TaylorHaps

Disney for Christmas

7-9 December 2021

I drove to Southern California to present at an NSTA conference. Went a few days early to hit Disneyland 🙂

Did a lot of pin trading this trip. Love these new Mardi Gras masks!

I rode this twice at around 9 pm. It was cold but so much fun!

Here we go! I love having a waterproof phone 🙂

Yummy food! New chocolate dipping sauce for beignets, pumpkin spice shake with yummy doughnut, strawberry Nutella churro, and the beautiful marriage of peppermint ice cream bar to hot chocolate. 🙂

The new fast pass replacement (lightning lanes and genie plus) was so glitchy the first day but worked like a dream later on 🙂

My Sulley drawing with my Sulley headband with the Sulley ride

Southern Utah…but actually Splash Mountain

On Friday I drove to the convention center. My session went great! The rest of it was a bust so I left early.

Delicious lunch at the Jazz Kitchen and some wandering at Downtown Disney since I couldn’t get a reservation to go in to the parks

Chilling at the campground…waiting for the traffic to die down enough to drive home. By the time it did I was tired so I just watched the fireworks, went to bed, and left early the next morning.

Overnight hike with Ken and Scotty. Very hard and incredibly beautiful! We rented dry suits, neoprene socks, and boots for hiking in water. We stayed at a site along the trail where we set up hammocks (it was so cold!) On day 2, Ken and Scotty took my pack off and on since I was slow and my knee was really hurting me.

Disneyland for Ethan! And Gary, Emily, and Me :)

25-27 Oct 2021

I spent Monday presenting at a conference and waiting forever at the airport and being freaked out on a plane while Gary and fam enjoyed Disneyland! They did lots of Lego shopping!

Made it to the park at about 9 pm. Had grilled cheese at jolly holiday, rode pirates and Indy and looked for decorated pumpkins on the way back to the condo

Morning 1…Dumbo, Ethan made his light saber, Matterhorn, breakfast at Carnation Cafe (delicious new skillet!) and Splash Mountain.

Afternoon 1…Emily’s dream of eating at The Blue Bayou finally came true! and we got a table right on the water edge! Standing at the center of Disneyland. Carousel, Toontown, and a special Mr Toad photo op for Magic Key Holders.

Evening 1…beautiful river 🙂 we waited to do The Haunted Mansion at night.

Day 2 DCA Avengers photo op, breakfast at Pym’s, Midway Mania (I won!), Fun Wheel (I went on the swinging one but Em insisted on a stationary one), delicious lunch at Lamplight Lounge, some photos in the evening that I took after Guardians and drawing Lightning McQueen on my own.

Ramblings through the South…Part 2

Day 13…Florida

Tortilla bocadillo (yum!) from a Spanish store in Miami. Bought rosquillas, thick chocolate, and bravas sauce

Snorkeling at Biscayne NP around the mangroves…so awesome!

Camped at Boyd’s at Key West. So cool to sleep with real ocean sounds 🙂

Day 14…Florida

Dry Tortuga NP was phenomenal! Long boat ride over…worked mostly. Toured around the fort but it got really hot so couldn’t wait to get in the water

Visited the southernmost point and got delicious key lime pie in key West. Drove back to the mainland stopping at key lime pie factory. Stayed at Florida City and discovered a DIY back lotion applicator (AKA mirror) 🙂

Day 15…Florida

Robert is Here fruit stand…bought fresh fruit, salsa and yummy chips, a key lime shake, and banana bread. Delicious!

Everglades NP…Shark Valley and Gulf Coast

Day 16…Florida and Georgia

After camping at Silver Lake, got some great misty early morning shots

Gorgeous Rainbow Springs! I would have gone in for a swim except that I wouldn’t have had a shower afterward

Went to Plains…jimmy carter NHP…loved it! What a great man! Saw his Nobel peace prize, The house he was born in, his campaign headquarters, and the house he lives in now (a really small place with a very imposing fence 🙂

Day 17…Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi

After a lovely evening at Kristin and Mikle‘s house and the less than lovely 4 hours at a car repair shop, I had a wonderful hike up Stone Mountain. What a view!

Atlanta has great soul food (thank you, Mary Mac!) and awesome rainbow sidewalks 🙂

Birmingham civil rights sites…Kelly Ingram Park and the 16th street church where demonstrations were staged. A homeless man named Marcus showed me around and taught me sine things.

First white house of the confederacy in Montgomery. Drove to Meridian Mississippi and stayed at a KOA

Day 18…Mississippi and Louisiana

St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square, Mississippi River, amazing beignets, typical New Orleans building, and Louis Armstrong Park

Had the most amazing Cajun food at Rice and roux, visited the Louisiana state Capitol. Stayed at a Hampton in Jennings

Day 19…Louisiana and Texas

Shangri-La botanical gardens in orange Texas…charming! They had a recycled-materials scarecrow contest…so many cute entries!

Delicious food at the adorable Hobbit Cafe in Houston

Wonderfully refreshing swim and crazy thunderstorms at the KOA in San Antonio

Day 20…Texas and New Mexico

Mission San Jose…couldn’t go inside because they hadn’t opened yet

World’s largest cowboy boots. In Texas, of course

Yummy fry bread takeout from a pretty sketch cafe. I ate it in a well-lit KFC parking lot. Steve can see my location and he texted incredulously that I was eating there. 🙂

Day 21…New Mexico and Arizona

Enjoyed a swim at the Hampton in chandler.

Ramblings through the South…Part 1

25 Sept – 17 Oct 2021

Day One…Utah and Colorado

Grand Junction…Brunch at Spoons, pastries at Home Style Bakery, and gelato at Gelato Junction

Grizzly Creek rest area on the way the staying with Dave

Day 2…Colorado and Kansas

Attempted to go to church in Aurora but no one was wthere. 😦 Long boring day driving through long boring Kansas. Stayed in Mulvane.

Day 3…Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas

Delicious corn muffins at Urban BBQ and the Capitol building in Oklahoma City

Route 66 Sites…great soda and the most amazing strawberry shortcake from Pops 66, the Round Barn, the Golden Driller statue and the Blue Whale of Catoosa

In the middle of Tulsa there is an acoustically weird spot called the Center of the Universe. If you stomp on the ground you can hear it like it’s happening right next to your ear.

Peach cobbler and apple crisp mix from the Peach Barn in Porter. Amazing!

Day 4…Arkansas and Tennessee

Hot Springs National Park…cool forest area with small hikes, the historic bath houses (mostly closed due to COVID), and spouts to fill your empty containers with the spring water (I took a gallon and wasn’t really impressed but there were people there filling up dozens of containers!)

Little Rock Central High National Historic Site…where a major integration incident took place (very moving! And still a functioning high school)

Arkansas State Capitol building and delicious soul food (fried catfish is my favorite!)

Typical Jen…went to Graceland but not to tour Elvis’ house but to see the Disney Archives exhibit…so neat! And I was seriously the only one there.

Memphis sights…Mud Island Park, National Civil Rights museum (it was closed last time I was here too, darn it!) and the Memphis temple

Crazy cool place in a random graveyard called the Crystal Shrine Grotto

Day 5…Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana

Casey Jones park. Cute little store and restaurant 🙂

Nashville temple, dinner at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, and the Tennessee State Capitol

Octagon Hall – supposed to be really haunted but only seemed mildly creepy to me

Stumbled upon a cool random aviation park in bowling green

Crazy Stonehenge replica and awesome foggy drive through rural Kentucky to get to Lincoln State Park in Indiana where I camped

Day 6…Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky

My campground at the state park. Beautiful serene and solitary early morning walk through Lincoln Boyhood Home NM

Drove through Illinois to see Gateway Arch. Incredible and terrifying! Got my own pod on the way up thanks to Covid 🙂 And there were fewer people on the viewing platform

Italian food and delicious sugar pie with strawberry sauce at a random corner restaurant

Golden statue of David in Louisville and the Kentucky state Capitol in Frankfort

Day 7… Kentucky and Tennessee

Went to the original Colonel Sanders restaurant but it was just a KFC. And the museum wasn’t open. Sad face

Manhattan project NHP Oak ridge was awesome! The volunteers were floored by how much I already knew 🙂

Day 8… Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia

This trip had been planned around the National storytelling festival. It got cancelled but I decided to drive through Jonesboro anyway. Cute town. Made me a bit sad.

Brief foray into Virginia and then on to the Capitol of West Virginia

New river gorge…the newest National park is beautiful! pulled into the “campground” which was really a campground but a large field basically. I couldn’t find anyone to pay that night or at dawn when I left. Sorry!

Day 9…West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina

Beautiful misty early morning at new river gorge and Humpback Bridge

Day 10….South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida

Stopped to work for a bit at a rest stop. There were so many loud birds there! Beach at St Augustine. Stayed at nova family campground in Daytona beach

Days 11 and 12…Disney World

Magic Kingdom is such a beautiful park. I still prefer Disney but there are a few cooler things. ..the mine train ride and the some of lines have interactive things for kids.

Magic kingdom food…the most incredible impossible meatloaf, toffee cake, and cool swirly lemonade at Liberty Tree, frozen mint julep at Casey’s, and fried mozzarella, impossible meatballs/spaghetti and dreamy donuts with strawberry sauce at Tony’s restaurant

I found all of the 50 new golden statues that I could (a few are at Animal Kingdom that I didn’t make it to)

I love Epcot! The New remy ride is awesome!

Amazing food at Epcot…small things all day at the food festival booths and that evening ate at the swanky French restaurant 🙂

Rode the sky tram over to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. The new railway ride was really fun even though the line was long and excruciatingly hot. The impossible totchos are yummy, the alien saucers ride is just like Mater. 🙂 love me some Tower of Terror!

Went back to Epcot for the cool new nighttime show for the 50th anniversary

Disney with my boys and the Freelands

7-11 August. We drove down on Saturday and stayed at Doheny state beach with the Freelands. On Sunday we went to Disneyland. We were planning to camp on the beach again but I really wanted a place to crash mid-day and didn’t want to drive the 30 minutes back that night, so we got another night at the hotel. On Tuesday the Freelands joined us at Disney. The lines were SO LONG! Much worse than Sunday or Monday. Weird. But I think everyone had a good time 🙂

Space Mountain…went several times 🙂 masks are required indoors regardless of vaccination status. We wore ours outside too sometimes

Racers…stood in a pretty long line, but that is the state of things now. No fast passes 😦

WebSlingers score! We got a boarding group at 7 am and were called by 8:30 am!

The Pier was fun…went on the Inside Out ride for the first time. 🙂

I stayed in the park and did a couple of animation classes

Loved Splash! Alex sat out, didn’t want to get wet

Disneyland (finally!) with Ada, Gary, and Emily

24-26 June 2021

Accident on I-15. Sat in the stopped traffic for quite awhile, then flipped around and went 30 miles back to Route 66. Stopped at Elmers bottle tree ranch and experienced a cool thunder storm. Beautiful sky coming into Anaheim. 🙂

Had to scrap our plan to go to the beach. Went to downtown Disney instead. Shopped a bit and ate at the Jazz Kitchen. The chocolate sauce from the beignets made a little Mickey 🙂

**Day 1 – DCA** Racers first (wahoo!) then snack time on the pier (num nums and ice cream) where ada tied the cherry stem into a knot with her tongue 🙂 We waited for grizzly all day but it stayed closed 😦 Explored the new avengers campus and ate at Pym test kitchen for lunch (funny combo of big and small food). I rode guardians while everyone else put their feet up. Rode Mater, monsters inc, took a drawing class, and ate nachos, showing off our cool friendship bracelets that I made for the trip :). The new Spider-Man ride is so cool! We got into the virtual queue at noon.

**Day 1 – Disneyland** So happy to be here! Had drinks at Oga’s Cantina, dinner at Docking Bay, rode Smugglers Run. Cool full moon over Main Street 🙂

**Day 2** started in fantasyland. Took photos with matching shirts in front of our favorite fantasyland ride 🙂 Got into the virtual queue at noon while having bengal BBQ and dole whip snacks. After our nap break, we got to do Rise of the resistance. So cool! Then Winnie the Pooh, Big Thunder, late dinner at French Market and pirates at the very end of the day (had our own boat!) Gary snd I wandered around after closing time snd hot cool castle pics and soaked up the quiet cool atmosphere

Day 3. New Snow White ride, toon town, tea cups, lunch at cafe Orleans, mark twain, lamplight lounge, yummy Terran treats. Ada and I did guardians while gary and em did soarin. The rise of the resistance again! It was a great trip. 🙂

Midwest Road Trip

21 May – 4 June 2021

I love road trips…my soul needs to get out of my house and into nature periodically. I had been planning this trip for quite awhile but put it off until I was vaccinated and it was late enough in the year for the northern parts to be warm. I visited 13 states on the trip (4 of them for the first time!) and visited 7 National Parks, 5 for the first time.

Visited Andre for his birthday on my way out

Fort Bridger State Park…walked the grounds and ate old-fashioned stick candy 🙂

Dinner at Cavalryman Steakhouse in Laramie…trout, Cajun zucchini, and berry cobbler 🙂 Ordered takeout and ate it in the parking lot on my lounge chair.

21 May 625 miles
Stayed at Lewis Park campground (free!) in Wheatland Wyoming

Scott’s Bluff…would have been more striking without the fog, but it was cool in its own way

Agate Fossil Beds NM…the calendar skin is so cool! Lots of places started allowing no masks for vaccinated people

Ducked back into Wyoming to hit Devils Tower NM…saw some bison and pronghorn. The wind circle sculpture was really neat.

After a quick shower stop at Spearfish campground where I was planning to stay, I pushed on so that I could be at wind cave early enough to get a cave tour. Briefly stopped in Deadwood for some pub fish and a quick selfie with Wild Bill. Crowded tourist trap honestly.

22 May 495 miles Stayed at Oreville campground. Pulled in after dark but the shot the next morning proved that it’s s pretty spot 🙂

Wind Cave NP…waited for 2 hours in line but I was able to get a spot on a tour.

Wind cave is named for the amazing airflow throughout. This is the natural opening

Crazy Horse Memorial was blanketed in fog so I had to settle for posing with the model

Mount Rushmore poked out of the fog briefly

Farm Island state park…got there early evening. Knowing I had along driving day ahead, I abandoned the cute cabin, took a shower, and pushed on!

23 May 574 miles Ended up at Garden Inn in Sioux Falls

Iowa state Capitol has a pretty shiny gold dome

Beautiful sunset shots at a rest stop in Iowa

24 May 610 miles Slept in my car at a rest stop near Davenport

Lincoln Boyhood home NHS…the buildings were closed but the street was charming

Didn’t catch it right at 350,000 but close enough. I love my Ace…best car ever!

Buckeyes are my favorite! These are excellent 🙂

Ohio state house…there was nowhere to park, circled and circled so this was the best I could do

25 May 687 miles Stayed at Charles mill lake state park. Looked for my site for awhile and then finally just pulled into one of the many empty ones. Took these shots the next morning.

Drove through some Amish country. Visited Yoder’s bargain store, an awesome store. Bought a Dutch card game that the shopkeeper said is really fun…excited to try it!

Fruit hand pies and wild apple soda from Dutch kitchen. Also some of the most delectable wheat bread I have ever tasted.

Cuyahoga National Park…it poured when I first got there. I did two conference presentations while there…the first one on the side of the road and the second (after a slight reprimand) in a public library. And parts of the park were closed so the whole experience was a bit tainted

Henry Ford museum (closed but the colonial buildings were so cool)

26 May 427 miles Michigan state Capitol. Stayed in Lansing at Hampton.

I had planned to skip the northern part of the “glove” and head directly to Sleeping Bear Dunes but I decided to try for Mackinac Island so I headed north. On a whim I stopped at this German-inspired town.

Went to Brommers, the hugest Christmas store I have ever seen! Bought a really cute figurine for the Belen.

Got Apple strudel and Mozart kugel from the Bavarian inn shops and would have had lunch but it’s all meat…schnitzel and brats 😦

Stopped in Bay City to put my feet into Lake Huron, visit my street, and do a conference presentation in a tiny corner of the public library. Finding quiet public places is pretty hard when you’re on the road. I used a TON of data this trip using my hotspot all the time.

Mackinaw City is so nice! Visited the lighthouse at Colonial Michilimackinac park

Fish and chips (excellent!) and chowder (strangely bitter) at scalawags.

Great little hike from McGulpin lighthouse through the woods to the shore of Lake Superior

Hiked around the beach at Headlands Dark Sky Park

Crossed the Mackinac Bridge into St Ignace hoping to find a rest stop to stay the night (I got a ferry ticket for the next morning so I needed to be somewhere close). Beautiful rest stops with awesome views but no overnight stays allowed 😦 so I headed back over the bridge and got some amazing sunset shots.

27 May 365 miles Ended up at Mackinaw Mill Creek campground which was right next to the windy Lake Huron

Mackinac Island (so cute!) beautiful church, an old fort, buggies. No vehicles are allowed.

Walked around, bought a puzzle, ice cream, some fudge. Watched the fudge guru pour a batch, had some breakfast and then took the ferry back.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore…the overlook was terrifying. Heights and big water all at once.

28 May 445 miles Drove around looking for a place to stay. The campground at Indiana dunes was full, couldn’t find a place on town streets where I wouldn’t be worried about someone getting suspicious of my presence. Ended up in my car at a truck stop in Michigan city 🙂