October 13-31, 2024 (SEASON 5) NY to FL

Season 5 of our retirement travels started on Oct 13, the day after the grand opening of our new fire station in Raquette Lake. Welcome back to The Van Stops Here Blog. we appreciate you reading about our travels and following us on our journey.

It took us about 7 1/2 hours to get to Long Island because of the horrendous traffic that there was on the Grand Central and then again on the on the Clearview Expressway.  But we did finally arrive and we had a great time visiting family and friends. I’ve been posting lots of photos on Facebook and Instagram, but I’ll put a few here as well for the blog readers.

After we left my family, we drove to Scranton Pennsylvania to visit with Greg’s family. Greg’s parents took us to the trolley museum, which was pretty cool and we also also had a fun karaoke night with our niece Kiyah.

From Scranton, we drove about three hours south until we got to Gettysburg. Greg had been wanting to see Gettysburg for a long long time. We got there kind of late because there was a couple of accidents on the highway so when we arrived, it was already dark. We decided to spend the night at the hospital and to have dinner at this old tavern in town. The place was built in the late 1700s and all the dinner was served by candlelight.

In the morning when we woke up, there was a security guard parked facing our van so we stayed in quiet mode until he left. He did finally leave and then we were off. We wanted to go see the museum and the visitor center for the Gettysburg Battlefield. I don’t remember ever learning about this battle or really the Civil War for that matter when I was in school. It was a pretty enlightening experience for me to learn how it all went down back then. So much killing and so much death. And the whole up close battles that took place in Gettysburg. They don’t seem very smart or planned out. To run into a field of flying bullets and cannons seems like a pretty stupid plan. Hence the amount of dead people.  After the tour, we had a picnic lunch and then set off to Walmart.

If you’ve never been to. Wegmans Supermarket, I highly recommend it. There was one in the Cabelas lot that opened super early so I went shopping while Greg slept. Such a great store. There’s also a Duluths store in this lot that we will go to when Greg wakes up. I’ve never been to a Duluths but I have ordered online. 

The Duluth store was Ok. Little too pricey and too “country” for my taste but still fun to walk around in. Headed out for another three hour tour and decided to stay at a campground and stretch out for a bit. Stayed at site 25 at Cliffs of the Neuse State Park. It was 36 bucks for the night and worth every penny. We had a nice dinner and a nice hot shower. 

Here is Gregs review of the campground on his YouTube page.

We woke up fairly early and did a nice 2 mile hike. It was pretty cold, I think about 47°. Once we got moving though, it was tolerable.

Headed out again for another three hour drive. My hip has been bothering me from driving. I have no idea why but when I stand up after driving, I can barely walk. Eventually it loosens up but it is pretty painful. Because of that, we decided to stop every hour and take a break. Thankfully for us, one of the stops was a Buc-ees. The greatest stop in the world!!

On we went for about another hour to our final destination for the night, The Cracker Barrel, our home away from home. This one was located in Santee, South Carolina.

Next day, another three hours to another Cracker Barrel in Jacksonville. We stopped at this HUGE flea market along the way and pretended to shop for about an hour. I’ve never seen such a big flea market. Got to Cracker Barrel around sunset and went in for dinner. Cracker Barrel’s are all exactly the same so for us it’s easy to see the slight differences in service or quality of food. And this one just didn’t match up to some of the others but I still have them a good review on Google maps. After dinner we walked around a few stores and then settled in for the night.

Today we head to Disney. We are 2 and a half hours away from Disney!!

Day 1 of Disney was a great day spent at Disney Springs. They have like 5 giant parking spots so getting a spot for the van was a breeze. Our first stop was to use the bathroom so we wandered into Splitz which is a humungous bowling alley.

After that it was in and out of shops and attractions.

We decided then to get some air conditioning and relax a bit so we went to the Disney Movie theater and saw The Joker. It was awesome. We had a chicken wrap which they delivered right to our seat. After the movie, a GIANT donut for dessert.

Our camping reservations aren’t till tomorrow so we drove to the Celebration Hospital about 10 minutes away and had a well deserved sleep. We had walked like 15000 steps at Disney Springs. Next day we headed into the hospital cafeteria for a little breakfast before heading to the Disney Riviera Resort. The cafeteria at this hospital is absolutely amazing. 

WE had heard that if you have a reservation for a meal at one of the Resort Restaurants that you can park for free at that resort. So we headed to the Riviera because we have lunch reservations here. I had to show my ID at the gate to prove we had a reservation and then he let us in. It’s too early yet for us to go to the Disney Campground so this is a great alternative. The lobby and the grounds are amazing here. This is one of the newest resorts that Disney has built. Built in 2019. 

The lunch at Topilinos was amazing. It actually was breakfast but we ate it at lunch time. 

The Halloween decorations in all the loops at the Fort Wilderness Campground are nuts!!! And get even better at night time. We went to check out the fireworks at the contemporary. I had tried getting a reservation over at The Lodge for another character dining experience but it was booked solid so since we were gonna head that way to see the fireworks, I thought I would check with the hostess to see if they had a table and as luck would have it, they had a table available. This was the highlight of the trip so far to see the Queen from Snow White was so unbelievable. She really did an awesome job and never came out of character. 

The fireworks from the tenth floor of the Contemporary were excellent. We took the boat back to the campground afterwards and were able to see some of the nighttime decorations. Here are a few photos of the daytime decorations.

Next day we headed back on the boat to Magic Kingdom and then walked over to theContemporary to have breakfast at Chef Mickey. This was a buffet and if you know anything about us, we love a good buffet. Our waitress was awesome and the food was amazing. And as usual the characters did not disappoint.

We spent some time at the pool but it was even too hot for me. So back we went to the campground.

Our tickets for Mickey’s not so spooky Halloween spectacular start at 4 PM so we had a nice relaxing day sitting around the campground. At 3:45 we hopped on the bus to take us to the boat to take us to Magic Kingdom. We missed the boat by like 10 seconds so waited for the next one. We arrived at Magic Kingdom around 5 with around 10 thousand other people. We got in and made a bee line to Daisy and Minnie in Fantasyland. We then checked out the people mover and had some dinner. At 7 pm the spectacular started. They open up the trick or treat candy stations and we filled our bags twice over with lots and lots of candy. We watched the Hocus Pocus Show and the Fireworks show and the Halloween parade. It was a long long day and we didn’t leave Magic Kingdom till midnight. Took the boat and the bus back to the campground and were in bed at 1 am. My body and my brain were feeling this long long day. I’m glad we committed to staying out for all the activity at the Halloween Spectacular. If I had to do it all again, I don’t think I would. I prefer the daytime Magic over the nighttime Magic. Plus the cost was a bit ludicrous. $400 for the two of us. A definite one and done.

Today we check out of the Fort Wilderness Campground at 11 and head back north a bit towards Savannah. On Halloween we are stopping by Richmond Hill for a little Halloween fun with Gregs Cruise friend, Tia. On the way we stopped at a beach in Jacksonville and had some lunch. Its weird heading north after we has already been south but the super hot temperatures in Florida can be unbearable sleeping at night. we both have our Halloween Costumes ready to go. Ill take some pictures tonight and will post them in the next blog.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that while we were on Long Island, our Check Engine light came on. Thankfully, Mercedez Benz of Massapequa had an opening for us to come in and get it fixed. It was a Nox sensor that cost a thousand bucks to fix. Happy to have peace of mind regardless of the cost.