4. Alone

A beautiful early morning, alone in the Jambo House at Animal Kingdom Lodge

There are very few moments in life where I truly appreciate being alone. Of all places I found this appreciation at Disney World on our trip last year. If you have never had a chance to stay at or even visit the Animal Kingdom Lodge, I strongly suggest you do. This resort is so large, sprawling and beautiful you can't help but realize you are entirely alone from time to time.

On vacation I am a morning person, at home in my day-to-day grind I am not. Every morning of our trip last May I woke up around 0530. I would pull my cardigan on over tank top and yoga pants and meander the vast landscape of this resort to get the blessed nectar of life, coffee. Every morning was like my own personal safari adventure.

Along with the serenity and peace it provided me, in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the day crowds, it allowed me to see things and details I think I would overlook during the busier times of the day. I also gave me an overwhelming appreciation of all of the custodial, horticulture, and animal care Cast Members.

As I was the only guest up and about in the resort, or so it seemed, I became a familiar face to a few CM's. They would smile and wave, wish me a good morning, and even joke with me about my alone time in the morning. It was pleasant and peaceful. These alone moments also made me feel special. I was the crazy lady who wandered the grounds with her coffee and camera in hand at the crack of dawn.

Since writing and blogging is something I want to be better at, and I really want to be better at my Photo-A-Day challenge (one of these months I'm going to finish more than a week!), I thought maybe I could try to combine the two. So for the month of Sept I am going to try combining the photo prompt with a post. I really love the photo challenges over on the blog, Fat Mum Slim. Chantelle does a bang up job every month. There are instructions and everything over at her blog if you want to play along too! I usually share my photos to Instagram, as that is my preferred social media platform.

So as with most things in my life I'm starting this a day late, but at least I'm starting! Here's to a happy September.

2 days left

So we're down to the wire. Suitcases are packed, tickets are in hand, APs are in my wallet, electronics are charging. Now, hurry up and wait! The last couple days before a trip are always the hardest. I'm running out of stuff to keep me busy! The pre-vacation crazies are starting to set in.

There still are a handful of things I haven't settled on I suppose. I'm still on the fence about doing another guided tour. I do need to return a few things to the library as well. That is something I have forgotten about before, and its hard to ask your house-sitter to return your overdue books. But I think the one thing that has been decided for us is this, we are spending an entire week almost exclusively at Disneyland! I know, many of you are thinking, how in the heck could you spend and ENTIRE week there, its so small. Well, you would be surprised. One, its off season so crowds are lower and so are wait times. Two, I'm on a mission to take some more interesting pictures this trip, so I can spend an entire day hunting for neat shots.

To anyone who says that once you've seen Disney you don't need to go back, it never changes, well, I'm setting out to disprove that. The parks are an ever changing entity, and with all the recent construction (on both coasts) I cannot wait to compare pictures from my last several trips with the new ones I will have from this trip. And, if anyone has any suggestions for neat, funny, witty, interesting shots, please let me know!

Humanity Parade

A good friend on mine is a flight attendant, and that said, she sees some what I shall refer to as "interesting" people in her travels. I love her insights into humanity. She posted a photo album last week that reminded me of the photos Lilo took of tourists in "Lilo and Stitch". It was entertaining and enlightening. I also like to people watch. I do it a lot. However, now I think I will do it with camera in hand. I was looking for a photo theme for our upcoming trip and I think, thanks to K, I will focus my photo taking on painting a portrait of the hoards of Disney tourists in their humanity parade.

For the past few years we have developed a routine in the park. We get there fairly early, get a cup of coffee on Mainstreet and camp out for a morning people safari and then repeat mid afternoon, and at park closing. You see some of the same people and I am fascinated by their daily change in appearance and demeanor. The typical theme park visiting family is ill-prepared for the day to day hustle and bustle of the American family vacation. No one has a plan, and there is no pre-trip training, amateurs. This year I will make it my mission to dutifully photo document this "Humanity Parade".