Got up at 5:30 this morning (after packing until 1 am last night) to head to the airport for my flight to Florida.  Casey stayed over last night so she could give me a ride, so we got up early and headed out so I could begin my vacation.  I was exhausted when I collapsed into bed, but I was full of energy when my alarm went off.  With a flight to Florida waiting for me, how could I not be?

My flight was on time and mostly empty, so I was lucky enough to have an empty seat next to me.  I slept for the majority of the flight, and when I wasn’t sleeping I was reading quietly without an annoying seat neighbor trying to talk to me.  It was a fantastic flight, and one I hope will be mirrored on my return trip.

Dan and Josh picked me up and we headed out to one of the local malls to have a nice pizza lunch, then headed back to the apartment to relax for a few hours.  After playing some video games and brief nodding off on my part, we got ready and headed out to the Wilderness lodge for dinner.

Took a few pictures of the outside of the lodge and the beautiful sunset, then made our way in to make our reservation at the Whispering Canyon Cafe, housed right inside the fascinating lobby of the lodge.

It was a very…umm…interesting meal.  The staff were very much in character as part of the old west pioneer period, and asked all guests to participate.  I normally don’t get into that kind of thing, but we had a lot of fun.  It was just a different kind of restaurant experience than you might normally find anywhere else.  When you ask your server for ketchup, they shout out that you want ketchup and the kids from all over the restaurant rush over with the bottles from their table and you end up with way more ketchup than you could ever want.  I stupidly didn’t think this could possibly affect me in any way.

That is, until I accidentally dropped Dan’s fork on the floor while my OCD forced me to straighten out all the packets in the little container.  When our server came over to refill our drinks I asked him for another fork since I had dropped one, and he gladly brought Dan another fork.  He also brought me a huge training fork that I was required to hold onto for a little while to teach me not to drop silverware.

I had a delicious roast chicken for dinner, followed up by a scrumptious piece of s’mores cheesecake.  I’m still full and it was hours ago.  Today was fun and it was only the beginning of my weeklong vacation.  Tomorrow we’ll be at Magic Kingdom.  Can’t wait!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.