It was pretty early when Robby started stirring, but I refused to start moving until he was out of the shower. It didn't take me long to make the bed, put on my clothes and get ready this morning. The difficult task is being quiet so I don't wake up the others.
Soon, Bentley had pottied, and Robby rolled off of the leveling blocks. That usually wakes most people up, but it didn't really today. I jumped out and followed him in the van to check in area where there was a spot to easily hook up the van.
Casey was outside stirring, but since it takes us a little bit longer to hook up we left before they did. By the time that we had finished-I helped Robby while Bentley's leash was around my wrist, and Robby worked while Bentley was crawling all over him. No one was awake inside to watch her.
On the drive to Kennessaw National Battlefield, we remembered that Keaton was sleeping in the top bunk. I went back to move her, but she did not want to move at all. I finally convinced her to move to my bed, so I had to do a bit of pleading, but she eventually relented and let me move her. After moving her, I certainly felt much better about flying down the interstate while she was snoozing in the bed and not the top bunk.
It took about 45 minutes through a little bit of Atlanta rush hour traffic to arrive at Kennessaw. Robby had researched online that they had an overflow parking lot that would easily fit our two rigs. He was a bit nervous as Casey turned down the road towards the parking lot. Thankfully, the internet did not steer us wrong and the parking lot was huge and empty.
We both parked, and Casey unhooked and headed to his meeting. Robby also unhooked our car-now, this is something that we never ever would have even thought about doing just a few months ago. It sure wasn't a problem at all today.
Most of us walked to the visitor's center, while Robby drove part of the crew. In the visitor's center, I stamped everyone's book, and we walked around the museum for a little bit. Whitman and Keaton had worked on a Jr. Ranger book so they turned that in to receive their badge. Now only did they receive their badge, but they also got a bag full of goodies-a tiny buffalo, a frisbee, a pencil and some stickers. That was the nicest Jr. Ranger spot that we had ever been to.
Even though the Jr. Ranger swag was nice, the educational part of the visitor's center was lacking. The movie was closed (stupid covid) and the museum wasn't very interactive. The ranger at Arkansas Post wins my educational stop award. She came out of the closed visitor's center to talk to my kids about what all had happened there. Now it was a bit long, but they (and we) all learned something.
After the visitor's center, Robby drove us to the top of the mountain. Well, he didn't drive all 14 of us at once. He drove one crew while the other waited at the bottom. Then we all explored for a little bit before coming down off the mountain-again in shifts.
We all got back to the campers about 20 minutes before Casey arrived back. In that time, Bentley had lots of playtime, Whitman asked for his bike and rode around the parking lot and Robby pulled out a lawn chair and enjoyed the pleasant weather. I used the time to straighten up a little bit, and soon we were on the road to Orlando.
Campbell rode with the Crafts for the first and second legs of the trip, and we had two of theirs. We drove about 120 miles to Buccees to get gas. I know that we have been to a lot of them recently, but they are just super easy in this big thing to get in and out of. The kids ran in to get icees, Robby requested fudge, Robby pumped gas, and Anderson walked Bentley (I grabbed his icee for him.)
Soon we were back on the road for another long stretch. We lost a hubcap on the way down here, and this afternoon we saw a trailer hitch pin bouncing in front of us. It was Casey's, but he had a spare that he put on at the next gas station. That was a timely stop because we were over 3 hours of traveling and Robby and Bentley's bladders were full.
The final leg to the campground was not too eventful. Bentley did have to potty-she sat at the door and whined. We couldn't ask for anything else, but she just eventually had to go on the floor. That was fine because I stuck my puppy pad under her and quickly cleaned everything up. It is something when you scrub down floors that you thought had been clean, and your paper towels are brown when you finish. You just bring a lot of dirt into this thing.
So tonight we are at Tropical Palms in Kissimmee, Florida. It is pretty packed with campers-we haven't had time to explore much because when we did pull into our site, we unhooked and were on our way in about 10 minutes.
I had my crew going to the bathroom before we even pulled in so that was one less thing to do. The mission tonight was to get to Disney Springs for a little bit before our dinner reservations. The only thing that we were able to do was to get our temperatures taken and then wait in a line to get into the World of Disney store.
The line part is silly because the sidewalks were crazy crowded. However, because they are limiting the number of people in the store, it wasn't crowded in there at all. We were actually able to look around except we didn't have too much time.
We did get an overview for when/if we come back tomorrow. Then we hurried off for our 9:15 dinner reservations at Ragland Road. It didn't take long at all for us to be seated. We thought we were going to have 2 different tables-we did have two different tables but 10 kids were at one and the adults and Gabriel were at the other.
I had fish and chips, and it was very good. Robby liked his sandwich though it needed sauce. Whitman had mac and cheese, Campbell and Graham had grilled chicken, Anderson and Keaton had chicken fingers, Reagan had something from the adult menu-it was a brave pick, and I think that she pretty much liked it. The kids portions were huge, but for the most part the kids ate everything on their plates-probably eating after 10 can cause you to be a bit hungry.
When we finished with dinner, Disney Springs was a ghost town. It would have been perfect to walk around then except there were no stores open. There is a new cookie place that I would like to try, but I am not too sure about an 8 hour line. The entrance to get into the area (Disney Springs) wasn't too bad-though you did have to walk an extra few blocks to zig zag through the Covid screening. And Robby was able to snap a few pictures of the kids without masks without anyone fussing at us so that was a good thing.
Overall, it was a pretty perfect day. When Anderson laid down tonight, he said that it had been a good day, and I do certainly agree. It was almost 1 when Robby and I finally laid down-he looks like he is doing some real work while I am going to catch up on my fun stuff.
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