Celebrating our 240th Independence

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays of the year and of course is especially made better with a 3 day weekend! After a week of not sleeping very well I enjoyed some extra time of relaxation, but also had a great time celebrating in the parks!

Saturday 2nd

My roommate rented a room at the Hard Rock Hotel so we had a ball at Universal! I'd been inside to go to the Velvet lounge during Mardi Gras (Thank you Mardi Gras Universal app for free drinks! What what?!?!) The rooms were even more amazing and we could even see CityWalk and the parks from our room! We had planned to spend the afternoon at the pool but when we first checked in it was pouring rain so we headed to CityWalk to go to one of the best places ever: Red Oven Pizza! It is seriously soooo good. Instead of heading back to the pool we decided to just hang out at the parks. We saw so of the cars cycling at the Hulk so hopefully it means that it will be back up and smoother than ever! I even got to watch part of the 100 years of movies nighttime show that I've never seen before. I'll definitely have to go back and see the whole thing. Before heading in for a relatively early night in we headed back to CityWalk to grab a bite to eat at Hot Dog Hall of Fame (where I of course got the Detroit option!)

Sunday 3rd 

We had such a great night sleep. Those beds at Hard Rock are COMFY! Today is the day that the holiday celebrations really began. Disney knows how to do fireworks so of course they do special ones for the holiday where they come hand and hand at both EPCOT and MK. This might seem to be a torn decision on what to attend, but luckily Magic Kingdom perimeter ones are on the 3rd and 4th, so I of course wanted to get the best of both worlds. My roommates and I met up with my roommate Sam's friends from out of town right before the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, which were amazing. I do have to say the best spot to see them is in the Hub. Afterwards we decided to go show our visitors Animal Kingdom at night. We were only there for about an hour, but we got a ton done including dinosaur twice, Everest, and a great safari where we saw the Hyenas!!!! I was pretty much jumping up and down because I've been waiting forever to see them! After a great night, Sam and her friends went back to MK for extra magic hours until 3am, but Corey, Scott, and I headed over to the new Applebees for some half price apps.

Monday 4th

Finally was the actual holiday! I celebrated by the all american decisions to go to Starbucks for their frappuccino deal and Five Guys for a great American cheeseburger. Then Corey, Scott, and I met up with Sam and her friends again for an evening of fun at EPCOT. We were lucky enough to be able to go on Test Track and the new Soarin', which I do think it is an improvement over the old one. Then we made our way around the world showcase before playing some Heads Up waiting for the fireworks. 

Overall, while we definitely know that summer has hit us with some crazy heat and humidity, it was a fantastic weekend with a good balance of relaxation, friends, parks, and celebrations. I have to say if you are ever in town for the Independence Day fireworks they are totally worth the crowds to watch! Like I said, Disney knows how to do fireworks. :) After such a great weekend, it was definitely hard to get up to go to work on Tuesday! lol

Find Your Park: National Park Service Centennial

This year is the centennial of the US National Park Service! If you've ever been to any of the parks you know how amazing they are! If you haven't gone to one yet or just need to get your nature fix in head over to the National Parks website at Find Your Park and head to one soon! 

To celebrate there was a special Ranger Mickey topiary at this years Flower and Garden Festival. I LOVED it!!! It reminded me of my Wilderness Explorer days and made me so happy to get the exposure of our beautiful parks to all of the Disney goers out there. On the weekends there was even a small booth nearby that was maned be people from the NPS and there occasionally was a ranger dressed in their uniform nearby! They were hoping to connect people to a park that may be near them and hand out goodies like temporary tattoos, stickers and sunglasses. I chose the elk tattoo since the Rockies are some of my favorite parks and even got a sticker to display at my desk!

Temporary tattoo from National Park Service
Booth at Flower and Garden

Roommates and I in front of Ranger Mickey
celebrating National Park Service Centennial

When my family came to visit in May we were even able to find my first park in Florida. I know, I know. It's a shame that I have been here two years and still haven't made it to the Everglades, but I hope to cross that off later this year. One of the days my parents were here we decided to venture over to St. Augustine. I hope to do another post on our overall experience there, but the great thing is that we were able to head over to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. It was SOOOO cool. I can't say it is anything like Yellowstone (but that is a National Park and not a monument) but it was so cool to visit a Fort that had so much history. 

The monument was originally a fort built by the Spanish and is the oldest masonary fort in the continental United States. The fort walls were beautiful as they are made with a unique rock called Coquina, which is largely made of little shells. It was crazy being in the rooms and seeing the walls with thousands upon thousands of shells! The fort sits on a beautiful site on the bay and gave amazing views. At first the fort didn't look like much from the outside, but inside I learned a ton about the history of St. Augustine and even was able to see a cannon firing demonstration! The day we visited was extremely hot, so we picked up some water from the gift shop and they even had a water bottle refill station inside that reminded me of my days at the Detroit Zoo.

Overall it was a really great experience and I totally recommend it if you are in town. I even picked up a new limited edition Park Passport. I totally recommend getting these. I have a little one from when I was growing up and it is so much fun to get all the stamps from where you visit. My old one was getting full so I talked myself into buying a new bigger one for the Centennial. It even has nice descriptions and maps of all the Parks, Lakeshores, Preserves, Monuments, etc all over the US so you can #FindYourPark!

Find Your Park and National Park Service Centennial pictures are from www.NPS.gov

Earth Month is Every Month

Okay, I think everyone should treat every month like Earth Month, but in reality the world officially celebrates it in April. One of my favorite things about Disney is the Company's commitment to the environment. We even have a word for it: Environmentality, which basically means to keep a commitment to act with the environment in mind. This is something that I always cared about a bit, but now live even more intentionally mostly due to my time being a Conservation Education Presenter at Animal Kingdom. 

Now, I could make countless posts about ways to live intentionally using Environmentality in everything you do so I won't go into too much detail in this post. Additionally, the longer I have worked for Disney I still continue to be amazed by the efforts that I am continually learning about. With a resort as large as Walt Disney World we sure do produce a lot of waste, but the Company has teams of people that work to find ways to divert that waste from landfills, wether it is your basic recycling, making dog toys out of old costumes, participating in Clean the World, composting, and the list goes on! 

Wearing my Environmentality button from
Old Key West's Earth Day event showing off the
homemade jam I bought at the Team Disney
farmers market

For Earth month there were a lot of activities around property including local Earth Day events at the various parks, resorts, and office buildings, voluntearing with nature preserves or recycling efforts, and even seminars and webinars as well! 

Spending 7 months teaching thousands of guests about conservation, it is still something I am very passionate about. So I attended a couple of Earth day events, including one at Old Key West, one of the resorts I work with, bought local goods from a farmers market set up at team Disney (I even won a raffle!), and I was even honored to be invited out to Saratoga (another of my resort partners) to help with a Purple Martin nest check. These birds are a migratory bird that is threatened of lack of nesting space so people around the country use these birdhouses and gourds to give them a place to nest. Disney has a bunch of them on property and we check and band the birds so we can see how the populations are doing, band for future observation, and make sure parasitic birds-birds that lay eggs in other birds nests- don't take over the nests.This was such a cool opportunity and I felt honored to have been asked to participate. I even got to hold a baby bird, even if it did poop all over my hand! 

Baby purple martins!

To show off my Environmentality every day, I have added elements to my desk at work! I collect the Disney Conservation Fund buttons. These are fun to collect and the money donated goes to a great cause! I also was lucky to buy up a few old Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund signs to add to my wall to show off some of the amazing work that we contribute towards. Lastly, one of my favorites is a picture of some vultures at Animal Kingdom Lodge signed by members of the keeper team thanking me for helping out with enrichment training on World Vulture Day last fall! I'm continually adding and love having these reminders with me every day and enjoy the conservation starter they can be to people that stop by.

Now get out there, keep environmentality in the back of your mind, and learn more of the small things you can do to celebrate Earth Day every day!

Some old Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF) posters that I bought

My treasured vulture picture

My pin collection which I am very proud of!