Monday October 1, 2001

Pretty quiet morning. We heard only some faint foot steps overhead and distant doors slamming. Since the sun rises from the east (the other side of resort) our room remained quite dark in the morning. Not such a bad thing when we wanted to relax and catch up on our lost sleep.

We had breakfast inside, as the balcony was too cool. After finding our bathing suits, we jumped into the car and drove over to the Beach House. A nice drive as well. HHI is rather unusual as part of it is on the marshes and part on the beach. DVC actually purchased a strip of beach front property to build the Beach House. Besides the beach, there is a fair sized pool, a fast food (Signals) counter, Surfmen’s Bar, Big Buoy Arcade, and Signalman’s Station (fashioned on the old life saving stations along the Atlantic- prior to the Coast Guard). After selecting a pool-side seat, we took a quick walk on the beach. A cold front had come through the area (that’s why we were in cloudy weather on Saturday) and had dropped the temperatures. As a result, the beach was chilly with the water temps feeling cold. For the next several hours, we swam in the pool, enjoyed the sun (bright blue, cloudless sky) and read our books. A very relaxing start to our vacation. The crowds very light even in the middle of the day. We enjoyed lunch at Signals (a little pricey $17.49 for the two of us). We noticed new name tags on the CM’s today. The 100th Anniversary ones. Replacing the places they are from is a character or place (we haven’t figured out what exactly but perhaps their favorite or first Disney memory).

After spending time at the pool we made our way to the car. We knew we were at Disney when we saw a CM out walking the parking lot picking up trash. Very Disney! Back at the room, we used the whirlpool to clean off. The long drive down made us worn out so we took a nap.

After awakening we took a walk around Shelter Cove and purchased some souvenirs for ourselves and our cat sitters as well as some family Xmas presents. We stopped into PJ’s New York deli for a quick ice cream. We were on the way back to the resort when we took a detour to the Preview Center. We had talked about adding points to our ownership and wanted to talk to one of the sales reps. We spoke with Susan about adding 50 points and she told us we could use Magical Beginnings and receive a $13 credit for add-on points if we ‘return’ the points for this year. We took home some of the paperwork and decided to think it over.

We sat down to crunch some numbers to decide whether or not to add more points. We needed to figure out what our costs would be for the purchase as well as yearly dues. We have used and loved DVC so much that we concluded it would be worth it for us.

We prepared dinner and decided to eat in as it was quite chilly outside.  After cleaning up from dinner we took a ride to Wal-Mart. We highly recommend this as there is a whole section (just inside the front door) of reasonably price souvenirs. There were several T-shirts for $5.00 as well as coffee mugs, photos, etc. We bought some warm clothes, as well as several items for the folks back home.

After a short drive around town we headed back to our room and played a game of Disney Monopoly. Bed and sleep followed shortly.