National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 63 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Ah.... summer storms in the southwest. I remember them well from being in New Mexico (you need to go there BTW). Chris and I just pulled out the National Park/Monument Map fro our passport and are starting to plan the 2013 trip...
Great hotel room! The two beds facing each other looks a bit funny to me, though!
I love the pictures from this update...I love the gradients of color, and how the winds and rains have shaped the hillsides. It's almost like someone ran a giant comb down along the mountain side and made wavy lines!
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Ah.... summer storms in the southwest. I remember them well from being in New Mexico (you need to go there BTW). Chris and I just pulled out the National Park/Monument Map fro our passport and are starting to plan the 2013 trip...
That's on the longer list - i.e. I need to get through the shortlist first, then move on to the longer list. I did see how many national parks there are in that area, which is why it made the longer list. I'm also wondering if we can combine it with a visit to Texas, as that's on the longer list as well.....
Great hotel room! The two beds facing each other looks a bit funny to me, though!
I love the pictures from this update...I love the gradients of color, and how the winds and rains have shaped the hillsides. It's almost like someone ran a giant comb down along the mountain side and made wavy lines!
Thursday 15 September – part one: “are we staying in a hotel in Chicago?”
We woke up, with Mark complaining about a bad night’s sleep, because the fridge/freezer in our room kept making funny noises. I have to say, this made me laugh, bearing in mind he’s the one who always has to have the TV on at night to help him sleep!
Needless to say, he was a little slow going this morning, which made for some entertaining conversations. I think my favourite was “are we staying in a hotel in Chicago?” to which I replied, “well I did think about sleeping on the street...”
While we were in the room, I saw an advert for Disneyland during the holidays and it was interesting to see their marketing, as of course, I’ve never seen a TV advert for Disneyland in my life before. : I was slightly more freaked out by the weather report that said that Aspen had had some snow last night. As I knew Rifle, where we’d be staying tonight, was in that general region, I did a quick check of my own on the forecast and fortunately it was still saying high 40s for tonight. Good, so hopefully no snow then...
We headed over to get breakfast and it was pretty basic, with the chairs set out as if it was a school room. The food wasn’t great, but at the end of the day, it was food and we hadn’t paid much for the privilege. I guess you get what you pay for.
When it came to leaving, I offered to drive, as it was only an hour and 20 minutes to our first stop of the day. I jumped into the driver’s seat and Mark promptly walked off to check out. I told him he could come back and explain everything. By the time I’d looked at the position of the wipers, the accelerator and other things, I’d had enough. No way was I going to drive! :
Mark hopped back in and I checked out and we headed out of Blanding, getting some photos of the town on the way.
Our hotel
Soon we were back out in the middle of nowhere, which is becoming a theme for this trip...
We didn’t see any in our lane – or any other for that matter!
Amazing how low the cloud was!
We also ended up cutting a path between the rain to our left and the sun to the right, which was very odd.
The next town we came to was Monticello, which was a bit bigger than Blanding. We’d already discussed this morning and it was a shame that Mapquest gave me some questionable driving times for yesterday, as it claimed that our total driving time would be around six hours. In truth, it was more like four hours and we could’ve easily pushed on to stay in Moab tonight and much closer to Denver tonight, which was a shame, but never mind, lesson learnt for the future...
Then we were back into countryside again...
We believe these were llamas
Next: one of the national park’s best visitor centres!
It is eerie to be driving along one of those unpopulated stretches of road and see no other cars in either direction. Makes you wonder why they built the road!
It is eerie to be driving along one of those unpopulated stretches of road and see no other cars in either direction. Makes you wonder why they built the road!
You've definitely seen some neat rock formations during your travels. I wonder what the Hole 'n the Rock store was like?
Rather worryingly, there were a lot of zoo signs there - so it could've been a zoo... if it was inside the rock, that could be quite interesting. You could certainly scare the kids there - oh look, there's a lion in the darkness...
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: I was slightly more freaked out by the weather report that said that Aspen had had some snow last night. 
As I knew Rifle, where we’d be staying tonight, was in that general region, I did a quick check of my own on the forecast and fortunately it was still saying high 40s for tonight. Good, so hopefully no snow then... 
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