THE Trip.

That's right.
We did it all.

*CAUTION* You might have to surrender a serious chunk of your life if you plan to embark on the entirety of this post. I've broken it up into parts to make the length...manageable. ;p Enjoy!

PART 1

I hardly know where to begin. I'm sure you're thinking, "Well...the beginning might be a good place to start..." Aaaaand you're right.
Only-- I can't remember when this crazy-wonderfulness all started.

Lets just say that the anticipation for this trip was immense and lengthy. I've been looking forward to it for so long I still can't believe that it's come and went. There are so many things we did, so many things we saw, that I feel that it was like someone was pouring bags of rice over my outstretched hands; there is no way I could hold on to every grain.

So yeah. Anticipation.
The Parents left a week early and, as I'm sure you have all seen, Beth and I had a grand time. As per usual. ;)
All went swimmingly (thank GOODNESS) no fires, no locking ourselves out and what not. And of course, we splurged on some Benjars. (Ben & Jerry's)

So, after we crossed off about a hundred checklists of things to do; the Big Day of Departure finally arrived. I was a "little" concerned because of my *cough* inability to navigate or know where I am at any given time. You know. My "sense of direction" is seriously impaired, as anyone who knows me intimately well knows. But yeah, wonder of wonders, miracles of miracles!! ...again! We were able to find our gates easily and everything went well. We felt so incredibly and deliciously independent. The confidence in each step said, "Hey World. I'm on my own." This new found confidence may sound good and well for a 14 year old but for a 20 year old to be thinking "Oh I'm sooooOOooo independent..." for finding a gate at the airport??
Kind of sad.
But hey- we all start somewhere ;p

Well, that brings us to FLORIDA!!!!! As we were landing Beth and I eagerly glanced out the window to catch our first glimpse of Orlando. What we saw was millions (pff prolly literally) of ponds/lakes, and a swimming pool in each backyard.
Smart?
I think not.
Isn't this supposed to be gator country?? Are these people begging to be devoured?!?!?
But yeah. Besides the suicidal inhabitants, Florida is beautiful.
The weather was perfect. And when found the Parents, Sheena, and Miles, we might have as well been in heaven.

* Just a little side note here: That "gator stuff" is a joke. I'm from Montana and apparently I have to put my garbage in bear safe dumpsters...Riiiiiiiggghhhhttt. So, just so everyone knows, it was a joke. I know they're aren't alligators walking around every which way in Florida.

K. Moving on.
So we all get on the shuttle that will take us to our hotel and, unsurprisingly, we were all quite giddy.
Ok, so I'll admit that I knew Disney World was big...but...I had no idea it was that big. Don't think "World" is a courtesy title... I mean this place has highways.
It's literally like it's own huge city.
Or county.
I don't even know.

PART 2

We get to our hotel, scope everything out, and you haven't seen a happier bunch.
Cut to next day when we're preparing to go to... The Magic Kingdom!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

The excitement...is palpable.

Unable to exhibit any amount of self control, Beth and I literally took off in a sprint. You know, like the chicken with its head cut off. We didn't really know where we were going-- but we just wanted to get

there....now.

Our somewhat swifty feet carried us to: Adventureland.

Where we went of Pirates and that Safari Jungle Cruise. To my great and unending despair, Disney World has....no....Indian Jones ride.

I know, I know.

(But there is some Indy action later on.)

SoooOoooo. That was really sad. In other news, you know what they say about camels...

Watch out. They spit.

Later that day, it went all monsoon on us and rained really hard. Dad, Sheen, Miles, and I huddles in Aladdin's Bazaar. (Next to us was a Scottish family. Good times.) After the storm calmed, people began to go outside again soaked, but happy. We waited for a little bit and from my stand-point I had a clear view of these majestic camels, shown above. The funny thing was, these camels really do spit.And as one did so, it nailed some guy right in the head. Completely shocked, he grabbed his head and looked around wildly to see just who the culprit was, never imagining that it was the huge golden camel several feet behind him. He took one last suspicious look around and darted away. It was such a precious moment, I treasure the fact that I witnessed it. Then, some other little poncho-clad boy was standing in front of the other one deliberately letting himself get pelted by the spurts. It was pretty cute.

Ahhh man.

I love camels.

I think the last tale I'll tell about the Magic Kingdom is, "The Tale of the Unexpected Migraine". That's right my dear friends. There I am, in the happiest place on earth, and I have my very first migraine.
What the crap?!?!?
It all started to happen when we had to wait 10 years for our reservation. Then this really rude girl finally takes us in, only to have a complete freak out on us because Miles made 6 people. Then she kicked us out.
Um, hellllooooo rude?? I thought one requirement to work for Disney was that you were supposed to be happy. For reals. Some one should fire her. She was just so rude about everything and we were all exhausted from the days adventures.
Anyways...so I wasn't feeling very good, right? We finally got seated and ordered and what I thought was a reg-u-lare ole headache turned out to be a vicious, brain-eating monster. Almost instantly I became extremely nauseous and light was quite painful. I would have cried if we weren't in public, but that was the only shame I was going to hide from these people. I was in too much pain to not lie on the table and I don't even know what. Prolly caused a scene, but I didn't care.
I was dying.
Sheena, bless her, had some pain killers. There was no way I would have made the bus  ride back to our hotel. Just thinking about it makes me queasy.
Anyways so then we're ready to go home and I'm met with millions of artificial lights glaring brightly at me from every angle. To everyone else it seemed magical, but to me they were all light sabers, stabbing into my eyes. So I did what anyone would have done.
I pulled my hood on and wore my sunglasses.
At night.
Sheena and Beth thought I looked like some celeb coming out of rehab. Soooo funny. Except for the fact that I was in extreme pain. I hope I never have to go through that again :s

PART 3

EPCOT. Aaaaaaand, it's rain-city.



The poncho was initially for Miles...buuuut....Dad got some use out of it ;p

Half of EPCOT is filled with cool science stuff, the other half culture awesomeness. Aaaaaand the Humanities major fell in love with which half??

Ha.

But seriously. Everything was sooo cool. It all seems a bit vague until we hit the thing I was anticipating the most....Morocco.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I...was in heaven. I seriously took a picture of everything I saw. All of these wonderfully delicious details were coming back to me from my Islamic Humanities class...

Everything was soooo wonderful :D

As were all of the other countries. I seriously can't get over how cool and authentic everything was. Even the workers were all from natives from that country. It was pure awesomeness.
So, like I said, it was raining (hard) all day that day so I can't really think of what else went on. We had dinner at the Nine Dragons. Sooo good. I had these really good spinach noodles.
They were green.
Muuuust fiiiiind thoooose.....
Yes. Cool stuff.

PART 4

Hollywooooooooood!!!!

This was another one of my favorites. It had the Hollywood Tower of Terror (my favorite) and the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. They were both SOO fun!

Ok...since we're friends... I'm going to show you think next picture under the strictest confidence. This is some what creepy and extremely embarrassing...but... that's right.

I went there.

My love for Humphrey Bogart knows no shame....

Ahem.
Moving on.
We also saw a Beauty and the Beast type Broadway show. Gaston was this not attractive guy that was wearing padded biceps but left the rest of his frame all saggy-baggy.
Oh my gosh, it was hilarious.
Seriously though- he made the show.

Next we went to the Indiana Jones Stunt Show!

Basically; it was awesome.

I have this tradition of pur-chasing an Indian Jones clothing item every time I go to Disney Land (I've been twice...) and I was super excited to continue with us. But....they had hardly any Indian Jones paraphernalia and the only shirts they had were soooo lame. I'm sure you're asking yourself, "If it has Indian Jones on it, HOW can it be lame?!?!" I know right?

But some how....

They managed it.

So, with a heavy heart, I left with out another Indy shirt to add to my collection :(

We ate dinner at the Brown Derby. It's a very famous restaurant in Hollywood and all of the classics used to eat there.

(Clark Gable proposed to Carol Lombard at booth 18)

I was really excited, but I had no idea what to expect. As we waited to be seated, Miles was entertaining us all with a little dance. Then, the rhythm must have really got him, and he jumped around (right as an old man was walking towards him) and he did this fast alternating punch thing right at the guys...well, you know.

Aaaaaand, there went my make-up.

Eyes streaming with tears and crow-like eruptions of laughter bursting forth from me, and everyone else who saw. Ohhh, I'll never forget that as long as I live.

Oh my gosh, and then we finally do get seated and the instant Miles sat down he looked up at the waiter and said, "Where's my crayons??"

No, we haven't been eating out a lot...;p

So we look at the menu and I must have read it about 100 times.

Euh....what?

And that's when I realized that we were in some high brow, fancy-schmancy we-serve-quail-and-fish type restaurant.

I finally settled on some form of chicken because I'd never even heard of anything else. I don't know if anyone else felt like this, but I was extremely uncomfortable. I felt like my ignorance and uncouthness stood out like and tall blond in a sea of Asians.

There's no hiding it.

But anyways, I got over it, decided never to eat in a place like that again, and ate my chicken.

Oh! and THEN we found out that (after I had eaten the whole thing, of course) that there was some sort of brandy sauce used on our dessert.

I felt the fool!

I'd been had!

How DARE they!!!!!!!!!

Again. I should have known this posh place would put brandy with the bananas.

Curse you Brown Derby.

Curse you.

Oh, one more funny thing; the waiter was picking up our plates and he was behind Sheena when she was grabbing something out of her bag. Well, she nearly "took the guy out" (if you know what I mean) but tried to play it off like nothing happened. The guy just kept doing his thing, but Sheen couldn't hold it in. I didn't see it, but I saw her reaction and was openly curious about it. Then the waiter said, "Yeah, I've had to dodge many-a elbow in my day."

Ha.

Love it.

PART 5

On our last day we went back to EPCOT and this time it was oh-so-sunny. Yay! This time we were actually able to see more of the World stuff and it was so fun.

We ate lunch at Italy and these cute Italian guys made our pizzas. Well, bon jourrrrrrno! ;p

And yeah. Lots of other cool stuff, but I'll admit. I'm about ready to die and I'm not even done with the first week.

Sorry, but we're moving on!

PART 6

Leaving Disney World and Sheena and Miles (for a short time) was quite sad :(

Then we jumped in our rental car and headed for Daytona Beach!

It was sooo nice to have a day just to relax. The water wasn't really warm, but it wasn't freezing either. I just felt cool that my feet were being soaked by the Atlantic.

Aaaaand that's enough of that.

Off to the train station!

That's right. We decided to take a train from Florida, all the way up to Virginia. If you're like me, then you're thinking, "Oh, that's not going to be that bad..."

When my dad told me we'd be getting on at 8 at night and getting there around 2:30, I assumed he meant the next morning. I remained thus, blissfully unaware, until we got at the train station. We got there at like, 6ish, just to be safe. Thank goodness we're able to keep ourselves amused, right?

Right.

Beth and I started reading Dawn of the Dreadfuls (verrrry funny) and you know, walked around and took pictures and stuff. The minutes ticked away into hours as we sat all by our onesies in the little train station. Then an attendant came out and told us our train wasn't going to be there until 9:30...Ok....

How on earth could a train be late??

I instantly started coming up with explanations. From armadillos (HA) to trees falling on the tracks.

I don't think we ever found out. But we eventually did get on and that's when I found out that we wouldn't be getting to Virgina until 3 in the afternoon. It was kind of a nightmare.

It's cool to say I've been on a train; but I don't ever want to do that again.

One thing I did like was being able to see practically ALL of North Carolina. I've official been in "The South". I don't think Florida counts... I mean, you know. They weren't really involved in the war, so...yeah. You know what I mean.

PART 7

Now we're finally in to Virginia!!Our first day we decided to take it easy and go for a picnic in Great Falls.

Aaaaaand, it was frickin-freezing.

But still fun.



PART 8

Welcome to Baltimore, Maryland!
We went to the National Aquarium (where Beth and I made a change with our change. If you can't tell, we're quite proud of that ;p) That was very cool.

We also learned that something went quite wrong with Australia's turtle population. That would be interesting to research...

Then for dinner we went to; Medieval Times!!

Kind of blurry, but it was so cool because we were in the front row!

PART 9

Mount Vernon.

This was also really cool, but I am so running out of steam. But we're going to push on because if I don't just do it I for sure won't when I'm out at school.

Courage, Tasha! Courage!

Ooooook.

You know how in National Treasure 2 the President has his birthday party at Mount Vernon?? Well we got to see all of that stuff. Sorry, no pictures. It was much to secrety for that.

So that was really interesting and I'm really glad we were able to do that.

One thing you might not have known about Georgie...

His "necessary" *cough* (out house) was a three-seater.

Oh yeah.

PART 10

So you know how the Government was gonna up'n shut down?? Well, that's the day we decided to go to DC!

Woot!

It also just happened to be the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Oooo.

Double Trouble.

?

Anyways...

The parade was cool. Especially when some car caught on fire.

The only other thing I want to touch on is the fact that I didn't get to see any of Rocky's stuff.

Man, I guess it just really wasn't meant to be on the trip :(

Sadness.

But really, that aside, this was obviously one AMAZING trip. Maybe when I've had a rest I can add more things but I will always cherish the memories we made.

I am so thankful for my wonderful family and for all of the wonderful things we were able to see.

Now, you know how much I love to see and learn about new places. But there's something so precious, so tender about familiarity.

The End