Another summer has passed (although it’s still in the 90s here in Florida!) so it’s time for our annual Labor Day Weekend vacation trip to Walt Disney World. To avoid the holiday weekend traffic that is typical on I-4 over to Orlando, this year we left Thursday evening and checked into our hotel room in the Gran Destino Tower at the Coronado Springs resort.
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Memorial Day Weekend at Disney (2022 – Cosmic Rewind!)
It’s the start of summer, time for our (now) annual Memorial Day Weekend trip to Disney! We had planned this back in January before my daughter went back to school since this would be our only opportunity to all go together before our annual passes go into the summer blackout period and my daughter heads to a summer language program in Vermont at the end of June.
Spring Training 2022 – no, actually a week in Seattle
[ posting this late/out-of-order since I apparently started it and never finished ]
Mid-March would typically find me out in Arizona for my annual spring training trip to see my Cleveland Indians Guardians but the past two years have seen my trips cancelled (first for the pandemic, and now the MLB lockout). This year’s trip was also planned around a side-trip to Seattle to see the Lightning play the Kraken (my sister is a inaugural season ticket holder for the new NHL franchise). With our planned baseball games cancelled, I decided to just spend the entire week in Seattle with my sister.
2021 Panama Canal cruise
To celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and my daughter’s 21st birthday this year, we spent Christmas and New Year’s on a 11-day Panama Canal cruise on the Norwegian Pearl!
Back at Disney: Labor Day Weekend 2021
We didn’t go to Disney World for our annual Labor Day Weekend trip last year (for obvious reasons) so it was nice to finally celebrate the end of summer and spend the long holiday weekend over in Orlando at the parks.
Memorial Day Weekend at Disney (2021)
With the pandemic starting to get under control and things heading back towards “normal” we decided to try a mini (Minnie?) family vacation to kick off the summer and head over to Disney World for Memorial Day Weekend. The last time we did this was 2018. Normally our annual trip to Disney is Labor Day weekend, but with my daughter now in college there are fewer times we can actually go as a family and Labor Day isn’t one of them. We also still don’t have our annual passes so this was just a single day, single park trip.
Weekend getaway to Fernandina Beach
This past weekend we were up in the Amelia Island area at a beach rental in Fernandina Beach visiting with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. We drove up Thursday evening after work and then worked from the beach house on Friday while we waited for my wife’s sister and her husband to arrive (they were renting the other side of the duplex so we could appropriately social distance). We had dinner delivered from Fancy Sushi and then sat outside on the deck (bundled up since it was actually kinda cold!).
Saturday (Halloween) morning we started with a walk along the beach and over to Starbucks for breakfast and back. We grabbed lunch at Cantina Louie (sitting outside at separate ends of a large table) and then walked around Centre Street before it started raining. Since I had my growler in the car, I got it filled at the Amelia Island Brewing Company before we headed back to the house. My wife and sister-in-law set up a tent outside so we were able to sit (again, appropriately distanced) outside in the rain and still visit. Quite the odd Halloween, but at least it was warmer than last night.
We had to check out of the VRBO by 10:00am on Sunday, so after our morning walk on the beach we had to clean up and pack up. Since it was a beautiful day we went back to Centre Street to actually walk around in the sun. For lunch we ate at the Salty Pelican (mmmm … fish and shrimp tacos) near the river. Then we had to say our goodbyes and headed back home. It was a quick weekend, but nice to get away to the beach for a while with family.
My pandemic reading list
I stopped WIJFR posts five years ago (switched to Goodreads), but during the COVID-19 pandemic I found myself tending towards related topics. Such as:
- “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton (actually, I watched the classic film and the not-so-great 2008 mini-series in preparation to read the below)
- “The Andromeda Evolution” by Daniel Wilson
- “The Strain” trilogy (“The Strain“, “The Fall“, and “The Night Eternal“) by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
- and now I’m working on Justin Cronin’s “Passage” series (“The Passage“, “The Twelve“, and “The City of Mirrors“)
Obviously missing is Stephen King’s “The Stand” which I’ve been meaning to re-read to since finishing the Dark Tower series back in 2018. That might be next.
Odd observation: all of these books start with “The”.
COVID Road Trip
It was finally time to move my daughter back to college in Ohio, which meant a family road trip during COVID-19 times. Considering we hadn’t really been more than 15 miles from the house for the past 6 months, going on a 2,000 mile roundtrip drive across 5 states during a global pandemic was a slightly daunting.
Labor Day Weekend 2020 – Pandemic Edition
Normally we’d be spending Labor Day Weekend over at Disney, our end-of-summer family tradition. But (no) thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic we cancelled our annual passes last month and for the first time since 2012 we’re spending the holiday weekend at home. I’ll be barbecuing on Monday, though, so there’ll be some semblance of normalcy.
At least sports are back! I haven’t been watching the NBA bubble since the Cavs aren’t in it, but on the baseball side the Rays are solidly in first place in the AL East (5 games ahead of the Yankees) and the Indians are currently tied for first in the AL Central with the White Sox. It’s a little weird that we’re halfway through the abbreviated season that started back at the end of July. I actually went ahead and purchased an MLB.tv subscription (through Amazon Prime) so I can watch more of the Tribe.
Even weirder, though, is Stanley Cup Playoff hockey in September!! 😮 The Lightning (in the Toronto bubble) started as the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference and after a record-setting 5OT Game #1 against the Columbus Blue Jackets, went on to win the first round in 5 games (revenge for being swept out of the first round round by the Blue Jackets last season!). In the second round the Bolts faced another familiar foe, the Boston Bruins. Boston was in first place in the Eastern Conference when play was suspended back in March but went 0-3 in the preliminary round and was seeded 4th. I almost think that might have been on purpose to get the other teams to underestimate them, and you should never underestimate Boston. It was tough, but the Lightning came out victorious, winning the round in a double overtime Game 5 thriller. On to the Eastern Conference Finals in Edmonton … go Bolts!! (they’re still awaiting their opponent, Game 7 between the Flyers and Islanders is tonight)