October Trip Report - Prelude

Since the International Food and Wine Festival has been taking place in EPCOT, I have only missed it one year, and this year was not to be a second. Plans were made, as usual, taking into consideration when my grandson's birthday occurs ... and off we go!

October 10, 2014

The car is packed, and as soon as rush hour is over, we are on our way.

Everything is smooth sailing until we get close to Washington, DC - but that is always expected so we give it no thought. Traffic continues to be stop and go as we pass into Virginia, but once again, that is not very unusual and we thing nothing of it ... until it continues longer than it usually does. In fact, the traffic is so bad that we lose between 2 and 3 hours in stop and go conditions until it finally opens up. A combination of rain, construction, and accidents appear to have accounted for the logjam.

We end our day just over the border into North Carolina and stop for the night. Since bot my wife and myself are retired and have no time pressure due to a finite vacation period, I have given us an extra day of traveling more than we actually need so that we can stop early and make it an easy 1100 mile drive.

October 11, 2014

Back on the road, and today we leave the rain behind early in the day, and have a nice, sunny, traffic-free day of driving.

We arrive in Florida and decide to get to about St. Augustine before we stop for the night. Our reservations at Pop Century start tomorrow and we don't really want to get too close to Disney World today. At Palm Coast, we pull off Interstate 95 and look to get a room, but all of the rooms at the Holiday Inn Express are filled ... it seems that there is a soccer tournament in the area which has taken most of the available rooms ... but there is one suite left at the Microtel just down the block, so that is where we spend the night.

October 12, 2014

This is the day our reservation at Pop Century begins, and the plan is to meet our daughter in the lobby at 1:00 PM and check in. We also make arrangements to meet the representative from Randy's Mobility who will be providing us with an electric scooter for this visit. Both my wife and I have been having some major issues with a foot recently, and while I am going to try to walk as much as possible this trip, but my wife still needs to use a scooter.

Since we are only about 2 hours from WDW, we stick around until the 11:00 check-out time and make the last part of the trip. We arrive just before 1:00 and both Randy's Mobility and our daughter follow shortly. We check into our room in the Fifties section of the hotel.

As evening approaches, my son-in-law ... who was working today ... meets us and we head over to the Beach Club Resort where we have reservations for Cape May Café for dinner.

Back in the room my wife and I get some sleep - ready to head over to EPCOT tomorrow to start our week with a visit to the International Food and Wine Festival.