Home Again

We survived the band trip! I ended up being well enough to go, so we left Wednesday afternoon to head toward Florida. Caradorn and I were running a bit late, and when the buses left at 1:00 we were still at the vet dropping Stitch off to be boarded. We weren't too worried about it, though, since we knew which way the buses planned to go and thought we could easily catch up with them. We were wrong! Those bus drivers must drive race cars in their time off, because they kept the buses going upwards of 80 mph for most of the trip. Fortunately they also stopped at rest stops fairly often so we did eventually manage to catch up to them.


We got out of Rocket City just in time. Wednesday evening they announced that schools would be closed on Thursday and Friday because of the Swine Flu. One local band had their trip cancelled that night. Another band was on the buses leaving town Thursday morning when they got the call to turn around and come home. I felt terrible for those poor kids! Fortunately we didn't have to turn back and after spending Wednesday night in Valdosta we got to the Magic Kingdom on Thursday afternoon.


The band managed to hit all four parks plus DisneyQuest while they were there. Caradorn and I tagged along with them most of the time. We weren't officially chaperones since we were driving the emergency vehicle and needed to be able to leave with anyone who was sick or injured, so we needed to stay close to the band but we did have a bit of freedom. We had promised The Kidd that we would also let him have some freedom from us on the trip. So we mostly kept our distance from him, though he did seek us out a few times. Caradorn and I skipped DisneyQuest while the band was there and went to Sweet Tomatoes and played mini golf instead. The rest of the time we shadowed the band pretty closely, though we did head over to MGM while they were on Pleasure Island and DTD since I'm still not ready to stop boycotting yet.


Saturday we did play hooky for a while so we could go see Blondie performing at Epcot. While we were there we also swung by the Velcro show to see Snoopy and we went to see if Judy at the Global Gecko had any new carvings that we just had to have. Then we grabbed lunch and headed over to MGM for the rest of the day. That night was the Festival Disney awards ceremony. The kids were disappointed that their bands didn't score as high as they had hoped (or as we had expected) but they still had fun. They especially enjoyed "Mulch, Sweat and Shears" who performed at the awards presentation. And we were pleased to see Gabby from the Adventurers Club appearing as Mia Mulch.


Sunday morning we all got up bright and early and headed toward home. The drive was a ridiculous comedy of errors. The buses spent the first half of the drive going 80 to 90 mph, and then crawled along at 50 for a while because they were too far ahead of schedule. The buses kept making extra stops because they were trying to kill time before meeting up with replacement drivers. At one point we had to stop so the kids could spend a while hiding in a Kohl's store because of severe weather. By that point a few kids had started getting sick. Then we had to detour through Birmingham because the drivers were afraid that flooding had washed out one of the roads they had planned to use.


I was beginning to think we would never make it back to Rocket City, but finally we did. . . 16 hours after we left Orlando. I'm still so tired - I'm just trying to get through today so I can get some sleep tonight. And still, even though it was an exausting trip, I would like to go back. Caradorn and I will be going back by ourselves this summer while The Kidd visits my parents, and I am looking forward to it. For now, though, it's nice to be home!