To Brunswick, Georgia- Saturday, February 14, 2026

      We started our Valentine's Day in Bridgeport, West Virginia.  We had two double beds in our room, but Abby wanted to open up the couch into a third.  She slept there all night.   We liked our hotel, but it did give us a couple of stories.  Julie wanted to call down to ask the front desk when breakfast started.  Scott had just made a joke about how old the phone in the room was when Julie discovered that it wasn't even connected to anything.  We all laughed about that.  Then, when we went down to breakfast, we (and everyone else who was there) were surprised at the sport that was playing on the TV.  It was the championships of the PFC- a pillow fighting match.  Two big guys, and later two women, were in a boxing ring slugging away at each other with pillows that had handles like shopping bags.  It was on ESPN and had been recorded at their complex in Disney World.

      We got on the road a little after 7:00.  We were facing more than 10 hours of actual driving, plus whatever stops for breaks we had to make along the way.   It was about 22 degrees according to the car's thermometer.  We went through a long tunnel in West Virginia and came out in Virginia.  We had lunch in North Carolina at a Wendy's. By 1:45, we had crossed into South Carolina and stopped at their very nice welcome center.  By then the temperature was 61 degrees, and we enjoyed a few minutes on some very nice bench swings so we could enjoy the outside a little.   

     Before we left South Carolina, we ate dinner at a Zakbys chicken.  Julie had heard great things about it and wanted to try it.  We thought it was okay, and gave it a sideways thumb.  Emma liked the Zak sauce, but Julie thought it was too curious to enjoy.  We continued on to Georgia, and made it to our hotel in Brunswick at about 8:00.... or so we thought.

     We pulled in to the Country Inn & Suites in Brunswick.  (We don't usually mention the name of the hotels in the blog unless there's a good reason to.)  Of course, we were all tired and Abby could hardly contain herself after sitting for so long and was looking forward to more pool time.  We dragged all of our suitcases in, but the desk clerk told Julie that they had cancelled our reservation today.  We were shocked.  He said he had called us five times, allegedly.  We couldn't see what good that was and weren't sure why calling us the day of the reservation was any good when we were driving for so long, on vacation, and ignoring unknown callers on our phone.  In fact, there is no sign in our phone that they did call us at all.  But they had no rooms available and we were left scrambling for a place to stay.  (We were reminded of the line from Seinfeld-- "Anybody can take a reservation.  You have to hold the reservation.)

    Even before we had pulled into the first hotel, we had made the comment that there seemed to be an awful lot of hotels in the small area around ours.  Julie pulled out a different app on the phone and tried to find us a nearby room.  All of the hotels in the vicinity seemed to be booked, maybe because of the fact that it's Daytona 500 weekend or Valentine's Day.  We did find one on Booking.com at a Hilton Home2, but when we got there, we had to wait fifteen minutes for the desk clerk to show up, but when she did, she said that they were booked too.  By this point we were wondering what good the apps actually are.  

    Julie called the Choice.com people, which we made our original reservation through.  The person on the phone helped us.  She helped us out and found us a Comfort Inn only about mile away from where we were.  We dragged the suitcases into the third hotel and thought we had gotten to the finish line when the desk clerk gave us our key cards.  We went to the room, but as Julie walked in she said, "This won't work."  It just had one queen bed for the four of us.  She went back to the front desk and got keys to a different room.  When we got to that one, the keys cards didn't work at all.  The front desk clerk had to come let us in with a physical key, and someone has to be in the room to let the others in if we go anywhere.  We're so tired, we're not going anywhere though.  It was about 9:30 by the time we got into the room,  14 and 1/2 hours after we had started this morning.  It was a long end to a long day.

To Clarksburg, West Virginia- Friday, Feb. 13, 2026

     Julie knew she needed something to look forward to in order to get through what was probably going to be a tough year at school, so she started planning again for a trip to Disney World over our February break.  It has been a cold winter— colder than usual even, with Buffalo experiencing 19 straight days in a row with temperatures below freezing (not a record, but still more than we've seen in almost a decade).   Julie has been looking forward to feeling the warmth of the sun and being outside.  In fact, the thing that she says that she has been looking forward to the most this time is just sitting outside and eating, especially a breakfast of Mickey waffles.

     We were reluctant to go back to Disney after last year’s trip.  It wasn’t exactly a disaster because we always have fun when we are on trips, but it certainly was a more subdued trip then we were originally expecting.  Abby’s fears and anxieties, combined with Julie’s bad knee and Emma’s need to get some schoolwork done while we were there, all meant that we took things a lot slower and in a more measured way than we otherwise would have.  But Julie’s knee surgery last year did wonders for her, Emma is finished at U.B., and Abby is a year older.  Even if Abby is still reluctant to go on some rides, we are confident that we can find lots of ways to have fun. 

     It’s Friday the 13^th, but we counted on our good luck and left today.  We  are driving because we thought Abby would have trouble flying.  We are taking our new Ford Explorer, which we got less than a month ago.  Scott has a planning period each day during 8^th period, so he took part of the day off and left school as soon as he was done with students at the end of 7^th period.  His first stop was to get Abby.  She was a little disappointed to miss time with her “STEM buddies” and the Valentine’s Day activities at the end of school.  At least she had her swag bag full of valentines and goodies from her classmates.  We swung by the house and got Emma, and then went to pick up Julie as she left her school.   

     We were on the road shortly after 2:30, headed to our first hotel in West Virginia.  We stopped in Pennsylvania at a Perkins for dinner.   It was a little underwhelming, but the highlight was when Abby and Julie won a tie-dye colored bear from the claw machine.  It took them $3 and six tries to do it.

      We made it to our West Virginia hotel well before 9:00, and after we dragged our bags in, we took Abby to the pool so she could enjoy it before it closed.