Kayaking on the river

We’re almost out of here, but I’ll probably share a few more posts with photos as I catch up. Here are some that we took of us kayaking at our resort… we really should have allowed a couple more days to simply hang around here and play! We missed fishing, motorboats, there was even a 2 hour pirate excursion for the kids.

Kayaking! Brian was launched first. You should have seen his face.. they put him on the boat, gave him a paddle, shoved him in the water, and then walked off snickering! For a second, Brian, who has never been in a small boat in his life, much less completely in charge of one, was wondering what the heck he was supposed to do, but then he grabbed the paddle and just took off.

Brad was launched next

  I had to put the camera away so Honor and I could have our turn, but after we paddled around the little canal for 45 minutes, we returned to the dock and Brian photographed us as we came in to the dock.

Honor was actually a great rowing teammate.

We had a ton of fun!

and it wasn’t scary at all.

Critters

As a couple people have noticed, one thing we’ve enjoyed about our R&R is being in a place with lots of water, greenery, and wildlife. Jordan has birds for our garden and an occasional gecko. There are some barking lizards out in the desert, and we see sheep, goats, donkeys and camels, but our kids don’t get to see the critters I grew up with. Lizards everywhere, a wide variety of large and small land and water birds, and all sorts of cute fuzzy animals romping about. We’ve met all the squirrels, chipmunks, and bunnies for miles around.

We’ve enjoyed teaching the kids about the different trees, and life within the trees too, and often the bus or water taxi drivers have their own nature facts to share, like how bats live in the Spanish moss we see in the trees.

Of course, we had lots of water birds to enjoy.

Lizards are everywhere too.

even hanging out on the rides..

Even the restaurants have critters… we’ve enjoyed both the Rainforest Cafe and T-rex.

Epcot

Land of the big white ball

First thing, we had to remember what Epcot stood for: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Future and science themes, plus international learning experiences.

Also, bunnies.

A little blurry, but this bunny was in a garden, about 2 feet behind where Brian was sitting. There were lots of ducks to enjoy too, roaming through the pretty gardens.

The first attraction we visited was a Space adventure – a rather exciting flight simulator for a virtual flight to Mars! We all enjoyed it.

That is an orange card… yes, the kids did vote for the ‘extreme’ experience vs the ‘mild’ version. I enjoyed it, but have to admit that I was a little dizzy when I walked out! Honor also got tagged with a badge they use to track line times… she was chosen several times during the day. I’m not sure that these tags did anything to actually help with the line times… but I guess I should be happy that they’re trying.

We also rode a Test Track ride that may have been more impressive without our desert driving experience… rough roads, steep hills, random curves, heat lamps, trucks swerving into your lane… meh… show me something I don’t do every day. I suppose it was interesting to learn about and see the displays on how cars are tested, but the ride was less than exciting.

Next, we went to Canada… at least the Canadian section of Epcot… and watched a movie on a 360-degree screen.. and saw more ducks hanging out around the lovely pond and flowers.

We also strolled through a few more ‘countries’… are we back in the Middle East? … It was hot enough, but perhaps there’s too much green to be authentic?!

We also stopped by Japan.

Dinner was awesome!

 

And afterwards… we found MORE ducks!

our family is duck-deprived (especially Honor).

 

There were rides and shows, but mostly we enjoyed walking around and enjoying the sites.

Another sunset brings to a close another tiring but fun day!

Hollywood Day

Wow! We sorta forgot how tiring vacation can be. We are failing the ‘rest and recuperation’ part of it all, but we are having fun! Everyday we drag ourselves out of bed and over to breakfast… this resort complex sprawls over many acres of gardens and a river and it’s lovely to take walks around here… and then we hop a bus to a park. We usually arrive back after having dinner out somewhere and have barely enough energy to plop into bed before we all fall asleep. One of our first stops was Disney’s Hollywood Studios… a theme park all about the making of Disney’s movies.

Some of the shows were very cute… like the Mermaid show, but we all agree that others, like the Narnia show, was nothing more than a very lame commercial for the movie :p  Most was typical good fun Disney stuff though. One of the 1st characters we met were the Army guys from Toy Story… I love those guys in the movie!

We also met a maintenance employee who rescued us from Honor’s runaway ice cream. Apparently the vanilla ice cream with chocolate coating is a notorious mess-maker and it did fall apart in the heat worse than the rest of our goodies. He joked with us and gave us a cloth to clean up. One of the nice thing about these parks are the positive employees… seriously, it really is nice! These guys have to deal with lost, confused, and less-nice-adjective customers all day, in blistering heat and humidity, and yet, we have yet to meet a surly staff member. Speaking of heat… we appreciated all the displays that shot out water at random.

You’d think we should be used to the heat, but this spring in Jordan was incredibly cool and mild, these 90’s were getting now are the hottest we’ve dealt with this year!

Much of the park is about how movies are made and we enjoyed learning about Mushu from Mulan, and the special effects from the Pearl Harbor movie, this photo is from a ride that put us in the middle of an earthquake, firey explosions, and a giant flood!

We LOVED the live action car show!

We also wandered through several places that weren’t exactly what they seemed to be…

San Fran?

New York?

and ,,, we stood in line a lot

but the kids handle it well and enjoyed the rewards

well… it seems we’re off to breakfast and kayaking this morning. We didn’t plan a park for today, but it seems we have still managed a full schedule. More later!