A seed was planted and here’s what grew....Magical Memories About This Page:

[chezp]

No worries, we'll be here whenever you're ready.

[CinderAbby]

Wednesday August 18th and Thursday August 19th

I was up somewhat early on the 18th - I woke up at 7. It was the end of the vacation and it was really catching up with me quickly. It took me a while to get everything together and start moving everything out of the room because I was tired. The method for getting everything out of the room was the same as getting it in - I used the wheelchair to move things out to the truck where Lenny was waiting. We were finally out of the rooms at around 10:30 and finished packing up the truck soon after. We still had 3 CS credits and 3 snack credits left so we drove up to the main building and ran into the food court. Even though by this time it was about 11, breakfast was still being served. I got Abby Mickey waffles, bacon, chocolate milk and a soda. Lenny had a western with a sausage, a powerade and a soda and he got for me a breakfast sandwich, a powerade and a soda. For the leftover snacks, I got 3 of the Rice Krispie treats with chocolate. With trays in hand, we headed out to the truck as we were going to eat as we were driving to Sanford but that didn’t quite happen.

When we got back to the truck, I happen to remember the last postcard we needed to mail out. I had handed it to Abby before we left the room saying it was very important that she hold onto it and not put it down. I had meant to take it in with us and buy a stamp and mail it before we used our credits but it wasn’t until we got back to the truck with the food that I asked Abby where it was. She had no idea and got upset, then Lenny started to get upset but I told everyone to knock it off. There were only a few places it could be - either back in the room, on the ground somewhere between the room and where the van had been parked or in the van. We would find it somewhere so there was no need to be upset. Was I upset? Yeah, of course I was but only because I told Abby to not put it down and she did. Abby was pretty sure she did not get into the van with it so while she and Lenny sat in the van and ate while their food was hot, I ran back to the room (kinda unfair, wasn’t it?) hoping my key would still get me in. Once I got there and was able to get in, I saw the postcard right away on the bedside table. I was very happy to have found it so quickly and I called Lenny in the van and said I had it so if Abby was crying, she could stop. I made it back to the van and while I looked for some change, Lenny drove me closer to the gift shop doors so I could run in for a stamp and mail the postcard. Once I was done with that, we made one last quick stop in the resort for a trash can. Lenny and Abby had finished their breakfast so we stopped to throw out their trash and leave the trays behind. When that was all done, I could settle down and eat my breakfast as we drove away from the resort for the last time this trip. It was later than I really wanted (about 11:40) but we didn’t need to be at the station until 2 so I wasn’t overly concerned about the late start. Abby was a little upset and teary eyed but that didn’t last long. She actually recovered very quickly and was excited to be on our way home and to her grammy, the dogs and the bunny.

Unlike in past years, I did not hear can we come back next year. I was very thankful for that because I knew there was no way a trip would happen a fourth year in a row. We were very lucky with this one happening. And even if there was some way I could swing it for 2011, I told Abby point blank I will not go back to Disney until Fantasyland is all done. She seemed to accept that answer and decided to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the way to the station. I don’t know what I did - maybe spaced out?? I’m not really sure. An hour later - at 12:40 - we were in Sanford and our first stop was the gas station. We didn’t really need it but we wanted to top off the tank. Any extra weight in the van to bring it down a little bit would help us at the train station. I may or may not have mentioned this in previous reports but on the Auto Train, they have maximum heights and widths for vehicles. The height is 88 inches (I don’t know the width off hand) - and that’s exactly what our van is completely empty. With everything I pack, it does bring it down a little bit but having a full tank of gas also helps. So we got the gas and the gas station was right next door to the Subway we wanted to hit. I wasn’t overly hungry at the time but I went in and ordered 3 subs for us and got some chips and sodas too. Lenny and Abby had half their sub right there but I only ate my chips. When they were done, we headed to the station and were checked in about 1:15. This was good on one hand as that meant a really short wait before we could get on the train. The bad part was we were risking not getting the 5 pm seating for dinner that we like. I went and checked us in and I had my choice of times which made me really happy. I was even offered an upgrade to a suite sleeper but when I was quoted the price I said no thanks as it was way out of my price range.

As Lenny and Abby waited in the temporary waiting room that’s been set up, I wandered around and took some pictures. Compared to the Lorton station, the Sanford station can really be summed up in one word - dumpy. Part of the problem is Sanford looks like it’s part of a rail yard because of all the different sets of tracks there. The other part is the station is old and small and not well lit. So IMO, it really is dumpy but Amtrak is in the process of updating and making the Sanford station bigger. From what I saw, it’s going to be really nice when they finish and I can’t wait to see it. I even talked to an Amtrak employee for a while and she said that they’re hoping it will be completed by the fall of 2011.

The temporary waiting room (sorry I didn't get pictures of the old waiting room but that one is tiny and dark compared to this one)


These 5 pictures are the front of the station


These 7 photos are from the platform. The trailer is the temporary gift shop

These are glimpses of the "new" station coming to Sanford

When 2:30 came around, we wheeled our carts outside and got our stuff onto the train. We had the same car and same exact sleepers as we had going down so we knew exactly where they were. Our attendant came and introduced himself (his name was something like Moshkool but I don’t remember the exact spelling) and we asked for our beds to be put down during dinner. Because Lenny looked like he was half asleep, our attendant offered to put one of the beds down right then and there. Lenny declined but we thanked him for the offer. Once he left and we got settled, we pulled out our sandwiches from Subway. I ate only half of mine and Lenny and Abby finished theirs. When we were done, Lenny set up the DVD player so Abby could play her games and I started to doze. Just like in Lorton, we ended up leaving the station early and while I kept thinking I needed to start writing my TR, I was just too tired to actually do it. I think I might have dozed some more until close to dinner then we went upstairs a little early to sit in the lounge car. This one was different from the previous lounge cars we had been in because it actually had the windows that went around the curve of the roof and you could look up and out instead of just to the side. It was nice to pass the time just looking out the windows and when the first call to dinner was made, we headed back to the dining car (the whole big distance of one car).

Dinner coming home was the same choices as the ones going down - beef tenderloins, chicken, crab cakes and manicotti. Veggies this time were carrots, green beans and yellow beans. Salad and rolls were included as well. We got Abby the chicken again and both Lenny and I got the beef this time. It was just as good as the first time around but for desserts, Abby and Lenny both got the ice cream with chocolate sauce and I got the chocolate cake. I forget what they called it but boy was it chocolate - chocolate cake, chocolate frosting and TONS of chocolate chips all in the frosting. It was rich but boy it satisfied my sweet tooth that night. When we were done with dinner, we went back to the rooms. This time Lenny and Abby watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Lenny felt bad that I was in the sleeper all by myself but because we leave the doors open, I was able to listen to the movie even though I couldn’t watch it but I was fine with that. I was still tired and I ended up falling asleep soon after getting back to the rooms. I slept well on the train for a change and barely woke up when Lenny put Abby to bed. The next time I did wake up was around 3:30 with Abby complaining that her tummy hurt. We’d been having a few nights of this before we left home and I was thinking maybe it was due to excitement of the vacation, maybe eating too quickly, maybe not drinking enough water. Whatever had caused it, this was the first time all vacation that she had complained about it. Not sure of what she wanted me to do - Lenny had all the meds in his roomette and the door was locked - I had Abby drink some water that was in our room. It was warm but at least it was wet. A minute later, Abby threw up. I of course jumped right up, threw on my pants and headed upstairs on the train. On the second level, they have hot water, coffee and tea, a drawer full of ice but more importantly they had ice buckets. I grabbed one of those, went back downstairs and had Abby get in my bed. Our attendant was awake thankfully and got me a bunch of towels so I could clean Abby and the bed up and he also put the laundry bag in the car window so I could throw everything in there when I was done. I think the most ironic part about Abby getting sick is whenever we travel, we travel with what we call the "puke pot" Abby calls it the coughing cup. It’s a huge, plastic mixing bowl/measuring cup with a handle that whenever someone is sick, that’s what we use it for. That’s what it’s always been used for in our house and it’s kept in the bathroom. Anything for food is glass and kept in the kitchen. So anyway, we travel with it and when we had arrived at the station and I helped Abby out of the back seat, I looked at it and had the thought, I should bring it with us. Then I said to myself "no, I don’t need it. There’s ice buckets on board if I need something." Must be that gut feeling again that I know better than to ignore. This time however, ignoring it wasn’t a bad thing. The ice buckets are cardboard and disposable - no need to wash it out after.

So I went upstairs and got Abby an ice bucket but thankfully she didn’t need it. Nothing else came up but luckily, very little came up to begin with. Once she was cleaned up and I had all her sheets stripped off her bed and in the laundry bag, I put the bed back up to the ceiling since we wouldn’t be using it any more that night and sat back down on my bed. I was mostly sitting up and I had Abby get as comfortable as she could between my legs. Neither one of us slept very well but at 7 I was kind of awake. I heard some morning announcements being made so I opened my door to learn that there was a medical emergency during the night and that we wouldn’t arrive at Lorton until 10:15. I wasn’t happy to hear that because I was tired and I just wanted off the train, but I did think at the time "I’m so glad it’s happening on this end rather than the other end." That certainly wouldn’t have been a good start to vacation. Since we were returning home and I had planned on us only driving a few hours after we got off the train, I didn’t really care when we got back to Lorton.

Lenny woke up to the announcements and like me, wasn’t concerned about getting in late. What he was surprised about was Abby in bed with me. I was able to get out from Abby and I went to his sleeper to tell him what had happened. He felt bad as he had slept through the whole thing (he does here at home too so I don’t know why being on a train would be any different) but he did tell me to lay down in his room to get some more sleep. He had slept badly and really just wanted some coffee and a cigarette at that point in time so he went for the lounge car. About an hour or so later, I woke up again when Abby came in the room. She was kind of upset that I had left her. I got up and had her crawl back in the bed to get some more sleep then I went back to Lenny’s sleeper and sat on the edge of the bed. I was tired but didn’t want to lay back down. When our attendant saw me in Lenny’s room, he asked how everyone was doing. I told him Abby felt better but she was still laying down and asked if it was okay if we left the bed down for her and he said not a problem. I said if he had the time, he could undo the bed in Lenny’s room because even though I was still tired, my back was starting to hurt so I didn’t want to lay down anymore. He took care of it right then and there and in something like a minute instead of a bed, we had two chairs again.

I did some cleaning up of the room and soon after Lenny came back. From that time until the time we actually arrived at the station, the time dragged big time. I think I might have napped some more, I really don’t remember though. I do know as we neared the site of the train derailment, I got ready to take some pictures but there wasn’t much there. All the train cars from a week before were totally gone and all that was left was the small pile of railroad ties.

The location of the train derailment that happened 2 days before we left. Not much left to see when we came home but the plane was cool to see

We finally arrived at the station at about 10:45 and there was an announcement made thanking everyone for their patience and that hopefully everyone was understanding of the medical emergency that caused us to stop and that it didn’t cause anyone any major inconveniences. It didn’t inconvenience us in any way so it didn’t bother me but I was just really, really glad to finally be off the train. After a while, it just gets really uncomfortable and it was nice to stretch my legs. Once we got in the station itself though, it was maybe only 5 minutes before our number was called. Our van was the first one off and that was really nice. It meant we wouldn’t have to sit around waiting - the last thing I really wanted to do. While Lenny went and got the van, Abby and I went to wait near the visitor parking lot. We didn’t want to get in the truck that quickly so by going to the visitor lot, we could take our time putting our stuff back in and organize it a little before we left. It would also give us a break from sitting for a bit. It’s actually a good thing we did that too because Lenny noticed one of our tires was low in air. Once we finally were underway (about 11:30), our first stop was at a gas station as Lenny didn’t feel like getting out the air compressor. When we got there, we noticed it charged for use of the air machine so we left and headed to McDonalds instead. Once we got there, Lenny got out the compressor and filled up the tire. When he was done, we went inside for some lunch. Done with lunch, we headed back to the highway and had no problems until we hit I-81. And it wasn’t construction problems we hit either.

I spent most of my time writing up my TR so I didn’t keep very good notes (if any at all) for the trip home but it was sometime in the afternoon we hit a major backup. Pennsylvania, for whatever reason that day, had only weather on their traffic advisory channel. I don’t know where it was but somewhere on the highway, there was one of those electric boards that only said "traffic incident at exit 71," We had spent a while in traffic already (I think something close to an hour or so) but even though we were almost through it (we were at something like exit 65 or 67 - something like that) we were getting very stressed with all the traffic and really just wanted out of it. Lenny didn’t help matters any when he got off at exit 70 instead of continuing on. He said he wanted to find a way around the rest of the traffic but not having a full size map, I didn’t know of one. And then when he took another exit, we ended up on route 22 - and for us that was like route 9 here in MA. It was nothing but businesses and traffic lights. It took us something like 15 minutes just to get to a McDonalds. Lenny had said he wanted another route to get us past the "incident" on 81 but this route wasn’t going to work and without knowing where we were, I didn’t know where to go. As we were pulling into the McDonalds, my mother called and when I explained what was going on, she turned on her computer and tried to help but that didn’t work. Again - because I didn’t know exactly where we were at. And since we were at McDonald’s, we both took the time to run in and use their restrooms. After we did that, we left and Lenny pulled into a gas station. I told him to ask where we were and if there was any way back to 81 other than the way we came but all he did was buy cigarettes and ask where we were. It turns out we were in Harrisburg but unfortunately that didn’t help us any as mom couldn’t find the road we were on on the map (I forget the name of it). Lenny then finally got back on the road and headed the way we came. He got back on whatever highway had gotten us there and headed back to 81. When I asked why he decided to head back, his comment was "I really only wanted to get off to use a bathroom. Now I’ve done that, I’m fine." I just so wanted to kill him. We had spent something like 20 to 30 minutes arguing because I told him not to get off the highway, we should just go the way we knew and he insisted there had to be another way. Now he was telling me he just wanted a bathroom and wanted to stick to our directions, that’s why he backtracked after using the bathroom and getting the cigarettes. I was so, so ticked at him and just said "why in the *&^% didn’t you say that to begin with? Is it because you wanted to argue with me and tick me off?" Whatever answer he had, I tuned it out. I just tried to get back to writing my TR and was wondering how much longer we’d sit in traffic.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out whatever the "incident" at exit 71, there was nothing there anymore and it really only took 5 or 10 minutes tops to get past all the backup that was still there. And an ironic part of us getting off is we technically didn’t lose our place in traffic. Lenny noticed a tandem FedEx truck and said it was caught in the traffic near us. I just looked at Lenny and said "I’ve seen a bunch of those today so I highly doubt that’s the one. It’s probably a different one." Lenny kept insisting so I dropped it but as we continued on, I noticed a huge wide load tractor trailer with some sort of silo or tank or something on it and its escort car. There was only one wide vehicle load that we had seen all day and that was the one. It had only been a few vehicles ahead of us before we got off at exit 70. After seeing that, I wasn’t as mad that we had gotten off when we did. At least in the amount of time that others spent in traffic on the highway we had been able to find someplace to stop for a few minutes and get away from all of it.

After that, things were smooth going and we finally arrived at our exit about 6:00. We stopped for some gas and then went right to the hotel and checked in. We all went in together for a change and went right upstairs with our stuff. Even though we were tired, we opted to go to dinner before we went swimming. We went to the Marvelous Muggs restaurant that was behind the hotel and like last year, we had a good meal. Abby got chicken tenders. Lenny got a caesar salad and a fish sandwich and I got the open turkey sandwich. Everything tasted really good and we were able to eat it all. Once we were done, we headed for the hotel. When we arrived, Lenny’s handicapped spot was taken on the right side of the entranceway so we decided to park on the left. We thought it was strange as there hadn’t been that many cars when we left for dinner but we hopped out and Abby and I grabbed our pillows and headed into the hotel. As we entered the hotel, I stopped and had to look around. I didn’t recognize anything and just as I thought "why is the check in counter on the right now," an employee said "can I help you?" And then our conversation proceeded as follows:

Me: "I’m in the wrong hotel, aren’t I?"
Hotel Employee: "Which hotel are you suppose to be in?’
Me: "The Comfort Inn."
Hotel Employee: "That would be the hotel next door"
Me (beet red): "Okay, thanks. Come on Abby. This isn’t our hotel."
Me as Lenny walked in the door: "This isn’t the Comfort Inn Lenny. We went to the wrong hotel."

In our defense though, the two hotels literally are right next door to each other, they both have the same type of entrance ways, and the parking lots are the same configuration. At night, the exteriors both looked to be the same color too. So after the day we had and being tired, the confusion was certainly understandable. And if it’s not, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it .

So we got back into the van and drove next door. Our parking spot from earlier was still open and for the second time since dinner, we got out of the van and headed into a hotel. This time it was the correct one and I recognized the lobby immediately. We went upstairs and even though I didn’t want to go swimming, we all changed into our bathing suits for some pool time. When we got down there, I was surprised by how many people were there. The last time we stayed here, the pool area had been empty and it was only us. This time, there were a bunch of people in the pool and a bunch of people in the hot tub. Knowing the pool would be too cool for me, I went right to the hot tub. After about 5 minutes, I felt really hot and just didn’t feel right so I had to get out. Because all the chairs were taken, I sat on the windowsill near our stuff. This bothered Lenny as he said it looked like I wasn’t having any fun. What can I say - I wasn’t. There were too many people, it was too loud, the hot tub was too hot - who can enjoy that? After a little bit, a family left and freed up some chairs so I went to sit there but after a few minutes, I actually got cold. So I decided to try the hot tub again. This time I went in, sat down, and started feeling hot and not quite right again so I got right out. I went back to my chair and when Lenny asked why I wasn’t in the hot tub, I told him why. A couple of minutes later, Abby and Lenny had had enough of the pool so we all went upstairs. After we all got showered, we were too tired to do anything else, even watch tv, so we just called it a night.

[CinderAbby]

Just wanted to add the exterior photos of the hotels.



Our hotel




The "wrong" hotel

[B.M.]

Boy, that sounds like a rough trip home..... We had a similar (though not as bad) trip home when we went Thanksgiving 2009- we learned first hand that they are not lying when they say the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year! We sat in traffic the whole 12 hours home (and it was only a 7 hour drive going there!!) I have officially swore off traveling the Sunday after Thanksgiving!

[Colexis Mom]

Glad you're writing again Darlene! Sorry about the traffic, and Abby getting sick on the train!

[omd]

I was so glad to see your update ! I'm sorry that your return trip was not so pleasant . Abby must have been upset to get sick on the train. On one of our trips we did the same thing as you and went to the wrong hotel , so don't feel bad. I hope the rest of your trip was better.

[Cam22]

Sorry about the rough trip back home!

[ariel14]

Glad that you are writing again Darlene! Thx!!

[rhinohunter]

Glad that you finally go to sleep. That was some trip. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

[ilovedisney247]

Almost home! That was some day!

[WeRDisneyFanatics]

Sorry Abby was sick . That makes the trip home rough!

[KMB733]

Glad to see you updating again! Sorry Abby got sick on the train ride home.

[lazanya]

Glad to see you writing again! Sorry about the rough trip home.

[chezp]

Wow, that was one rough journey home!

[Kobeychiev]

Sorry about the trip back, but at least you went!