Contemporary Resort / Cars From All Over

Contemporary Resort

We have never stayed at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World, although we often drop by for a visit. It probably doesn’t look quite as futuristic as it did back in 1971. But still, how many buildings do you know that have Monorails running right through the middle of them?

After our visit to the Contemporary, we walked out to the dock to catch a boat to the Wilderness Lodge. As we were waiting, the setting sun was just starting to break through the clouds, which made for a neat view.

Photo location: Contemporary Resort, Walt Disney World, Florida
A three-exposure (-2, 0, +2) HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, edited in GIMP

Cars From All Over

When we drive to Florida, or most anywhere else, I always look to see where the other cars are from. Usually, they are from the general area of the Southeast United States, although there will occasionally be some cars from farther away as well. And even some from Canada, usually from Ontario or Quebec. And occasionally, you see some that are even more interesting than that.

On this trip, I saw a car from Alaska. In Florida. Talk about a long drive! I know it isn’t an impossible drive, but I would hope that with driving that far, they were staying a little bit longer than we were. And I wondered where else they might have stopped along their journey. Because I would guess that there is quite a lot to see between Alaska and Florida.

On Sundays when we are there, we always visit the same church. And occasionally when we are there, we see someone that we know. This time around, as we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a car with a Harding Academy sticker in the back window. Harding just happens to be the school where Laura teaches and Jaylin attends. Because it is a small private school, seeing a school sticker all the way in Florida is just a little unusual. When we sat down in the church auditorium, we started looking around. And on the row right in front of us was a lady that used to teach with Laura and still substitutes there after her retirement, along with her family. We were all pleasantly surprised to see each other! Spreading things out just a bit more, we saw them again a couple of days later at the Magic Kingdom, too.

But back to the cars. While driving around in the area, we saw a while Cadillac convertible. Just put some horns on the front of it, and it could have been Boss Hogg all the way from Hazzard County. That’s something you don’t see every day. I looked for the General Lee, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight.

On our last morning, we traditionally go to McDonald’s just down the street from our condo for breakfast before driving home. As we were leaving McDonald’s, there was a car in the parking lot from Fayette County, Tennessee, which just happens to be where we live. It isn’t often that we see a car from our rural county that far away from home. The man standing next to the car didn’t look familiar, so I didn’t get out to talk to him. Besides, the license plates on our rental car showed that we were from Virginia, so that would have taken some more explaining. Instead, we just drove our Virginia car back home to Tennessee.

Ever since we got back home, I keep seeing cars and thinking to myself, “Look! It’s a car from Tennessee!” And then I have to remind myself that it is because we are in Tennessee. Which explains why so many cars are from there. Vacation is over, after all.