First trip to Disney World's Fort Wilderness Campground, Oct 2010

 Shortly after purchasing our pop-up (or maybe even before we got

it), Dawn made camping reservations at Disney World. Yes, believe it or not,
Disney has a campground (Disney's Fort Wilderness Campground). Given that prior to buying the pop-up my idea of ‘roughing
it’ had been staying at a Comfort Inn, it had honestly never crossed my mind
that Disney, with its seemingly endless supply of resorts would have a place to
go camping. I mean really, who would want to go to the happiest place on earth
and camp? Turns out, we do.
We had reservations for a week stay at Fort Wilderness campground,
in one of the premium loops…300. This is
a loop where you will find very few pop-ups.
We were surrounded by 100K+ dollar coach motorhomes and 5^thwheels, but we had to have the best amenities so here we were. We decided to leave home on Friday afternoon
and spend the night in Valdosta so we would get to Disney in plenty of time for
our 6:30 p.m. reservations for Mickey’s Backyard BBQ on Saturday. If you have read our prior blogs then you are
aware that our little Miss Reagan decides to get sick right before or on our
way to each and every camping adventure.
Let me just say, she really out did herself this time.
So here are all packed up, pulling our pop-up and heading to
Valdosta. We made reservations at a hotel
right off the interstate that would allow us to have our dog. About an hour into the trip, Reagan starts
coughing and getting really fussy. We
were hoping that she was just tired and would be fine once she was able to get
out of the car and take a nap. Not sure who we were kidding. We got to Valdosta, checked in and made it to
the room. By then her cough was getting worse and her respirations were getting
faster. We had taken her to urgent care
several weeks before (on our last camping trip) so we had the inhaler that they
had given us and were trying to use it but to virtually no avail. Long story short, we ended up heading to the
closest ER a little after midnight.
After several breathing treatments and steroids they decided to admit
her. Poor baby girl… What a way to start our
vacation. Joshua was such a sweet boy.
Even though we might not be able to make it to Mickey Mouse’s House, he was
only worried that his “baby tister” was sick and he wanted her to feel better. Thankfully, she did improve and was
discharged the next afternoon.
The doctor said that we could go ahead and go to Disney as long as
she was getting her 4 breathing treatments a day. And if we needed it there was a great Children’s
hospital in Orlando, which is more than we can say for back home in
Jackson. So we headed to the pharmacy, loaded
up on all of our new breathing equipment and headed south to the Magical land. Three and half hours later the Welcome to Fort
Wilderness sign welcomed us, what a great site to see. Needless to say, we missed our Backyard BBQ
but we were all so exhausted that it was probably for the best. We set up our campsite, which we loved, grabbed some dinner
at Trails End Tavern and called it a night. Starting your Disney vacation by
missing and entire night’s sleep is really not the best way to go, trust me.
Fort Wilderness is an amazing place. There are a number of loops
containing all manner of campers – from tents to million dollar coaches (yeah,
I didn’t know those things could cost that much either). We chose loop 300 because of its proximity to
the main restaurant (basically the only restaurant unless you count the
sandwich place at the main pool) and the boat launch. We could walk or ride our
bikes up there in just a matter of a few minutes. Many people rented one of the
7500 golf carts offered by Disney but we couldn’t stomach the price for one of
those things, not to mention we needed to get some exercise to keep from
gaining 15 pounds in a week on Disney’s dining plan. We loved having our bikes, and the tow behind
for the kids was a Godsend.
One very cool aspect of loop 300 is that several of the sites back
up to a pond where virtually every morning you could watch the deer come out
and get a drink. We didn’t get one of
those sites, but we took our little Maggie on walks there every morning and got
to watch the wildlife. We thought that was pretty cool. Many campers brought their pets so Maggie’s
walks always turned into an opportunity to meet your neighbors and their
puppies. I think Maggie enjoyed herself
as much as we did.
We were there in mid-October and let me tell you nobody does
Halloween quite like the campers at Disney. People had inflatables the size of
buses, lights, and an endless supply of Mickeys dressed up for Halloween. One
camper that was situated along the walking trail to the boat launch and
restaurant had so many inflatable Disney characters on its site that you had to
look really closely just to find the travel trailer behind it all. We, being
Fort Wilderness novices, were seriously unprepared for all the festivities,
which made us the undecorated little pop-up in the fancy loop full of big-fancy
rigs. Frankly, we had no problem with
it! A number of folks with either rented
or owned golf carts decorated those for Halloween as well. At times it was hard
to pay attention to where you were going on your bike for all the golf cart

distractions passing by. The kids loved it!
Our first morning there, we got up and headed to the boat launch
to go to the Magic Kingdom, The kids were so excited, we were off to the MK…
The boat ride over was nice as well, no worries about driving and
parking, just a 10 minute boat ride and you are dropped off at the front gates. Somehow you are not truely at Disney until you walk through the gates and see the castle in the background. I will never forget the look on Joshua’s face
when he saw the the Celebrate Parade coming down the street. His eyes got
so big and his mouth wide open. He said “Mama,
LOOK….Mama, LOOK. Then he just started
dancing in the street. We rode all of the
rides that they could ride on, Dumbo, goofy’s roller coaster etc.. His favorite
was Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean.
He bought his Halloween costume as we were leaving the Pirates
ride. Little did I know it would become
his favorite costume to wear on many, many days to come in the next several
months. We went and met the characters, Reagan found this part quite exhausting
but Joshua enjoyed it. On our way out of the park we stopped and let
them get their first Minnie and Mickey dolls.
They are still sleeping with those every night to this day.
We agonized over the Disney dining plan for weeks before we
finally committed to purchasing it. Dawn read every review ever written on the
topic and we finally concluded that it was worth the price. Having now
experienced it, we aren’t so sure. One
huge motivating factor in doing the dining service was the considerable lack of
space one has in a pop-up. Trying to feed us for a week in that thing would
have been a pain. The plan consists of a certain number of full service meals,
counter service meals and a snack for each person each day of your stay. A full-service meal basically meant a meal
where you sit down and are served or more frequently a buffet meal which we are
not big fans of. Counter-service is pretty self-explanatory, but the snacks
were a bit interesting. How a Diet Coke
constitutes a snack, I don’t know, but at Disney it does. Another befuddling aspect of the dining plan
was that some of the dinner options actually cost more than one full-service
meal. For instance, the Mickey’s Backyard BBQ that we missed cost each of us
two full-service meals, which meant that on that day we had to have counter
service the other two meals or do our own thing, which was a little bit weird.
I think perhaps the best part of the dining plan is that you don’t
have to face the sticker shock of looking at all the food prices at
Disney. The prices there are nothing
short of ridiculous. Without the dining plan, I think we both would have been
stressed at each meal. We would have split a side salad and water twice a day!
At least on the plan, we could order whatever we wanted from each restaurant
and not worry about the cost. In fact, it almost encouraged us to order the
most expensive thing we wanted because we really wanted to get our money’s
worth out that freaking plan!
Of all of the meals we had there I think our favorite was actually
a counter service meal at Wolfgang Puck express in downtown Disney. It was fire grilled Italian style pizza and was
delicious. That was the only meal that was
worth mentioning. We did get to go to
the Crystal Palace one morning in the Magic Kingdom and met all of the Winnie
the Pooh characters, the kids loved it, well Joshua did, not so sure about
Reagan. The big kids kind of liked it
too.
In the days to come we visited Epcot, Hollywood Studios, back to the
Magic Kingdom and just enjoyed the campground. They had the horse stables there where all of the horses from the MK stayed, a great pool, the chip and dale campfire and outdoor movie, it was a hugh place that could take a week in itself to explore.
It was a great trip, so great that we have reservations to return next fall.
(hopefully without the hospital visit). It’s a great time of year to go, not as hot,
crowded, or expensive. And it’s a
fantastic way to spend quality time and make great memories with my amazing family.

Cloudland Canyon State Park Campground 2011

So the Four Happy Campers and their Scottie officially became happier campers with the purchase of a new travel trailer! Perhaps no other purchase in the history of the world has been as thoroughly vetted as this one. Although that may be a slight exaggeration, I can say with some confidence that I doubt anyone else researched the various options available to us more thoroughly than Dawn. I’ve previously referenced her slight OCD tendencies and make no mistake she was fully obsessed with the travel trailer purchase. The upside of that is that we now know everything there is to know about almost every travel trailer out there; the down side is that we spent months going round and round and round about what, if anything, to buy. My Dawnie is now an expert on the topic and, in fact, frequently corrected sales people when they were discussing available options on the models they were showing us. I have absolutely no doubt that she worked us the best deal possible on our new Kodiak 284BHS.

The new camper has a little front bedroom for us, two bunk beds in the back for the kids (which they absolutely love), a dinette that converts to a double bed, a jack-knife sofa (which seems like it would be horribly uncomfortable but we haven’t tried it) and, most importantly, a real bathroom with a glassed-in shower! It has a full kitchen inside including a stove, oven, large refrigerator and microwave, as well as an outdoor kitchen with a little stove and small fridge. Because this model didn’t have a grill, we bought a Weber Q portable grill, which honestly may be the best grill I’ve ever owned. It cooks evenly and sears a steak better than anything I’ve ever seen. I absolutely love it and would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a small portable grill.

We were able to take our new camper on our first expedition up to Cloudland Canyon State Park in Rising Fawn, Georgia over the long Labor Day weekend. I, unfortunately, wound up on trial in Gwinnett County during the preceding week and my jury was still out on Thursday morning when we were planning to begin our trip. So, I got up bright and early that morning and hooked up the camper to our truck and Dawn had to haul the camper up to the park. Joshua didn’t realize she was pulling the trailer and asked Dawn on the way up how our “tamper” was going to get to the park. When she told him it was behind them and the truck was pulling it, he decided that we had the best, strongest truck ever.

Cloudland Canyon is aptly named given that you sometimes feel higher than the clouds as you look out over the spectacular vistas from the overlooks scattered throughout the park. The Canyon itself is amazing with sheer rock cliffs edged by beautiful Georgia hardwoods. If you are afraid of heights as we are be forewarned: it’s a long way down from the overlooks and it’s a straight drop. Thankfully, they’ve put up fences to keep you a safe distance from the edge. The campground is divided into two sections: the East Rim and the West Rim. As per usual, we read numerous reviews on the campground prior to arrival and most campers seemed to prefer the West Rim. Dawn headed straight there when she arrived and found a great private site for us. The sites were small, especially compared with the ones at Victoria Bryant, but they seemed well maintained. Ours slanted a bit to one side so I had to run up the wheels on one side of the camper onto some wooden blocks to try to even it out. We’ve since purchased these really cool interlocking blocks that let you raise the camper up to about 4 inches high for those particularly uneven campsites. Those would have come in handy at Cloudland as I didn’t quite get the camper even and we were all walking at a slight angle the whole weekend.

For those considering a camping trip to Cloudland, I’ll explain the main differences between the East Rim and West Rim. The East Rim campsites have very little privacy. It’s a newer campground and the green space between the sites just hasn’t grown in that well. It’s almost like a very nice, large parking lot for campers. The upside of the East Rim is that you are very close to the best views in the park as well as the Interpretive Center which hosts a variety of activities for kids. The West Rim campsites are very secluded and private. You are basically out in the woods, which I like. Our site had a little unmarked trail that led down to the main West Rim trail.

While the park was absolutely beautiful, it really wasn’t well suited for our little family right now. The West Rim trail was pretty strenuous and there were several places with some fairly steep drop offs, which is not really what you want with little ones around. We did find the closest thing to a bear cave that we’ve come across in all our hiking. Joshua always wants to find a bear cave when we hike (thanks to the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt) and normally if we can find a cool rock grouping or a hollowed out tree we’ll call it a bear cave and pretend to look for bears. This time we found a really cool small cave in one of the rocks. Joshua was both very excited and very concerned that the bear owner of the cave would come back and find us hanging out there. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened. Reagan is now a whopping 25 pounds, which is a lot to carry on your back especially while trying to negotiate some rocky, steep hills on the hike. We made it about a mile on the trip and turned around for home. For those without small kids, Cloudland Canyon is an amazing place to visit and a must do for hikers.

The only negative about Cloudland that we discovered were the playgrounds. How can you have a playground without a slide? Each campground loop has its own playground and neither of them had a slide. Both had structures for the kids to climb on but it didn’t take long for them to get bored with that. We wound up driving into nearby Trenton, which was about 20 minutes away just to find a decent playground.

Dawn found out that the Interpretive Center was hosting a “Catfish Rodeo” at the small pond located within the park. For a whopping $2 we were loaned a fishing pole, given a big bag of stale hamburger buns and sent over the river and through the woods to the tiny pond. Joshua was SO excited to go “tishing.” When we got to the pond, this extremely nice older man approached me with his hands cupped and extended in front of him. He asked me if I was squeamish and I mistakenly told him not really. He then presented me with a handful of wriggling, disgusting, fat meal worms. I immediately did the grossed-dance (you know the one where you vigorously shake your hands while simultaneously twisting and wriggling your body) and quickly informed him that I had misspoken and I was, in fact, squeamish. Thankfully, he didn’t think I was a complete freak. He laughed at me and brought his handful of grossness over to where we were sitting and proceeded to bait our hook for us. Joshua almost immediately caught a fish. He was SOOO excited! The nice man hung out with us long enough for Joshua to catch 3 more fish (actually, I think it may have been the same fish two other times – it looked awfully familiar). Joshua had a great time fishing, Reagan had a great time getting into all sorts of trouble, and Dawn and I learned that one of us needs to buck up and learn how to bait hooks and remove the caught fish from the hook! We then returned to the interpretive center to return our fishing pole and pick up Joshua’s “First Fish” certificate….so freakin cute!Maggie and Reagan had a great time fishing too….thankfully we have an outdoor shower on our new TT.

We love our new travel trailer and are looking forward to our next adventure!