National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 39 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I love all the cows you've been seeing! Isn't it amazing how much open land there is in the US? If you had continued south on the 15 and driven another 7-8 hours, you would've driven past my house!
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I love all the cows you've been seeing! Isn't it amazing how much open land there is in the US? If you had continued south on the 15 and driven another 7-8 hours, you would've driven past my house!
Dang it - we should've kept going... on second thoughts, maybe not, as we'd have missed some truly amazing places!
I no longer mind when I miss a few days now...because it means I get to catch up on such wonderful updates.
I loved the look of the cabin, it was so roomy, definitely a nice place to stay. All of the pictures are breathtaking, I loved the ones with the mountains reflecting into the water.
The Visitor Center in the Grand Tetons looked very interesting, and very inviting, there is just such a warm feeling that you get from the pictures.
Never being on that side of the country my dad tried to explain about the emptiness...but seeing the pictures, I could not imagine living in a town with 100 or 400 people....especially up North, when it snows I imagine you could be snowed in for weeks. But the drive was beautiful and I love the color of the mountains once you got to Utah.
Glad you missed the storm as you headed in to your hotel which looked very nice by the way, Thje Sundance Resort looked wonderful, loved the look of the restuarant and general store and your dinner looked delicious. What a wonderful passporter meet with Tricia.
Never being on that side of the country my dad tried to explain about the emptiness...but seeing the pictures, I could not imagine living in a town with 100 or 400 people....especially up North, when it snows I imagine you could be snowed in for weeks. But the drive was beautiful and I love the color of the mountains once you got to Utah.
I know - to me, the prospect of snow in those tiny places is just terrifying!
Monday 12 September – part two: canyons and cowboy towns
We could see that someone somewhere was getting a lot of rain, judging by the sky, and we encountered some as well as we neared Bryce Canyon. However, they had forecast showers and even thunderstorms for the next couple of days across the whole area, so I guess we were due to get some rain at some point.
As we were about 20 miles out, suddenly the heavens opened up, so sadly I can’t share photos with you of the wonderful old-world town we went through. You could also expect a saloon door to open up and a cowboy to emerge, that’s exactly how it was, but there was no way I could get photos of it in the tipping rain.
Of course, as soon as we cleared the town, the weather cleared and it was as if the rain had never been there.
As we got to Red Canyon, the rain came again, but it was so beautiful that I had to try and take some photos through the rain anyway. They aren’t great, but they give you an idea of how richly coloured it all was. I guessed it would the appetiser, with Bryce Canyon the entree.
We soon made it to the entrance of the park, and as at the south end of the Grand Tetons, it’s amazing how close development has got to a national park. I’m sure, left unchecked, it would’ve crept a lot further in.
We paid our $25 entrance fee and headed for the visitor centre for the most important stop of all, a restroom break. We did start to look in the shop, but the weather was now sunny again and, as it was open until 8:00pm tonight, I figured perhaps we should do the sensible thing and head out to see the park while it was still dry.
My trusty guidebook had told me that the best way to do the scenic drive here is to drive all the way to the end at Rainbow Point, as all the overlooks were on the left hand side of the road. It was odd driving along, as it all looked a bit like Yellowstone, with trees all around and some fire damage...
... occasionally, usually as we passed lookout points, we’d see tantalising glimpses of what we’d be seeing later in the trip. It caused us both to ooh and aah.
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