Pop-up Stories from 1999

September 1999 John, Kirsten and I drove down to Florida with the camper to meet my sister who was flying in to Stanford Airport in Orlando. We had booked two weeks of camping at the Disney Fort Wilderness Campground.  On the way down we had both of the brand new tires on the camper burst, luckily not at the same time. We had to find a garage for the second one because we were already using our spare. After we got back home we discovered that the tires were half an inch wider than the original tires and they had rubbed on the wheel well of the camper causing the blow out.

We had a wonderful time at Disney World until Hurricane Floyd chased us out, of course, this was the first time Disney World had ever been closed.

John had left on the Monday to drive over to St Petersburg for some ASME  meetings that he was scheduled to attend. Then on Tuesday we were told we had to evacuate but John had the van over in St Pete's. We called John and while he drove back to pick us up, we emptied the pop-up piling every thing to one side then closed the pop-up so that we were ready to roll. When John arrive we loaded the van and set off back to his hotel in St Pete's. As soon as we started driving he realized we had a problem with the transmission.  We were in a stop and go traffic jam with no first gear, traveling with the heater on and all the windows open to help cool the engine.  We were on tenterhooks all the way to the hotel a drive normally of 2 hrs that took four because of the traffic. The next day we took the van in to have a new transmission installed.  We were able to get it back in time to drive back to Disney World on the Friday so that my sister could get her flight out on the Saturday.

We decided we would stay at the Disney All Star Movies Hotel rather than the campground for the two nights we had left. We started our journey home on the Sunday, stopping in at John's sister's in North Carolina for a short visit before finally driving home.