Day 22 -- Orlando, Florida

Thursday 7/19/2001

Excursion: River Country waterpark (Fort Wilderness)

This is our last day before starting our return back north. Lilly and I got up in the morning and ran the exercise trail. I felt good during this run and had to throttle back to let Lilly keep pace. We were about 8% faster than prior runs. I sat outside the trailer, while Lilly stretched. It was low 70s already and humid. The sky looked nice and blue. I tried to buy some coffee filters but neither of the two local stores in the campground here had any. Got some of that expensive milk, though. Managed to get a bag of pre-packaged coffee from one of our neigbors .. definitely not our preference, but beggars are not choosers, and this was an emergency. At least we were saved! We ate breakfast outside and watched birds come by, begging for food.

We decided to visit the River Country park here in the campground. It is located near the campground's Marina. Instead of blowing one of our four specialty tickets from our multi-day passes, we paid for tickets instead. Those specialty tickets are better used against expensive parks, such as Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon. Here we even got a reduced price because we were staying at Fort Wilderness. It cost about $63 for the entire family to enter the waterpark while tickets to Blizzard Beach are around $180 for the family.

Eating lunch in the shade

River country is very nice. Its like a small lagoon of greenish water, bordering on the big lake that is next to the campground. It has many different slides and rope games for kids. The water is nice and warm. Weather was nice and warm, too. For lunch we bought junk food. This was probably the first time in weeks. They also sell cold beer!! Finished reading I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. The kids had a great time.

Click on pictures above to enlarge

By about 3pm dark clouds were rolling in and the loud speakers told those at the water park that it was closing temporarily. I rushed back to the trailer to get the awnings up and clear things up around the trailer before the rain would start. Karl came shortly thereafter, crying. He had fallen on the pavement with his bicycle and scraped his left leg and foot. Lilly was not far behind and started helping Karl. Meanwhile, I cleared out the last couple of things and made sure things were packed into the trailer and the truck. We then got into the trailer and watched TV while Lilly went down to Wal-Mart to do some shopping. By 6:30pm the rain had not yet started. Perhaps we just saw "bad clouds"? Lilly came back a bit later after having struggled through heavy traffic in both directions. We prepared dinner (bbq:d fish). We ate outside. It looked spartan around the trailer as we'd packed away most things.

After dinner the kids went to roast marshmallows and watch the evening movie organized by the campground. They came back very happy and bubbling. I went to bed before the others, as I usually do most of the driving.

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