November 14-30, 2023, Florida to Texas

Today we spent the rainy dreary day in Animal Kingdom.

The first thing we did was walk to the Safari and got on the Safari truck for an amazing trip around Make believe Africa. It was awesome and every single animal was out and about. It was early morning and raining.

We went to a bunch of shows that I took small clips of each one and will put them all together and post on here at some point. We had another amazing buffet lunch with the characters. This was also in Africa at Tusker Restaurant. It was really good and not too many people eating when we were eating so the characters kept coming over. It was magical. My favorite was Daisy. She really really liked my hat and I finally figured out why. Lol. Let’s see if you can figure it out.

We stayed till the very end to see the Tree of Life Extravaganza. It was awesome. The tree itself is pretty amazing by itself and then they shoot projections onto it. so despite a miserable rainy day, we still had an amazing day.

We got to the campground pretty late but decided to head to the Trailsend restaurant at the Campground for dinner. We split a rack of ribs. They switched over this restaurant from a full serve restaurant to one of those quick serve cafeteria style.!it was reasonably priced and very good.

Next day was check out day at the Campground but they allow you to park your camper in the overflow lot so that you can still explore the parks. We did just that and headed in the bus to Hollywood Studios. Another Rainy Day which kept the crowds at bay. Our favorite part of the park was definitely the Star Wars Area. Disney really went all out in this area. It was amazing. I can’t even imagine what a real Star Wars fan would feel like here. Again we went to a ton of shows and had a great day. We had lunch at an indoor drive in which was pretty cool except that you could not see what you were eating.

We got back to the van that night which was in the overflow lot and were planning on just sleeping in that lot for the night. However, the security in the lot was really on top of his game and we had a feeling we would eventually get the Knock so off we went, a 20 minute drive back to the hospital that we stayed out before hitting Disney. We slept there with no issues at all. Greg’s been feeling a little under the weather so it was good to be right there with nice bathrooms at our convenience.

That morning, another freaking rainy day. That’s three in a row now. We headed to the movies and the mall. Saw Priscilla. Interesting version of what Elvis really was like. I had forgotten that he was a 24 year old man interested in a 14 year old girl. That is so creepy. Not only was he a pedophile but a real jerk as well, according to Priscilla, of course. We had the whole theater to ourselves with super comfy lounge chairs.

At Cracker Barrel, I was able to upload all my Disney Clips using the Cracker Barrel WiFi. So I uploaded it to YouTube and will post down below. Warning! It’s probably the worst, most boring video of Disney you will ever see. I don’t even know why I took all of these video clips. However, if you are a fan of Its a small world, then you will probably enjoy the video. I watched it once all the way through and it’s really bad. You won’t hurt my feelings if you skip over it.

We headed over to Palm Harbor to have a visit with Greg’s parents. On the way we stopped at Discount Tire to have our tires rotated and balance. They do that for free for the life of your tires. I highly recommend that place. They are all over the country too which is convenient for us and they are super quick. In and out in like half an hour. We had a nice 3 day visit with Greg’s parents and we didn’t take one single picture. We are not fully back into blog photo mode yet. Hopefully we will remember to continue to take photos for our memories and for the blog.

We left there heading to Gulfport, Mississippi. We have three full nights of free hotel rooms at the Island View casino. This place must really wanted us to come back. This is the same place from last year that gave us all that free stuff just to sign up for the players card. It’s about 9 hours from Palm Harbor, Florida so we put in a 4 hour driving day today and then tomorrow another 4 or so and then we’ll be there. This is the place that has the best buffet we have ever been to so Im really looking forward to that. Tonight we are staying at a Rest Stop on I-10.

We arrived at Island View casino and went straight to the Buffet and boy was it everything we remembered it to be. From there we checked into our room to see what our view would be like and if we had a view of the van in the parking lot or not. It’s nice when we do to keep an eye on it. We got a room on the 18th floor with a beautiful view of the water and also could see the van so a perfect room for us. Plus the room was FREE!!!

Next we headed to the kiosk to see how much free play was loaded onto our casino cards. I had 70 and Greg had 50. I turned my 70 into 300!!! And continued gambling with their money for the next 4 days. On top of that we ate free every day that we were there. If you haven’t been to Island view and are heading to Mississippi, I highly recommend it. They had an awesome Christmas lights show that we could see from our window but we took a walk down to it one night. It was pretty spectacular and it wasn’t even completely set up yet. I also found a super old baseball card along the walk on the beach.

The weather while we were there was kinda yucky, cloudy, rainy and cold so we were thankful to have the room. On Thanksgiving day we headed out. Drove our usual hour and a half and went for a nice Thanksgiving dinner at the Cracker Barrel.

After dinner we went over to Cabela’s/Bass Pro Sops and walked around a bit. They were the only place open on Thanksgiving and even Santa was there. We took our picture with him. They do FREE Santa photos at all the Bass Pro Shops. We plan on stopping at every one we pass between now and Christmas. I’ll post all the Santa Photos in Decembers Blog.

We slept that night in an empty parking lot. This particular Cracker Barrel was in the same lot as the Tanger Outlets which was also completely empty because of the holiday. However on Black Friday morning when I awoke at 6 am and looked out the window, the lot was filled with cars and people shopping the sales.

And it only got worse as the morning continued. Every single parking spot was taken and the lines in some of the outlets were sooooo long. It was crazy. Black Friday was in full swing here.

We did a little shopping ourselves at Under Armor. Greg needed some breathable shirts and our small backpack ripped so we needed a new one and everything was half off. We hardly ever shop so this was pretty exciting for us.

We also did a little food shopping in Walmart. It’s nice to restock on our grocery bags again now that we are out of NY. We use them for so many things. And it sucks when we run out and can’t get more because of the NY ban on grocery bags.

We made it to Texas on a Saturday night and found a beautiful shrine that had a Saturday night mass so we stopped there. The church was beautiful but the Mass was so bizarre. I thought for a while that maybe I wasn’t in a Catholic Church because all the prayers were different. But when I looked at the Bulletin, it clearly said Catholic Church. It’s just some weird order that I’ve never experienced in all my years of going to Mass. I’m still perplexed by the whole thing.

Oops, just realized I’m a day ahead of myself. I forgot we spent a night in the Bayou of Louisiana at the Dick Davis County Park. It was a small roadside campground on a river. It was a freezing cold morning but it warmed up nicely once the sun came up.

Ok, back on track, after that we arrived in Texas. We love Texas because the Diesel is cheap and the State Parks are big.

Our first state park we stayed at was Palmetto State Park which is about 40 minutes outside of San Antonio. We still have the Texas State Park Pass left over from last year. Its good until the end of 2023. It gets us half off the campsites plus free admission to the parks. two nights at this state park cost us a total of $18. The park is really nice too with lots of trails. Its pretty cold right now for this part of Texas so we have been doing a lot of hikes basically to warm up instead of sitting in the van all day.

We continued traveling West and stayed the night at a Loves Truck Stop in the town of Sonora Texas which is right off of I10. From there we headed south to Del Rio. Del Rio is a border town. The way the media describes it, you would be frightened to come here. However, thats all Bullsh*t because this is a lovely town with every amenity imaginable. We did laundry and shopped at Walmart and then drove 6 miles to a 6 dollar campground. Will probablt spend a few days here and wait for the weather to warm up.

Ok so thats the end of the month for November. Each month, I post our expenses as far as Gas and camping goes. We did way more driving than usual and also stayed at Fort Wilderness which is a hundred a day. Thats not our normal camping fee so our expenses this month are higher than normal but still way lower than our monthly expenses living on Long Island. We spent $654 in Diesel and $428 on Camp sites.