I’m BAAaack!

It’s been said that any good vacation requires a vacation at its completion. I’m in need of another vacation.

Let me tell you about the Serle family vacation of 2007. It was meticulously planned (a lie) with strategic stops at regular intervals (another lie) in order to maximize optimal family pleasure (oh God, get the shovels).

OK, I may have exaggerated a wee bit (I think I just destroyed any good will I may have had with God) but the principles of what I said is true. First, Tracey my wife and I started thinking about where we wanted to go this year. Last year we rented a beach house, so there was no way in hell I was going to talk her into another beach vacation. It had been a few years since we went to Florida as a family and Tracey had talked about wanting to go back to Saint Augustine (oldest continuous European settlement in North America) and we had both wanted to check out the Space Coast.

The best way to plan a trip like this is to start investigating places to stay and possible attractions long in advance of the actual trip. I said that’s the BEST way. It wasn’t what I did. Months prior to actually going on this trip, Tracey started suggesting (does telling me to get off my ass actually count as a suggestion?) that I look up hotels in the locations we were going to. I of course waited until the last possible moment to do this and we ended up with less than prime locations to stay in. Not that the hotels weren’t all that nice because they weren’t bad. Just small. Very small. Theoretically, there were two beds in each room, one for my wife and I and one for the kids, but they ended up being double beds. For some people a double bed may be just fine and dandy, for me however this is less than optimal for a comfortable stay. Worse yet, because I got them by using an online travel service, they were pre-paid which means I couldn’t just go find another room or hotel without paying a substantial penalty.

Now I’m not slamming the travel service I used (they don’t advertise with MyMac.com, but it does rhythm with babbleocity) as they said what the bed sizes were as I booked them online, I just chose to not pay attention to it until we walked into the hotel room. So, I booked the three hotels we were going to stay at (St Augustine, Titusville, and Orlando), the rental car we were going to use for the trip (A minivan as I didn’t feel comfortable putting 2000 miles on my 98 Ford), and I thought I was all done. As it turned out, the adventure was just beginning. As usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We left on Wednesday, June 20th at roughly 6:30 in the morning. We needed to leave that early because I didn’t want to have to deal with Washington DC morning traffic right out of the gate. This turned out to be an excellent idea (one of the few I had for this trip) and we got out of town with no problems. Got as far as near the border of Virginia and North Carolina before we hit our first snag. Said snag was a Virginia State Trooper who took offense to me going 78 MPH in a 65 MPH zone. He was very professional as he handed me a speeding ticket. I feel extremely patriotic to be contributing to the overall budget of the State of Virginia, which is a polite way of saying what the hell was I doing going so fast and I’m an idiot.

No other problems heading south to Florida. The kids were reasonable entertained with movies and video games in the back seat, thereby sparing me the inevitable “Are we there yets”. We found our hotel and discovered that yes I had indeed booked a hotel room with two double beds and no way to upgrade them to something more comfortable.

That first night we went on a Ghost Tour of old St. Augustine which seems to be a cottage industry since there are roughly 10 million of them to choose from. It was a good way to stretch our legs after being cooped up in a car for 12 hours and also was a lot of fun. How accurate the stories they tell is kinda besides the point. The next day was filled with going to the old Spanish Fort and to Alligator Land. My wife has a healthy interest in reptiles (please don’t think about how this might relate to her agreeing to marry me…oops, too late) so her “gator” fixation was sated for this trip. We also went to the old St Augustine lighthouse. The next day we went to another Spanish fort situated down river a bit that was built as an early warning post and traveled up and down A1A (the coastal highway) as well as visiting the old jail and the original Ripley’s Believe it or not museum. All of this is somewhat tacky and a lot of fun. I highly recommend taking the time to go St. Augustine the next time you have occasion to go to Florida.

From there it was down to Titusville (central east Florida) for some spacey fun. No, we did not ingest mind-altering substances, we went to tour NASA facilities. The Visitor Center for NASA includes a bus tour that takes you past most of the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) support sites. You get a lot for the price of admission and most of the exhibits are uncrowded and easy to get to in a single day.

While in Titusville, we also went over to Cocoa Beach to see the Dinosaur Store. This is a neat little place with all kinds of real and recreated dinosaur artifacts. Naturally, we also visited and dropped some cash at the Ron Jon’s Surf shop. What trip to Florida would be complete without going to a shop custom made for surfer posers (like me) to buy surf gear.

After all this, we crammed into the rented familymobile and headed for that great mecca dedicated to separating as much cash as possible from every purse and wallet within a 1000 mile area known as OrDisneylando. We were within range and got sucked into the vortex. To my credit, I had anticipated this and made hotel reservations that thankfully included a room with two Queen-sized beds. I won’t waste a lot of time talking about Disney parks. You’ve either been there and experienced the madness or you’re going to go there and experience the madness. If you have kids, you really have no choice in the matter so you may as well get it over with.

We did do one non-Disney related thing (SHHHH!) by going to Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park which is really very different from the Disney parks…ok, I’m lying. It’s exactly like going to a Disney park, just with a few better roller coasters. After that we went to the Animal Kingdom park and the mothership Disneyworld. The lines were thankfully reasonable short and we were able to ride all the rides we wanted to go on.

On Friday the 27th of June, we got the van loaded up for the return trip and hit a few more souvenir stores (because you’re not allowed to actually leave unless you have a deficient in your checking and savings accounts) and managed to get back on the road around 3:30 pm. Got as far as South Carolina before my bleary eyes couldn’t take it and we stopped for the night. Made it the way to Richmond, Virginia on Saturday before I turned the keys over to my wife to finish the drive. I just couldn’t sit behind the wheel of that car anymore after almost 2000 miles. Got home and started the long process of unloading and getting clean clothes on once more.

I guess the weirdest thing that happened actually didn’t occur until I was returning the van the next day. On my way to the airport I had the radio on and the Ramones “I wanna be sedated” was playing. I was rocking out and gradually became aware that I was drawing some stares from the cars around me. I soon realized that here I was, a 40-something slightly balding (I’m being kind) man was bouncing all over the driver’s seat of a mini-van listening to an over 20 year old song and behaving like a child. The behaving like a child thing didn’t faze me as I’ve done that most of my life, but if someone had told me 20 years ago that I would be driving such a vehicle while listening to punk rock, I first would have laughed at them and most likely beaten them to a pulp. Who’s laughing now? Well, it isn’t me.