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Our visit to Disney World was done, and the consensus was both the adults and the kids had a great time.  Judy and I hit the road back towards Texas at 7:00am eastern time on Saturday morning.  The rest of the family was flying back to Pittsburgh today and would be home tonight, while our drive was planned at three days to cover 1200 miles.  Today our goal was to cover roughly 500 miles to Foley, Alabama for the night so I could pick up my Nathan K5LA and Nathan M5 from the Horn Doctor, Ken Kanne.

We had decided to stay off of I75 and I10 as much as possible, so we planned a route that would follow the coastline westward along the Gulf of Mexico.  Mid-morning found us crossing the Suwanee River, made famous by songwriter Stephen Foster in the 1800’s with his immortal tune that eventually became the state song of Florida.

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Friday January 5th was our last day, and we spent it at Disney’s movie studio theme park.  While there are no train rides here, a railroad theme was seen immediately after our arrival in the form of this billboard advertising the old Pacific-Electric Interuban service in California.

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Unlike the other theme parks where you drive to a vast parking lot and then walk or ride a tram to the front gate, the only two ways into the Magic Kingdom from the parking lot are by ferry boat or monorail. On the morning of Thurday January 4th we opted to take the ferry, and were rewarded with this view as we approached the Magic Kingdom’s dock.  With the train station on the left and the spires of Cinderella’s castle on the right in the distance, on the water ahead of us is another ferry on the right and a launch catering to guests of the lakefront resorts on the left. 

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Wednesday, January 3rd, we along with thousands of others streamed into the Animal Kingdom.  The Tree of Life rises 145 feet above the landscape, and looks as real as any tree created by nature instead of Disney magic.

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