A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 7, Saturday

The day dawned bright, clear and hot. I was about reasonably early, as is my wont, but sadly no one else was. The run out to the Space Centre was nigh on two hours and I sat there fretting about the place closing before we arrived there. The Tadpoles surfaced at about 10.30 am and even then didn't seem overly keen to get into gear. I'd been to Florida once before and been denied a trip to the Space Centre by awkward people and I didn't want the same thing to happen again. Words were spoken and we set off eventually at about midday, the Tadpoles having mysteriously given up their grumbling and become remarkably compliant. I found out later that Mrs T had spoken to them and that they were trying to be nice to me!

Anyway, on the road again, sans trailer of course, we went down to Orlando again, then east to the airport and beyond. I didn't count how many toll gates we went through, nor how much money we handed over, but I think we just paid for this years Orlando road maintenance programme. Once away from the city we entered the Florida coastal area which was flat and watery, but interesting for all that. The big central building of the Space Center hoves into view at some distance and is a good visual reference as you approach, and a reminder that everything at the Space Center is on a big scale. The good news on arriving at the Visitor Center was that the place was open until 8.30pm, so at least we were going to get a good crack at the place.

First off, they recommend the bus tour to the launch sites, so that's what we did being good obedient toads. It's a bit theme park-ish, lining up for the bus, having your photo taken in front of Shuttle launch backdrop and then being regaled with short and snappy videos on the bus. The drivers were good, though, all having their own tales to tell in amongst the facts and figures. The launch pads were impressive, although now redundant of course. The crawler roads even more impressive, still imprinted with the track marks from the final mission a month or so ago. The bit that was least impressive was the price of the snacks offered in the kiosk, which had obviously been set by Walt Disney himself, they being totally in the realms of fantasy.

From the launch sites we were taken to the Saturn V display area, which had interesting displays and video presentations. They use part of the original Apollo launch control room as a very funky presentation piece with lots of video, noise and vibration, showing what it was like when a Saturn V rocket took off. All very entertaining stuff but some of the digital readouts that were supposed to be from the late sixties looked remarkably modern. Still, it was all smoke and mirrors. The Saturn V rocket on display cannot be anything other than incredible, it's so big, as were the food prices in the cafe! There were some interesting artifacts on display, though, including the watch belonging to one of the astronauts killed in the Apollo 1 accident in 1967; macbre maybe, but fascinating.

Back on the bus and it was nature time, the driver pointing out the wildlife that thrives in the protected environment, a great spin off from the Space programme. Then it was back to the visitor centre where there were lots of spiffy displays and presentations and, as with all good theme parks, a ride. The Shuttle experience is a simulation of a Shuttle launch from inside the vehicle. I won't say too much about it for fear of putting people off, except to say that they talk it up well. As with Universal Studios, there were a lot of Brits at the Space Center, complete with footer shirts and red faces. At Universal, Liverpool won the battle of the shirts; at the Space Center it was Chelsea. Chelsea fans, as we know, are very cerebral bunch.

It was getting towards 8pm by the time we left and the heat outside was still immense. Mrs T had decided that we'd try to visit a Universal Studios store on the way home, to finish off the Potter-fest and we settled on the one in the entrance to the theme parks in downtown Orlando. Sat Nav duly programmed, off we went into nightime Orlando. It was only (!) $3 to park after 6pm, so that was better, but the place was heaving. There's a big shopping, entertainment and nightclub area built as the entrance to the theme parks and even at 9.30pm it was bright with lights, loud with music and thronging with people. Some were dressed for the nightclubs but there were many more families with young kids enjoying the place and overdosing their spawn with more theme park stimulation; lovely!

Shopping achieved, we departed and headed out of Orlando, back towards the campground and some supper. As we headed north we were driving into a huge thunderstorm, the night sky filled with lightening that showed the towering clouds. Strangely, though, although we drove on some wet roads, our campground was dry when we arrived, which meant dry washing. Even leaving the awning out couldn't bring the rain so we felt really quite pleased to be dry for once. Not really up to McDonald's or Dennies at that time of night, we settled for tinned spaghetti on toast in the trailer, which is a great way to round off a full and very long day. We'd seen much about the now completed Shuttle programme, seen lots of Florida, seen Downtown Orlando at night and helped the Orlando roads survive into the 22^nd century. Tomorrow was to be a travelling day, 350 miles west to Grayton Beach, on the Gulf Coast, so alarm set for stupid O'Clock we finally settled down for night. Holiday? I think I'm going to need another one when we get back!

A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 6, Friday

There's one sure way to get the Tadpoles out of bed without complaint and that's to offer them a trip to Universal Studios' Wizarding World of Harry Potter. They were up and ready to go and a little past 7 am, which is some kind of record. The day looked set fair; well, hot, really, so we filled a backpack with drinks and set off. At the gatehouse to the campground, we reported last night's power issue and the woman there seemed quite relieved that we were going to be out for the day, I suppose because we weren't going to be giving her earache all day.

The campground is situated about an hour north of Orlando but the run in on the Florida Turnpike was easy. $1.25 to get onto the Turnpike and 50 Cents to get off it, which seemed a trifle odd to me. Mind you, without the trailer we were able to hit 70 mph with no concerns and the gas consumption was about half of that with the trailer, which is something that our poor, hard pressed wallets approved of. Talking of money, though, any visit to a theme park is surely a modern equivalent of daylight robbery. The tickets had cost us $84 each and were good for one day in one half of the Universal Studios theme park offering. To park the car cost $15 (the first and probably the last parking charge of the whole trip) and once inside, any food, drink, candy or souvenirs were so extortionately priced that we stopped even looking. Obviously we looked at it from the grown-ups point of view but the Tadpoles just couldn't see it our way. After blowing the best part of $200 on souvenirs, they set about destroying $50 each on candy, which for the most part was gone by bedtime. Still, I'm just a grumpy old adult; what price can you put on a fun day out? Answers on a postcard, please.

We arrived just about as the place was opening and made a slow walk over to Hogsmead and Hogwarts Castle, through the garish Comic Book streets and Jurassic Park sections of the place. The castle certainly looked true to the Harry Potter Films, even the scale was impressive. Hogsmead looked a little incongruous with it's snow covered roofs glinting in the Florida sunshine. Of course, it was wall-to-wall people, all very excited about being there and looking everywhere except where they were going. Call us nasty old adults but we took the first opportunity we could to shove the Tadpoles onto a ride so that we could escape for a while. The line wait was listed as 20 minutes but it was nearly an hour before we saw their green faces go by on the Dragon Challenge after they'd been hurtled around, upside-down and around and around for two minutes. The small Tadpole had been terrified but hey, it's all character building, isn't it?

The best ride, The Forbidden Journey, was out of commission with no hint of when and if it was to be working, which was a bit of a bummer. Without the ride, there was no access to the castle and that is about a third of the entire Harry Potter extravaganza. It was also the only ride that Mrs T wanted anything to do with so you can imagine the pursed lips, can't you? We mooched about a bit, took some pictures and ate in the Three Broomsticks pub. Given that alcoholic drinks were on sale (One drink per ID only!), I suppose it did qualify as a pub but think of that spiteful, malevolent influence we were subjecting all the dear little children to; tut, tut, Universal, shame on you.

We were just about to give up on the Forbidden Journey, Mrs T actively interrogating the poor park staff about when the ride might be functioning again when Bingo!, they called that it would be open right there and then. There was a bit of a line, which we jumped into pretty sharpish, and it just went straight into the castle without any hold up at all. We had fun getting two lockers for the bags, with fingerprints taken in the general melee, and then we were walking through the castle and enjoying the exhibits there. A young family climbed through a fence at one stage, not really jumping the line but joining it without seeing that all but one of the kids was too small to ride, so you can guess what happened to them when they reached the end of the queue (snigger). The ride itself was really quite something, a mix of roller coaster (although it wasn't), animatronics and amazing video effects. Of course, I began to suffer a bit of motion sickness but the ride wasn't that long so no one had to clear up any, er, outpourings; well, not from me, anyway.

After that we thought we'd head for the entrance, via a log flume ride we liked the look of. It was so hot, though, that when we saw a 45 minute wait posted we decided that enough was enough and made our way to the “Port of Entry”. Why is it that Theme Parks are the place in the US where you have to walk any distance? Sweating indecently, it must have taken us 20 minutes to get back to the car. Doing that walk, in amongst the crowds, the endless and horrifically expensive shops (of which there thousands) and the weird smells of candy, fried food and chlorinated water, I realised that I am a grumpy old toad and really don't like theme parks. Still, the Tadpoles were happy.

Heading back to the campground, we were hoping that the power problems were fixed and when we were greeted warmly at the gate with a “we've fixed the power problem” we were already visualising our afternoon nap. Sadly the first message was followed by a second “but it's going to happen again” so bang went the nap thoughts. The park staff suggested we move to another site, one with a sewer connection and working power, so we agreed and then set about hitching up and dragging Towed Haul around the campground. It was hot and sweaty work but we re-pitched on site number 8 and re-settled ourselves. The sewer connection was a bit too far away from our outlet valves, at least if we wanted the awning up (no, don't rain!), so there was no gain on that front, but the site had an open aspect and the power worked!

Too late for a nap, we headed out to Dennie's, that gourmet breakfast restaurant with “all you can eat” pancakes. Yes, I know it wasn't breakfast time but they are open 24 hours, which is a novelty in these here parts. I had Georgia Peach French Toast with bacon and a hash brown; it sounds awful but I really liked it. We also put away a mountain of pancakes and the bill for the trip was well under $40, which was excellent. We followed that with Internet Ice Cream at McDonald's then headed home for a well earned snooze. Apart from a few drops of rain as we left Dennie's, it was our first dry day of the whole trip, which is quite something six days into it. As I've said before, at least it's warm rain, which makes things a little more bearable.

Tomorrow is a trip to the Kennedy Space Center, but a slow start is anticipated. I note that we missed the last ever flight of the Shuttle by only a week or two but I'm sure it'll be very edjumacational for us all. Indoors, too, which will be good in this heat.

Look for Saturday's installment, coming to a blog near you!  

A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 5, Thursday

I woke to a grey dawn (sunup is very late down here) that gave way to a blue sky and rising heat. Everywhere was dripping wet following last night's rain but that was no deterrent to the squirrels crashing about in the trees and the lizards scuttling around on the little fence next to our site. The shower block was clean, to a certain degree, and the water copious and hot, or at least was hot when I'd worked out which twist of the faucet offered hot water. The park itself was small but wooded with oaks strung with Spanish Moss, indigenous palm trees and pine trees.

Mrs T and I sat out front in the gathering heat and were accosted by our neighbour, who was camped in an Airstream Motorhome. He had the tell-tale red numbers of the Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCCI) emblazoned on the front of his MoHo (see how I'm hip with the groove?). His number was 23, one of the original numbers issued by Wally Byam himself and originally allocated to our neighbour's father. Wally Byam, by the way, is the inventor of the Airstream and his company built them for many years. Amongst Airstreamers, Wally Byam is much revered so it was great to meet the son of someone who'd been on one of Wally's celebrated Caravans to Mexico. The MoHo was all done up like your grandmother's kitchen, all faux wood and beige carpets, which is not to our taste at all. In the centre of the dashboard was mounted a 25” CRT television, enveloped in a carpet covered cowl, and by the steering wheel was a 10” mono CRT screen for the rear view camera. The guy had said that it wasn't a new MoHo and I'd have pitched it being built in the late seventies or early eighties. It was actually manufactured in 2000! Stand by for social comment, folks, avert your eyes if you're of a nervous disposition; this is where American industries did and still do go wrong. In North America, the ad men tell you that bigger is better, especially if encased in wood and/or carpet. Sadly for the American public, this goes against the general run of technology, where smaller and lighter is better and wood, faux or otherwise, is to be avoided at all costs. Things covered in carpet are akin to having a mullet and thinking you look cool.

Moving on...... we had a slow start, did some washing and generally took our time. After lunch we jumped into the car to go to New Smyrna Beach, to see the Atlantic coast of Florida. It was going to about a 90 minute cross country run and I was wavering a bit but, as is usual with these things, I'm glad we did make the trip. Central Florida is a nice enough place and the roads are pretty good but it was the coast we wanted so as we crested the Intra-Coastal Waterway bridge and saw the ocean ahead we were really quite excited little toads. Beach access in the US is often taken by houses, apartments and hotels but I'd read about a public parking lot with access to the beach on East 23^rd. We went there but found no parking lot, although there was pedestrian access. Oh, and a great big tortoise scuttling about. Mrs T crested the little wooden bridge on the dunes and called for us to come look and wow, what a sight. Laid out on either side was a sandy beach, stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions. Midway between the sea and the dunes was a roadway marked out on the sand and loads of cars parked along it, glinting in the sun. The Atlantic surf came rolling in and it looked just like in the guidebooks, only better for being in three dimensions.

We made our way back up the beach strip and eventually found the vehicular access to the beach nestling between two apartment buildings. $3 later and were driving down the sand between the markers getting very excited about driving onto the beach, and legally so. We set up camp not far from the car and all of us made straight for the surf. Now Mrs T is not what you'd call an enthusiast for the water but here it was blood warm and the rolling surf made a great place to unwind and let off some steam. It's a few years since I've been in the sea and had forgotten the stinging that afflicts your eyes when sticking your face into salt water. It's doing me good, it's doing me good I kept repeating to myself, but it didn't, it just made my eyes sting even more!

We spent three hours on the beach before being chivvied off by the Beach Patrol and we had a wonderful time. The Tadpoles enjoyed it but we did, too, which is probably good when you're all together for seventeen days. We followed up with a terrific meal in Flip Flop's restaurant, where the food was good and inexpensive and the ambiance was very relaxed; it was a fine end to a good day.

Arriving back at the campground at about half past ten, we found the place had been run though by another major rainstorm and that we had no power from the pillar next to the trailer. The A/C was off, as was the fridge and with the temperatures so high, we really needed both. The fridge we set to LPG and the lights to battery, but no power, no A/C. I fitted the extension cable to the trailer and dragged it through the wet bushes so that we could try with the next (unoccupied) site's power and, thankfully, that worked fine, albeit that it could only be temporary. Another sticky night was on the cards for us but at least we had some cool air to play with. Tomorrow was to be Harry Potter day so everyone was showered at 11pm and the preparations for the day were made before we turned in. This was turning out to be a great holiday but boy, what a lot of work for the grown ups! Also, as there's no rest for the wicked, we knew Harry Potter was really going to do us in. Yawn, g'night all.

A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 4, Wednesday

A significantly better organised camp break than last time meant that we were dumped and heading out of the gate at about 9.30am. Our first obstacle of the day was the very steep uphill grade to get out onto the road, something that the Sienna took well, if a little slowly. See, who says you can't tow with a Minivan? Heading down the I75 again and it was 350 miles to our destination just to the North of Orlando, Florida. I felt a certain pride that we were headed to Orlando and not going to Walt Disney World. Deviant, aren't I?

We motored for a few hours, stopping for a hearty breakfast (of cream doughnuts) at a Walmart along the way, then to fuel up just a few miles short of the Florida Border. We came through a really wicked rain storm that had claimed at least three accidents in the short time it took us to pass through, which is where having your speed limited can come in quite handy in preventing such silliness. Fuelling up can be a bit of a pain because a lot of gas pumps in the US don't like Canadian credit cards, which means you have to go in to the kiosk and pay up front for a set amount of fuel. We're hardly going to make a break for it with the trailer weighing the car down so I don't really think it's necessary, but security is security apparently. Shortly after fuelling, we were flagged by a couple of men in a car who indicated that we had a problem with one of the trailer wheels. Wary of there being mechanical mishaps so far from home but also wary of all sorts of other strangeness that can happen, I pulled off at the next exit and stopped (in full view of a fruit stand and a load of people) where the men were waiting. They said there was some wobbling on one of the wheels and that if I pulled into a truck stop just on the other side of the Florida State Line they'd be able to look at the bearings. Still a bit wary, I tested the wheel lugs (one slightly loose) and the tyres but everything seemed OK to me. We set off again with me peering in the mirror to get a glimpse of the wheel as we were moving. I couldn't see anything wrong, and the trailer was behaving itself so we decided that maybe it was a scam that these men were pulling, so we determined to carry on regardless.

Just over the Florida State Line, we stopped at the official welcome center for essential activities (ahem) and to try to find the next instalment of Dave Hunter's excellent Along The I75, this one to cover Florida. Not only did the welcome center stock the book but would accept no money for it. Result! So, armed with a new, interesting and free book, we set off for our final leg, down to Lake Griffin State Park. Then it began to rain. It rained and rained and rained, making the driving difficult and slow. This was, I supposed, some semi-tropical downpour sent to smite my holiday but I suspect, more mundanely, that it was due to the very hot weather that had been building for weeks.

We moved out of the rain a little way north of Ocala and when we arrived at the campground it was hot and dry (but threatening). We were upgraded from Standard site to Premier site but only give us a pitch where it was a little more private. the site was very narrow and sandy but we were able to set up quickly and get the awning out. Now, if you've been following this blog, you'll know that the phrase Get The Awning Out is in fact a secret signal to start a downpour and today, gentle reader, was no exception. No sooner had we fixed the fairy lights and the rain fell. It fell in such immense proportions, too, instantly forming rivers of mud and water and hammering on the aluminium skin of the trailer. I stood under the awning watching the water cascade off the lower end (always set it at a rakish angle to allow water to come off), wondering if I should bring the thing in again. Fifteen minutes of monsoon and it wasn't looking any better so off came the shirt and the specs and out I went into the storm. I can report that the rain in Florida arrives in copious amounts and is really quite warm. It took me about two minutes to get the awning stowed and in that time I was soaked through. Welcome to the Sunshine State, I thought.

The rain kept up (as did the heat) so we gave up the unequal struggle and headed out to eat. We settled on Stakis, the Greek and Italian specialists, just a few miles up the road. Now there will be those of you that will laugh but there is a precedent for mixing Greek and Italian cooking that is alive and well in the Greek Ionian Islands. I had the best pizza I've ever had in Zakynthos. Anyway, I digress, we were in Florida so I celebrated with a nice plate of Moussaka, as you do. We followed that with an ice cream, with Internet on the side, in the Fruitland Park branch of McDonald's. Later that evening, two very tired toads sweltered in the trailer trying to sleep whilst the air conditioner rumbled. Two tadpoles slumbered peacefully, oblivious to everything; the little buggers!