Goodbye, Virginia...Hello Florida!

A whirlwind afternoon/evening of unpacking, doing laundry, and repacking later, I got a bit of sleep and was up early the next morning. It was time for my next trip! My buddy Dave and I were taking his Cessna 210 to Sun N Fun in Lakeland, Florida, for the week.

Don't let the sun fool you...it was 35 and flurrying when we left.

Dave had filed IFR, so we didn't have to try to dodge the weather and instead flew right through it.

We eventually wound up on top of the clouds. It was a much nicer ride, and we picked up a tailwind, too! 190kts over the ground...I'll take it. We made a short stop at Low Country Regional (RBW) in South Carolina to top off, then took off for the second leg to Kissimmee (ISM).

The Florida coast...I haven't flown down this way in years!

Dave and I both had our iPads with Foreflight and Stratus. The closer we got, the busier it got...all of those little blue triangle things are other airplanes.

ATC vectored us right past all of the Disney parks. You can just see the golf ball at Epcot on the left side.

We landed just fine at ISM, left the plane with the FBO, and picked up the rental car. Dave's son and his family live nearby, so we made a quick stop so Dave could visit them before heading to the hotel. We checked in, took a few minutes to regroup, then hopped back in the car to go to...

...Disney World! Or more specifically, Epcot. Since we didn't have enough time to get to Sun N Fun itself that day, we figured we might as well make good use of our time!

I had never been to any Disney anything before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. It was pretty cool to see this up close, though.

It was the middle of Epcot's Garden Festival, so everything was really pretty. We wandered around for a little while, then decided to start looking for dinner.

I made it as far as Morocco...I'm a sucker for falafel and baklava.   :)

Dave grabbed dinner in Japan (and I grabbed some sushi and plum wine), and we were able to catch the drummers on the way out. Dave used to be stationed in Japan, so he had fun talking to all the employees in Japanese.

Italy was really pretty...

...as was Mexico. We made our way around the entire loop, then staked out a good spot for the fireworks show (which was really good). Really, the whole thing was pretty cool and I wouldn't have minded spending a bit more time there. (Mark went there on our school's senior trip and told me it was boring. I think he missed the best parts - drinking and fireworks!)

We left right after the fireworks show and I passed out almost as soon as we got back to the hotel. We had a big day of drooling on airplanes ahead of us!