30-7:45. We woke up at 7 and started to get the rest of our stuff together. The disembarkation instructions were on the TV, so when we finally turned it on around 7:10 we realized they were running early so we were actually able to leave right then. Hooray! We were more than ready to leave so we threw everything together and got off that boat. Boarding took us 3 hours, but they get you off QUICKLY. We were in our car by 7:30 and on our way to get our girls that we missed so much!

Snuggled them right up when I got home!

So. Would we do this cruise again? Yes and no. Here are the scenarios in which we'd say yes:

- it is free again, and there are fun coworkers going too.
- a big group of friends or family are going and want us to go too (although I'd still urge them to pick a different cruise/trip beforehand)

and that's about it. Would we cruise again? Again, yes and no, and here are our reasons for yes:

- Disney Cruise. Duh. If only I could get that one for free!
- A lovely blog friend suggested a cruise that leaves from Puerto Rico so you basically get a different Caribbean Island every day and not many at-sea days. THAT I would enjoy.
- To MAYBE try a different cruise line. Carnival is the Wal-Mart of cruise lines, as I understand, so we would probably enjoy a different cruise line much more.

But even with a different cruise line, if trying to decide where to spend my vacation money, an all-inclusive or a domestic trip to see another U.S. city or a trip abroad would all still beat out a cruise in our minds, hands down.

This got crazy long - didn't it?

Cliff's Notes version? Basically, we went on a free cruise. We had fun with my coworkers but didn't like the cruise much otherwise. We decided we were right about not being cruisers. The end.