Let's go driving: A brief vacation...from our vacation.

The funny thing about Florida, is that we never had any intentions of even going to Florida. However, after consulting our travel book, we decided that we had to see what all the fuss was about. That being said, we did not bring adequate clothing for it’s tropical climate and I think I ended up wearing the same dress for about 4 days straight. The climate during this trip has been interesting, about a week ago we were shopping for scarves and gloves in New York and now we are wishing we brought cooler clothes! Anyways, the great thing about a warmer climate too is that campsites are open all year long!

Disney World was a blast. There are actually 4 different parks that make up Disney World so we decided to go to the original called the Magic Kingdom. We toured the Swiss Family Robinson tree house, got soaked on splash mountain, floated over Neverland, and sang along with the Pirates of the Caribbean. The great thing about going to Disney World in Florida was that a lot of retirees have taken part time jobs at Disney World. So you have the nicest old people walking around making their ridiculous Disney costumes/uniforms look totally cool. Even better, Main Street was decked out for Christmas and we watched as Cinderella’s fairy godmother lit up the castle. The night ended with Tinkerbell’s flight and of course, fire works.

Swiss Family Tree house.

Disney World tired us out so much that we took the next day just to do nothing. We went down to check out Cocoa Beach and spent most of the day horsing around in the pool at our campsite. Yes, a pool at our campsite, or should I say RV site. RV’ing is a big business in Florida and it is totally normal, if not required to have a pool at an RV site.

We had been told that we absolutely had to check out the beaches on the Gulf side so we booked a campsite on Pensacola Beach and hightailed it out of Orlando. On our way, we stopped in a little town called Seaside, otherwise known as the filming location of the movie The Truman Show. This town was incredible! Other then the snooty vibe we got from it, it was as cookie-cutter as cookie-cutter can get.

As we got closer to our beachfront RV site, we began to have doubts about our little trailer. All the RV’s we had seen around Florida seemed brand new, massive and shiny. What if the other RV owners didn’t think we were good enough to stay at their site? It was the first time on our trip that we began to feel insecure about our living quarters. However, our fears were put to rest when we realized that retired people living out of their RV’s in Florida are probably the nicest people out there. We met Graham and Gail from Alberta, and our neighbors Lewis and Betty were sad to hear that we were only staying one night. Those people have got it figured out! It is true what they say, the beaches on along the gulf of Mexico are just spectacular.

It was time to leave our vacation paced lifestyle in Florida and head west. We passed through Alabama and Mississippi to reach a campsite in Mandeville, Louisiana. We dropped the trailer and headed in the Big Easy, or New Orleans. New Orleans has been described as America’s "most interesting city", and is it ever! We almost felt like we were in another country as we wandered the iron wrought balconied streets of the French Quarter. Live Jazz and Blues music came from almost every restaurant and bar as we were mesmerized by the lights and people on Bourbon street. We stopped for some food and decided to get straight up Southern Gumbo, Jambalaya and Crawfish. As we continued down the main strip things got pretty seedy pretty quick so we headed over to Frenchmen Street, away from the big crowds and tacky shops. It was there that we found “The Spotted Cat – Music Club” and tapped our feet to some incredible Blues. Turns out that some of the guys in the band are from Seattle and therefore Luke found he had a mutual friend with one of them. Go figure.