Disney Vero Beach Resort: retirement "home" & evacuation

Dianna, Doug and I had a wonderful adventure slipping away out of North Dakota on an early morning Allegiant flight to Florida. I've never flown on Allegiant before, and I was ecstatic about the good extra inch of leg room between my knee and the seat in front of me. Such joy! Such bliss! Almost made me forget that the seats don't recline and you have to pay extra for a drink of water. And now, you also pay extra for carry-on luggage. (Hint* You can fit lots of stuff in the 15 or so pockets of a photographer's vest. And fill your water bottle from the fountain after passing through security.) Speaking of security, you can score a nice little head-pat ("good girl! good girl!") if you leave a bobby pin in your hair.

The beach was perfect! And for further lazy, pleasant, diversion, at the Disney Resort at Vero Beach, we watched someone create giant bubbles:

Or stared at the palm trees. . .

Or just watched the Atlantic Ocean do its little ocean things. . . .

We thought about hanging out in one of these cabanas on the beach, until we found out that Disney charges for use of it's cabanas and lounge chairs.  Bummer! We decided to save the $30 or so by just sitting on a towel.

. . . or wandering back to the pool, where the chairs were free.

We only spent one night at the resort, and even managed to head into the city of Vero Beach after dinner to catch a movie, Cabin in the Woods.

The movie gave all three of us nightmares! I'll not tell you who had which nightmare, but one of us dreamed about eating zombies, one of us dreamed that she/he was a murderer who got away with it by passing off the murders as an art project, and one of us could not remember his/her dream.

The next morning, after checking out of our room, we spent a few more hours relaxing at the resort. As Dianna pointed out, Vero Beach, as a Disney resort, is totally unlike other Disney resorts.  The average age of the population seems to be around 65 years old. It all has the feel of a very expensive retirement community, rather than the usual lively Disney atmosphere.

We even got to play shuffle board!

One "activity" that we did not expect was the evacuation.  I myself got hustled out of the shower room next to the pool where I was drying my hair.  I thought it was strange, the loud shrill noise and the blinking lights; I thought maybe, once again, I was managing to blow out a hotel's electrical system with a hair dryer. But then some guy pounded on the door, asking if anyone was in there, that this was not a drill, and I needed to evacuate.

Disney employees take evacuation very seriously! They moved everyone rapidly through a tunnel and across the street because of a fire in their kitchen.

The fire was apparently resolved fairly quickly, we managed to be reunited with each other and our "stuff" and head on down to our next stop on our trip:  Miami.

One of These Photos is Not Like All the Others

HINT* All the rest are from Valladolid, Mexico in Quintana Roo.

We had the most extraordinary excursion, one day (the spring equinox) in Mexico, visiting a cenote, then stopping in this little city for lunch, and then moving on to Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza was the "climax", but I wanted to weep for joy in this little city. I could not press my shutter fast enough to capture the color and visual delight all around me!

This was my idea of a perfect day: five of my loved ones and pure photographic bliss!



People seemed to delighted in this little town to let me photograph them. I showed them the LCD screen, and they smiled, called their friends over to look, and seemed pleased to indulge me.



I used my Nikon 16-85mm lens for most of the photos in town.

I like how in one of the filter sections of Bridge, you can see how many photos you shot at each length. By the end of the day, 129 of the 465 photos I took were at the 16mm end of the lens.

More Disney World

One of the best parts about Disney World without kids was wandering where we wanted to wander, whenever we wanted, and taking as long as we wanted to get photos.



And since I have very little interest in rides, the lines were minimal!



It really helped that Doug has now started experimenting with the D5000 while I tote around my D300s. You wouldn't believe how long he wanted to hang out in the bird areas of Animal Kingdom! (I think I've created a monster!)

30 Years of Marriage

In May, Doug and I celebrated 30 years of marriage!



And we decided to spend it at Disney World's Animal Kingdom, sans progeny. We had a great time. . . . and I have SO many photos to edit now!!!!!!!!!!!!

And finally, as of yesterday, I seem to have gotten my new computer configured the way I want it (almost).

I couldn't figure out why my photos were all posting to my blog in an overly-red sort of way. I dragged out the mammoth Color Management for CS3 book (although I have CS5), and I don't know why, but first assigning a photo to sRGB, rather than trusting the action I created to convert it to sRGB seems to be doing the trick!

But, you have to ask, does it really make sense to pick a photo that has brilliant reds to demonstrate this? (But he's too cute to resist, so I had to post him!)