Orlando's True Magic

For everyone, there comes a time in life when reality and Disney cross paths in a major way. For me, this happened this February. For the first time in my young life, I entered a Disney theme park. Here to follow are a few images and tales of my visit to Walt Disney World in Orlando.

At the beginning of my adventure, I got to go up into the Swiss Family Robinson's Tree House and it was incredible. I would have liked to have spent more time there, but the line of people kept urging us all forward. Below is an image of me next to the bust of one of my mom's favorite actors.

One of my favorite is the Love Bug and the classic other Herbie movies. Naturally, you can imagine my delight at Hollywood Studios on the Backlots Tour when I got to see Herbie, both the chopped and whole versions waiting around.

Then, on that same ride, I was able to experience an earthquake & flood. I could feel the heat from the fires and I sure loved that little scare if gave us.

Now, we did go shopping around Downtown Disney, and here's a picture opportunity we had and couldn't walk away from:

Another highlight was in Animal World on a Safari ride. I love Elephants, so when we got to see a small little herd of them, I was happy. I also enjoyed being able to take a rest and be off my feet for a while.

Now, as you well can imagine, my nephew & niece were with us throughout the week and truly they were the main attraction and highlight of our adventure.

Their eyes were full of the magic and wonder and it was hard not to feel that this really was a different world.

Epcot was great, I wish I'd had more time there. I did enter the German zone and here's a picture of me shopping the shops there and loving it!

Another part of our vacation brought us to Universal Studios, a theme park with ever major movie or show themed ride you could ever want.

I got to enter into the Harry Potter section, which was really neat.

It’s really something else to be in a life-sized representation of JK Rowling’s wizarding world.

Since one of my favorite children’s authors is Dr. Seuss, I was happily at home in that portion of the park, watching little Jonathon & Hannah enjoy the fun rides and play areas. I will say that before anyone decides to ride the Cat in the Hat ride, they should first down some Dramamine and hope for the best. It was a wacky ride, one that I was happy to get off at the end. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures in this part of the park :(

I did have a wonderful time and though the plane ride was long and less than fun, I will someday return to this wonderful city of Orlando.

Winter's Wonderland

Beus Pond
My brother and his girl friend drove out for a short visit. They wanted to do a hike, but the weather didn’t look like hiking would be a good idea, so instead we went to Beus Pond.

Winter has brought a layer of ice to this beautiful play. The ducks didn’t seem to mind the weather much, hanging around on the ice.

Others went swimming in the parts of the pond that weren’t locked under a layer of ice.

Along the way, we discovered a number of ice formations that begged the camera lens to immortalize them. Naturally, I obliged.

I also saw some very cute little tracks that followed along the shore of the water which were reminiscent of a child’s hand print. All of you cub scouts out there could probably tell me what it was that left these tracks. I was purely enchanted with the mystery.

I encourage everyone who reads this to take a morning or afternoon and go to a park or pond near them and enjoy the wildlife. There’s bound to be a story in every landscape.

I know I discovered many on my visit to Beus Pond.

Road Trip Weather

About an hour out of Vegas on our drive home, we received a phone call about flooding in St. George and a blizzard in Beaver. Tyler and I, remembering I drive down, chuckled because it had already been flooding up around St George and we'd figured it would just be more of the same.Yet, as we got up to Mesquite, NV we noticed more muddy water in and around the town than we'd seen on our drive out just 2 days before.Here are a number of pictures we took while driving. We also pulled off I-15 to snap a few pictures of the Virigin River. This first one I took to put some of the waterfalls in the background and also show the resulting flow. Below, you get an intimate look at the water that frothed below us. Where we stood, not more than 3' away from the water, it was clear that the banks of the river were beginning to erode away. Yikes!
Looking out the window at one point in St. George, both sides of the car seemed surrounded by water. When we got home, I saw that same stretch of highway on the news and it was indeed surrounded by water.Later, we started to see snow, though the roads were pretty clear most of the drive. In Nephi, we stopped to get gas. The gas station had about 8" of snow and luckily they had kept on top of things and plowed it enough so we could stop and refuel. I took this image of a hillside that reportedly had up to two foot depths of snow just up from where we were.