Christmas and Tropical Palms

We just wrapped up two weeks at our favorite Orlando-area Thousand Trails park - Tropical Palms Resort.  This resort is quite hard to get into and, having now booked out the rest of our stays through the winter, I can tell you this is the only time we'll make it in here this season.  In addition to being the closest Thousand Trails park to Disney World, it is also the best maintained park with the most amenities of any Thousand Trails park in the Orlando area.  The laundry room alone is worth the stay!  For the first time we weren't even able to book the 'elite' site here, so we were 'stuck' in a premium site nearer to the back of the park.  Still a great experience, but because of ongoing construction (they're expanding the park - good news for next year!) it was a pain to get to our site.

This is a terrible picture of our campsite but the only 
one we managed to take...

We only had a couple of days to take advantage of the proximity to Disney World before our annual passes were blocked out for the holiday season, but we made the most of them!  We saw the Candlelight Processional at Epcot for the first time and it was just beautiful.  Andy Garcia hosted the evening we visited and he had some entertaining commentary, but overall it was just a reverent telling (and singing) of the Christmas story.  It was absolutely beautiful and definitely put us in the Christmas spirit!  We also saw the new Harmonious nighttime show at Epcot (impressive!) and finished our cookie stroll.

The Candelight Processional

Close up of Andy Garcia reading the Christmas story

Our reward for finishing the cookie stroll!

We also spent a few hours at Animal Kingdom, catching the new Kite-Tails show (Lion King version).  It was neat!  Lots of handheld and jetski-held kites.

Animal Kingdom Christmas tree

Simba in the Kite-Tails show

We enjoyed several quiet days at Tropical Palms after we couldn't go to Disney World, and for Christmas itself we drove (just the car) back 'home' (to the adjacent towns where we grew up) to Virginia to spend a couple days with both sets of parents and most of our siblings (Aaron's brother and my sister).  It was great to see everyone but the drive home the Sunday after Christmas was awful, so if we end up doing this again we definitely need to figure out an alternative RV storage in Florida so we can travel some different dates.  This trip kind of came up last minute when my sister decided to spend Christmas with my parents, and we'd already booked all of our stays through the holiday season so we were a bit inflexible in our travel plans.

All ready for Christmas morning at my mom's house (pre-kid
destruction)

Merry Christmas everyone!  And a happy new year!

Hungry Mother State Park

After leaving Tennessee we stopped by Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia for a few days.  Both of us had apparently been here in our youth but neither of us really remembered it, so it was fun to explore a bit.  We stayed at Camp Burson, which is a state park campground but accessed before the main entrance to the park.  Online it appeared to be the only campground that could accommodate our size RV, but looking at the other RV campground inside the park I think we could have fit.  Our campsite was decently spacious with a large gravel 'living area' and fire pit, and had easy access to the Lake Trail.

Our campsite at Camp Burson

We were only at the park for a couple days.  The first day we explored the southeast side of the lake trail, and the second Aaron's family came to hang out, hike a little more, and see the RV all set up for camping.

Hiking on the Lake Trail

A VERY unconcerned deer grazing near us

Hiking with Aaron's parents on the other side of the lake trail

This was a nice little stop with a pretty lake and interesting history with the Civilian Conservation Corps - it was one of the initial state parks developed in Virginia.  We enjoyed our short stay and now it's time to start heading south in earnest!