I Wonder as I Wander…

Pure Pleasure in Puerto Rico

2010-03-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

Our next trip was the most wonderful vacation. Right after Christmas, our whole family (four generations from 8 months to 81 years old) went to Puerto Rico for a week of warm weather, sunshine and relaxation. Eight of us (Grandma, Ross, Richard, Kara, Paul, Naomi, Bob and I) stayed at a hotel near the airport, boarded a crowded and very cold shuttle for a five hour flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Why Puerto Rico? I was asked that many times and really didn’t have a good answer. Last year Bob and I took a Caribbean Cruise and really enjoyed spending a week in the warm sunshine during December. We talked about a cruise, but didn’t find anything that fit our schedules. We also talked about getting a condo or something in the Keys, but didn’t find anything reasonable. So we looked at NWA World Vacations and found this air, hotel, and rental car deal that was really good—so we booked it!

Naomi did really well on the flight—she fussed a little when we were getting ready to take off—she was hungry and Kara wanted to wait to feed her until we were actually taking off—so she lets us know she didn’t like that. But then she slept and played the rest of the time.

We got to San Juan and walked out of the plane into a balmy 80 degree heat. We had two rental cars at two different places—so it was interesting to try and met up again at a restaurant.
Ross and Richard’s conversation when something like “We’re on the south side of the freeway—right by the big sign that says ‘Cockfights’”. We had asked at the car rental place for someplace to get real Puerto Rican food. So we dined on rice and black beans and baked plantains.

We were in a really nice Hilton hotel in Ponce about one and a half hour from San Juan. All our rooms had balconies that faced the beach. Mom and I loved to get up early and sit on the balcony and watch the sun come up. We even left our sliding glass door open several nights so we could feel the breeze and hear the ocean crashing against the shore. That is so relaxing!

As part of our package, we had breakfast at the hotel every morning. It was a huge buffet (we saw that it would have cost $19.99) and they had chefs making special orders, plus lots of fruit, eggs, meat, rolls, salmon and lox, and lots of other really good stuff. We ate very well every morning.

Ross and Richard’s Christmas gift to the family was a snorkeling trip out to Isla Caja de Muertos, a nature reserve that’s near Ponce with a diving company called Caribbean Images Tours. This was such a wonderful day—the people who have the company were very interesting. Dave is an underway photographer very knowledgeable in marine life and his wife, Lynn is a producer (one she mentioned was the Dr. Phil show).

It was a beautiful day with crystal clear turquoise waters. Naomi fell asleep on the way out, so Mom and Lynn were able to look after her and the rest of us were able to snorkel. Dave and his deck hand, Juan, led us on a guided tour so they could point out the wide variety of marine life on the coral reef. The reef was 3 – 10 feet deep and full of beautiful tropical fish and coral. We saw blue tang, four eye butterfly, damsel fish, and sergeant major fish—plus a lot of coral. We also saw a conch with a crab in it and then Juan gave us several empty conch shells.

Mom enjoyed spending the day on the boat. Naomi woke up just shortly before we got back—so the timing was perfect. When we got back, Kara put Naomi in the water with Paul—she wasn’t sure quite what to think about it. I wonder if Kara had gotten in the water with her, she wouldn’t have been a lot happier. Her lifejacket had a handle on the top, so when Kara took her out of the water, she just lifted her by the handle.

That evening we went to a restaurant that Dave and Lynn recommended in downtown Ponce. We got there around 4:30 pm and it was totally empty. We had a really good meal—we had a lot of seafood and sweet plantains. Later in the week, we drove past that same restaurant at 8 pm and it was packed.

Kara and Paul’s gift to everyone was massages. Ohh, how relaxing! It was interesting because there were two massage therapists so they did two people at a time. That evening we went to a Sushi bar and ate raw fish—yummy!

One evening, we drove around the downtown area. They really do a great job of decorating for Christmas. Every light standard had a decoration on it and then there were some hanging over the road. The town square was full of colorful angels made from Christmas lights. It was a visual explosion of color and lights. We also drove up to the castle which was all lit up. From up there, you could see the entire town. We also saw a lot of stray dogs—there are tons of them wandering around the town—mangy, skinny, and hollow-eyed.

On Dec 31, Ross and Richard went to San Juan to visit the sites there. Naomi, Kara, Paul, Bob and I drove over to the El Yunque National Park—which is a Rain Forest. It was really pretty, but rained hard the farther we went into it—it is a rain forest after all and rains a total of 240 inches every year. They estimate over 100 billion gallons of rainwater fall on the forest every year. The forest has a lot of rare wildlife including the Puerto Rican Parrot—we didn’t see any. We did see a lot of bamboo trees, waterfalls, and tropical flowers.

We stopped in a little roadside café. I got a coconut drink—they just chopped the top off a coconut and stuck a straw in top. It was a watery liquid and OK, but not delicious. We also had some beans and rice and more plantains.

Since it was New Year’s Eve, we decided to get some party food and Puerto Rican Rum to have a family celebration. We chose not to pay the $70 per person for the buffet. Although Mom and Paul went gambling for a little while—they didn’t win anything. We wandered around and saw a lot of fancy clothing—even on little kids.

It was fun when New Years came around. There was a party going on in the Hotel lobby and we heard them start to count down, but our cell phones didn’t match their time. All around the city we could see fireworks going off. As midnight approached it got more and more until it was constant. Really awesome!

The next day (New Year’s Day) we had to head for home—which turned into quite an experience. Since we didn’t leave until 5 pm, we had a leisurely day driving from Ponce to San Juan—even had some time to wander around San Juan for a while—talk about narrow streets and winding roads. Ross and Richard had spent the day there, so knew their way around a little bit.

We got on to the airplane and were getting ready to leave when we heard—‘there’s a mechanical problem—someone is coming to fix it’. A while later, ‘we’ve been told someone is coming within 30 minutes to fix it’…and later ‘the maintenance people are on their way to fix it’……Three hours later, we finally take off. I was upgraded to first class, but let mom sit up there—so she could get first class service. Naomi slept or played most of the way, so she was very good.

Our flight had been changed so rather than flying directly to Mpls, we went to Detroit. Needless to say, when we were so late in leaving, we missed our connecting flight. They put us up in a hotel and gave us vouchers for $100 off our next trip and $15 for food. But it was really late when we got there and we had to leave very early in the morning. We did eat breakfast at the airport after we arrived.

This time both Bob and I were upgraded—and what an upgrade—because this was a 747—it was huge. Bob and Paul took the first class seats because they were going to run and get the cars, while we got the luggage. Those seats big bubbles around the heads with full reclining seats—pretty plush—too bad it was only a one hour flight.

We got back to Ross and Richard’s, sorted out some things and Kara and Paul headed for Owatonna because Naomi was baptized there on Sunday—the rest of us headed down there on Sunday. All most all of Paul’s family was there and they were able to celebrate Christmas—which they missed because of the snow storm and Paul’s birthday.

Baby Panda excitement

2010-02-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

Our next trip was to San Diego—by way of Los Angeles—it’s just so much cheaper flying into LAX. And we’ve found a great Hampton Inn that’s close to the airport and is fairly reasonable.

We stayed in Oceanside, which is a little south of LA, for several days. We ended up changing hotels since I had goofed when I made reservations and checked us out a day earlier than we wanted and the hotel we were staying in was full for that night and we had to move to another hotel that was just across the parking lot. We visited chapters that were on the south side of LA—one was Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. It was about an hour drive and we visited with several chapter members and the advisor.

When it was time to leave, the advisor made the comment that she had to take a bus home because her car was in the shop and it would be a two hour trip. We offered to give her a ride—although it was about a 45 minute drive in the opposite direction from where we were staying. She was so grateful that she didn’t have to take the long bus ride, that she suggested we have dinner together at a great seafood restaurant. It was some of the best seafood we have ever eaten.

We moved to San Diego and stayed in a Hilton in the Gas Lamp District—which is a historic part of town with lots of neat shops and restaurants. Right across the train tracks is the convention center that has lots of steps going up one side of it and down the other. We climbed up and over them one day—Bob did it a couple days—if we would do that every day, we’d be in pretty good shape. There were lots of runners going up and down them as well.

It was ironic because Terry and Pam were in San Diego at a convention at the same time, so we got together and went to Old Town for lunch one day. How amazing when relatives from Atlanta and Minnesota would end up at conventions in San Diego at the same time.

We had Sunday afternoon free, so we went to the San Diego Zoo. I was all excited because I knew they had a baby panda and I wanted to see it. Little did I know, that they keep the baby out of the public’s eye for quite a while. They did have a ‘baby panda cam’ going, so you could see the baby sleeping, but you could view that on the web without going to the zoo http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/index.html Although we got to see other big Pandas and one was walking around and eating—a lot of time they just sleep.

It was really fun to go to the zoo. It’s the first time I’ve been to one in a long long time. I was amazed at some of the brilliant coloration of the animals. We also saw hippos in the water behind a glass wall—so we were very close.
The zoo has a lot of natural settings, so it’s not just a bunch of cages with animals. It also had a sky tram that we took over the tree tops which was very neat. We were there on Nov. 22 and they were just decorating for Christmas—it looked like many of the lights were in the shapes of animals, so I’ll bet it would be fantastic to be there when it was all lit up.

We got back home just in time to wash up some clothes and head out to Bottineau and Minot for Thanksgiving. Why stay home when you can go someplace? We had a wonderful visit with family, helped process venison, and did some quilting.

Uneventful (Maybe even on the edge of boring) Trip

2010-01-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

Bob had a meeting in Columbus, Ohio. We’ve been in that area before (actually twice this past summer) and there are lots of things to see and do in that area, but this time we didn’t have a car and our hotel was in the middle of nowhere. To make matters worse, the only restaurant that was in walking distance (some others were close enough, but there were no sidewalks along busy roads) was a Waffle House. We ate lunch there and then later the same day went there for dinner—it was pretty blah.

In my travels, I like to talk about the neat things we see and do and also the great restaurants and food we eat. This trip didn’t have any of those.

LA - Oxnard - Fargo

2010-01-24T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here I go with a lot of quick trip posts from last fall….

We did a fairly quick trip to Los Angeles area. I visited some chapters and also chartered a new chapter in Oxnard, which is between LA and Santa Barbara. It’s funny, I’ve never heard of some of these places, but after I learn that I’m going someplace, I hear about it on TV shows or that someone knows someone who lives there. Oxnard was no exception—on TV there was a reference to someone having to move to Oxnard—not the Oxnard by the ocean, but the Oxnard with all the onion fields. And we saw both.

We left LA area and decided that we would go to a seafood restaurant along the ocean. We stopped at one place and it was actually a burger joint (and kind of a dive). We asked about seafood (since there was a big sign out front) and he said “Oh you’ll have to go next door”, but there was no one there—it was like a fish market. So we left and found a neat restaurant in Oxnard called the Lobster Trap. It was really good. Then the next night the new advisor suggested we go out to eat and said “How about this really great restaurant—The Lobster Trap?” So we ate there twice, but it was well worth it.

One morning, we decided we needed to get our exercise. Should we go to the fitness center and work out, or should we go to the beach for a walk along the ocean?? Guess where we went! I love the ocean!

Another fun thing that happened on this trip was at a steakhouse. We tend to eat a good breakfast at the hotel, have an apple or granola bar during the day and then eat supper around 5 pm. We have learned that not many people in California eat that early—most of the restaurants are empty. So we went to this Steakhouse and as we walked in, there were about 5 people sitting at the bar talking quite loud and laughing a lot. There was no one in the dining area, but they assured us that they were open. We ordered our meal and while we were waiting, one of the guys from the bar walked by our table on his way to the rest room; he stopped and apologized for their group being so loud. He said they are all in the wine business and don’t get a chance to get together very often, so they have a really good time when they do. We assured him that they weren’t bothering us. He offered to buy us a drink, but we said that we don’t really drink. Later the waitress came and told us that the group had paid for our meals. WOW how nice was that!

We flew from LA to Fargo, so I could go to a leadership conference in Alex (home of Big Ole). Our flight was changed due to some bad weather, so we ended up getting into Fargo later than expected. But we got there just in time for an advisor reception, so I got to visit with a lot of my friends. When we left the following day, we were in the Fargo airport and were surprised to bump into my nephew’s in-laws in the airport. What a small world.

Bean Town

2010-01-23T19:03:00.000-08:00

This was written a long time ago, but I'm just getting around to posting it. My goal is to get caught up in the next week or so....

After a short, but really nice visit with Naomi—she’s growing so fast and really happy most of the time—lots of smiles and giggles.

We had to get up early Monday morning to catch a plane for Boston—everything was pretty uneventful. Planes were on time, rental car was ready and traffic wasn’t too bad to get to our hotel. We found a great seafood restaurant close to our hotel called Finz. That night we had to stay up late to watch Monday night football (MN vs. Green Bay). Since I’d just been to Green Bay and Brett Farve has moved to the Vikings—there was a lot of talk about the game. It was a good game—especially since the Vikings came out on top.

The next day, I had a meeting at a college that was close to our hotel—only about 10 miles, but we ended up in construction and very slow moving traffic and then the road we were suppose to turn on was blocked—so we got to the college right as my meeting was scheduled to start. Bob dropped me off right at the door and a security guard brought me to the room.

That night was when the MN Twins were playing Detroit Tigers in a playoff game for the Central Division Championship (Yay, they won!). However, it was another late night. We watched more sports than we had for a long time.

The next morning, we got up very early to take the T into downtown Boston. When we checked in to the hotel, the clerk told us the best way to get downtown was to take the T—and there was a station right around the corner. He gave us the timetable for the train and we were figuring how to get to the college. I asked the desk clerk a whole lot of questions and directions. We even decided we didn’t need to leave quite as early as we originally planned.

We were fortunate, because as we were leaving the hotel it started sprinkling, as we were crossing the train tracks it was raining a little harder. When we got to the shelter, it started to pour. As I was riding the T, my mind kept repeating the Kingston Trio lyrics ‘did he ever return? No, he never returned and his fate is still unknown…’ But we didn’t have any issues and it was a very nice ride and walk through downtown Boston to go to Ben Franklin Institute of Technology. That afternoon, we visited another college.

We checked out of the hotel and headed for southern Mass and Rhode Island. The trees were absolutely beautiful. I’ve often heard of New England in the Fall, and I think it would be even prettier farther north, but there was still some spectacular scenery. I had one visit in Fall River—we had some time before the meeting, so sat in Battleship Park and ate lunch. We could see huge battleships right on the harbor.

We headed south and crossed over into Rhode Island, went though Newport and got into Warwick where the Leadership Conference was being held. The hotel was a Crowne Plaza, which was pretty fancy. The conference was held at CC of Rhode Island which was very close to the hotel. We could see this huge round building up on the hill and wondered if it was the college. When we got there we saw it was the college and a very distinct shape. I mentioned it was ‘interesting’ and several students laughed and said ‘you mean ugly, don’t you?’ They told me it was in the shape of a submarine—and really had that theme throughout the entire building. Some of the windows looked like portholes; the bathrooms looked like stainless steel metal cabinets and everything was stainless steel inside.

Bob met up with Joe, one of his high school classmates, and his wife. They picked me up and we went out to eat at a Legal’s Seafood. I had a cup of clam chowder, but Joe thought we needed to try several things, so he ordered raw clams on the half-shell and a bucket of steamers. We had to try them all. The raw clams were a lot like raw oysters. The steamers had to be peeled to get the sand off them. Then you swished them in broth to wash them off. They were very good.

The next night we moved back to the same hotel we were in the first couple nights, since it was pretty close to the airport. Sunday, we flew in to Hibbing and were able to spend a few days with Naomi.

Packer Country!

2009-10-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

I had an unexpected trip come up—to Green Bay, Wisconsin to attend a Leadership Conference. Bob had planned to go to Moorhead for his conference (and I was going to visit chapters in the area while we were there) when I got asked if I could change my plans. I could, but Bob couldn’t. So I went alone—sigh, I don’t like that too much. It’s so much nicer traveling together.

I was suppose to leave at noon on Thursday, but there was a severe thunderstorm going through the Mpls area, so the plane came in the Int’l Falls, but was cancelled going out—my flight. I was rebooked on the 4 pm flight. I thought it would work to go to the cities, have a nice supper with Ross and Richard and get to Green Bay Friday morning.

So I went to Hardees, ate a hamburger and then worked on some things I had to do. I got back to the airport around 2:30; we went through security and waited… and waited…….and waited. Pretty soon the agent came out and said “There has been another delay, we won’t go until 5:15 pm”…then it was 6 pm….7:30 pm. Finally about 8:15 pm the agent came running out looking for the pilot—we had a 15 minute window to take off—get everyone through security right away!

The pilot was really nice, he ordered pizza for the entire group, although by this time, a lot of people had rebooked for the next day, or driven to the cities—so there was only 8-10 of us left. I got to the cities around 10:30 pm—generally when we’re passing through any time after 9:30 pm—it’s pretty quiet. The airport was packed, with lots of planes coming in and taking off yet. Ross and Richard picked me up, so we had a short time to visit and then ate breakfast together and Ross dropped me back off at the airport around 8:30 am.

I made it to my hotel and met Linda, the regional coordinator, so I ended up riding with her all the time. I hardly drove my car at all. I had just enough time to move into my room and change clothes and we headed over to the college. The college is really nice—they have a little coffee shop that has Kindles that they ‘loan’ out to the students, so they can use them while in the shop.

This was the first ever Leadership Conference in Wisconsin, so it was pretty exciting. There were quite a few chapters who attended that have never come to any other meetings. We had a fabulous Italian Table dinner and then had a tour through Lambeau Field (where the Packers play). It was really wonderful to see the place and hear about the history behind it. And the field is huge with seating for 71,000—and they don’t have tiers, so there is a pretty good view from every seat. The grass was interesting—they wove one strand of nylon grass in about every inch of the sod. This makes the roots of the sod grow around the nylon strand and makes it much stronger so it never has to be resodded during the season.
A few years ago they did a $500 million renovation—added an extra 20,000 seats and more suites, an atrium, convention center (where they hold a lot of weddings), pro shop, restaurant and bar. Those places are used year around, but the huge stadium is only used 10 days per year. That fact really stimulated a lot of discussion around the Paradox of Affluence.

The convention ended on Saturday afternoon, and I didn’t leave until Sunday morning, so I just hung out and relaxed since I would get to Int’l Falls at 4 pm and leave for Boston at 7 pm the next morning from Hibbing. I did some quick unpacking, repacking, and hurrying to Hibbing so I could have some fun time with Naomi and her parents.

Beautiful Northern California

2009-10-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

After Labor Day, we spent a week and a half in northern California. We saw some beautiful country, but it was tiring, because we were there for nine days and were in six different hotels. That meant we were packing and moving practically every day. And we moved a lot--we put over 1500 miles on the car.

We got in to Sacramento fairly late and drove to Stockton, which is about an hour drive from Sacramento—so we were checking into the hotel at 1:30 am (which really was 3:30 am to us). We were treated very well—first had complimentary passes to the Sky Club at the airport—so were able to snack, sit in comfortable chairs, and be on the internet. Then I was upgraded to First Class—Bob wasn’t, but he was in seat 5A and I was in 4A, so he was right behind me. I could have passed him snacks, if I would have stayed awake when they were passing them out.

The next day, I had a meeting in the morning here in Stockton, and then chartered a chapter in Concord (it’s about an hour away). Then we drove to Redding—which is about 4 hours—so it was a long day and we were tired. The next day we went back and forth between Redding and Weed, but did get to stay in the same motel for two nights!

The road between Redding and Weed is beautiful, with mountains on both sides and lots of trees. Then all of a sudden Mount Shasta shows up towering above all of the others. It’s beautiful and so much bigger than everything else.

On the weekend, we decided to visit Crater Lake, since neither Bob nor I had ever been there. I had read and heard people say “it’s so blue”, but I was still amazed at the deep beautiful blue it was. And it’s huge—about six miles across with sheer cliffs all around it. Crater Lake lies inside a caldera, or volcanic basin, created when the 12,000 foot high Mount Mazama collapsed 7,700 years ago following a large eruption.

The lake is supplied with rain and winter snow (they said over 500 inches per year). There are no inlets or outlets to the lake. Crater Lake, at 1,943 feet deep, is the seventh deepest lake in the world and the deepest in the United States. This is why the lake is so blue—all the red and yellows are absorbed and the blues and purples are reflected. It’s also cold and pure—you get down to the water at one place, and can swim, but not for long because hypothermia will set in quickly.

We went from there to Bandon, which is on the coast. I’m just like a kid as we are approaching an ocean—I get all excited and can’t wait until I get my first glimpse of water. Then we drove down Hwy 101 which has spectacular views of the ocean. I lived in several of those towns, so remembered some of the places. We even found an old run-down school that I attended for first grade in Langlois. We stayed for two nights in Crescent City. We were able to walk along the ocean a couple times. I love walking barefoot in the sand with the waves lapping at my feet. We could even hear the seals barking out on the rocks.

We continued down Hwy 101 which is beautiful; first, the Oregon and northern California coast is really rugged with lots of rocks and cliffs and second, that’s redwood country—so there are the huge redwoods all around. We left Hwy 101 to go on Hwy 1, which winds through the coastal mountains and redwoods—it’s beautiful, but slow going. We stayed in Fort Bragg which sits on a cliff. One morning, we had some time, so sat out on the cliff and just watched the waves crashing into the rocks and swirling around. We also ate at a restaurant called the Cliff House—which is build on the cliff and has tiered seats, so everyone had a beautiful view. Although it got foggy every evening—we didn’t see a good sunset, but the mornings were clear.

We left the coast to head back to Sacramento, stopping at a couple places in central California. Boy, is it dry there—most of the fields have long brown grass unless they are being irrigated. I can see why there are so many fires happening out there. We had an uneventful trip home. But flew in to Hibbing, so got to see Naomi and her family, and then Ross and Richard came—so we had a great visit.

Summer Travels

2009-09-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

This summer flew by and included a fair amount of travel, but short trips which didn’t include much time for seeing any sights. So I’ll try and catch up on my blogging in one post.

In June, we did a quick trip to Minneapolis for Ross and Richard’s graduation—they both earned MBA’s. It was a lot of fun because Kara, Paul and Naomi and Richard’s mom and Tom were there as well and we always have a good time when we are all together.

The first week in July, we spent time with Naomi and back to the cities for chapter visits. As soon as we got home, we packed and left for meetings in Columbus Ohio. We flew into Dayton, which is about an hour and half drive from Columbus. Following the conference, several of us went out to eat at a wonderful German restaurant named Schmidts—so many different kinds of brats and sauerkraut. And their special dessert is cream puffs—HUGE cream puffs, with chocolate drizzled all over them. The next morning, we had to leave early to catch our plane and it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything, but it cleared in time for our flight.

The second week in July, we first did a quick trip to Hibbing/Duluth for a doctor appointment for mom. Then we flew to Boston for an advisor meeting. We got there Friday afternoon, ate supper at a great little seafood restaurant (I had New England clam chowder), went to the conference on Saturday, and went back home Sunday morning.

The last week in July, we went back to Ohio—this time Pique, which is a little north of Dayton. We had a little more time on this trip, so we were able to see a few things. The first was the Longaberger Basket office (which is an eight story building that looks like a basket). Then we went to their plant which wasn’t in production due to their annual convention being held. But we were able to look around and I got to make a basket (with a little help from a weaver)

One evening we went to a concert in the town square in Troy, Ohio—it was a group from Canada who specialized in music by the Eagles. There were thousands of people and most had their own lawn chairs—since we didn’t have chairs, we ended up sitting on a curb—it was a beautiful evening and really great music.

I went directly from Ohio to Jackson, but Bob went home, so we went to the airport together and went two different directions—although both our flights were late. I went through Atlanta and had to really hurry to make my flight—I think I was the last person on the plane.

The first week of August, Jackson was hot and humid—although the locals kept saying, ‘it’s not bad—you should have seen it the last few weeks’. Every day was packed with meetings and I ate breakfast and supper at the hotel most of the time. I did have a couple of fun evenings. One was with the International Officers. They decided to cook for some of the staff members—and it was a lot of ethnic foods. It was great getting to know them and be with some of the staff members.

I asked Saralyn if she wanted to go to Cock of the Walk for supper—she did and then asked Susan and Jeff and West to go along—we had a lot of fun and laughs—along with really great catfish.

Later in August found us heading back to Duluth for more appointments with mom. Ross and Richard came up for supper one night and Naomi, Kara and Paul ate with us and then stayed over one night. We got in a few games of cards and in the morning, I sat outside at the hotel holding Naomi while she was sleeping. It was perfect—a nice warm sunny day with a view of Lake Superior and cuddling my sweet granddaughter. We even got to walk along the lake walk which is one of my favorite places for a walk.

We went back to Duluth in Sept. for another appointment with mom and felt pretty good after this trip—she is responding well to the medication and has to go back in three months for a vision check and six months for the next MRI. The best part is she is feeling so much better and back to her old self.

Iceland? Why are you going to Iceland?

2009-08-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

I heard that many times while we were planning our trip to Iceland and generally responded ‘because I’ve never been there’. I also heard ‘What are you going to see and do in Iceland’. After Ross, Richard, Bob and I decided to go to Iceland, I heard so many people who had lived, visited, or knew people from here. A couple of the speakers at our Int’l convention mentioned Iceland due to its geothermal heat and its economic crisis.

It was a little due to the economic crisis that we chose Iceland—right now they really need tourists to help their economy—so some of their prices are pretty low. The airfare wasn’t too bad and the apartment where we are staying is very reasonable. The food is still pretty pricy because they have to import almost everything (except whale, lamb and puffin).

As we were landing, all we could see out the plane window was what looked like tundra—just black lava with a little bit of moss on it. Someone had compared it to the moon’s surface and that’s the way I would describe it as well—barren and rocky. Our bus ride into the city had more of the same, but you could see a snow covered mountain across the way and every so often there would be a bunch of wild flowers—I saw some lupines. As we got closer to Reykjavik, there were more trees and flowers—although I think it’s early, the lilacs are just starting to show some buds.

We got here Thursday morning around 6:30 am—we had left Mpls at 7:20 pm Wed evening. The flight was 6 hours and they are 5 hours ahead of CDT. They are actually on GMT. So we had all day to wander around and try and get caught up on our sleep. We found an information center and picked up a lot of brochures, a bank and changed our money (and had hot chocolate and mocha), and did a little sight seeing. We got to city hall—which is a neat building right next to The Pond. The guys walked around the pond and I decided to sit on a bench in the sunshine, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I laid on the bench and took a nap.

About 5:30 pm, Gunnar (who has the apartment) gave us a tour of Reykjavik. It was very interesting—he told us a lot of the history of the country and city. He also stopped the car in the middle of the road to point out something. Sometimes he would sit there until the car behind him honked--although no one seemed to get too upset. He’d also be looking at something and drift into the other lane—once Richard grabbed the wheel because he was heading for the curb.

After we got back to our apartment, we decided we needed to eat something—we had seen a restaurant that said it had a fish feast—so we went there. Most of the fish was cold—and there must have been 20 different things—dill salmon, smoked salmon, cod, fish pasta, scallops, oysters and squid, and even whale. The whale was very dark and tasted and had the consistency of raw meat. They also had several hot entrees—potatoes, vegetables and a couple pasta dishes. And, what really drew us to the feast—they had a whole table full of deserts including chocolate cake, yogurt (which is very good here), several cheeses, and fruit. The restaurant also boasted an ‘ice bar’—so we had to check it out. It was a very cold room that had ice blocks all over the walls with benches and tables made of ice. The benches did have a heavy furry thing on them. There was an actual bar in it—although no one else was in there at the time—maybe it was too early or a Thursday night. Everything was very blue. After all that eating, we went back, played one game of cards and went to bed.

One of the huge pastimes in Iceland is going to the swimming pool—even in the winter. Since they have all this geothermal hot water coming out of the ground, they use it to make swimming pools and hot tubs (they call hot pots). So all over town there are swimming pools and the big social networking happens at the pool. Gunnar said he goes to the pool every day at 5 pm—so he meets up with the same people and they discuss all the issues of the day. We spend most of the day on Friday at Laugardalslaug, which is the largest. It has an indoor pool (used for training); outdoors there is a huge pool with lanes for swimming laps, a huge pool that was full of toys like slides and floaty things, a huge rock hot tub, a wading pool, a series of five hot pots, each one getting hotter and one being salt water and a steambath. They are very strict that you have to soap up and shower (without your swimsuit) before you go into the pool and then shower when you get out again. I’ve started walking around naked like all the other women in the locker room.

That evening, we ate at a place where Ross and I had a puffin feast, Richard had a lamb feast, and Bob had sole. Yes, they eat those cute little puffins—it was very interesting a dark meat with the texture and a little bit of the taste of liver (but not as offensive). We even had a puffin salad and Richard had a lamb salad. Iceland was playing Holland in football (soccer) on Saturday, so we were beginning to see a lot of bright orange around (Holland’s color). After we were seated, in came 18 men (with all kinds of orange clothes)—they were very boisterous and pretty loud. It was funny, because when their food came—there was no talking, but really loud clinking of silverware. You could tell when they finished eating, because the noise level went up quickly.

We had massage appointments back at the swimming pool on Saturday. Bob and I left early while the boys slept in (they had gone out clubbing the night before—since the bars don’t close until 5 pm—they stayed there until then). It’s about a 45 minute walk to the pool, so we have been getting our exercise. The massage was very relaxing—I even dozed for a bit afterward. It was the first really warm and sunny day, so everyone was out soaking up the sun—we got a little burned. Bob and I left the pool before the boys and stopped to shop at a few places—we got our Christmas ornament and an Icelandic sweater. Later the boys stopped at the same places and got sweaters. We look really cool! We also look really cool in our fancy bathrobes that came with the apartment.

Gunnar showed us a hot dog stand that was always busy. He said it was the best hot dogs in town, so we had to go there and get one—they were very good. We had them ‘with everything’ which included brown mustard, a mayo relish, onions, and some crispy fried onions. Richard wants to go back sometime.

Sunday was a day to stock up on groceries and do some sightseeing. Ross and Richard had gone clubbing again, so Bob and I got up and made a run to the grocery store—it’s a lot of fun to look at the different products—most of them don’t have the writing in English at all, so we were just trying to figure out what it was. Sometimes we have to go by photos on the boxes because the orange juice says ‘appelsinu’ on it and the apple juice said ‘epla’ on it.

We were going to do the harbor festival yesterday, but it rained all day long—so we decided to visit the Church that sits at the top of a hill with a huge tower. We went to the top of the tower and could see all around us. The church is doing a renovation, so the tower is covered with scaffolding, which is a little disappointing.

From there, we went to the Settlement museum which had the actual archeological dig from a long house that was build 871 +/– 2. They have started saying ‘plus or minus 2’ for a lot of their dates, because they found some discrepancy in some of the dates they had been using for years; Christianity came here in 1000 (+/- 2). The Settlement museum was very interesting and had great technology. They had displays that were motion activated and would run a little show about people hunting the auk (a big dumb bird that couldn’t fly, so is now extinct). There was also a huge model of the long house that had an interactive display where you could see what the different parts of the house were used for. It was like a giant touch screen touch phone—at one point there were six different viewings going at the same time. Even Richard was impressed by the technology.

For supper, we decided to go to this seafood restaurant that Gunnar recommended. It was about 5:10, so we went in, but they didn’t open until 6, so we made a reservation and came back. The restaurant was a house with different rooms and it was like grandma’s attic—plumb full of ‘stuff’—knickknacks, pictures, doilies, lace tablecloths, needlework, flowers, etc, etc. We had the fish special which included dried wolfish (catfish) with butter—out waitress explained how they laid the catfish on racks by the sea to let the salt winds dry it—then they beat it into thin strips, cut it up and put butter on it to eat. It was very chewy and kind of grew as it rehydrated in your mouth. The next course was a fish soup, which was extremely tasty—lots of tomato and basil. The main entrée was fried catfish—with a sauce, some vegetables and baby red potatoes. The special included rhubarb pie with ice cream, but they ‘encouraged’ us to go to the cognac room for our dessert. This room was full of the Victorian type couches and chairs, more doilies, a couple china closets that were full, a treadle sewing machine, and a view master with a lot of the slides that Bob remembered having when he was a kid. Every time we would look at something, we would start laughing because there was something else that was just so funny, like a painting of a fish, or a naked black women holding a bowl.

We had two tours scheduled with Gunnar, our host and tour guide. The first was what they call ‘the golden circle’ tour—and very interest—mostly because Gunnar teaches Icelandic language and culture—so he is telling us about the history and stories of the area. Once we left town, we saw more lava fields, but a lot of them were covered with moss and purple lupines. They plant the lupines because it will make soil so other crops can be planted. Sometimes it was purple for as far as you could see. When the first people came to Iceland, they cut down all the trees for building and fuel—now they are trying to build up the soil and plant some more trees. Gunnar pointed out a typical Icelandic forest—it consisted of scrub brush. He said Norwegians joke ‘What do you do if you get lost in the forest in Iceland? Just stand up and see where you are!’

We saw where two rivers converged—one was from glacier melt and was full of grey silt and the other was from the snow melt in the mountains and was clear blue—where the two rivers met you could see the two different colors. The water in people’s homes is either very hot from geothermal or very cold from snow and glacier melt. All the homes are heated with hot water and most of their electricity is made from steam driven turbines. We saw some pipes that brought the steam from the earth to a power plant and the pipes were zig zagged with sharp turns. Gunnar explained that the steam had too much pressure and that’s the only way it can be regulated.

Our tour included stops at a crater from a volcano—we hiked around it. Then we went to the waterfall Gullfoss which is really two falls and very beautiful. Gunnar told Richard to follow him for a really good photo—they crossed the rope barriers and into a cave that brought them right next to the falls—Richard said he could almost touch the water.

We also went to a geyser area where there are several active geysers. The large one, “Geysir” doesn’t erupt very often, but another one ‘Strokkel’ goes abut every five minutes. Bob and I watched it erupt a couple times and then started following a path up the mountain where there were some fantastic views—lots of green fields and lupines in the valleys. While we were up there, Ross and Richard wanted to get some really good photos of the geyser and ‘feel the mist and steam’, so they walked around to the other side (always staying behind the ropes). It was a while before it erupted and so was a very big eruption. Richard was snapping photos and they were watching the water and steam shoot up and up and soon it was coming down on top of them—they got soaked by warm, but not hot, water that smelled like sulfur. They said they looked at each other with water dripping off their hair into their eyes and started laughing and as they turned to go, the geyser erupted again and they got soaked again. They saw a lot of the other tourists were laughing and a few came by with comments. The area also has a lot of boiling mud areas and strong sulfur smell.

Our last stop was at Thingvellir which was the where the oldest Parliament in the world was founded in 930. It’s also where we could see the plate tectonics that divides the North American and European continents. The Iceland Parliament used to be a two week session where families would stay for the social aspects. The leader would first recite the laws and then representatives would suggest laws or policies and everyone would decide. If there was anything that wasn’t decided by consensus—the two people who disagreed would go onto an island and fight until one killed the other.

We got back to Reykjavik around 5:45 pm and had Gunnar drop us off at The Pearl—which is actually several water tanks on top of a hill to keep the city’s water pressure stable. They have built a dome on top of the tanks and have a very nice restaurant on top of it. It didn’t open until 6:30, so we just looked around and watched the artificial geyser erupt several times and watched kids wading in it to gather the coins. Ross had a whale appetizer and reindeer, Richard and I had lamb, and Bob had steak. They also kept bringing us samples—an appetizer and dessert.

The second tour we had was an even longer day. We started at 9 am and didn’t get back until about 8:30 pm (or 20:30—we had a 24 hour clock—it was always funny when we were going to bed at midnight and it would be 00:00 o’clock.) Our first stop was at a waterfall where we take a steep flight of steps up to the top and look down on it—it was very beautiful. Right next to it was the Skogasafn museum—it’s a place where this one man basically collected things for his entire life (he’s in his 90s, but nobody knows his actual age. He’s a friend of Gunnar’s and really took a shine to Richard. He linked arms with Richard and was patting him on the back or butt. He would say ‘come see this’ and would rush us over to look at several things and then ‘come see this’. He also would demonstrate a stringed instrument and sing, or a tool for hand spinning lamb’s wool or horse hair—set it down and say ‘come’. We went through some turf houses—they were surprisingly comfortable—with wooden floors in the living areas and ended up at a church. He sat down at the pump organ and played and sang several hymns. By this time, people from another tour had joined us and everyone was singing along in all different languages—it was really neat. Last year, over 44,000 people visited the museum and in the last 11 years over 300,000 people have been through it (the same as the population of Iceland).

After there, we walked up to a glacier and climbed on it a bit—since it was going over lava fields, the gravel in it was very black. Gunnar explained that in the 1980s (I think), there was a volcano eruption under the glacier—so the steam and hot lava build up under the glacier and after several days, there was so much pressure that it lifted the glacier a bit and all the water came and flooded the town of Vik, but the people knew something was happening, so had evacuated and nobody was killed, but a lot of homes were destroyed.

On both our tours, we had a traditional Icelandic soup with lamb and vegetables. On Monday, it was very good with lots of big chunks of lamb, Wednesday’s was OK, but not very much lamb at all—more vegetables. Our next stop in Vik was at the black beaches—it was totally amazing because it seemed like it would be dirty like soot, but it was just like sand—you could brush it off and it didn’t leave any black on your hands. The ocean was very cold—no swimming there. Gunner pointed out that we were at the southern most tip of Iceland and if you looked south, there was no land between where we were and the South Pole.

We stopped at another beach which had black (and some other) pebbles. It also had a huge cliff which was made when the volcano erupted—since some lava took longer to cool it made interesting rock formations that were hexagon shaped columns. There was a cave that we could go into and see the bottom side of the columns which was really neat.

On the way back, we stopped at another water fall, where you could go behind it, but you had to climb up some steep rock steps. Bob and I started out and on the way, the wind gusted and blew a lot of the spray onto us—so this time we got soaked. The sun was shinning through the waterfall and it was very beautiful. When we got home, we took Gunnar and Andrias out for supper—we had some wonderful fish dishes—including ‘cod chins’ and fish hash—we talked for a long time—it was really a fun day and evening.

On our last day, we took a bus to the Blue Lagoon—which is a geothermal spa that was created by the runoff from a geothermal power plant. The people who worked there swam in the pool and discovered that it was very good for their skin. The pool is a milky blue color and is totally surrounded by lava. The water has silica in it and there are pots of silica all around that you plaster all over your face. People look so funny swimming around with all this white gunk all over their faces (some even had it totally covering their shoulders). We all had massages that were in the water on these floaty mats with a fleece over up. Every so often the therapist would push our feed or middle into the water, so the fleece would stay warm. It was fun because the therapists had to hang on to us so we didn’t float away while they were massaging. We did all get pretty well sunburned on our faces.

Since we were in Iceland, we had to get some Icelandic sweaters and warm ‘66 North’ jackets. This brand was made for sailors as warm and waterproof clothing. Now it’s become a designer brand. We also found great chocolate and licorice and bought some at the duty free store in the airport as we were leaving.

We had a wonderful trip and the question has come up ‘where are we going to next?’

Family and Naomi Time

2009-07-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

So we had two trips to North Dakota for family events. The first one was to Minot for Alex’s confirmation. We first went to Hibbing and picked up Kara, Paul, and Naomi—I was able to visit the chapter at Hibbing and even speak at their induction ceremony.

We went to Grand Forks and spent the night there—it was easier on Naomi (and the rest of us) to break up the trip into shorter times—so we could relax and she could eat leisurely. We went to eat at Space Aliens—I had a whole plate full of BBQ. I think I like plain Baby Back ribs the best. Naomi was very good in the restaurant—although she creates quite a stir—people are always stopping by and commenting on her red hair.

Visiting with all the family in Minot was so much fun—we had big crowds going out to eat, we ordered pizza and KFC and ate around the pool. Naomi was passed around and around. It was funny because when Sandy or I held her, we would be unwrapping her and when Mom or LeAnn held her, they would be wrapping her up tight. But she didn’t seem to mind too much. Even the little kids were holding her some.

Alex’s confirmation was really nice. He had a big crowd of family surrounding him. Then we went back to the hotel and enjoyed a buffet dinner.

A couple weeks later, we went to Fargo to see Terry and Pam and Tim and Tammy and their kids. Kara and Naomi went along with us. We went to Tracy’s dance recital and it was really nice. They had some great music that filled the entire auditorium—Naomi seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Conventioning in Dallas

2009-07-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

Our convention was back in Dallas. This is the third time that I’ve been in Dallas for our convention. It was at the Gaylord Convention Center—which is really a great venue. I was still on cloud nine from the birth of Naomi—so every one of my presentations started with a photo of Naomi on my PowerPoint. It must have to do with the age of advisors, because so many of us had new grandbabies. In fact one man got the call that his daughter had a baby while we were there.

Because of Naomi being expected—I didn’t go to Chicago with Bob for his convention and he didn’t go to Dallas for mine. In fact, he had a meeting in the cities, so I even had to drive myself to the airport and back home. I guess I’m really spoiled.

I was hoping to see my college roommate, Kathy while we were there, but it didn’t work out—I was in sessions when she was free. Hopefully, we’ll be able to connect sometime in the not-to-distance future.

Our sessions were amazing—we had great speakers including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Fareed Zakaria. Both of them talked about Iceland—and that was really interesting because we’re getting ready to go to Iceland…and that’s another post!

And the Very Exciting Time…

2009-07-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

I had a short, but very exciting trip to Hibbing on April 11th. I had a call from Kara saying her water broke and she was in the hospital. I quickly showered, threw some things in a bag and headed for the Hibbing Hospital. When I got there—I was able to visit with Kara and Paul and then witness the birth of my beautiful grand daughter, Naomi. She is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen!

Naomi has a whole head full of fiery red hair—we’re not sure where she got that from—although both Paul and Kara have a little tint of red in their hair. She was 7 lbs 4 oz and 21 inches long—so is very long and thin.

The hospital is amazing—there is a wonderful birthing room, with a whirlpool in the bathroom and a long bench (Kara called it stadium seating and Paul slept on it each night.) They didn’t have any restrictions on visitations, so we were able to spend Easter Sunday there. And it was like grand central station. Grandma, Bob and I were there. Ross and Richard came up. Kari, Kim, and Carolyn all stopped in for a visit.

Naomi was passed around so everyone had a change to cuddle her. Poor Kara was probably beat, but she’s too polite to tell people to get out. I’m so excited to be a Grandma—I’ve heard that the ‘grandparent club’ is the best!

Chartering a new chapter…

2009-06-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

I LOVE chartering new chapters—I may have mentioned that before, but there is something about the excitement of the college staff, the advisors, and the new members that makes me feel practically euphoric. And this chapter is going to be one of my favorites. I had visited their college in Joshua Tree, CA when I was there in December. The advisors were very interesting people, who were really a lot of fun to be around. So when it came time to charter them, I really wanted to go and they really wanted me to come.

I was very glad I had gone (and I think they were very happy to have me), because the advisors struggled to get a list of students to invite, so they had to do a lot of extra work to find them. They were coordinating their college’s accreditation visit and had just received a call telling them the accreditation team would be on campus the following week, so were trying to get ready for that as well. Bob and I ended up setting up the room for the induction, making sure the membership roster and charter were there to be signed, setting up the head table, and I even made some of the punch. The advisor kept thanking us and saying how sorry she was that she wasn’t more prepared.

The ceremony was beautiful—there were several members from the college’s Advisory Board there (and a couple of them spoke). We kept bringing in more chairs because the audience kept growing and growing—the room was absolutely packed. I was surprised because this was a Friday night just before their spring break was scheduled to begin, but most of the students were there, with a lot of guests.

I also got the chance to visit with another chapter that I had chartered the previous October at College of the Desert. This chapter is doing all kinds of great activities. While we were there, we helped make up 160 Easter Baskets for children who were living in a homeless shelter. This shelter had a fire earlier in the year, and many of the people who were there, lost what little bit they had. So the members took on the project of providing Easter Baskets for the kids. About a dozen members were there and had all the baskets spread out all over a huge table. We ended up working assembly style to put grass, plastic eggs, treats, and candy in each of the baskets.

We talked about ‘The Paradox of Affluence’ as we were working. It was especially heart-breaking to think that there would be 160 children who were homeless—just think how many people that includes. The students also talked about what else they children might need and what the chapter could do. Maybe a gentle used clothes drive, school supplies in the fall, and possibly a mentoring program for the kids and their parents to help them do well in school or get them looking at college courses or other programs.

We had some time before our flight, so we took a tour of a wind farm. It was very interesting. The Palm Springs area is in a valley where the wind comes through the valley fast and steady--so it's a perfect place for wind farms. EXCEPT, we were told the infrastructure wasn't in place to be able to transfer the electricity to the LA area where it's actually needed. We saw several generations of windmills--and learned how the newer ones can generate so much more electricity. Even when they change out an older windmill, they don't scrap the parts--instead they send them to third world countries where they can be put to good use.

We headed back to Minnesota and a very exciting time….

Sunny?? California

2009-06-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

Off to California again—this time for three weeks. We were hoping for a nice warm break from the cold, but ended up with rain—lots of it. It absolutely poured for the first three days we were here. We didn’t dare complain, because they need rain so badly.

I had a regional convention at a Holiday Inn in San Jose over the weekend, but we arrived on Monday—so we checked into the Holiday Inn and stayed there for eight nights (sure beats moving every couple days). The only issue is that San Jose is a ways away from some of the colleges that I was visiting, so we were driving every day. The other thing is the hotel had a restaurant, so they don’t provide a free breakfast. We bought a $2 Styrofoam cooler, juice, oatmeal packets, and fruit—so we could eat breakfast and snacks in our room.

One day, we visited a college and when we came out—it was pouring. So we stood under an awning for quite a while and then made a dash for the car. We got soaked. Then we had to drive for quite a while—down to Salinas, which is a couple hours south of San Jose, and not too far from Monterey. Salinas is also called the salad bowl of the world because of all the lettuce and other vegetables grown there. Salinas also happens to be the hometown of John Steinbeck, so his home is on display and there is a National Steinbeck center. We visited the center for a while to pass some time.

Several of our trips involved us driving up the peninsula toward San Francisco. It was amazing, we would be totally surrounded by an urban area with houses and businesses and then a few miles down the road, there would be cows grazing on the fields. Later I heard they bring the cows in to keep the grass from getting too high on those hills after the winter rains, because when summer and fall comes and it dries off—they are really dangerous areas for wildfires.

Several of the colleges are located at the top of hills with fantastic views. Lucky for us the rain stopped after three days, and it has been clear every since. Skyline College, which is just south of San Francisco, has a visitor parking lot that would be designated a ‘scenic view’ in my book. It looked down from a rocky ledge to the ocean. Although the advisor told us that they are really in the fog belt—sometimes they can’t see across the sidewalk because it’s so thick.

The first week included long days and short nights. I was still on central time, so was waking up every morning by 4:30-5:00 am, and not eating supper until around 8 pm Pacific time, so we weren’t getting to bed until close to midnight. Probably due to the lack of sleep, I ended up with a raging cold—a cough that wouldn’t quit and the need to have a handful of Kleenex at all times.

One evening, we went to the Winchester Mystery House and were in awe of this Victorian mansion which was built by Sarah Winchester, who was the heiress of the Winchester Rifle Company. After the deaths of her infant daughter and husband, she consulted a medium, who told her to move to San Jose in 1884 and start building a house. Mrs. Winchester was convinced by a medium that continuous building would appease the evil spirits of those killed by the famous "Gun that Won the West" and help her attain eternal life. If she ever finished the house, she would die, so she began a construction project of such magnitude that it was to occupy the lives of carpenters and craftsmen 24 hours a day, until her death thirty-eight years later.

The mansion was totally designed by the Winchester Rifle heiress. She went to a special ‘seance’ room every evening where the spirits told her how the house should be designed. Because Sarah needed to be working on the house every minute of every day, she had the workers build rooms, only to tear them apart and remodel them. The house is filled with so many unexplained oddities, that nobody understands. Some people think it’s because she wasn’t trained as an architect or she just wanted to keep the building going on.

Sarah Winchester built a home that is an architectural marvel. Unlike most homes of its era, this 160-room Victorian mansion had modern heating and sewer systems, gas lights that operated by pressing a button, three working elevators, and 47 fireplaces. From rambling roofs and exquisite hand inlaid parquet floors to the gold and silver chandeliers and Tiffany art glass windows, you will be impressed by the staggering amount of creativity, energy, and expense poured into each and every detail.

There is even a million dollar storeroom—which is filled with Tiffany glass windows, Italian made wall covering, and other things that were never used. We did a tour through 110 of the 160 rooms and saw some of the bizarre things in the mansion; a window built into the floor, another that opens into the rest of the house, staircases leading to nowhere, a chimney that rises four floors and yet doesn’t go through the roof, doors that open onto blank walls, and upside down posts!

Mrs. Winchester was also a recluse; she never had any photos taken of herself. She had massive front doors with beautiful Tiffany Windows, put in the front of the house, but no one ever walked through them. Even Teddy Roosevelt came and was turned away.

After San Jose, we moved down to Merced, which is pretty close to Yosemite National Park, so we had to plan one day in the park—which is beautiful. First we drove up and up through very winding roads with beautiful scenery in all directions. My ears were popping and plugged all the time. Yosemite is mainly in a valley with high cliffs and mountains all around. Many of the hiking paths weren’t open due to the snow, but they had a free shuttle bus that went all around the park and then we took a bus tour that had a narrator and we were able to get out and look around. There were some beautiful vistas that absolutely took your breath away. This is someplace we are going to have to visit again—with hiking boots!

The spring flowers were in bloom and some of the ditches and mountain sides were totally covered with yellow and orange flowers. It was so bright and beautiful that you had to shade your eyes. We visited colleges in Merced, Modesto, and Porterville and that is really a farming area. There were trees in bloom with white or pink flowers and trees that were laden with oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and limes. Some were right along the road—I wanted to stop the car and fill up the backseat with fruit. I asked one of the advisors if people didn’t just stop and pick some that was right in town and she said they often did. A lot of nuts are grown around that area as well, so some of the flowering trees would have been almond, walnut and pecan.

On Sunday, we drove to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Again many of the roads were impassable except in summer because they are very low maintained gravel roads. Those areas have really been kept a wilderness area. We were able to see some of the giant sequoias—they are some of the largest trees in the world. They only grow at 5000 feet—so there aren’t too many places that they will grow and it was hard for loggers to harvest them until after better roads were built, so some of them are thousands of years old.

From there, we went to Sacramento and spent a week visiting chapters in that area. We checked in to our hotel and went to eat supper. As we were leaving the hotel, we saw the college that we would be visiting the next day, so we were able to walk over to it. We had some great visits in Sacramento and we found several really neat restaurants to eat at, but we were really busy every single day and so didn’t get any chance to see any of the sights around Sacramento. And, I was disappointed that we never found a place to buy fresh fruit just before we were leaving for home.

We did have a fairly interesting trip home. I had visited with one chapter and they were holding their induction ceremony on Friday evening at 5 pm. Since we didn’t leave until midnight from San Francisco, I told them I could speak at their induction ceremony—so I did—even though we really had to rush from one appointment to get there. Their induction ceremony was very nice and we got the chance to visit with the advisors and some students again (and eat cake). Then we left to catch the red eye home—We both slept pretty good on the trip home, but still took a nap that afternoon.

Wichita

2009-03-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

We had another quick trip—this time to Wichita Kansas. I’m always surprised by how far west and south Kansas is. For some reason, in my mind I always put Kansas in the middle of the country (maybe between Iowa and Missouri). When we picked up our rental car, it had Oklahoma licenses on it and I thought “Wow, that’s from a long ways away”, but Wichita is very close to the Oklahoma border.

One bad thing about this trip is that we moved every single night—which means we were packing and unpacking constantly. We flew in to Wichita and went to our hotel and checked in. That evening we went to a BBQ place called “Hog Wild”. It was really good! Have I ever mentioned that I love good BBQ!

The next day, we packed up and went 50 miles north to the Crosswinds Conference Center in Hesston. This was a really neat place with a beautiful staircase from the lobby to the second floor where the conference rooms were located. The sleeping rooms were pretty barren—two twin beds with plastic mattress covers, one desk and chair, bathroom and a separate shower room. Of course no TV or internet connection in the sleeping rooms, although there was internet in the lobby. I guess it’s a Christian camp—there was an outdoor pool and sports fields. Our meals were provided by the center and they were really ‘home cooking’. A couple little old ladies were the cooks and servers.

After the conference was over, we drove back to Wichita and checked back into the same hotel we stayed in on Thursday night. We happened to see an advertisement for a dinner theatre production of ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’, so we called and got tickets. The dinner was a buffet that included hominy (which isn’t too exciting) and ham, plus lots of other good stuff. Then some servers came though with the dessert cart—where you could ‘purchase’ a dessert. The servers were very clear that there was a charge.

The show was really a lot of fun, but the theatre was very cold—we wished we had brought along our jackets, so we could bundle up. Instead, we tried to cover as much as possible with our cloth napkins!

We didn’t fly home until 5 pm on Sunday, so we spent some time in our room working and then wandered around Wichita—and took in the Shepplers Western Store—although we didn’t find anything that we absolutely had to have.

Back home again around midnight!

Down South, ya'll

2009-03-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

The first week of February found us headed for Jackson, MS. This was a pretty uneventful trip even though it included my birthday and Valentine’s Day. The weather was very warm—although rainy, but I was inside most of the time—judging Hallmark Award entries. I even judged most evenings, although we did go out to Cock of the Walk for catfish on my birthday. A restaurant called Shapleys—which has the best Filet Mignon that I have ever had, is right across from the hotel, so we went there on Friday evening. Otherwise we ate breakfast and a light supper at the hotel every day.

One neat thing was we got a Hyundai for our rental and Bob noticed it only had 11 miles on it—that must be the trip odometer—nope, it was a brand new car—it even still had that new car smell. Saturday was Valentines Day and that’s when we flew home. We did have enough time in the cities so Ross and Richard could pick us up for lunch at TGI Fridays. One of their new dishes was Macaroni and Cheese—not like the boxed Kraft kinds, but four cheeses on penne. It was really good. All four of us split a vanilla bean cheese cake.

Then it was home to the cold again.

The Key to the West??

2009-02-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

Our cruise ended on Saturday morning—we had figured that we would get to the car rental place by noon, but since it was so easy to walk off the ship, jump in a cab and we asked him to take us to the Avis car rental rather than the airport, so we were picking up our car around 9 am. The cabbie told us that tourism was way down because of the economy. He said he was driving 7 days a week for 10-12 hours each day just to earn enough money to pay his bills and feed his family.

We hopped in our car and headed south. Since we had plenty of time, we decided to stop at Everglades National Park. We heard about how the everglades and the lake has decreased in size by half since the 50’s, and with the urban sprawl going on—they are afraid it will continue to shrink. This creates lots of problems with the vegetation and animals—some of which are only native to that area.

It was nice that we were there in December, many places talked about the hoards of mosquitoes that are around in the summer. I love visiting National Parks—there is so much interesting information about what makes the area special. We stopped and hiked along a board walk and could look over the everglades. When we were leaving, we noticed something along the road. Bob said “I think it’s an alligator”. Sure enough here was an alligator right next to the road—it started to turn around to go back into the ditch and we noticed a baby right next to it—really little and cute. One of the park rangers told us that alligators are very maternal—they actually keep their young with them for a year. Sometimes like loons, they will have them ride on their backs. We took a couple photos, but all you could see was the alligator butt and a very little nose and eyes peeking out of the grass.

When we got on the Keys Highway—we were surprised because we thought it was an interstate all the way, but it was a two lane road that went though lots of little towns—so it was slow going, especially since traffic was bumper to bumper! This is a wonderful road, with lots of bridges across the water that connect the little islands. Many years ago, a developer built a railroad track all the way to the Keys—now it’s in pretty bad disrepair—many sections are missing, but some different agencies are fixing up some sections for walking, biking and fishing. It sounds like there is a movement to complete the whole thing for a walking and biking path—that would be wonderful, because it’s about a 90 mile stretch and many of the Keys have a relaxed life style that bicycles fit very well into. Several places had a lot of people fishing from the bridge.

We arrive in Key West and checked into our hotel—there was a car port under the hotel that also had scooters and bicycles available for rent. As we checked in, the desk clerk gave us a map of the area and showed us where Mallory Square was where there is a nightly sunset celebration and arts festival and everyone goes there to watch the sun set. Since it was getting to be about that time, we headed down there. It was only a couple miles from our hotel, but took us a while to get there, since we ended up going around a few blocks. Since this is an island—you can head for the water in all directions. We just kept looking for the setting sun.

All kinds of things were happening in this area—craft booths, food stands, and lots of street performers. But the highlight was the setting sun. It cast a huge blaze across the water and lots of boats were floating around it. This was one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve seen in a long time. Hundreds of people were sitting and standing along the edge of the pier. There was a pelican that was getting lots of treats and getting his picture taken. We bought some conch fritters—much like cheese curds, but with conch—again kind of chewy—not a whole lot of taste.

That night we went to a Cuban open air restaurant. It was hard to believe that it was December 20 and we were eating outside—although we did break down and put on a jacket and Bob bought a Sweatshirt. The food was really good—we split a jerked pork entrée. As the waiter said it was spicy flavorful, not spicy hot. They also had really good bread there.

We only had one full day in Key West, so we wanted to make the most of it. We checked out a lot of the fliers for things to do and there were so many options, it was hard to decide. We ended up doing a whole day tour to Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson National Park. It’s about 70 miles southwest from Key West and used to be a fort. We left at 7:30 am and had breakfast on the tour boat. Since this is a National Park, there was a naturalist on board who talked about the Dry Tortugas and fort. It was really interesting.

After we arrived at the Fort, the naturalist gave us a tour of the fort and explained some of the amazing things about it. A moat completely surrounds the fort—some of it goes out into the water. The moat was build to keep attackers out, since they would have to swim the moat and the guns they had were black power, which would get wet and not be of any use. The moat has really helped protect the fort from hurricanes and water surges. Some parts of the moat were all in the water. In fact, one of the engineering problems of the fort is that part of it was built over water. This made it shift at different rates when it settled--so it developed some cracks.

The fort is huge—when we walked inside, we were amaze a how large it was. She said Yankee Stadium could fit inside of it. Inside the fort was a place where the soldiers could heat up cannon balls until they were red-hot, run them across the fort and shoot them at the wooden ships. Needless to say, a hit in the right place could either set the black powder off or catch the wooden ship on fire.

The fort was build of two walls of bricks that are about 20 feet apart—and there are arches everywhere which makes it very strong. They filled between the walls with sand and coral and then put in a water system where the rainwater would filter through the sand into a collection system and be stored in huge tanks under the floor of the fort. This was very important, because there is no water available. The soldiers would write home about drinking their ‘squiggles’ which was the mosquito larvae, but that probably saved some of their lives because it was protein. But the tanks where the water was collected became a problem as well, because some of them rusted out and caused a huge empty space. The park service is restoring much of the fort, so they have filled in all the tanks. They now have a desalination process for their drinking water.

The soldiers had a hard life because it was hot, isolated, not much water, sometimes food was scarce, and they wore wool uniforms. They also dumped their sewage into the moat on one side, so it smelled pretty bad and disease was rampant.

Fort Jefferson served for a time as a remote prison facility. One of its most famous inmates was none other than Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set the leg of John Wilkes Booth following the assassination of President Lincoln. Mudd was incarcerated on the Dry Tortugas for only four years, from 1865 to 1869. According to the guide, Dr. Mudd didn’t realize it was John Wilkes Booth when he treated him and after he was at Dry Tortugas, he began treating the soldiers who were suffering from yellow fever. He was pardoned after four years of his prison term.

We had lunch on the boat—everyone who visits Dry Tortugas has to bring all their own food and water, because there is nothing available on the island. The Park Service does have a small campground for tenting that had quite a few people camping. The campers will ride to and from Key West on the tour boat. Also, sometimes on the boat will be Cubans who have left Cuba for the US. A small boat that was pretty rickety with a very small old looking motor was on display and they said it had 20 people aboard including children. The government policy is if the refugees have dry feet on US soil they will be granted asylum, if the coast guard catches them while they are still in the water (wet feet) they will be sent back. Since there isn’t as many coast guard patrolling around Dry Tortugas, many Cubans head there—and it’s only 50 miles from Cuba.

After lunch we went snorkeling!!! WOW—this was the best time ever. For one thing, it was a beautiful day of 80+ degrees, with warm, calm, and crystal clear water. We had a lot more time—about 3 full hours. The coral reefs and fish were absolutely stunning and just when I would think “Oh, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”, I would see something else and think “Oh, THAT’S the most beautiful thing I’ve every seen!” The only problem with snorkeling is it’s hard to talk or point out things to the other person without getting a mouth full of salt water (which makes me gag)!

The Dry Tortugas are also where the giant sea turtles lay their eggs. In the spring, people come to watch the baby turtles hatch and scurry to the water. Between the months of March and September, some 100,000 sooty terns will come to nest on the islands of the Dry Tortugas. They are joined by brown noddies, roseate terns, double-crested cormorants and brown pelicans. Our guide was a birder and set up her telescope on the beach so people could watch some of the birds.

Then it was time to get back on the boat and head back to Key West, we sat and visited with a couple who were from Scotland—they were very interesting. That evening we saw the sun setting just as we were docking. We went back to our hotel and got out of our swim suites and into the shower to wash away the salt. I would never have believed that I would spend so many full days in my swim suite. I was glad that I had bought a little skirt thingy to wear over the top—so I looked more dressed. We noticed that we were both a little burned—not as bad as you would have thought from spending the entire day in the sun.

We found a neat seafood restaurant that was a big area where they opened up all the tent-like walls and had a great supper. As we were walking along the street, we found a neat shop that was all Key Lime products, so we bought somethings that can be used as stocking stuffers. We've seen this shop on the Food Network's show 'Unwrapped'.

The next day, we headed back toward Miami, but for a late lunch we stopped at a restaurant called Pirate’s Cove. I had crab legs—they were very good, but so hard that it was extremely difficult to crack them. I really had to work for my food!

Kara and Paul picked us up from the airport and we stayed overnight at Ross and Richard’s—they had already left for Seattle. The next day (Dec. 23) we headed for home, stopping at Virginia for some Christmas presents and groceries. When we got there we had a foot of snow, but mom (bless her heart) had someone come out and plow us out, so we just had to shovel a little, put up a tree, wrapped some presents, and were ready for Christmas!!

Just a Cruisin'

2009-02-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

So…we’ve never done a cruise before. We’ve talked about it, but then looked at the ads that have those huge ships with about a million windows on both sides. That looks like a lot of people crammed onto that ship. So we’ve been a bit apprehensive to say the least.

Well, here we are sitting in the Bahamas thinking it’s really pretty cool! (Of course, I’m posting this much later!) There has only been a few times when I felt a little cramped, and sometimes it’s ‘hurry up and wait’, but so far we have been very happy cruisin’.

This trip is pure vacation—no work at all! It all started in Minnesota—where they were getting around a foot of snow and the temperature was dropping like crazy. We flew to Miami (Bob got upgraded, but I didn’t—he did save a cookie and some nuts for me!) On the shuttle from the airport to the Embassy Suites, we were with another couple who were cruising on the same ship we were (Carnival Destiny), but this was their fifth cruise! The hotel had free cocktails, pretzels, and potato chips that evening—so that was our supper. They also have a ‘cook-to-order’ breakfast.

The next morning (Monday), we board a shuttle to go to the ship(s)—there were about five ships in a row. Only two couples on the shuttle were going to Destiny. A man met us there and tagged our luggage with our room number and it got loaded onto a cart and we went inside where we went through security—not quite as strict as airport security. We didn’t have to take off our shoes or take the liquids out of the carry-ons. Some people even had cases of pop—which would have been a good idea since pop was one of the things they charged extra for--$1.95 per can. From there we went to another line to check in. They had different lines for the different decks (room numbers)—so we didn’t wait too long.

From there we went onto the ship and they told us lunch was being served on the ninth level toward the back—we’ve decided to take the stairs rather than the elevators, so we started climbing. We found a buffet and got in line and picked up our food—but there wasn’t any place to sit, so we kept moving on back through another dining room (where they had a lot of other things to eat) and to another room (where they had a grill and also some places to sit). If you want a coke, it costs $1.95 (there are even some in the room), but lemonade, ice tea and ice cream are available all the time. There are several other places to eat—including sushi, pasta, Chinese, New York Deli, and others if you don’t want to go to the main dining room. Plus there is a pizza place and room service available 24 hours a day—at no charge!

We were hoping to see the sun set over the water, but were disappointed because it was really cloudy and we couldn’t see anything. Our room is the very first room on the starboard side of the ship (starboard means ‘right’ as you face the front). So right next to our door is a door to the deck at the front of the ship—we’ve gone out there to watch when we left the pier in Miami.

That night, we found our table for supper—it’s a table for four people and we’re with Sy and Maria. They are having their 33rd anniversary while on board and are from Albany, NY. He is originally from Hong Kong and she is from Guatemala—they met at an English as a Second Language Class. They seem really nice—we’re usually visiting so much that we’re the last ones to leave the dinning room.

We did notice after we set sail that the boat has these little shifts back and forth—not really an up-and-down rocking, although one night it was pretty windy and we were really moving around a lot. Neither Bob nor I get sea sick, but it bothered Maria a bit. The menu they give you has ‘starters’ and ‘entrees’ and our waiter said ‘you can order as much as you want’. I had shrimp and gazpacho for starters and tilapia for the main course. Bob had a salad and fruit and then a huge pork chop for the main course. Then they bring out the desert menu. Bob had a chocolate melt with vanilla ice cream and I got a fruit plate and cheese platter that everyone shared. We are enjoying tasting each others meals and deserts. I’m glad to see the other couple does that as well.

After supper, we decided to walk a little bit, so we went out on the deck and, at first, I thought someone had pulled down black drapes because it was pitch black, but then realized that it was just dark outside. We walked to the deck at the front and could see a few stars, but couldn’t see any moon—it was still really dark.

With the gentle lolling of the boat, we both slept like rocks! We had ordered breakfast in our room. They have an order form and said to put numbers by what you want, so we marked 2-melon, 2 citrus slices, 1 smoked salmon, 1 muffin, 1 croissant, 2 apple juices, 2 teas. Well, we ended up with this huge pile of food—or at least of plates and covers. The melon and citrus were some slices all arranged fancy on separate plates. The salmon was on a plate and there were two bagels with cream cheese—the waiter said that came with the salmon. There were three croissants and two muffins on one plate. So we had seven covered plates and a lot of food.

OK, let’s cut it down—so the next morning we ordered 2-bananas, 1-smoked salmon, juice and tea. And we got 2 bananas on one plate and the smoked salmon—no bagels this time!! So we ate pretty light that morning!!

The second day (Tuesday), we arrived in Nassau, Bahamas around 7 am. We had booked a shore excursion to a resort called Atlantis, so we got in the line for it and loaded on a bus—it was made to haul as many people as possible, because after the people filled in the seats, there was a fold-down seat that covered the aisle. The driver was on the right hand side—and he drove on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. We noticed about half the cars had the steering wheel on the right and half on the left.

The driver told us a little about The Republic of the Bahamas—it’s a series of 700 Islands and has a population of 300,000—except for Nassau (the capital), most of the people live in poverty. The Atlantis resort is 650 acres that includes miles of beaches, a lagoon, a huge water park, several different hotels, shops and a 141 acre waterscape comprised of 20 million gallons of fresh and seawater with more than 50,000 fascinating sea creatures. Some of the aquariums are in a maze of archaeological ruins called the Dig. The guide told us about one of the rooms—it’s in an area that spans between the tops of two buildings and is called ‘the bridge’. The room rents for $25,000 per night, with a minimum four night stay—and is booked solid for two years. I guess we won’t be staying there anytime soon!

We staked out a couple chairs and then walked along the beach for quite a ways—the waves were pretty strong and the bank was really sloped, so a couple times, we did some staggering when the waves hit us. When we got back to our chairs, our feet were just crusted with sand—and some was like little concrete pieces that were just ‘glued’ on to our feet. I ended up with some between my little toe and the next one and got a blister between my toes!! I’ve never even imagined being able to get a blister there!

We saw all kinds of sharks—some from the bottom, because there is one walkway that is all glass underneath the water and the fish are swimming all around and above you. Some of the sharks were hammerheads—they are so funny looking. We also saw barracudas, sea horses (so cute), clown fish (really goofy looking), jelly fish (gently pulsing and gliding), lobster (ugly), star fish (you could touch), spiny things, neon glow-in-the-dark fish, and lots of others that were beautiful colors and shapes. We also saw living conches—according to a guide, they make their own shell—those beautiful bright pink, spiral ones—and they get their shell so big that they trap themselves inside and die from starvation or self induced suicide. She said, “So we assist them by humanely killing them and then eating them.”

I was disappointed for lunch, because a couple things on the menu were conch fritters or a conch sandwich, but they were all out of both, so I ended up with a chicken sandwich—Boring!

We loaded on the bus to return to our ship—of course, you have to go through a gift shop to get there—it had some really great craft things. I got a neat bowl and spoon made from a conch shell. Those are the kinds of souvenirs I like—not ones with Nassau stamped on a hunk of junk that was made in China. We also had to get a Christmas ornament for our tree. I have to admit that it doesn’t seem very much like Christmas—with no snow and we’re wandering around in swim suits.

That night was ‘elegant night’—everyone dressed up (although there weren’t too many tuxedos and evening gowns). We had a captain’s reception before dinner—although he didn’t show up, because we were late leaving port. We sat at a table and waiters came around with appetizers and drinks (ones that we didn’t even have to pay for). For supper I had stuffed mushrooms and prosciutto and melon and Bob had a salad and strawberry bisque for starters. I had lobster and Bob had grouper for the main course. We then had bitter and blanc (a dark and light chocolate desert), cherries jubilee and vanilla ice cream for desert. Everything was so good!! Sy (our table mate) had both a lobster and prime rib main entrée.

Each night they have a Las Vegas type show—some nights there have been comedians, an orchestra and singers and dancers. There are lots of costume changes, feathers, headdresses and a fair amount of skin showing!

That second night it was storming—really windy and raining, and the boat was moving around a fair amount. We joked that we didn’t need to drink, because we could stagger down the hall just fine without it! The rocking didn’t really bother me, but I couldn’t go to sleep and when I did, I was dreaming and woke up a lot. We had to get up early, because we had to leave for our shore excursion at 7:30 am—so we had the alarm go off at 5:40 and breakfast come at 6. It was a short night.

Wednesday our port of call was Half Moon Cay where we got to snorkel with the Sting Rays. A large part of Half Moon Cay is owned by Holland America/Carnival so all of the shops etc were run by members of the ship’s crew. Our adventure with the Sting Rays was to start at 10:30, so we loaded on the back of a truck and rode to the Sting Ray Cove. We got goggles, snorkels, swimming shoes, and life vests. Since neither Bob nor I had ever snorkeled before, we got some pointers from the people who worked there. So we put on the gear and off we went—it was great fun. I discovered that I love snorkeling! It’s just so relaxing to float in the water and see all these great things below. You do have to remind yourself to breath slow and easy and always through your mouth.

We even got to feed and pet the sting rays—it was kind of funny as we were standing there, they would float by our feet and gently rub up against our legs. The guides told us they won’t sting unless they get startled—like getting stepped on. When we fed them, we held on to some slimy fishy stuff and the sting ray came up and took it out of our hands. There too, the guide said be careful, because if they think you have food, they will latch on with their sucker mouth and give you a nice hicky!

When we got back to the beach, we lay in the sun and just relaxed. It was so beautiful out! The ship crew hauled out a Caribbean Barbeque for lunch—many of our same waiters were there serving. It was wonderful—jerked chicken, BBQ beef, lots of fruit, and many different kinds of salads. That was the only time I saw them use anything disposable—and it was just paper cups. They even still had cloth napkins, real silverware, and dishes.

One of the ‘talks’ they gave us had to do with their garbage policy. After you’re so far from shore, it’s legal to dump your garbage, but they said that they didn’t do that—they mostly recycle and incinerate the paper. The rest they haul back to port. They have a desalination system on the ship for their fresh water. Early in the cruise there was a below decks tour and I would have liked to do that, but we missed it.

Wednesday evening, we ran into a lady that I knew. She worked at one of the colleges in Northern MN, but moved to Wisconsin. We used to attend many meetings together in the several years that I knew her. It turned out that her daughter was the main female singer for the shows. She and her husband decided to surprise their daughter. Bob and I joking wondered if we would bump into anyone that we knew. What a coincidence!

That night we had Mango Bisque, gazpacho, flat iron steak, and BBQ ribs. Our head waiter was from India and was really nice—we also had another waiter who mainly kept our water glasses filled, changed our silverware (we must have gone through five place settings every night), cleaned off the table, and brought bread. I think he was from Ghana, and might not have spoken very good English—at least he was pretty quite. That night the head of the dining room said “And now your waiters will sing and dance for you” and they all lined up and sang and danced along with a song. Our waiter was one who climbed up on a table and really did some fancy moves. He told us later that he worked for a cruise line around the Mediterranean and they used to sing and dance at every meal—and lots of different dances.

On Thursday, we were at Grand Turk. I had never heard of it before, but found out it is a British colony and part of the Turk and Caicos Islands. Our excursion for this day was Power Snorkeling. Again, we were picked up by the dock by a bus—but this one wasn’t as classy as the one at Nassau. In fact, we wondered if we were going to make it up some hills. Our driver was a quite the character. He told us all about the island and showed us the damage from Hurricane Ike—it hit on Sept 7 and really wiped out a lot of homes and businesses. There were lots of tents where people were living. He also told us the island is made up mostly of Churches and bars. There is even a bar in the police department—he said the police don’t carry guns, they carry drinks.

Power snorkeling was awesome. We had these scooter things that would pull us through the water. It was very windy and rough, so we ended up taking a boat out to where we would be snorkeling. I went on the first boat and Bob went on the second—he’s not as enthused as I am. This was one of those places where you rolled backwards off the boat. There are wonderful coral reefs all around Grand Turk—they said it is the third largest in the world! And they are beautiful—all this purple lacy coral with the yellow and blue stripped fish swimming around. It’s so clear that it seems like you can see all the way to the bottom. I have always loved aquariums, but I think I love watching the fish in their natural habitat even more! This excursion was three hours, so we had a lot of time to snorkel. The guide took us over to a ledge, where the sea bottom dropped 3000 feet—you could see the edge—just like a cliff, but it was underwater.

After our driver picked us up, he asked if we wanted a tour of the island—since it is only seven miles long and 1 ½ miles wide. Of course, we all said yes. So off we went in this ramshackle bus—with the gears grinding. He told us that he was from Jamaica and use to train polo ponies. So one of the places he showed us was a horse and donkey stable, where some of our cruise people were doing a surf ride. We saw lots of donkeys in the wild because the island’s main industry used to be making salt from the ocean. They used the donkeys to pull these drags over the salt to dry it. When they stopped making salt, they just let the donkeys go free. He said they are trying to capture them, and the government has offered $50 for every donkey that people bring in, but the government then lets the donkeys go again. One guy has gotten paid for the same donkey several times.

I did notice there was a community college on the island—so I could see about starting a Phi Theta Kappa chapter there and visit it often!

That night I decided to be brave and try the Escargot (snails)—they weren’t bad—a little chewy—like calamari. They were baked in this little dish (the stuffed mushrooms had come in it before) with five dents for the escargot—it had a garlic butter sauce. We also had lobster bisque and chilled Bing cherry soup. Our waiter had asked if I liked Indian Food and brought me a meal of lamb stew, rice, vegetables, but it was way too hot, so he took it back and brought me lamb chops and they were wonderful! That’s what Bob had as well.

Friday was our ‘Fun Day at Sea’. This means that we were cruising all day without stopping in any ports. They had several different events going on—games, walks, contests, etc, but I decided it would be a good day to visit the spa. So I went and had a pedicure and then had this body treatment that tones and firms. It was interesting, because there were huge windows and I was standing there with no clothes on—I guess there was only open sea around us, but it seemed strange.

During the day, we were sitting on our balcony and you could see a storm off in the distance. Pretty soon, there was a faint rainbow and it kept getting brighter and brighter—and ended up being a double rainbow. It was gorgeous—we felt like we were cruising right though it, although, we never did run into any rain. Another thing we noticed is that some times there would be a rainbow in the spray along side of the boat.

That afternoon there was a fun Christmas show with all the kids performing. We finally saw the captain (as Santa Claus). There were lots of kids of all ages on the ship. Carnival has programs for 14-17 yr olds; 10-14 yr olds; 6-10 yr olds; and even 2-5 yr olds—so there were dances and crafts and lots of things for the kids to do.

The ship had a casino (we didn’t gamble), several bars (we didn’t drink) and a photography studio—photographers were taking your picture all the time—then they would be for sale. There were also places set up where you could get studio photos taken (we didn’t do that either). There were different kinds of dancing going on every evening, comedy clubs (although they didn’t start until midnight—and we didn’t stay up that late), a library with books and games, a couple of small pools and saunas, a water slide and jogging track—so there really was a lot to do if you wanted. We enjoyed sitting on our balcony in the sunshine.

That evening, we had short ribs and salmon. I also had a cream of wild mushroom soup that was really good. It was fun to experiment with food that I would never order in a restaurant. It was also nice that the servings weren’t really big, so you didn’t too feel bad ordering two appetizers and an entrée.

One of the things that was so much fun, was seeing what animal was waiting for us in our cabin every night. The staff made up our rooms several times a day. In the morning, they made up the bed and cleaned, later they brought in a bucket of ice, in the evening they would turn down the bed and make an animal out of the towels—and perched my sunglasses on his nose. We had a seal, crab, armadillo, dog, and the last night was a monkey hanging from the ceiling. He was so cute!

When we woke up on Saturday morning, we were in port at Miami again. They had a session about disembarking and said if you wanted to carry out your luggage, you could leave at a certain time. They did unload by deck, so it wasn’t jam packed. We basically just carried our luggage down three flights of stairs and walked off the ship. We saw a line of taxis, so walked over and got in one—off to a new adventure!!

Back to California

2009-01-31T19:53:00.000-08:00

The first week of December found us heading back to California—this time to the center of the state. We flew in to Sacramento and then drove over to the Napa Valley the first evening. That is such a beautiful area—we drove back and forth between Napa and Fairfield several times—and it’s a beautiful drive—the road goes through some mountains. The only problem was is that it was a two lane road and bumper-to-bumper traffic. That isn’t any fun!

We visited a couple chapters in that area and then moved to the Oakland area where I visited some more colleges and then chartered a chapter at Heald College that was right in downtown San Francisco. The advisor there was quite an interesting fellow. He was the Director of the Learning Resource Center and was interrupted about every five minutes. It was hard having a conversation with him, because he was constantly talking to someone else and me at the same time. He had a student approach him and start talking in Spanish—and he answered back in Spanish. Then another student started talking to him—and this time he answered in Mandarin! He said he is fluent in six languages (he was originally from Uganda). And his first love is theatre—he’s been in several Bay area productions, done voice-overs, and a few small parts in TV and movies.

The next day we drove back to the Sacramento area and stayed in Yuba City. The last 50 miles or so, it was so foggy that we had no idea where we were. We tried programming the Fairfield Inn (our hotel) into Gertie, but it didn’t recognize the street that hotel was on—it said the closest one was in Sacramento. So we ended up calling the hotel. They told us that it was brand new and even on a new street—so the GPS didn’t have it yet. They also told us that there was fog like that just about every night—although that was the earliest (3 pm) that it had moved in.

The next morning, we got up fairly early and headed to Quincy (which is right on the Nevada border). Again, it was really foggy, so we were going pretty slow—then suddenly after we had gone about 30 miles—the fog suddenly lifted and it was clear! We also discovered that we were climbing into the mountains, so it was great that Bob wasn’t trying to drive those winding roads when it was foggy. The scenery was outstanding as well; although we did see where the fires had gone through the area last year. The road followed a river and had lots of bridges back and forth over the water. There were also several tunnels along the way. Those are our favorite kinds of roads!

One time when there was a passing lane, a car went around us and we noticed the license plate said “POETRY”. I joking said “maybe that’s Roger—since he’s an English professor”. Sure enough, when we saw him later—he confessed that was his car and he passes a lot of people—he said that he’s “POETRY in motion!”

I participated in the Leadership Summit at Feather River Community College in Quincy. It’s a beautiful campus—right on the edge of the woods, with mountains all around. They even had some snow on the ground and a small herd of deer grazing in the open area.

On the way home, we had NPR on our Satellite radio—so we could hear some of Prairie Home Companion, but we would lose it when we went though the tunnels or if we got into a valley with steep cliffs on one side of us. We again enjoyed the scenery, but were glad to get off the mountain before dark (and the fog rolled in again that evening).

We flew home on Sunday evening and had enough time in the cities that we could meet up with Ross and Richard for supper (and to celebrate Ross’ birthday). When we got home, we had about 6 inches of snow on our car that we had to clean off before we could drive home. It was funny, because that week, Jackson, MS got 5 inches of snow and closed everything down!

Thankful for Family!

2009-01-25T06:11:00.000-08:00

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with family. Since we had decided to travel to North Dakota, I arranged to visit some chapters along the way—so Mom, Bob and I left Tuesday morning, stopped in East Grand Forks, and then stayed in Devils Lake that evening. Sandy had mentioned the Seafood buffet at the Casino at Devils Lake—so we decided to go there. They had a wonderful buffet—with lots of king crab legs—not the little tiny ones that are so hard to eat!

After a nice visit with the chapter advisor and several students, we went on up to Sandy and Al’s. After checking into the motel, we went to their favorite Pizza place for supper and then headed over to their house to start processing deer. This is becoming an annual event to process venison over Thanksgiving. We got some ready for jerky and cut and wrapped up some steaks.

We went down to Kevin’s in Minot for Thanksgiving. Ross and Richard and Kara and Paul had driven over on Wed evening and stayed overnight at LeAnn’s, so they met us there. We had a wonderful meal—with three kinds of meat (Turkey, ham and prime rib) and lots of extras and we had a wonderful time. It’s always so nice to spend time with that group, because they like to laugh and tell stories. We did the gift exchange where you can ‘steal’ gifts from each other and had a lot of laughs.

We drove back to Bottineau that evening, Kara and I ran over to the store to get some snacks and we found a whole row of Christmas decorations that played songs and danced around—like Santa/reindeer/snowmen with saxophones. Kara said “I’ll take the top row, you take the bottom and let’s see if we can get them all playing at the same time” And we did pretty well—it was really noisy!

Then we got in a game of cards and hit the sack so we would be ready for meat processing the next two days. And process meat we did! We ground burger, made sausage, stuffed the little link thingys, kept the dehydrator going steady, butchered a lamb, and Paul even hunted, although he didn’t see anything. Plus everyone had to play on Sandy and Al’s new Wii—we set some new records for them to beat.

Sunday, we all went different directions to head for home—we took the northern route, the kids all went to Grand Forks where they separated and went their own ways. We all got home between 7:30-8:30 pm, with coolers full of meat—we should be set for the winter!

Go Bama!

2009-01-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

The people from Alabama are huge football fans! Even the women can quote you statistics and players from a lot of the southern teams. Last year when I was in Alabama at a conference, I noticed people leaving the session fairly often. I thought they were really using the rest room, until I realized they were going out to check on the football game.

This year, the conference was at a wonderful conference center that Kimberly Clark (the paper and cleaning products people) gave to a college. It has a huge living room area (with a fireplace), nice kitchen with a large attached dining room (with another fireplace), a conference room with a backlit screen and all the electronics, and about 20 guest rooms (some with two queen beds and some with one queen bed). And to make it even nicer—it’s way out in the woods and right on a lake. We had a glass sliding door that opened right to the lake.

We actually flew in to Atlanta and drove to Oxford, Alabama, where we stayed the first night. The next day, we had some time, so we wandered through the Cheaha State Park and Talladega National Forest. It was neat winding roads through mountains and lots of trees. Some of the trees still had some leaves with color left—so it was beautiful! It was fun wandering around through there, because we had Gertie (the GPS) programmed to go to the conference center, so we could just flip a coin to decide whether to turn right or left and then let her figure out where we were and how we should go to get to the conference center. Although when we got closer to the center, she gave up and said ‘the roads to your destination contain incomplete data’.

The center is near a town called Sylacauga which we never did learn to pronounce. We stopped there for lunch at a Chinese Buffet. They had really good food—a lot of seafood that was really good. That night for supper, they catered BBQ—there was chicken and ribs, baked beans, with banana pudding and chocolate cake for desert!

The conference was on Friday evening and all day Saturday. Saturday, we decided to move to the living room area and light the fire and talk around it. It was very comfortable and relaxed. It was funny, because one advisor asked if Bob could come and light the fire—both he and I laughed, because I’m the one who likes to start fires!

That evening, we drove back to Atlanta and stayed at Teresa and John’s. They love to play cards, so we were able to get a few games in. On Sunday, we went to church with them and then had brunch. That afternoon we went to the King Tut exhibition, which was really interesting—there were a lot of artifacts, but no mummy and no big gold case that held the mummy. A lot of other Egyptian artifacts were on display in addition to King Tut—it always amazes me how much ‘bling’ royalty would wear and even bury with them to take to the afterlife. Sometimes it seems like they had the attitude ‘how much money can I possibly spend’. A few of the necklaces and earrings were so big, that it would hurt to try and wear them for any length of time.

Terry and Pam were at a conference and came home on Sunday, so after going out to eat, we moved over to their place that evening. We had a nice visit with them and Pam showed us their Church and the area where they live. We left for home on Monday afternoon with a totally uneventful trip—except that we had time to get a bowl of noodles (my favorite) and Bourbon Chicken (Bob’s favorite) at the Wok and Roll in the airport.

Helping Kara and Paul

2008-12-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite kinds of wandering is when we go to either Ross or Kara’s and do something all together. That’s what happened the first part of November. Kara and Paul bought a house—they closed on Thursday around 5 pm, and we showed up around 7 pm to ‘help’. When we first walked in, we thought ‘hmmm, it kind of smells like old people—kind of musty, closed up, and maybe some pet smells.

Bob and I had a double sized air mattress that we blew up and made into our bed. Kara and Paul had their futon. Kara had the play that she was working with doing their performances Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings and Sunday Matinee—so she had to leave for all of those, but she had Friday off from school. So we started cleaning and painting like crazy. I washed out all the cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom. They got a primer paint for all the rooms and we got the two bedrooms, bathroom and living room all done.

We pulled up most of the carpeting so Paul could put in hardwood flooring (and the carpeting was pretty dirty—probably some of the smell). We also managed to get in a couple games of pinochle—even though we had to sit on coolers and use an end table for our table. Where there’s a will—there’s a way!

On Saturday, Ross and Richard came and we really managed to get a lot more painting done—including the main coat on the bedrooms, living rooms, and bathroom. Bob and Paul replaced the toilet and we all got cleaned up and went to the play that evening. The students did a good job and one of the custodians gave us a tour around the theatre and into the library. Hibbing High School is pretty fancy! We’re talking lots of marble, plaster moldings with gilding, huge pipe organ, velvet seats, busts, etc, etc. The building is on the National Register of historic places. After the play, we went to Grandma’s for a late supper, however, we discovered they had Prime Rib on Special, so Ross and I and Kara and Paul each shared one. Bob got a salad and Richard got an appetizer.

It’s nice that Kara and Paul are in Hibbing—which is two hours from here and three hours for Ross and Richard—it’s not too far for either of us to drive. So even though we left at 7 pm—we got home by 9 pm.

2008-12-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

Monday morning we headed back for the LA area—this time staying right near Disneyland for two nights. From there we drove south and visited some chapters, then drove north and visited some more. We had some time so could have visited Disney, but it’s not too much fun without some kids along.

When we went north, we went on a four lane road that went through some canyons—it’s so funny, because some areas of LA are totally crowded with houses and businesses, but this area was totally desolate—just a lot of rocks and hills, and scrubby brush. I can also see why they have wild fires right in LA.

We left around 2:30 pm from the Northeast corner of LA to go to San Diego. We were a little worried about traffic, but got into a car pool lane and just breezed along—even when the traffic got heavy and slowed right down; we were able to keep going. So we got to San Diego fairly early in the evening. That night we found a seafood restaurant that was right on the beach—we ate on the patio and watched the sun set over the ocean—breathtaking!! Although as soon as the sun went down—the temperature dropped about 15 degrees—they had those heat lamp thingies, so we stayed nice and warm.

Thursday and Friday consisted of visiting more chapters—even one on Friday evening which was at a Buffet—lots of food and lots of people!

On Saturday, we went to the beach and got the other side of us burned a little bit—I didn’t want to get my back and the back of my legs burned anymore, so I didn’t lie on my stomach too much. We also walked along the beach for quite a ways, so we didn’t get burned as bad as last weekend. Then we hiked in Torrey Pine State Park—it’s the only place in the world where Torrey Pines grow—they looked a lot like Norway Pines to me—although their needles were really thick.

That night we went to Old Town in San Diego—we’ve been there before and it’s really neat. We ate at a place that specialized in Baja food—and they served things in buckets. I had the bucket of shrimp and crab and Bob had the bucket of meat (ribs, pork, beef, and chicken). They had a lot of it cooking over an open grill as you came in—the aroma was really enticing. My shrimp had the shell still on—so they had to be peeled and trying to crack the crab legs was not easy, since everything was covered with this Baja seasoning. I went through a whole stack of napkins and mainly ate with my fingers. But it was really good. That seasoning is very flavorful, but not real spicy.

When we left San Diego, we programmed Gertie (GPS) to avoid highways, so we wound through some neat mountains to get to Palm Desert (actually we’re in La Quinta—which is right next to Palm Desert, which is right next to Palm Springs). Have I mentioned before that I wish I knew a little Spanish, so I could pronounce the names of these towns and colleges—La Quinta is pronounced La Cinta.

Speaking of pronouncing—we laughed so hard when Gertie told us to turn on ‘Westward Doctor’. The street sign said ‘Westward Dr.’ It’s a good thing there are two of us, because many times you can’t really understand what she’s saying and it you had to try and read it while you were driving—it wouldn’t be good.

The advisor of the new chapter invited his officers and us to his home on Sunday evening—we went over the chartering ceremony and then I taught them about some of Phi Theta Kappa programs. The advisor’s home was in Desert Hot Springs, and he and his partner then served us a wonderful supper—chicken enchiladas, nachos and dip, and cream puffs for dessert. To get to Desert Hot Springs, we drove thought some hills that were covered with wind generators. I remember when we were out here several years ago and we were intrigued with the number of wind generators on the hillside—well there are 10 times as many now! One of the men that was there, managed a hotel in Desert Hot Springs. He said it has hot springs in the hotel that you can swim in—darn! I wish we would have stayed there!

Monday morning we drove over to Blythe to visit a chapter—it was on the other side of the state and took us a couple hours to drive over there. We had some time before the chartering, so we came back into Palm Desert through the back way and by a large lake. The area we came through had tons of produce growing—we saw lots of fields of peppers, grapes, and some palm trees that had these paper cones hanging from them. We learned later they were fig trees and they wrap the bunches of figs in brown paper to protect them from the sun.

We went over by the lake and there was an old marina and restaurant that looked like it hadn’t been used in 20 years. I was expecting there to be resort areas around the lake, but there weren’t any, so I wonder if it’s salty or not good for fishing or swimming. We couldn’t see any resorts along it. In fact, the area seemed pretty poor and run down.

I chartered the new chapter that evening and then we went back to the hotel. Since it gets dark shortly after 5 pm—we can’t do a whole lot of sight seeing in the evening.

The next morning we drove up to Joshua Tree to visit with a chapter that’s just in the process of chartering a new chapter. The advisor and another employee from the college took us to 29 Palms to a restaurant at 29 Palms Inn. At one time, this was a really fancy resort where a lot of movie stars visited—now it’s a little shabby. But the restaurant was really good. They grow their own vegetables and bake their sour dough bread in an outdoor wood stove. The city of 29 Palms is also home to a huge Marine base--that's where they are training all the military who are being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, because the climate is similar.

Since our flight didn’t leave until midnight—we had quite a bit of time to kill, so we wandered around Joshua Tree National Park for a while. We were here some years ago, but it was very foggy and we couldn’t see very far in front of us. The Joshua Tree is very interesting looking—kind of a cross between a pine tree, cactus, and Yucca. We hiked to a dam and reservoir, but it was dry. It was funny, because there were signs all around saying ‘No Swimming’, but there was no water.

Both Bob and I got upgraded to first class on the way home—it was nice because it was a red eye and we had more room for sleeping. Although you sleep all the way, so don’t get any extra services or a meal. We finally got home again after three weeks away—it felt really good to sleep in our own beds. Although when I woke up in the morning, the first thing I did was look for where the alarm clock was—I didn’t even realize I was back home.

A weekend in Vegas--a weekend in Santa Barbara

2008-10-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

I love Las Vegas – not!

We’re off again—this time to Las Vegas and California. We flew in to Los Angles on the early morning plane again. I really don’t like that flight—We had to get up at 2:30 am (Central time) to catch a plane. We got to LA around 10:30 am, got off the plane, went to the bathroom and went to baggage and our bags came shortly after. We walked out to catch the Avis shuttle and one was sitting at the curb just getting ready to leave. It took us about 10 minutes to get to the Avis Car rental and since we are ‘preferred’ customers—they drop us off right at our car (which is a VW Beetle!!—cool, we’ve never driven one of those before—although we struggled to get all of our luggage in it). We were on the road shortly after 11 am—we didn’t have too bad of traffic, so got to San Bernardino—which is on the edge of LA by noon.

I had an appointment with an advisor along the way and we decided it would be no problem to get there, so we stopped for a leisurely lunch. The visit with the chapter went very well—I even got to help ‘flock’ a person’s office. They have a bin of pink flamingo lawn ornaments and for a donation you can have them ‘flock’ someone’s office—for a little bigger donation, you can buy insurance against being ‘flocked’. They are raising money for the American Cancer Society. It was fun because their president had a stick with some flowers and a pink flamingo and ribbons that she let this procession of people with a bin full of the flamingos.

We didn’t get to get Vegas and our hotel until around 10 pm—so needless to say, we were pretty tired. The conference went Friday and all day Saturday—they even had a costume ball on Saturday night. It was great fun—some chapters really went all out. One had a guy dressed as Elvis with a lot of screaming women fans around him.

On Sunday we left Vegas and drove north so we could go through Death Valley. The road up there went through rolling hills of dry, scrubby brush. I’ve decided that I really like green—and even the white of snow rather than just brown. Death Valley was really neat—it was nice that we visited in the Fall because it wasn’t too hot. In fact, it was down right cool—especially when we were up at Dante’s view. It was about 45 degrees, but when we got down to the bottom (at 282 feet below sea level) it was 78 degrees. We were able to walk out on the salt flats and it was really neat. There is no way for the little bit of rainwater that they get to flow anyplace, so it just washes the salt down to the bottom and then evaporates. Some of the roads into canyons were absolutely beautiful--lots of interesting rock formations and colors--one road was called Painted Canyon. We hiked into one canyon--it was a great time of year, because it wasn't too hot.

We checked in to our hotel in Ridgecrest—which is city that’s surrounded by a military weapons testing area and lots of high desert—again brown and dry. Our room had a Jacuzzi in it, so we had a chance to really relax. It’s too bad that we were only there one night. The next day we drove through San Bernardino to the LA suburb, Moreno Valley. It’s been really hot, dry and windy--and the radio was talking about the Santa Ana winds and fires that were burning in some of the valleys. We were on I 215 around 3:30 pm and then heard that there were fires burning so close to the highway that it had to be closed around 5 pm.

Moving every single night isn’t too much fun, so we found a hotel in Santa Monica where we could stay for three nights and be able to drive to my appointments. The first college we visited was up on a hill that faced the ocean. They had a rose garden with benches and a deck off their cafeteria that had a fabulous view. The advisor said sometimes her husband will come over for supper and they will have a date night out on the deck of her school. WOW!! It was also a Catholic school, so I ended up going to Mass with the advisor.

That evening we went to a seafood restaurant that was right on the beach in Malibu. We had to wait for a while, so we strolled a ways on the beach, but it was already dark.

One chapter that I visited had an event called ‘pizza and politics’ which included a group of 5th graders who told the crowd why it’s important to vote—they were so cute. It was followed by a forum where two speakers talked about the platforms of McCain and Obama. It was in the quad of the college—which was a beautiful area, although it was in the sun—so we were sitting in the hot sun for a couple hours.

We then headed to Santa Clarita—which is north of LA in the Canyons. It was really pretty (although pretty brown). We had time to grab a late lunch, so went to a Coco’s. It’s a chain something like Applebees or Dennys—with pretty good food. The next day the chapter I visited was another Catholic College—the advisor’s office was in what used to be the Mother Superior’s private bathroom--although it was actually pretty good sized--better than what Bob had at one time.

After that appointment, we got on the Pacific Coast Highway—which goes right along the ocean. We followed that to Ventura and then went to Santa Barbara, which is a wonderful city right on the ocean. Our hotel wasn’t right on the beach, but we just had to cross a couple roads and we were there, so we went walking that evening. On Saturday, we went out on the beach, and walked for quite a ways, then made a nest and settled in for soaking up the sunshine (in fact got a little sunburned on my back and the back of my legs), but it sure is nice to nap on the beach.

That evening we went to a restaurant that used to be a stagecoach stop, Cold Spring Tavern. The road we were taking wound through the mountains and we saw our turn off just before a really high bridge—so we decided to keep going. Gertie (our GPS) had a fit—because we were supposed to turn on Stagecoach Road. After a couple miles there was another Stagecoach Road, so we took that. There was a sign on it that said “Road not maintained, but we decided to keep going”. The road was really neat with lots of trees, cliffs and winding roads. We went underneath the huge bridge and were clinging to the side of a cliff on a narrow road when Gertie piped up “Cold Spring Tavern” on right—all that was there was the side of a mountain. Another ½ mile and suddenly there were cars parked all along both sides of this narrow little road. We found it!! It consists of several old log buildings that include a bar, restaurant and antique shop. The food they served included wild boar, rabbit, venison, as well as the traditional menu items. I had the rabbit and it was delicious—had wild mushrooms and a rich sauce. The restaurant wasn’t very busy—we were surprised.

Sunday morning, we found a Lutheran Church and went to a service (I’m so thankful when churches have web sites, so you can find our their schedule.) It’s always fun to visit with people, because so many of them have roots in Minnesota. The pastor was new—in fact hadn’t been officially installed yet. He had gone through Luther Seminary and was a pretty good friend of a friend of ours.

We decided to drive around the area rather than take our sunburned bodies back to the beach. We had seen an article on a Lemon Festival in a neighboring town—with lemon cotton candy, lemon pie, lemon slushes, etc—so we drove over there. This town wasn’t very big, but we sure couldn’t find the park or a place where there would be 10,000 people (what the paper said had attended on Saturday). So we gave up and went driving through the mountains.

We saw a road called painted canyon and thought that might be a good one to check out. It ended up being a really windy road that was only one lane. It went up and up and up through wonderful mountains. We wondered if our little beetle would make it to the top or not, but she kept chugging away. Suddenly we came around a corner and here was a settlement of houses! I couldn't believe people would go up that winding, twisting road to get to their house--later, we discovered another road that was much straighter to get there.

We wondered if we should go back to the Cold Spring Tavern, so drove down the winding road that went to it—about a mile before we got there, we started seeing cars parked on both sides of the street—the place was absolutely packed! OK—we won’t stop there.

SD-MN-IO-SD

2008-10-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

That title almost seems like a song or the do-ra-mi, but it actually means that I left home in MN at 5 am (which meant I had to get up at 2:45 am) and got to Sioux Falls, SD at 8:30 am. The airport there has an interesting cross between an escalator and a moving walkway. It’s a walkway that’s got a steep incline—which is OK, except when I had a briefcase on wheels that almost ran over the top of me!

I found a copy place (thanks to the lady that lives in the box in my car—that’s a GPS). After I had my copies made, I saw a Barnes and Noble Bookstore and since I had time to kill and my cell phone to charge up—I went in and bought a book (Three Cups of Tea—it’s really good) and hung out. Then I ate lunch and headed slowly for Worthington, MN where I had an appointment at 3 pm.

I had a really good visit with the advisor and one student at Worthington, although the advisor talked like crazy—even asking me for career advice--and then took me to introduce me to her college president and Academic VP. I finally got going from there around 5:30 pm. Hwy 60 goes from Worthington to Sioux City, IA, but it had a detour on it and it must have some new sections because my lady in the box was having a fit that I wasn’t on the road—she must have thought I was going 70 miles per hour out in a corn field. She kept saying “get on the highlighted route” and the picture of the little car was in the middle of a field. I was tempted to pick up the box and show her that I was really on a road. But I think I really appreciate her—I found Kinkos, Minnesota West, and the Holiday Inn Express without any problems at all.

Needless to say, I was beat. The conference started on Thursday at 8:30 am and went until late—a scavenger hunt started at 9:30 pm—although I decided to skip that. Then we went all day Friday. I didn’t have anything schedule for Saturday and Sunday. However, the advisor from the local chapter invited her chapter officers and me to her home for dinner. She is from Iran, so had some unusual food. One was baklava—but not just regular baklava—which she said is the ‘Greek’ kind. She made the ‘Persian’ baklava—it was rolled rather than cut into squares and it wasn’t as sweet as what I’m used to. The advisor was so nice that she send a container home for Bob.

On Sunday, I found a Lutheran Church to attend. I was going to drive around a bit and realized that, since I had been depending on my GPS to tell me where to turn all the time, I had no idea what part of town I was in—so I actually found a map and tried to figure out where I was. I discovered that I was in Sioux City, IA—not to be confused with West Sioux City which is in Nebraska, or North Sioux City which is in SD.

On Monday I drove back to Sioux Falls, SD, visited another chapter and then flew home. I was excited, because I was upgraded to first class from Sioux Falls to Mpls—I thought I’d get my glass of merlot on the way, but it was only a 32 minute flight and kind of rough—so the flight attendants never got up. Darn!

Unpack, Wash clothes, Repack

2008-10-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Unpack, wash clothes, repack….this is getting to be a trend. We got home late Monday evening and left again Thursday morning. Although this time we’re not flying—we are going to Bismarck, ND. I needed to get some copies made, so we stopped in Bemidji and got them started. I had an appointment with an advisor at the college, so I went and visited with her. After I picked up my copies, I saw a place to get my hair cut—and, since I hadn’t had a chance to get my hair cut for a long time, I stopped in there.

After we stopped to eat supper in Fargo, we headed for Bismarck. I just got a broadband card for my computer that will allow me to be on the internet from anyplace that has AT&T cell phone service. It was really cool. I was sending e-mails as we were driving across ND. Actually Bob was driving and I was playing on the computer. Our car has an AC electrical outlet and Richard gave me a little light that gets plugged into the usb port. I’m just really set for working—well, maybe playing, since I can’t see the papers that I have to work with, but it works OK to type.

We got to Bismarck around 11:30 pm and checked in to the hotel. The conference didn’t start until 2—so we had some time to sleep in and relax. Friday night’s activity was cosmic bowling. Since I’ve been bowling pretty good on the Wii, I thought I would do OK—even though I haven’t actually bowled in a long time. Wrong!! It’s a whole lot different when you have a heavy ball to throw rather than the little light remote. I broke 100 the first time and was on track for the second game, but in the 10th frame, I threw my ball to the left and only picked up one pin and then threw the next ball to the right and only picked up one pin—so ended up with a 98. And the next couple of days I had the sorest left butt cheek!! I didn’t realize there was a muscle in there that gets used for bowling!

The conference went until 3 pm on Saturday, but we decided to drive home—even thought it was really late before we got there. We were really glad we did, because mom was sick and needed to go to the doctor on Sunday morning. Then there was a square dance party that we were able to make it to on Sunday afternoon.

NY - Traffic Nightmare!

2008-10-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

We were only home a couple days, before we were off again. We had some interesting navigation in New York City—and some really heavy traffic. We ended up renting a GPS—which was a life saver. I think we still would still be wandering around NYC if we didn’t have it. Even with the GPS, we made a couple bad turns—it said ‘turn right’, but there were several different roads going off to the right.

We stayed at the Friar Tuck Inn—it’s a very old resort—is kind of neat, but a little run down. There are some newer sections that are time-share condos, but we were in the main lodge area. It looks like a castle and we had our meetings in the lower level, which really looks like the walkways you would think of in castle dungeons.

Our meals are included with the room. When we ate supper on Thursday night, there were only four people in the dinning room (including Bob and I), and they served bread, an appetizer, salad, soup or pasta, an entrée (I had Maryland Crab Cake and Bob had Tilapia)—it was really a lot of food. We had three nights of eating like that—plus even dessert when the whole group was there. The breakfasts were a menu that included all kinds of different things and the servers kept asking ‘anything else’.

We got there fairly late Thursday evening and the conference didn’t start until Friday afternoon, so we went swimming and then sat in a hot tub that was outside—the breeze was a little cool, but the sun was really warm and the water was warm, so it felt really nice.

When we were leaving on Sunday afternoon, we decided to drive to Woodstock—where the big Woodstock gathering in the 70s happened. I guess there is a field with a small plaque, but we didn’t see it. The town is quant with lots of artsy shops and there are lots of gray haired men with pony tails wandering around—I guess the hippies are still there. That area is the Hudson Valley and it is very lush. Some literature said it is big wine area.

Since Bob had never been to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, we decided to visit there. We went to Jersey City and took the ferry from there. First we went to Ellis Island and wandered around there for a while. We didn’t take the time to do any kind of history search. I know my dad came through there—I found some information on the internet with his ship name. We got back on the ferry and went over to the Statue of Liberty—you had to have a reservation to go in, so we just wandered around the island. It’s pretty awesome—she’s so big. It was a beautiful, sunny day, so it felt good

When we were leaving Jersey City, we should have looked at a map and gone south through Jersey to get to JFK, but instead we listened to the lady who lives in the GPS. She sent us north and through the Holland Tunnel and across Manhattan—what a mistake! It was 6:15 pm and 19 miles to get to JFK. We got into heavy traffic trying to get to the Holland Tunnel. We could see the traffic light ahead of us changing from green to red and we would crawl ahead about 8 inches. After a long time, we finally got going in the tunnel and then our fuel light came on telling us we needed to get gas. We kept crawling along very slowly. It was after 9 pm before we got out of Manhattan and our GPS said we still had 14 miles to go. By that time we were really worried about the gas situation, so we pulled over to program the GPS to find a gas station. The first station ended up being a hole in the ground, the second one had construction tape all around it, the third one was just a mini-mart, the fourth one was closed. Finally we got gas at the fifth station we went to. Then after we finally got some gas, we headed for the airport—there was a gas station on every corner.

So, after going 5 miles in 3 hours, we were certainly glad that we stayed really close to the airport.

KC MO

2008-10-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

My first Advisor Education Conference for this fall was in Kansas City, MO. It’s always fun to go to Missouri—they have a really wonderful coordinator and some really great advisors! Our Friday night social was to Waldo’s Pizza, which is supposed to be the best pizza in the state. The one problem was that it was so noisy in there that we couldn’t visit with the advisors very well.

The next day was the Conference all day and then we went out to supper with the Regional Coordinator. I really enjoy having steak when we’re in the Midwest—it always tastes so good. So we said we wanted to find a steak place—someone suggested the Hereford House has really good steak, so that’s where we went. And, it was so delicious—melt in your mouth delicious!!

We didn’t leave until late Sunday, so we had the day to explore. We decided to check out Independence—which is Harry S. Truman’s home. We arrived just in time to do a tour through his home with the National Park Service. He really has an interesting story and the house—which was actually his in-laws is left the way it was during his lifetime. It even has his coat and hat hanging on a coat rack by the back door.

The Bingham-Waggnor Estate is a beautiful property with a gorgeous old home on it. We took a tour—first watching a film in the carriage house. On the tables were advertisements for the annual fall “Pig Pickin’ - Chicken Lickin’ Feast” which is a major fundraiser for the continued restoration and maintenance of the Estate. The tour guide told us that the Estate is rented out for parties, weddings, and other events—that raises $50,000 a year, which is about half of what they need for upkeep.

The house had a beautiful wooden table and piano bench that had very detailed inlay. There was also a quilt show going on in the house, so we got to check out some wonderful quilts. One of the interesting things the guide showed us was a Baseball board game that they had found in the attic. It’s very rare and worth a lot of money.

The other thing we decided that we needed to have while in KC was Barbecue. So Bob found a place on the Internet and jotted down the directions—Smokehouse—it even sounded pretty good. We followed the directions and drove right to it—except it was closed! Darn! Oh well there was a ‘Steak and Shake’ in the area—so we went there instead!

Back in the air and home again for a couple days.

Going to Jackson

2008-10-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

A quick trip to the office in Mississippi was scheduled for the last weekend in August. Several people asked if I was going there for a vacation—heck no, I wouldn’t travel to a hot and humid area like that for a vacation. Everyone said it wasn’t nearly as hot as it had been—only in the 80s and 90s, but very humid. I guess it had been over 100 for several weeks. It did rain (pour) several days.

I left on the 4:45 am flight—yuk, but arrived before noon. So I was able to work part of the day on Monday—although I was really tired. I went back to the hotel, grabbed a quick bite and went to bed. Then next day was go to the office, go out to eat with my team members, go back to the hotel and grab a bite, and go to bed. Bob didn’t go with me, so it was pretty quiet.

On Wed, I brought my computer to the IT people to do some work on it. We had meetings all day, even brought in a lunch. When I went to pick up my computer, I learned that I had several bad sectors on the hard drive—so I ended up leaving the computer in Jackson. It crashed before they could copy the files, so I lost everything—which is why I’m posting some of these entries so late. I didn’t get my computer back until the middle of Sept—I was really lost without it. And I had so many conferences scheduled that I had to recreate many of my documents for. It’s been really stressful—I haven’t had this churning in my stomach and sleepless nights since I left the college.

The end of the trip had so many things go wrong it was amazing—first my computer crashed, then when I went to fill up the car with gas, my credit card wouldn’t work at the pump. I was up early for my flight and it was a little late. When we got to Memphis—the flight was a couple hours late, which meant that I missed my connection to the cities. So I ended up sitting in the MSP airport for 7 ½ hours—and it was cold in there—I was freezing. I had to keep walking to keep warm. I finally got home at 11 pm—It was a long day.

I left my heart in San Francisco.....

2008-10-03T19:35:00.000-07:00

We ended up being at San Francisco State University for nearly two weeks—and it was ironic because just after we left—Ross went there for a week and a half for his conference.

We were a little bit late getting into San Francisco and I was concerned because we were meeting some other people from HQ and catching a ride to the University. Just as we were getting off the plane, I noticed a Delta gate right across from our gate. Pretty soon here came the people we were going to meet—their plane was a little late as well.

We got to the University and got into our rooms and then eight of us were going out to find something to eat—we got into two cars and the drivers took off. They both had GPS systems, but didn’t decide where they were going to eat. They said ‘we’ll find something’. So we drive around and fiddle with the GPS and call the people in the other car—and then drive some more and call the people in the other car—and drive some more. At one time there were two people in our car on the phone with two different people in the other car. Pretty soon we were right downtown San Francisco wandering around. Finally, we said ‘let’s just go back to that mall that’s close to the college and go to one of their restaurants’. The people in the other car decided they were still going to look for some place else. So we went back to the mall and went to an Olive Garden—the wait would be 90 minutes (and it was 8:30 pm)—so we checked out a Mexican place and only had a 20 minute wait. About the time we got in and sat down, we saw the other people come in. They tried the Olive Garden first and then ended up at the Mexican place as well.

That night we were so cold—there was no heat in the dorms and only a sheet and thin blanket. And it set a record low temp that night. So the next day several of us went to a target store and bought some cheap clothes. We also invested in wash clothes, a rug, and a hair dryer—some things that we had forgot to pack and some things to make our room a little nicer.

We had really great speakers and I had a good time because I was assigned to be the chauffer for some of the speakers, so I went with another staff member and picked up speakers at their hotel and dropped them off at the hotel or the airport. It was fun to escort them and get to visit with them a little more.

Then after Wednesday evening’s speaker, we discovered the speaker was going to take a taxi to Sausalito—which would have cost a small fortune, so Bob and I drove him home. The session didn’t end until 10:30 pm—and it was an hour drive each way—so it got pretty late. As we were coming into Sausalito, he asked if we wanted to take the quick way or the scenic way. Since we always like the scenic way, that’s what we opted for. We ended up driving right down by the water, where you could see the Golden Gate Bridge and there was a big huge full moon just hanging over the water—it was absolutely beautiful.

On Our R & R day, we decided to drive to Monterey—which is a beautiful drive right along the ocean. The road is a little crooked, but very pretty. It took us a couple hours to get there and we saw that they had a whale watching tour—so we got tickets. Then we had lunch--I had clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl and Bob had fish and chips. Since it was windy and a bit cool on the water, we went back and put on a few more layers of clothes before our whale watch. My college roommate and I went on a Whale watch in Maine and I remember we all watched for the blow when the whales surface and then hurry over to catch a glimpse before they go back down (for up to five minutes). This was the same way—we did a lot of looking and waiting, but didn’t see them up very close. Although we did see those big huge tails go up in the air when they dove—so it was neat. I was glad we didn’t have a camera, because so many people around us were standing there with a camera and trying to get a picture and would miss it every time. It was better to at least see it.

We finished our conference on Saturday at noon and our flight didn’t leave until midnight—so we had some time to kill. We had noticed a place called ‘sea horses’ when we were driving to Monterey where there were horses to rent and ride along the ocean. So we went down there and did a two hour horse back ride. We rode a path on top of the bank and then cut down and rode right along the water—we tried to get our horses to go into the water, but they didn’t like getting their feet wet at all. I was surprised, because we rode right along the beach where there were lots of people swimming and sun bathing. I don’t think it would be too much fun to walk along the beach and have to avoid the ‘horse apples’. We also really commented on how rough the ride was—I guess we’re spoiled because Sandy’s horses are so smooth.

We were both upgraded to first class for the trip to the cities, which was nice because we wanted to sleep since it was from midnight until 6 am. We got back home on the 10:30 am flight.

Backpacking along the North Shore

2008-09-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

In 2001, we did a huge backpacking trip. We were so proud of our accomplishments that we rewarded ourselves by getting backpacks and a tent—which we had never used. Every summer, we say that we’re going backpacking and then suddenly the summer is over and we haven’t gone. So we took a few days off in June to backpack. We got our gear all ready and made up packets of dehydrated food. We went over to Kara and Paul’s and headed out—however, the forecast was for heavy rain every evening—so we wimped out and just did some day hikes on Thursday, went to Duluth on Friday, and did a hike on Saturday. We did eat a fair amount of our food and even cooked the spaghetti and chili for a couple meals.

So a few weeks later, we were determined to use our packs and tent. This time Kara drove us over and dropped us off along the trail and we left our car at another parking area. We left Friday around noon and hiked until noon on Sunday—we covered 24 miles in that time. It was nice hiking—not too hot and it only rained one evening. There was one camp site that had quite a few bugs, but we made a fire and it seemed to keep them away pretty good.

We got back to Kara and Paul’s and had a chance to play a few games of cards—I think we have Paul addicted to Pinochle. Neither Bob nor I felt too achy after our hike. We’ll have to make sure we get in a good backpacking trip every summer!!

Cities – St. Cloud

2008-09-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

So it’s not a long trip or has lots of new things to see or do, but we did end up going to the cities for Bob’s spring meeting. We picked up Kara at Hibbing and brought her down with us. She wanted to go to the State Speech meet, so took a personal day. Paul came down later and met us there. We stayed with Ross and Richard and played with the Wii—Each person makes a Mii (a character that looks like them). We had a lot of fun making them for each of us. It’s kind of fun now because when we do some of the activities, we see all the family members.

On Saturday, we drove over to St. Cloud where we helped Kara and Paul sheetrock in the basement of their duplex. I had never been involved with sheetrocking—it is an interesting (and very dirty) experience. We had sheetrock dust all over us. Kara and I got pretty good at measuring and cutting—although we cut a piece for a closet, but then couldn’t maneuver it into the closet—so ended up having to cut it down to get it in.

We went back to St. Cloud the next weekend and then had a lot of sanding to do—that’s even dirtier than the cutting and rasping off the edges—especially when you are sanding the ceiling and it’s all falling in your hair and face. We also discovered the joys of mudding! Now I can put sheetrocking on my resume!

Back to Philly

2008-08-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

We are back in Philly—for my convention this time. We had another ‘interesting’ flight out—it was especially memorial to Bob because he was upgraded to first class—and even got a meal! I was flying on a free ticket, so didn’t even get considered for an upgrade. Our flight was 45 minutes late leaving the Falls—and since we were only suppose to have 40 minutes in the cities, we wondered if we would make the connection. When we landed in the cities, we had 8 minutes before the next flight was supposed to leave. We started running for all we were worth—stopped and looked at one flight schedule board. The panel that had Philadelphia on wasn’t working—so we couldn’t tell anything. We stopped at the next panel and discovered that our flight was delayed for two hours—so we were able to stop running and even stop for a bowl of noodles (one of my favorite meals in the airport—Bob usually has a bourbon chicken and rice dish.)

We got to Philadelphia and discovered our luggage didn’t make it with us. So we had to wait in line and file a report—they said they would bring it to our hotel later that evening. We checked into the hotel—and the man at the desk said ‘hmmm, I don’t have any rooms available—we’ll have to wait until something opens up’. We thought ‘great no room’, but he found one—although it had two double beds rather than a king. Sleeping in a double bed turned out to be a bit of a problem, because both Bob and I were struggling with colds and one of us would have a coughing jag every so often—so ended up keeping each other awake during the night. We debated whether we should sleep separately in both beds, but we didn’t. I got to the room about 8:15 pm and had a meeting at 8:30—so I was a bit rushed.

I was tired, so went to bed around 10:30 pm. Bob stayed up waiting for our luggage. He finally went to bed around 12:15 am. He just crawled in and the phone started blinking. Our luggage had arrived. They brought it up, but I heard Bob say “That’s not ours—ours is two brown bags”. Yep, they had that downstairs, so 15 minutes later, we had our luggage!

The next morning (Wed), I didn’t have very much of a voice and I had to lead three 1 ½ hour breakout sessions. I was really nervous that I would go completely hoarse with all that talking. One of the men from the hotel stopped in my room and asked if I was all set or needed anything. I said “I might need a new voice by this afternoon”. So he brought me a cup of tea with honey and lemon. The next morning when he saw me, he brought me another cup. He was really nice!

That evening, the ACA Officers, Jennifer and I went to Maggliano’s for supper—it is a wonderful Italian restaurant right near the hotel and convention center. I had to leave a little early and get to another meeting that evening.

Thursday and Friday passed in a blur of Ed. Forums—we had five rounds with about 20 forums in each round. I was busy checking rooms and making sure the presenters had everything they needed. When the session was over I would gather the evaluations. The people from the Marriott were so quick to get in to clean up the room that I followed them in one room—there were still some people talking with the presenter. The cleaners walked in and picked up a stack of evaluations that were sitting on a chair in the back of the room and tossed them in the trash. So I had to rescue them from the garbage. The rooms we were in at the Marriott could be turned into a big ball room. It had many portable walls so the one large room could be divided into 13 different rooms. After the last round on Friday afternoon, they started tearing down the walls while there were still people in the room talking.

Part of our convention was in the Philadelphia Convention Center—it’s really a beautiful building—it covers a couple blocks and goes across a street. But, it was really expensive—we were charged for every table, chair, and trash can! We had some time for lunch a couple days and would run over to the Reading Terminal Market. It is a Farmer’s Market with fresh fruits and vegetables, plus lots of different kinds of food. They have a great Philly Steak place—the sandwiches were so big that we shared one and it was still a lot. I even bought some cucumbers and red, orange, and yellow peppers that I packed in my suitcase to bring home—the peppers were $.99 per pound—and we pay $3.99 a pound at home!

We had some great speakers--Christiane Amanpour and James Rubin were very diferent and quite funny. They are married and would make comments back and forth to each other as well as answer questions.

One of my favorite speakers was Amy Tan, the author of “Joy Luck Club”. She really has a wonderful sense of humor! I was laughing during her entire presentation—although she was the keynote speaker at our joint session with AACC and that session went more than an hour over schedule. That session was followed by a banquet and then our Hallmark Gala happened immediately following. It really made the schedule hectic.

We didn’t get a change to see much of Philadelphia other than the hotel and convention center. We left on Sunday for home—gave up our seats—so got a couple vouchers for our next trip.

Walking Along the Riverwalk

2008-03-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

We are back in San Antonio—we were here 10 years ago. And, although it has changed a lot—it’s still pretty much the same, especially along the Riverwalk where we spent most of our free time. Although we didn’t have too much free time—Bob was in meetings most days, and with my convention a little over a week away, I was really busy with details for it.

We got here Monday evening, checked into our hotel and went walking along the River to stretch our legs. We found a nice restaurant where we shared an appetizer of crab salad, shrimp, and salmon. Then we split a meal of fish—they even plated the two meals separately—very fancy.

The next days passed in a blur of Bob going off to his meetings (earlier every day it seemed, until his Friday morning one was at 7:30 am). He usually had a couple hours off for lunch, so we would walk down to one of the restaurants along the river, sit outside at one of the tables and enjoy lunch—food always tastes so good when you eat outside! One of our favorite places is Country Line Barbeque—although they serve huge portions. One day I had a BBQ appetizer that included four pork ribs, a HUGE beef rib, smoked turkey, and a good amount of brisket. It was really good—I’ve discovered I really like brisket.

In the evenings, we would walk generally after we ate supper—we went to both ends of the riverwalk. You can only stroll where it’s so busy and through all the restaurants, because it’s so crowded and you just thread your way slowly. But, if you get out to the main river, there aren’t too many people and you can walk seriously. At one end, they are expanding the boardwalk, so they have diverted the river, so it’s dry and they can work on it. There was also an explanation of how they built a tunnel under the river that comes out a lot lower and quite a ways down the river to keep it from flooding the town. They can also close off the loop that goes through where all the hotels and restaurants are—and I guess they do every January, for maintenance. We never took the boat ride this year that explained all that, but since we were walking along the river so much, we heard most of it as the boats would go by.

For the Friday banquet at Bob’s convention, they had something a little different. We loaded into coaches and traveled out to the Knibbe Ranch. This was a working ranch—although we only saw one cow—and he had a saddle on him (you could get your photo taken on this longhorn steer). One of their wranglers came riding him, cracking a whip and twirling a lasso! Real ‘cowboy stuff’—I figure Sandy and Al will cringe if they see a picture of me on a cow—especially since he laid down and people just kept crawling on him (Bob and I included!) We had a wonderful meal of brisket (the Country Line’s was better, but it was still good), catfish, and other southern food. Again, we ate at picnic tables outside. There were about 300 people who went to the ranch.

The ranch must have had an agreement with the Marriott, because the napkins were from the Marriott and we had to sign a release saying we wouldn’t hold the Marriott responsible if we got hurt (falling from the cow!). The ranch was unique, because some archeologists had completed a dig there. At one place on the ranch, there were rocks that formed a fairly steep cliff. The prehistoric people had run buffalo over the cliff as part of their hunting. They found stones that were broke at 90 degree angles--that’s what archeologists look for to decide if there might be artifacts in an area. These people cooked on large flat slabs which they laid right on the fire—after a while the slabs would break from the heat (into right angles), so they would find another slab and set it on top of the last one.

From this area they found many spearheads—this was before the bow and arrow was used. They also found some atlatls—which is the tool the people used to throw their spears farther and harder. Right next to the cliff, they found many buffalo bones, because the people couldn’t move the buffalo—so would butcher it where it fell and haul the meat to the cooking area. It was really interesting. We went to that area on a hay ride, from there we went to a large hill where we could see a long ways in every direction. Just about the time we got up there, the moon came up and it was beautiful—totally full, huge, and bright orange when it came up.

The wife told us about the ranch. It had been in her husband’s family for five generations and started out about 20,000 acres—it’s been divided up because of the descendents. Their operation is breeding cattle and selling the calves. The cattle they have is a breed called Tiger stripe. I guess it’s a cross between Brahmas and White Faced Hereford. The Hereford has a better taste, but can’t survive on sparse grass. The Brahmas are a tough breed that can survive on anything, but are tough meat. So all their cows are this crossbreed—and are striped, which is where they get the name Tiger stripe. They then breed these cows to a Black Angus bull—which they said takes all the Brahma out of them.

They need this tougher breed because they have droughts all the time—some last for 3-4 years. Since the land is hilly and no water, they can’t hay, so the cows have to live off the grazing. I guess when they haven’t had rain—so there’s no grass, they burn the spines off the flat leafed cacti and the cows will eat them.

Saturday morning was Bob’s closing session, which included rolls and juice—so I went along. The speaker was LaDonna Gatlin, who is the younger sister of The Gatlin Brothers. She used to sing with them, until she decided to get married and have a family and leave the traveling behind. She is a great speaker—with a real sense of humor and would break into song quite often. We really laughed through all her talk. She did have a great message that she put to Do, Re, Mi

Do – Do the right thing
Re – Realize your potential by helping others realize theirs.
Mi – Mind your manners
Fa – Failures to fertilizer
So – Solutions begin with me
La – Laugh often
Ti – Time is valuable
And that brings us back to Do – Do the right thing!

We got ticket for the IMAX theatre of the 3D film of Mummies—it was really interesting of how the early Egyptians learned to mummify bodies and how modern scientists are trying to use some of the DNA from them to study diseases like malaria. We also learned about a man who learned to read hieroglyphics and in 1880, he discovered some grave robbers who had some artifacts from pharos—they discovered a burial site that had the mummies of 16 pharos and lots of others. They moved the mummies to a museum in Cairo, and shortly after, the tomb they found them in collapsed—so it was a good thing they moved them.

That evening we went to an ice show Disney’s High School Musical. It was OK, but would have been better if we had a few little girls with us who knew and loved the show. We didn’t know anything about it—in fact, we called Kara to learn what the plot was. There was a family with a little girl about 4 or 5 who sang along with every song. She also ended up with a toy microphone that flashed different colors and a pompom thing that spun with lots of different lights. The show was in the Alamo Dome—where the Spurs play basketball, but it was really empty—they only used half the arena, and none of the balconies, but probably only half the seats were filled.

Our room had a balcony that overlooked the river. We spent a fair amount of time in the evening, sitting out there enjoying the sights and sounds (we could hear the pan flute player from across the way). The sun would hit the balcony about 4 in the afternoon, so we got a little start on our tan.

On Easter Sunday, we attended an Easter Morning Sunrise service that was in the Arneson Theatre which is right on the riverwalk. In fact the stage in on one side of the river and an amphitheatre is on the other side. It's three Lutheran Churches that go together to put on a wonderful service--they have a combined choir, plus trumpets, organs and wonderful music. It was very special!

Flying over the Rockies—again!

2008-03-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

This trip took us to Seattle and then to Vancouver, WA. I was all excited thinking I could go into Canada and Victoria Island—until they told me Vancouver, WA is actually right by Portland, OR. We ended up flying to Seattle, because it was much cheaper than going to Portland—and was only a couple hours of driving.

We got in on Thursday evening and headed south for Vancouver. Since we were two hours later, we were hungry so stopped to eat at a Black Angus. Obviously they specialize in steak—and it was really good. It was dark by the time we got out of the restaurant, so we didn’t see much the rest of the way. We basically found our hotel and went to bed. The next morning, we had some time to explore, so we drove to Mount St. Helens. It was beautiful—a lot taller than the other mountains around it and totally covered with snow. Really pretty!

We couldn’t get too close, because the road was blocked by snow. I would love to go back some time when we could drive up as close as possible and then do some hiking. We were reading the literature and one trail goes up several thousand feet in 5 miles. (I don’t think we’ll do that one). There were several huge bridges that we crossed and we went up around 3,000 feet. We saw one deer and a herd of elk. The one nice thing about being there at this time of year was there were no crowds. In the summer, it would probably be bumper to bumper traffic and tons of people.

We stopped at a visitor’s center and they had glass that was made from the volcanic ash. I guess during the summer the artist works right there. I love watching glass blowers—it is really neat. We bought our Christmas ornament there—a bulb blown from St. Helen’s ash.

On Saturday, the region did a service project at Fort Vancouver. The park rangers explained that the Fort was established by the Hudson Bay Trading Company. It was never a fort to defend anything. One of the things they did was establish gardens where they grew vegetables and herbs. So we helped with restoring the gardens—there were 6-8 older ladies who were master gardeners. We had about 80 people in our group—6-8 went off to chop and haul wood for the lady who made bread every day. The rest of us were divided into a couple groups—one went down and started smoothing out piles of dirt that had been dumped into flower beds. The group I was with had the job of digging out herbs (and weeds), filling the beds with dirt and replanting the herbs. They had made some new concrete walkways and needed to fill the beds up to the walkways. They had about 15 yds of dirt that needed to be moved. Bob was one of the guys who shoveled dirt into wheelbarrows, then several guys would bring them (some actually running) to the beds where we would spread it out. We were only there for two hours, but one of the ladies said we did more than they could have done in a couple months! And, what made it even better is it was a beautiful day!

At lunch, they ran out of food—We said ‘what do you expect—you sent everyone outside to work hard—we came back starving’. For the banquet that evening—the host chapter had a Hawaiian luau. It was really good—the dessert was a coconut cream mousse on a macadamia nut crust.

We finished around 1 pm and our flight left at 12:40 am—so we had quite a bit of time. We drove over to Long Beach and walked along the beach for about an hour. The ocean is so beautiful. I could sit and watch the waves roll in and out for hours. It certainly makes me think of forever!

We stopped in Olympia on the way to the airport and found a restaurant that was recommended to us—the Oyster House. I had clam chowder and a seafood stew that had a tomato base and lots of clams, oysters, crab, halibut, salmon and mussels. It was good, but I think I would have rather had it just plain and not the tomato base—it made it pretty rich. Bob had the fish and chips.

We were both upgraded to first class and even got to sit by each other. But we slept through the service, so the only benefit we had was the bigger seats and the foot rest (which I love). We got into the cities at 5:45 am—had breakfast at the airport and then caught the flight home. We stopped at the grocery store and then headed for home.

Incredible Indiana (and Ohio…and Kentucky)

2008-03-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

This was a quick trip—we left on Friday and returned on Sunday/Monday. However, we ended up in three different states and got ourselves a voucher for our next trip. I was assigned to attend the Indiana Regional Convention which was held in Madison, IN. Which is a neat little town located right on the Ohio River. It’s midway between Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH—so we had our choice of airports. We ended up flying into the Cincinnati airport—which is actually located in Kentucky! We drove to Madison, found the college and our hotel and checked in.

The college is a brand new building that they just moved into in January. It has a beautiful rotunda with lots of glass. The theatre even smelled very new. I guess a lot of their money to build new campuses (their sister college at Lawrenceburg has a brand new building also) comes from gambling money. Ohio has allowed gambling on boats in the Ohio River—and have cut the deal where a percentage of their profits goes to education.

The host chapter had developed the theme “Note the Music: Note the Power” based around the Power Honors Study Topic. Everything had music as a theme. The opening session was pretty impressive with American Legion members as a color guard and a group called ‘Men of Praise’ singing the National Anthem. The group later performed following the meal. They were wonderful and had a really fun pianist/leader who was so enthusiastic—you couldn’t help but smile, just watching her! Following the formal sessions, there was a fun musical jeopardy game show type event. Many of the chapters came in costume and had fancy shaking sticks. I would have loved to have stayed, but we had gotten up very early and were beat—so we left around 10 pm. I guess it went until midnight.!

Saturday was a long day, starting with an advisor’s breakfast meeting, several general sessions and breakouts, and ending with a formal awards banquet. The banquet was held at a really nice restaurant where they had a wonderful buffet that included chefs carving prime rib, ham, and roast beef. They even had a wonderful dessert bar with persimmon cobbler, bread pudding, chocolate torte, and ice cream. Most everyone was formally dressed—with lots of women in long gowns. They really did it up nice!

On Sunday, there was a meeting with the newly elected officers and then we hit the road. Our flight didn’t leave until 7 pm, so we took the scenic drive right along the Ohio River. This area was an important trade route in the early 1800, so many of the towns like Madison had an ‘old town’ area right near the river. The photo above shows the 'old town' section of Madison, which is right on the Ohio River.

Further down the Ohio, we stopped so we could walk along a levee in Lawrenceburg that had historical markers which told of all the major floods and rebuilding that was done in the 1800s and early 1900 until dams and levees were built to control the flooding. The photo of the entrance to the levee looks a little different than what we saw, because there is a big new building, which is the Ivy Tech college in Lawrenceburg that was build with gambling money.

We stopped and ate at a neat little pizzeria in a small town. I had a ciabatti sandwich which they said was ‘heart healthy’ because the bread is steamed and then baked. It was really good—crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. It was filled with ham and lots of veggies. We eventually drove through Cincinnati (hence into Ohio) and back to the airport in Kentucky.

When we were ready to fly to Int’l Falls, they were looking for people to give up their seats, so we volunteered—and this time it worked! We ended up staying at a Holiday Inn Select—were eating supper at 10 pm and then went to bed. The next morning—it was up early to catch a 9 am flight (which didn’t end up going until 11 am) and back home again.

Staying over that one extra day, made it a short time at home, since we are leaving again on Thursday….but that’s another story.

From Frozen Lakes to the Mountains to the Beach!

2008-03-13T18:52:00.001-07:00

We were experiencing the coldest weather we had had all winter, when it was time to leave for Oregon—so it felt pretty good to get going--especially when we had several days of absolutely gorgeous sunshiny days. The last time we were in Oregon—it rained every day.

We left on Thursday on the 6 am flight—which means we have to get up around 3 am. Then, since we were flying west (that equates to 1 am their time). We worked for a while and then dozed off. Around 4 pm—we decided to go driving and headed out to the Columbia Gorge—which is one of our favorite places. The waterfalls and river are always so beautiful. We drove on the scenic highway—which winds up and down some cliffs and goes very close to several major waterfalls. The largest waterfall is Multnomah and it is spectacular! It drops 620 feet and then has a smaller drop. There is a little bridge that goes over the falls between the two waterfalls which is .2 miles from the bottom—then a mile long path goes to the top of the falls. We had climbed it 20 some years ago when the kids were small and decided it was time to climb it again.

Bob and I took off for the top—it was a pretty good workout—we had to stop and catch our breaths several times. We hiked for about 45 minutes and it started to get dark. I’m always nervous about coming down—that’s actually harder on the knees and back than going up. So we decided to turn around (we were probably 3/4 of the way to the top) and head back down. It took us about 15 minutes to get back down. The lodge at the base of the falls was having a Valentine Day’s Special—they had candles and rose petals all along the stairs going up into the restaurant.

We had to pick up Phyl at the airport at 7 pm—so we drove to the airport and waited in the cell call lot. While we were sitting there—suddenly the car started shaking and there was a loud roar. We decided there must have been some high powered jets taking off right near us. Since Phyl hadn’t gotten anything to eat since she had left early in the morning, we went to a Burgerville. They have great burgers and some interesting salads—I had one called Rouge River Smokey Blue —it had spring mix greens, blue cheese, cranberries, grape tomatoes, and apples—it was really good. They also had a special chocolate hazelnut milk shake—yummy!

The next day, we worked for a while and then Bob and I drove to Multnomah Falls for another good workout and lunch. This time we made it all the way to the top—stopping a few times. The view from the top is spectacular—you can see the lodge, the river, the waterfalls, and lots of cliffs. We felt good that we were able to make it to the top—in about 50 minutes—we went a little faster than we had the day before.

After we got back down, we ate a late lunch at the lodge—I remember from last year having a wonderful salmon, fruit, cheese, and multi grain bread. They still had it on the menu—so I got it again this year. It was wonderful! Bob ordered a steak sandwich (well done). When it came and he cut into it—it was really rare. So he ended up sending it back. They brought out a whole new one.

The retreat started at 7 pm Friday evening with a reception—around 10 pm (midnight our time), we fizzled out and headed for bed. The retreat went all day on Saturday and then we went to a wonderful Mexican restaurant for supper—there were about 17 people that went together—we had a huge long table. Bob and I rode with one of the advisors and her mother. The rest of the group rode in the coordinator’s RV. After supper, we went to a theatre and saw a fun play called “The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It”. It was about a theatre company who were putting on ‘As You Like It”, but they only had seven actors and they all had to play several parts—and supposedly several of them were ‘crazy’ and schizophrenic from playing all the parts. The only problem is that I was so tired and felt my eyes close for ‘just a second or two’. The next thing I knew—the actors had different costumes on and the stage had different props.

Sunday had the retreat going until noon. Then we all went back to the Columbia Gorge—since Phyl had never seen the waterfalls. We walked up to the little bridge at Multnomah and then ate at the lodge—this time I had the red pepper humus and pita bread and goat cheese. It was really good too! We drove to Bridal Veil Falls and hiked down to it and then stopped at the Vista House—which had a wonderful view. It was so windy that we could hardly walk—as we were going up the steps—the wind blew us into the railing. After we came out of the house—the wind took the sun glasses right off Phyl’s head and blew them across the road.

Since we figured we still had some time before dark, we decided we might as well drive to see the ocean—it was about 70 miles from Portland, but we didn’t think about it being over winding roads—so it took us a little longer than we thought it would—we got to the beach about ½ hour before sun set—but we did get to see the sun set over the ocean—absolutely beautiful. We walked along the beach for a ways until it got pretty dark and then headed back to Portland.

We left early Monday morning—and had smooth flying all the way home.

Stormin’ to the South!!

2008-02-26T05:12:00.000-08:00

We had a ‘glup’ interesting trip to Jackson. We got on the plane for the 11 am flight and when they went to put up the steps, they couldn’t get them up—I heard the flight attendant say “I think they are busted!” So we had to get off the plane ‘while they fixed them’. Our first clue that things weren’t going to go well was when they sent us back into the unsecured area rather than the secured area. Pretty soon they said ‘come over and rebook your flights’. Of course we were rebooked to get to Jackson the next evening at 9 pm—and I was supposed to start judging Hallmarks at 8:30 am. And the really frustrating part was I had been upgraded to first class from the Cities to Memphis.

What to do?? They would have flown us to the cities and put us up there and then we could have gotten to Jackson by 11 am on Wed.—still too late. So we did the same trick that we did on the previous trip—we changed our rental car so we would pick it up in Memphis and drive to Jackson. Thank heavens Bob was along to drive! I sure appreciate that he travels with me a lot—and especially in times like this.

So we had some time to kill in the Falls--it’s also nice that the Falls airport has free WiFi—so we can get some work done. We got back on the plane and headed to the Cities. According to our schedule, we should have had 45 minutes in the Cities, but we ended up being 30 minutes late, so only had 15 minutes to get all the way across the airport—we broke our rule of walking all the way, and took the tram—but then we walked very fast all the rest of the way. So we got on the airplane—and it was empty! There were 10 rows in front of us—and counting us—there were only 7 people in those 30 seats. And then we sat there for another 30 minutes or so before we took off. We were lucky the flight attendants served our drinks fairly quickly, because the flight got really rough and they wouldn’t let us get out of our seats for the rest of the way. We really bumped along.

The (normally) two hour trip took three hours because the pilot was avoiding some bad weather. As we were getting off the plane—the wind was blowing so hard that the plane was rocking as it was sitting at the jet bridge. Since we couldn’t get out of our seats, by the time we landed we really had to go to the bathroom. So that was the first place we headed. When I went into the bathroom—there were several airport employees sitting in there, because there was a tornado warning. After we came out of the bathrooms, we walked down the hallway and they wouldn’t let us go any further, because a tornado had touched down. I guess an airplane on the ground had been blown over and a roof ripped off a Sears store at a nearby mall in Memphis. There was major damage at a college and a total of 44 people killed in Tennessee and Alabama from the tornados.

We had a three hour drive from Memphis to Jackson—it was pouring—with lots of major lightening—but at least no more tornados. We finally got to Jackson around 2 am.

I judged Hallmarks on Wed and Thurs—until late at night most of the time. Then Friday, I worked at the office—judging some more and meeting with people regarding the Educational Forums. Saturday was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day with temps in the 60s—so we wanted to get outside and enjoy it. Therefore, I judged until 11 pm on Friday night and then got up early and started in again—so that I was able to finish by 11 am. We went out hiking along the Reservoir and the Natchez Trace—in our short sleeved T-Shirts! It was so nice—and hard to believe that it was the middle of February.

The Natchez Trace was an old Indian Trail that was later used by settlers. Now it is a National Park Service Road. It runs from the middle of Tennessee, through the North West corner of Alabama, then down the center of Mississippi. Most of the trace is rural, along the road are farms and woodlands. In Mississippi, there are several places where the original trace crosses the road, the first picture is from there. Toward the southern end of the Natchez Trace there is a place called Cypress Swamp, which is a swamp that has a path around it and contains mostly Tupelo trees. The second picture is of it.

Our flight home was pretty uneventful—although we offered to give up our seats on the flight from Mpls to Int’l Falls—but then they didn’t need us—darn! When we flew into Int’l Falls at 3:30 pm the temperature was -15 with a wind blowing (and that was the high for the day)!! I couldn’t believe that we were hiking in 65 degrees weather one day and came back to a wind chill of -45 (and it got even colder that night)!

Wonderful Christmas and New Year Parties!!

2008-02-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

We had another trip to the cities for Ross and Richard’s annual Christmas Party. It was extra special this year, because we picked up Kara after school. Paul had dropped her off in the morning and he went on to St. Cloud. So we met Kara in Hibbing and she rode down to the cities with us. Paul came down Friday evening and we all ended up staying at Ross and Richards. (That way we were able to get some pinochle games in!)

Their party is always so much fun. It starts around 3 pm and sometimes goes as late as 2 am. This year it wrapped up around 11 pm. There are always ‘waves’ of people—most come for a couple hours and then leave—so after a little while there is a new group of people there.

Our Christmas was absolutely wonderful! The kids were home and we had lots of great food, wonderful Church Services, good card games, fun games, and relaxing massages! We even spent an afternoon outside and pushed each other into snow banks.

After Christmas—we journeyed to the cities to help Ross and Richard clean and fix up two of their apartment units. It’s always a lot of fun (and yet some work) to help them. Of course, we always go out to eat following a hard day’s work.

On the way home, we stopped at Kara and Paul’s and spent New Years with them. First we played some cards and watched a movie. On New Year’s eve, we snowmobiled out to where they had a huge stack of brush stacked up and had a great bonfire. We were outside from about 2 pm until 7 pm. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening—there was a lot of deep snow that we were wallowing around in. And the pine trees had a covering of snow which was absolutely gorgeous. We all said “how can anyone not love snow?” If we got cold at all, we would just move a little closer to the fire and warm up. After the sun went down, a million stars came out—so with the fire, sparks, and stars—it was breathtaking!

When we got back to the house, we thought we should stay up to greet the New Year, but we were all so tired, we just went to bed. New Year’s Day, we went and checked on the fire—it had really burnt everything and was totally out. Then Bob and I headed home.

Thanks for the Venison

2008-01-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

We spent Thanksgiving at Sandy and Al’s—and processed venison. Al and Sandy had gotten quite a few deer and we offered to help make sausage, jerky, and steaks—and that’s what we did (and did, and did). We ended up doing two batches (90 lbs each) of sausage; 30 lbs of jerky; and I don’t know how many steaks we ended up with. I know that now everyone has their freezers full of venison (and it’s been delicious)!

We spent Thanksgiving Day processing venison and then cleaned up a bit and ate our meal in the evening. Friday, we went to Minot to see LeAnn, Scott, and Kevin and their families (got to see Kevin’s new home—it’s beautiful.) And, then we did some more gift exchanging—and the stealing game again! Dylan was so funny when someone opened the same gift he had received just the week before. He said “I got that at Ross and Richard’s last week!”

On the way back to Bottineau, Sandy, Bob and I sang Christmas Carols and some other oldies—at the top of our lungs! It was great fun!

After a couple more days of processing venison—we loaded up three coolers full of venison—(poor mom didn’t have much room in the back seat)—and headed home!

Minneapolis – Go Vikings

2008-01-27T18:14:00.000-08:00

My nephews and sister had a wonderful trip planned to go to the cities and take in a Vikings game—so we came along—just for fun. We started out by having a pre-Christmas party where we did a gift stealing game—it’s become one of our favorite things. You wrap up a bunch of ‘stuff’—some of it from the regifting closet—some good things—and some things you just plain want to get rid of. The first person opens a present, the second person can either steal that present or open another one. We had 10 people and did three rounds—so there was a lot of stealing (and laughter).

Saturday night we went to Basils for supper—they have really good food—we walked over there and it was a really nice evening—cool and crisp!

On Sunday, we went to the Vikings football game—it was the first time Bob & I had ever been—and we’ve always wanted to go. It was great fun. There ended up being 10 of us—Scott, Stacey, Dylan, Ross, Richard, Paul, Kevin, Carla, Bob and I. What made it even better was the Vikings won! Sandy and Al stayed and babysat for Parker. We rode the shuttle from the motel to the game, but decided to walk back—which took less time than how long we would have had to wait for the shuttle, even though it was a couple miles. It was cool and raining, but hey, we’re tough Vikings fans!!

Marvelous Madison

2008-01-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

The next retreat (and last for this year) was in Madison, WI. Since it’s closer, we decided to drive—although it is a 10 hour drive. We broke it up by driving to the cities one day, then going over to Madison for the retreat. Driving back to the cities the next day and then driving home on Sunday. Since my friend, Linda, from the cities was going, we picked her up and she rode with us. It gave us a great time to visit and eat together.

It was a beautiful, sunshiny time and the Wisconsin country side is very beautiful. I was especially impressed with the area around La Crosse, WI. It is in the Mississippi River valley—so you go down through cliffs of sandstone before you cross the river. Of course there are so many neat dairy farms in Wisconsin (hence all the cheese).

Part of our retreat was right downtown--I love the Monona Terrace Convention Center--it's so beautiful!

Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled, cancelled…. Finally Alabama!!

2008-01-21T16:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been bragging about how lucky we’ve been without having problems with flights—well, after the delayed one to Philadelphia—we really had problems getting to Alabama. We were leaving at 11 am on Wednesday, because I was going to have meetings and make some copies on Thursday. Then Bob, Phylliss and I were going to drive to Alabama for the retreat on Friday afternoon and Saturday.

We had square dancing on Tuesday evening and got home around 11 pm. There was a message on the phone that said our Wed 11 am flight was cancelled. So I got on the phone to rebook our flight from Bemidji—it took 1 ½ hours, but we got booked on the 7 am flight. So we were going to bed at 12:45 am and set the alarm for 3 am—short night. We saw hundreds of deer on the drive down, but got there in plenty of time and then we waited and waited and waited. The flight originates in Thief River Falls and it was too foggy to land, so it ended up flying over rather than picking us up. We rebooked for the 1 pm flight and then went to the mall to kill some time—and got another call that that flight was cancelled. So we rebooked for Int’l Falls on Thursday at 11 am and drove back home. We got another call—that flight was also cancelled. I called the airport and they said they were sending a van to the cities, so we should come up at the regular time. We did—they didn’t. Instead we ended up on the 4:30 pm flight—but couldn’t get all the way to Jackson, so we ended up going to Memphis and driving to Jackson. Finally checked into our hotel at 1:30 am and had to pick up Phylliss at 8 am—another short night!

The trip from Jackson to Alexander City, AL took about 5 hours. The retreat was held at the Children’s Harbor Conference Center—which is a beautiful facility that is used by children with disabilities, but can also be rented by any group. It is right on Lake Marin, but the lake is really low because that area is experiencing a terrible drought. The buildings are all log with lots of wood both inside and out. We were in one that had a bedroom, kitchen and living room area—it was really neat.

I learned what tremendous fans the football teams in the south have—some woman came to the retreat with her Auburn crocks, shirt, pants, earrings, and jacket on. They had a game on the TV in the room next door, and every so often, someone would go to catch the score and report back to the group. As we were going home, traffic from the ‘Bama’ game was really thick—mostly going toward us.

We checked back into the hotel late Saturday evening and had Sunday to relax. Then headed home on Monday—thankfully, there were no delays. I did complain to the airline and Bob and I each received $200 vouchers for our next flight—that should almost cover what it took for the extra driving we had to do.

Phlying to Philly

2007-11-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

Our flight to Philadelphia was interesting—that‘s why the ‘ph’ rather than the ‘f’. Our flight that was suppose to leave on Thursday at 4 pm was ‘delayed’ (not cancelled) until Friday at 6 am. I had meetings scheduled, but luckily two of my colleages were there to work with the Int’l Convention host region planning meeting.

We got into at Philly around rush hour—so we had lots of traffic to contend with—and we saw an accident. After checking in to the hotel, we headed downtown (and saw another accident) because the evenings activities included dinner at Maggianos, an Italian restaurant and then a theater production of Man of LaMancha. Maggianos was a really neat restaurant—we were all in a special dining room. The food was served family style and there was lots of it.

After dinner, we didn’t have too much time to get to the theatre, so five of us crowded into a cab to go the several blocks to the theatre. The cab driver took us a very roundabout way to a movie theater rather than the Theatre. As we were leaving there to go to the other theatre—we saw another accident, a woman got hit by a car that was backing up—I sure hope she is all right. Man of LaMancha was wonderful! “To Dream the Impossible Dream…” was going through my mind for the rest of the weekend.

After the retreat, as we were going back to our hotel, we saw another accident (I don’t think I’ve every seen so many accidents—this time it was a bus and a car crash). We drove for a while, but most of the scenery was industrial plants. So we found a place to have a Philly Steak sandwich and went to bed—it had been some long days and short nights.

The next day, we didn’t leave until 4 pm, so decided to cross the bridge into Camden, NJ. There we found a neat walkway alongside the river—it was right near the Campbell’s ball field, Battleship New Jersey, and the NJ State Aquarium. After we walked for a while, we decided to look for a restaurant—and couldn’t find one. Finally someone pointed out a Bistro that was across the street. When we got there, we found out it had 20 TVs with different football games on all of them. The Vikings game was just getting started—so we watched until half-time. They were leading, but later we heard they blew it.

We had an uneventful trip home, but the next trip—Oh boy!!

Back to Tennessee!

2007-10-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

We had a retreat in Monteagle Tennessee. It’s fairly close to Chattanooga and right up in the mountains—beautiful area! We flew in and out of Nashville (we’re getting to know that airport pretty well).

Monteagle is a small town located at the top of a mountain. Monteagle is most famous for the treacherous stretch of Interstate 24 that passes through the town. It is here that I-24 crosses the mountain of the same name, "The Monteagle" a major landmark between Chattanooga and Nashville. Crawling up 900 feet in elevation, truckers and other heavy vehicles may meet with overheating or mechanical failures. It is one mile across the plateau and then begins the same 900 foot descent.

We stayed at Jim Oliver’s Smokehouse Best Western. It’s well known for the smoked meats that are served in the restaurant. We ate breakfast there. They had the choice of Country Ham or Sugar-Cured Ham. I asked the waitress what the difference was. She had a really southern accent and said something like “the sugar-cured one is sweet because it has been cured with sugar. The Country Ham has been cured with ??” I ask her to repeat it a couple times and finally she picked up the salt shaker and said ‘salt’. We had the Sugar-Cured Ham and it was delicious!!

We drove over the mountain on a neat curvy road to the Cumberland Plateau below. It was really beautiful. We had a little time, so we stopped and hiked to a natural bridge and crossed it. There are lots of caves in that area. We also stopped at Sewanee where The University of the South is located. It is a beautiful campus—with gorgeous stone buildings. We walked around the campus and it was just one beautiful building after another, but the really breathtaking stop was in the Chapel. It was filled with wonderful stained glass windows. There was a wedding party just coming in when we were leaving. I’m guessing that have a lot of weddings held there.

Since we were in Nashville Saturday night—we had to go to the Grand Ole Opry. We saw Bill Anderson, Hal Ketchem, Porter Waggnor, and quite a few other singers—a couple who we weren’t too thrilled with. We were at the late show and had to leave early in the morning—so it was a short night.

A couple of short trips with family!

2007-10-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some of Sandy and Al's babies! CUTE!

We spend Labor Day weekend with Sandy, Al and some of their horses (there were some of their riding friends also) at the Togo horse camp—it’s only about 50 miles from our place. We went riding several times—they have a new horse for those of us ‘non-riders’. She’s a PasoFino named Feliz. Sandy keeps bragging about how smooth riding Paso’s are—and I was surprised at how quickly we moved without trotting. They just walk faster.

Sandy brought a little mini pony for her friend Susie. It was fun to watch her take it for a walk with her dog every morning and evening. Another person there was Beth Ann, who is so funny. When she was growing up, she loved horses so much that she pretended to be a horse all the time—even having her friends over to eat oatmeal out of a bowl on the floor. She can gallop like a horse and rear up and kick. She kept us in stitches—we laughed until our sides hurt.

On Saturday, Kara and Paul came and rode with us. Paul said that he could get hooked on horseback riding—and he was on a quarter horse, so he was trotting while everyone else was on Pasos—smoothly gliding along.

The next weekend, we went to Fargo, because Pam was there with her mother. Mom went with us and we had a great time swimming with Tracy and Tucker and visiting with Tammy, Steve, Pam and Margaret. It was a fun time seeing family that we don’t see too often—and Tracy and Tucker are really a couple firecrackers.

I’m way behind with my travel stories—so be prepared.

Alaska—49th State (in several ways)

2007-09-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

We know from history that Alaska was the 49th state admitted to the United States, but it’s also the 49th state that Bob and I have visited (only Hawaii—the 50th state left). And, what a visit we had! It was wonderful in so many ways.

First off, we had our family with us—which makes any trip more fun! I’m so glad that our kids still like traveling with us! And now we have added Paul and Richard to the mix—it makes it even more special. Second, only Richard had ever been to Alaska before, so it was exciting to see the things we had only read about, or seen pictures of. And, bonus—we came back with enough fish to feed our families for a long time!

We started off by traveling to Minneapolis on Thursday, and taking in ½ price appetizers at Applebees—one of our favorite things to do. Friday morning, Kara and Paul came to the cities—but not before they got a couple hours of wake boarding in (from 7 – 9 am). We left Ross and Richard’s at noon and took the bus to downtown and then caught the light rail to the airport. It was a good thing that it wasn’t rush hour, because we had seven people, with 5 suitcases (Kara and Paul had a friend with them who had two huge suitcases), 1 cooler, 5 backpacks, 1 roller briefcase, and two pillows.

After a 5 hour flight, we arrived in Anchorage, checked into our hotel—which was near the Historic Downtown area. We wandered around the area a bit, found Phyllis’s Café and Salmon Bake—which had seating under a tent and ate seafood—mainly Crab and Halibut!

The next day, we got up early—still on CDT which is 3 hours later than Alaska—and headed for our first exciting event in Talkeetna. We had booked a flightseeing tour around Mt. McKinley (which is known by locals as Denali--the Big One). It was the most awesome experience—we were right next to the mountains and could see the glaciers perfectly. We had a 90 minute tour—and 20 minutes of that was coming and going to the airport—the rest of the time, we went around and around by the mountains. The plane was long and skinny, so each of us had a window seat. Our pilot was really good about pointing out things and then looping back the other way—so the people on the other side could get a good look! At one point we had to put on oxygen masks, because we were above 20,000 feet in an unpressurized airplane. We all had on earphones and sunglasses—so we looked really cool! We couldn’t land on the glaciers because the ice was too soft, but it was really neat seeing them. And the day was clear and beautiful. We heard that a lot of people who go to Alaska never see Denali because it’s too cloudy. It was perfect for us!

We drove on up to Denali National Park and checked into our ‘tents’. Yes we had economy cabins at the Salmon Bake that were really foam insulated, canvas covered structures. Since ours were the ‘economy’ ones—the bathrooms were in a separate area—just like camping. We ate (more fish) at the Salmon Bake—I had king crab legs—which were delicious! We decided to drive a ways into the Park—you can only drive the first 15 miles. If you want to go the entire 90 mile road, you have to arrange for one of the tour buses. When we got to the end of the road, there was an area that had a trail along the river. We decided to go along that and Ross and Richard took off, but Bob and I spotted a trail that went up the mountain next to us and decided to take it instead. Kara and Paul went with us, soon passed us, and when we got up there, they were sitting at the top. Then they spotted another trail that went farther up another mountain and headed up there. Since we hadn’t really planned on hiking, Kara had on her Tivas rather than hiking boots. On the way back to our cabins, we spotted a moose and her calf—but could only see their butts through the trees.

Sunday was not a day of rest for us—instead it was a day of major hiking! We started out on a nice gentle hike down to Horseshoe Lake—about a mile and not too steep. Then we decided to head up Mount Healy Overlook trail--4.4 miles—and very steep—at the top it’s like climbing rock steps, but not as even. We caught up with the kids a couple times at the bottom, once when they were taking a picture on a bridge and once when they were on some log benches, but then we didn’t see them again until we reached the top—which was a couple hours later for us.

We kept plodding away and slowly made it up—although I probably would have given up, except we met several people coming down who asked if we had kids at the top. “They’re waiting for you”, they said. I did find a couple really nice places to rest. One was a large rock that had a beautiful view and an area that was shaped just like a lounger, the other was a bed of moss (and blueberries) on the hillside. I could lay back and snack at the same time. And I did get little blue dots on my jeans and t-shirt. After much huffing and puffing, we made it to the top—it was beautiful (and windy). And…the kids weren’t there—they had gone on up another path that went even higher! After a while, we could see them way off in the distance coming back down.

We really took our time coming back down—several times I even backed down a really steep place. The next day we were all pretty sore—except for Paul—he probably could have done the trip up and down a couple more times.

Kara and Paul were celebrating their first anniversary while we were there. Kara had the best present—she got a 1500 family while we were playing pinochle. It was first one she’s ever had—so she was really excited.

The next day we were all moving fairly slowly, so we took it a little easy--and ate a HUGE breakfast at Flapjack Fannies—everything is served family style—with tons of food. That afternoon we had a horseback ride out on the tundra—it was really interesting. There were tufts of grass with lots of muck all around it. The horses were up to their knees in mud most of the time. They said in the spring of the year, we would have been riding through big herds of caribou—now it was tons of blueberries.

On Wednesday, we had a long day of driving—since there aren’t many roads in Alaska, we ended up driving up through Fairbanks to get to Valdez. We stopped at the Worthington Glacier where you could climb right up to it--it was beautiful--I never realize how blue they were. Later than evening, we arrived there and moved on to the “Wunda Wunda” which is Larry and Ann’s (Bob’s cousin) boat. It’s really a nice boat—has two ¾ size beds below deck, a couch that folds out into a bed and a huge booth that we could all sit around to eat—and Bob and I slept on the seats. Kara and Paul were in charge of the food on the boat, so we ate really well—even ice cream and blueberries.

We had so much fun on the boat—we saw puffins, sea lions, bald eagles, glaciers, ice bergs, and lots of silver salmon (especially as we pulled them into the boat)! Paul was the only person really interested in fishing, but this was so much fun—we usually had two or three fish on at a time and hardly ever waited for more than five minutes without pulling one in. Kara and I were sitting up on top of the boat cheering Paul, Bob and Richard on as they were pulling in fish. We ended up catching 29--threw two small ones back and ate one). Then the next day we caught 8 more—so we ended up with 130 lbs of salmon that we brought home. We should have salmon for all winter! I even reeled in and netted several. We also lost quite a few this time, but they sure were jumping all over the place. Paul fished for Halibut for a while, but didn’t have any luck—it would have been fun to have caught a 100 lb Halibut (and had even more fish in the freezer).

One of the fun parts was when we went ‘fishing’ for ice for our coolers. We went near the glacier and caught hunks of iceberg with the net. It was great fun—Kara thought that was the best fishing there was. We found a nice quiet bay and anchored there for the night—it was so dark, and since we were close to the glacier—fairly cool. We could hear the water lapping around the boat—really nice. We got fairly close to the Columbia Glacier—there were lots of icebergs floating all around and some of them were the most beautiful shade of blue—they took your breath away!

We had booked a ferry to go from Valdez to Whittier—it was a three hour ride and was absolutely gorgeous—a beautiful day and through fjords with glaciers all around. The boat was really nice—great booths seats by windows. We had packed a lunch, so sat and ate our sandwiches. Then we went to the front where there were really comfortable, reclining seats. Kara and Paul thought they were too comfortable, because they slept all the way. After we arrived in Whittier, we had to take a 3 ½ mile tunnel out of the town.

We had a whole day to wander around Anchorage—there was a farmer’s market going on—with lots of fun things for sale (and to eat). We had Piroshki (bread dough wrapped around ground beef and cheddar cheese and then deep fried), which was really good. We went to the Ulu factory and bought some—one for us and all my Christmas presents for next year. Ulu’s are the curved knives that the Alaska natives have used for centuries.

This was the most wonderful trip—Bob and I are so fortunate that our family has always enjoyed each other’s company and everyone loves to travel. This trip was even more fun because we got a change to get to know Larry and Ann again—we hadn’t seen them since the 70’s. We even discovered they like to play pinochle—so we were able to have a couple games. And Paul even left fishing to play pinochle—so we’ve got him hooked!

We caught the red eye back to Minneapolis—and then decided to drive on home—so we were pretty tired by the time we got home—went to bed by 8 pm. Usually when I go on a trip, I don’t care whether I got back there for several years, but I think I could go to Alaska every year—for the fish if nothing else. Not only was it fun to catch, but it’s been great because I love Salmon and we’ve had several meals already.

Great Northwest to Deep (Hot) South

2007-08-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting (long and hot) trip. We went to Seattle for their Leadership Conference. It was a short time there—flew in on Friday and their event started Friday night. That always makes it hard, because they are still going strong at 10 pm, but that’s midnight to us! And especially when we had to get up at 4:30 am to catch our flight—we are really beat by the time they end. And then it seems like I’m still waking up at 5 am (their time—7 am our time). So I loose a bit of sleep on these west coast trips.

The conference went very well—it was held at Clover Park Technical College and we were in the auto mechanics building. There were huge bays that were the teaching sites for brakes, transmission, upholstery, etc. And our classroom was this wonderful round room with huge windows—they told us later that it was the car showroom.

Bob and I celebrated our 34th anniversary while we were there—so I brought him along for supper on Saturday night. It was catered and really good BBQ pork and chicken.

We were on the red-eye, so after the conference ended Sunday at 1:00 pm—we had quite a few hours to kill before we caught our flight at midnight. So we drove up to Gig Harbor on a beautiful scenic roadway—there were lots of trees and great views of the sound. Then we caught the ferry for a two-hour ride to Seattle. It was cool, but so beautiful being out on the water.

Our timing wasn’t the best however—when we arrived at downtown Seattle—the Mariners baseball game was just getting out—so we ended up in tons of traffic. But after slowly going around a couple blocks, we went into a parking ramp. We walked over to the harbor and wandered among the shops and fountains that are there. Several people had suggested that we eat at the Crab Pot—a really fun restaurant where they put butcher paper on the table and then ‘dump’ your meal of crab legs, mussels, oysters, clams, shrimp, Italian sausage, and hunks of red potatoes and corn on the cob, right on the table. Each person gets a small piece of wood for a plate, a wooden mallet, a small fork, melted butter, lots of napkins, and a bib. Everything (except the shrimp) was delicious!! Neither of us cared for the shrimp much.

We left Seattle at 12:30 am PT, arrived in Mpls at 5:30 am CT, left at 8 am for Atlanta—arrived there at 10 am ET, and hung around the airport until 4 pm ET when we left for Jackson. We finally got to Jackson at 4:30 pm CT. It was nice that we had gotten upgraded to first class from Seattle to Mpls and Mpls to Atlanta, but it wasn’t nice that we didn’t sleep too well and then had that long wait in Atlanta. I would rather spend a day in the Mpls airport than three hours in Atlanta. It’s noisy, there’s no place to get out of the crush of people, and the waiting areas are not comfortable.

In Jackson, I was involved with meetings most of the time—so Bob was on his own, but he was getting ready for his class. It was very hot there—over 100 degrees most days and humid. What bothers me the most is that it doesn’t cool off at night at all—so when you walk out of the hotel at 6 am—it’s still in the 80’s. We did have a couple interesting meals—one night we went out with the Int’l Officers and Faye. We went to Julep Restaurant—which is really a lot of fun—one of their specialties is fried green tomatoes—and a fried chicken meal (everything down south is fried!) On Thursday night we went out with our friends Susan and Jeff and went to Chars—which is really good and we had a great time with Susan and Jeff—they are really neat people!!

We left early the next morning for home—and this was one time that I was very glad to get home!

Missouri-Part II or Branson

2007-08-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Bob had meetings in Springfield until noon and then we drove down to Branson, which is only about 35 miles. We remember how crowded the main highway is through Branson, but learned about some of the alternate routes, so were able to get to our hotel and to the Jim Stafford show at 3 pm—it was really a lot of fun. He is so funny; I thought I was going to split because I was laughing so hard. He’s also a really good guitar player. Then his 10 yr old daughter and 14 year old son played the piano. He made the comment that he had 10 & 14 yr old children and he was 63. He said what he’ll need is a nursing home next to a good school!

That evening we went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede—she wasn’t there, but it is in a huge arena and included lots of horses and wagons. The audience sits along tiers that has narrow tables with everyone facing the arena. They give you a huge meal (cheese biscuit, soup, whole capon chicken, slab of pork tenderloin, corn on the cob, hunk of roasted potato, and apple turnover), but what they don’t give you is any silverware—so you eat it all with your hands. It was fun and messy! The show included singing and dancing as well as horse showmanship and contests. We have been to Medieval Times a couple of times—and it reminded me a lot like that (although this one had pig and chicken races, in addition to the horse riding).

On Friday, we had three shows. At 10 am we went to a Red Skelton revue. The actor was Tom Mullica and he really was a lot like Red Skelton and did several of his characters. Both Bob and I really liked Red Skelton and could remember Clem Kiddlehopper, Gertrude and Heathcliff (the birds), and Freddy the Freeloader. It was neat because toward the end of the performance, he put on Freddy’s make-up right on stage and did one of Freddy the Freeloader's skits. Then at the end, he took off all the make-up and removed the teeth and tape that he had on his ears and turned into himself. I’m always amazed at how theatre make-up can make such a difference in a person’s appearance.

The next show that we went to was Yakov Smirnoff—who is very funny. He had some Russian dancers and a few other people that helped with the skit, but a lot of it was him talking about how it was to come from Russia without knowing a single word of English. He (and a lot of the Branson shows) are extremely patriotic—to the point of au nausium—at least to me. But I still enjoyed his humor--one of his standard lines is "you probably never thought of that before--but you will from now on!" I was surprised to learn that he is also an accomplished artist and taught art at a University. In fact, he painted a picture that was made into a huge mural and displayed at ground zero after 9/11. He didn't sign the mural at that time, because he didn't want it linked to him as a humorist. There were lots of his paintings for sale in his gift shop and he is really great! Just recently he has completed a Master’s Degree in psychology because he really is studying the art of laughter.

We had just enough time to stop and eat a quick meal of barbeque ribs—where they had some live music going on—and then headed to our evening show, which was The Beach Boys! Of course their music is what Bob and I grew up on—so especially in the last part of the show, all the songs were familiar and we were dancing to 'Surf City', 'Barbara Ann', 'Fun, Fun, Fun till Her Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away', etc. I was really surprised because they didn’t take any intermission at all. The show was a little over two hours. We were in the RFD Theatre (which is beautiful) and our seats were about 7 rows back—so we had excellent seats. The only thing, we noticed is Mike Love (an original Beach Boy and cousin to the Wilson’s) and Bruce Johnston (who joined them in 1965) are sure old. I wonder how that happened?! Another thing that surprised me this that they didn't have many things for sale. Only some t-shirts--no CDs. They told everyone to go to their favorite music store to purchase the CDs.

The next day we went to Silver Dollar City—which is an amusement park, old time shops and demonstrations, and shows. However, we should have left earlier or looked for an alternate route, because we left the hotel around 9 am and drove the FIVE miles to the park and arrived there around 11 am! Most of the time, we were stopped and when we did move, we crawled forward a car length at a time.

We enjoyed many of the shows, but didn’t go on any of the rides—although it was very hot and one of the water rides would have felt pretty good. Then we realized that we didn’t have to take a water ride, because it came to us. We had gone to an ice show in a cool arena—so we were shivering a little and when we were going outside—it was pouring! We waited until it slowed down a bit and made a dash to another area where we got under a deck area—although it leaked, so we had big cold drips on us. The temperature must have dropped 40 degrees and along with the rain—it made it pretty cool. Since we didn’t want to get back into the slow moving traffic, we decided to wait for quite a while before we left. So we went to a great BBQ place and took our time eating, then moved to the car and enjoyed a bottle of green tea. We also found a back road—so it didn’t take much time to get back to the hotel.

We had a two-day ticket for Silver Dollar City and talked about going back Sunday morning, but thought we had taken in most of the shows that we were interested in, so decided to just relax and have a leisurely drive back to Springfield to catch our plane at 4 pm. We arrived home around midnight!

Missouri - Part 1

2007-07-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

Two for the price of one!! Bob and I both had meetings in Missouri for our last trip. Since I was going there with him, I volunteered to attend the Missouri Leadership Conference in Warrensburg, MO on Fri, Sat, Sun. Bob had meetings in Springfield, MO Tues, Wed, Thurs, and we decided to see some shows in Branson Thurs, Fri., Sat & come home on Sunday. It made for 10 days away from home, but we had a good time.

We flew in to Springfield—which is a pretty small airport, so it didn’t take any time at all to get our luggage and pick up our car—we had a Pontiac G6—which is a pretty neat car. That night we drove to Clinton (birthplace of Harry S. Truman). Clinton has a beautiful historic downtown area. The county court house is in the middle of the square and there are lots of neat restored buildings all around the square. After supper we walked around the square. It was a beautiful evening.

In Warrensburg, we stayed in a dorm at the University there. It was a dorm—what more can I say? There were plastic mattresses that were too short for the bed, the drain in the shower didn’t work very well, so we had a foot of water to stand in by the end of the shower, and the food was college cafeteria food. One of the people commented that the bacon tasted like a greasy piece of paper.

After the retreat, we wandered back to Springfield and then went to a minor league baseball game. Take me out to the ball game! It was lots of fun—although the home team (Springfield Cardinals) got slaughtered 8-1. Everyone from the opposing team was hitting home runs off the pitcher. The John Q. Hammond Stadium is beautiful and was walking distance from our hotel. Again it was a beautiful night and we ate popcorn, hot dogs, and ice cream—really healthy eating.

The next day we went to a restaurant in their historic downtown area called Trolleys. It had some really unique things on the menu. I had a grilled portabella mushroom sandwich and sweet potato fries, but the fries had cinnamon and brown sugar on them rather than salt. They were really good! That area has a fountain and lots of neat old buildings, but a lot of them are in the renovation process.

Several people told us that we could have to visit Lambert’s Restaurant, so that evening we found the directions and drove out to it. First we had quite a wait—and it was on a Monday evening. Then our drinks came in these insulated 36 oz mugs. I ordered a ham steak and Bob ordered catfish. I had a 14-15” skillet that had this huge slab of ham on it. I’d ordered fried apples and beets as the sides—Bob had baked beans and cucumbers and onions. Then they have waiters come by with ‘pass arounds’—fried potatoes, fried okra, black-eyed peas, and macaroni and tomatoes. And then some guy comes out with a huge tray of rolls, fresh out of the oven, and starts throwing them to people. Well, we had to eat some bread—just because it was too much fun not to catch them. Way too much food—if we ever go back, I’ll order the veggie plate and Bob and I will share a meal. After we were about through—they came by and asked if we wanted any more fish or ham—I guess it’s all you can eat—although how anyone could eat any more than that is beyond me!

On Tuesday, Bob went to his meetings, which were all day and into the evening, and I meet with the local chapter. I got a tour of the college and met the college president and academic Vice President. Then I met with the two advisors and six officers. They had lots of questions and ideas. I think their chapter is really going to take off this year. I went over there at 1 pm and we met until almost 5 pm, so they asked if I wanted to go to dinner with them. Since Bob was at meetings, I was thrilled to have some people to eat with. A few said they would have to bring their children or spouses, so we ended up with almost 20 people who went out. We went to a neat restaurant in the historic downtown area (right across from Trolleys) called Riad’s. We had a room to ourselves and had a wonderful meal—I had a tuna steak and asparagus.

On Wed, Bob had more meetings all day and evening, but did get from 5-6 pm off, so we dashed to a Steak and Shake and ate supper. A couple of his colleagues came into the restaurant, so we visited with them. I bought the last Harry Potter book and ended up reading until midnight a couple nights.

Eight (or nine) Random Facts

2007-07-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

Ross, my son, put out the challenge to give eight random facts about myself. I knew all of his, except that he has to have his ear covered when he sleeps. I’m not in to ‘passing things on’, so I’ll just post my answers.

1. My mother and I both ‘graduated’ from high school in 1969. She got her GED and I graduated—and this was the same high school that both of my kids graduated from.

2. I once set the forest on fire and accidentally burned down an outhouse. My kids will remember this very well and I think they still have a couple of “I told you so”s left!

3. But on the other hand…I once saved a mansion (the white one) from burning down (and no, I didn’t set the fire!) When I was coordinating an Elderhostel program, the city administrators from Little Falls asked us about hosting programs in the two ‘Mansions on the Mississippi’ that had recently been deeded to the City. These two neighboring homes were built in 1898 by Charles A. Weyerhaeuser and Richard "Drew" Musser, who were lumber men and are furnished with antiques and original heirlooms. A friend and I were touring through the homes with two women from the city when there was a loud crackling sound in the basement—two women immediately ran outside, one went for the phone to call the fire department. I peeked around the corner and saw a huge electric panel that had flames all over on it and the wall. I ran up, got the fire extinguisher, figured out how to use it, and sprayed the wall and put out the fire.

4. I use to be able to outrun all the boys in my class in the long distance race we did every year while I was in elementary school.

5. When I was in 6th grade, I was playing in a fort that my sister and I had built. I was standing on a branch that broke and as I fell to the ground, my leg was ripped open by a nail. I needed 33 stitches on the outside, plus three layers on the inside to sew my leg up. I discovered then that I have keloids which make my scars get larger than they should—so I’ve always had a big scar on my leg.

6. I moved eight or nine times (and several thousand miles) before I was eight years old, but have only moved once (15 miles) in the last 34 years. (Mom, correct me if I’m wrong.)

7. I love violent thunderstorms with lots of lightning and loud, booming thunder. I like to sit in our solarium during thunderstorms and watch them and the rain pour down.

8. I love to travel and have visited all the US states except Alaska and Hawaii (and am going to Alaska in August). I’ve also been on three continents and would like to visit them all. We love traveling with our kids—so have decided to spend any inheritance they may get now, rather than after we’re dead!

OK—one more—you all know this one, but it’s probably my biggest accomplishment!

9. I once thru-hiked the Superior Hiking trail (about 230 miles) in 18 days in 2001, carrying a pack that weighed between 35-45 lbs.

Chicago, Chicago, It’s My Kind of Town

2007-07-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

The organization I work for has a weeklong Institute every year. It’s held on the campus of a major university. This year that university was near Chicago. I flew directly from Jackson to O’Hare and Bob drove from home, so he was able to pick me (and a couple of my colleagues) up at the airport.

We have a GPS in our car, so Bob hadn’t brought a map of Chicago along, thinking that he could set the GPS and it would route us to the college. When he put the CD in for that area—the readout said the CD wasn’t working. So we were in the city without knowing where we were going. Luckily, one of the women with us had the directions—so we found the college. I guess it goes to prove that you can’t always trust technology.

The Institute was wonderful, with some really interesting speakers who make you think about things from a completely different angle. One of the best speakers was Reza Aslan. He is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a regular commentator for NPR’s Marketplace and Middle East Analyst for CBS News. He is the author of ‘No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam’, and the soon to be published ‘How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We’re Losing the War on Terror’.

Reza Aslan’s presentation was about the recent poll by Foreign Policy Magazine which indicated that nearly 90% of US foreign policy analysts on both the left and the right believe the United States is losing the so-called “War on Terror.” In his book, Reza argues that America’s poor performance in this conflict is due not only to the decisions made by the Bush Administration, but more importantly to the very way in which the struggle against Islamic extremists has been framed as a “cosmic war” between the forces of good and evil.

Another speaker, Dr. David M. Oshinsky, talked about the polio epidemic and how horrible it was, primarily striking children. The race for a vaccine led to the largest public health experiment in American history involving nearly two million school-age volunteers. When Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was declared “safe, effective, and potent,” in 1955, the nation celebrated as if a war had ended - and, indeed, one had. The crusade against polio not only prevented future cases of this horrific disease, it also revolutionized the ways in which medical research, charitable fundraising, and government drug testing would be done in the United States. This united effort produced The March of Dimes, one of the greatest scientific and philanthropic achievements on record.

On the R & R day of the Institute, everyone received a “Go Chicago” Pass and two train tickets so they could go into downtown Chicago. We caught the train to Union Station and then walked to Navy Pier (probably between 1 & 2 miles). We took a boat architectural tour of the city, which was really interesting. We wandered around Navy Pier for a while--rode the ferris wheel and found the Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream stand. Then we took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour—and hopped off right near Gino’s Pizza. Gino’s is one of the original places that has deep dish pizza—yum! It’s also an interesting place—they encourage people to do graffiti on the walls—so every square inch is covered. But the pizza was delicious. We also went up to the observation deck on the John Hancock building.

Saturday when everything was done, we drove back to Mpls and stayed at our son’s on Sunday, our daughter came to the cities and we went to “Les Miserable” at Chanhassen. What a wonderful play! And Chanhassen is a wonderful dinner theatre! That night we went to our daughter’s and spent one night in St Cloud, then we drove up to Brimson and spent a night at her place there. While there, we did a ‘Harry Potter’ movie marathon and watched all four movies.

Another fun trip!

Hot, Humid Mississippi

2007-07-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

I work from my home—which is in northern Minnesota, but I’m actually employed by an organization that is based in Jackson, Mississippi. Every so often, I need to go to the office in Jackson. I don’t know why, but the majority of the times that I end up there, is in the middle of the summer.

There is a perfectly good reason why I live in MN—I DO NOT like hot weather. In fact, a brisk fall day or warm (45 degrees) sunny winter day are perfect for me. Anyway, I found myself in 100 degree and high humidity a few weeks ago—and I was miserable! Bob didn’t go with me, so I didn’t feel like driving around too much by myself. The pool at the hotel is outside in the sun and it was so hot during the day that you couldn’t swim. Even at night, the temperature only cooled down to the mid 70’s.

Most of the time while I was down there, I was too busy to even notice that it was hot outside—and I was inside the office, car, restaurant, or hotel. I had a really neat car—it’s so much fun to rent cars a lot, because you get to drive different kinds. Even though I had reserved a compact—they upgraded me to a HHR. This is the Chevy Crossover. I’m not sure if I liked it—it had a lot of room and looked really big from the outside, but from the inside—it seemed small. There was a huge blind spot that made me nervous. But I made 10 trips to and from the airport—so I got to know my way around that part of town, very well.

On Saturday, we had a dedication service for a brick that was purchased by the region for my good friend Dennis. It was very nice with about 25 of his family members from MN and Alabama there. About eight of our staff were there. It was a really nice memorial. Dennis was a wonderful man who was very active—doing tai chi, running, gardening, and climbing the steps of the IDS building. Suddenly he had a massive heart attack and passed away at age 61. I still can’t believe it and I still miss him.

The rest of the week consisted of meetings and going out to dinner every evening. I was the driver for the guests because we were staying in the same hotel. So, other than seeing the hotel, the office, the airport, several restaurants, and the road in between them—it was a pretty uneventful trip.

And then, I left, but not for home—instead I went to Chicago….

Traversing to Traverse City

2007-06-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

We were to Michigan quite a few years ago, when we had some friends who were from Bay City. The kids were very young at that time. We spent some time around Bay City, Detroit, and Mackinaw Island. On this trip, we were on the other side of Michigan. We flew in and out of Grand Rapids and the retreat was in Traverse City.

Traverse City is where several peninsulas go into Lake Michigan—so there are several large bays. When we got there Wednesday evening, we walked along the shore and in the sand for a while. It was in the 80s and very humid, but as we were walking, the temperature dropped probably 20 degrees.

The next day, we drove up the Mission Peninsula before the retreat started. There are tons of cherry orchards, vineyards and million dollar homes. At the end is a historic area where an old light house is located. It was supposed to be a swimming beach, but there was a long stretch of rocks and grassy area before the water started. I guess the lake is really low (like a lot of others). Although there were some really nice sandy beaches along the lake.

On Saturday, after the retreat, we drove to the west cost of Michigan and followed the lake. We found a really nice beach where we sat in the sunshine—it was kind of neat because it was a sand dune with a steep bank. We carved out ‘chairs’ and plopped down. If we needed little more lumbar support—we could just push some sand in the area. Since I’m always so exhausted after a retreat—it was really nice to just sit back and relax.

We spent the night in Grand Rapids and then left early in the morning to fly home. Since there were sever thunder storms the day before, our plane was delayed for 45 minutes so the crew could get the mandatory rest. Then we ended up being delayed another 45 minutes because they didn’t get the slip when they fueled up the plane and couldn’t leave until they got it. That meant we only had 20 minutes in the cites—so we really hurried across the airport. Another man from our flight ran by us while we were going on the moving walkway. About the time we got to where the A and B concourse starts, we heard our names called for our flight. It was a lucky thing we were leaving from A2—so we didn’t have too far to go. The other man who had run by us was also getting on the plane to the Falls and was telling them that we were right behind him—so we made it on the flight. The really amazing thing to me was that our luggage also made it. I was certain that it wouldn’t.

I’m only home for a little while and then will be gone for two full weeks again.

Country Music Capital of the World

2007-06-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

Bob and I flew directly from New York to Nashville where my convention was held. Since both Bob and I love county western music—it’s one of our favorite places. Bob has gone to The Grand Ole Opry six times, so he was excited to get tickets and go again.

But I’ll start at the beginning—we go in to Nashville fairly early on Monday. We were able to check into our room right away. Then we went to work (or rather we stood around waiting to go to work). HQ always loads a huge truck with merchandise from Recognitions, all the awards that are given out, all the packets for the pre-conference and lots of other stuff. People from the hotel were suppose to be there to do the unloading, but they didn’t show up—so we ended up unloading all the stuff ourselves.

That evening, Bob and I found a Laundromat so we could wash our clothes. And that was the last time we had to relax together! And it was also the last time I stepped outside the hotel until Sunday morning when we headed for home.

Of course the Opryland hotel is pretty spectacular—so even though I didn’t go outside for a week, I did sit on our balcony which overlooked the Garden Atrium every morning. And I ate at three different restaurants—a couple that were atrium seating—so it felt like you were outside.

This year was really neat, because Ross and Richard came to the convention. Ross was a Guistwhite Scholar when he was a member and there was a reception for the former and current Scholars with Dr. Guistwhite. Since Ross was invited to the convention, he approached the college where he works and got them to pay his travel expenses and he staffed the college’s booth at the college fair. Richard came along for the ride. So they got there on Thursday evening and stayed with us.

Since they were there, I put them to work—and I think they enjoy working behind the scenes. And I was really busy. I lead five breakout sessions, did a couple focus groups, helped with the Int’l Officer elections, coordinated a luncheon, and staffed the Advisor Corner. Several days I would leave the room at 7 am and not get back to the room until after 11 pm.

Friday evening, there was nothing scheduled—so the kids and Bob and I went to a great seafood restaurant in the hotel. We were right near a little waterfall, so it was a neat area. We had sushi as an appetizer—which was really good.

Saturday evening was the Gala Banquet and Hallmark Awards—so I was involved, but that’s when Bob, Ross and Richard went to the Grand Ole Opry. They had a good time—and got back just as the last awards were being given out. Afterward we went out with the advisors from MN.

Being in Nashville really brought back a lot of memories. The first time Bob went to a Bus Ed. Convention, it was in Nashville—it was the only one where I didn’t go along. Bob and I took a fun vacation in 1994—just for the heck of it while the kids were on Tour with New Wine. The next time I was there was the second PTK convention that I ever attended—it was special because both Ross and Kara were members and attended with me. Also it was the first time I met Richard. The next convention that I was at was when our chapter won so many awards. I’ll never forget that night, we waited for photos after the gala and then I went out for a drink with Dennis Anderson and some of the MN advisors—I got back to the room at 2:30 am—it was the start of daylight savings time—so set the clock to 3:30—I needed to pack, so did that until almost 4 and we had to get up at 4, so we could catch the shuttle for an early morning flight. I decided it wasn’t worth it to go to bed.

This time was a little different—I was working, but the convention was still top notch. Al Gore was one of the speakers—and he did a good job of talking about global warming and the climate. However, he is still a Politian and didn’t answer any questions straight.

As always, even though it’s great to go to these wonderful places and see all kinds of new things and visit with people from all over—it’s really nice to get back home again. So it felt really good to get home and sleep in our own bed again.

New York, New York—Wicked!

2007-06-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

We have always been fortunate that Bob has his Business Education National Convention the week before Easter. Generally the kids would have a few days off from school, so we would pull them out for a few more days and have a wonderful family vacation in a great city. The only down side is that we are never home for Easter, but we have spent Easter morning in some really neat places.

This year his convention was scheduled for New York City. Even though the kids are all grown up, they felt they could revert back to the Easter trip with the parents (especially since it was in New York). So they all came along, and because we knew about the trip for a while—the kids gave everyone tickets to Broadway plays for Christmas.

Bob and I arrived in New York on Tuesday—he had meetings and work and I worked during the day, but we wandered around in the evening and for lunch. We found a couple really neat delis to eat at. On Wed, we bought tickets (from a man on the street) for Jersey Boys, which is the story of Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons. I was nervous that when we got there, our tickets might not be any good—but they were great. We were in the second row back from the stage—although two seats away from the wall. So I was looking up through the staircase, but no one sat in the two seats on the aisle, so at intermission, the man next to us and we moved down two seats—then we could see great. We were so close to the stage that the actors could spit on us when they sang (and they probably did). We also made eye contact with them—although they were more interested in Stephen Spielberg, who was sitting two rows behind us.

Jersey Boys was great—it had wonderful music—that Bob and I grew up with. And the actors all did their own music—when there were instruments on stage, the actors were playing and they did all the songs. We read that this was the first major role for the guy who played Frankie Vali, but he had that distinctive singing voice and really fit the part—he even looked a lot like Frankie Vali. One of the neat things they did was when they were showing them performing for a group, they would stand at the edge of the stage as if we were the audience. Once scene talked about them being on the Ed Sullivan TV Show and so they had cameras on one side of the stage and they started singing for the camera, then then moved to the back of the stage and it looked like they were singing to an audience and we were behind the stage. Then they moved to our side of the stage and sang to us..

Ross and Richard came on Thursday and then Kara and Paul came on Friday. We actually did the trip fairly cheaply because all of us flew on free tickets. Then Bob got some staff development funds to help pay for our room in the hotel and he used Marriott points for Kara and Paul’s room. Although the cost for food and theatre was outrageous.

Friday night after everyone was there, we went to see Wicked. This is the story of the wicked witch of the west from the Wizard of Oz. It was a great performance—we had really good seats in the first balcony and the music was so powerful. Since we knew we were going by Christmas time, most of us had read the book. Although it made us wonder how they were going to do a musical from the story—the book is really dark.

The next morning, Bob had meetings, but the kids and I had tickets for a back stage tour of Wicked—it was really interesting. One of the actors who led it was a ‘Swing Actor’ and a ‘Stand-in’ for one role. As a Swing he never knows what part he will be playinig until he gets to the theatre—he said one time it was even as they were taking their places on stage that they realized someone wasn’t there and he moved into that position. As a stand-in he will take one of the principal actors role if something happens to that person and they can’t continue with the performance. There are also under-studies for all the principals who will take their place if the principal knows they will be gone beforehand. This guy said one time Ben Vereen, who played the role of the wizard, got sick and after one of his numbers—so he left the stage and his stand-in went on stage and took over from there. It was probably a little confusing because the wizard was black and then came back on and was white.

We got to see a lot of the costumes and they were really beautiful—and big--and heavy. The costume designed likes to use upholstery fabric and many layers—so a lot of the costumes weight 30 lbs or more—and then they were suppose to dance. The actor said he has over ¼ million dollars worth of costumes just for his roles. Another thing that I found very interesting was the way they put the microphones on the actors—we noticed during Jersey Boys, one of the women had something in her eyebrow and a guy had a seam looking thing across the back of his hair. Most of the mics are in the hairlines or above the eyebrows, or in a mask or hat. The sound manager keeps track of all the mics so that only the actors who need them are live and if they put on a hat, the one in the hat will be live and the one in the hair won’t be. I would really like to do more back stage tours—it was really interesting.

The next day, we went to see Avenue Q—which was very (gulp) interesting. Kara had said it was like an R-rated Sesame Street. It was puppets with their puppeteers. We weren’t sure what to watch—the puppet or the person who was the running the puppet. And there’s something about a bedroom scene with puppets that just seems wrong—but it did have its funny parts.

Saturday night we all went our different directions. Kara and Paul went to Phantom of the Opera, Ross and Richard went to a club and Bob and I went to Rockefeller Center where we watched the skaters and ate at a rink-side seafood place. It was really good, but also really expensive—Bob had a bowl of butternut squash soup that was $15. We also had an appetizer of French fried portabella mushrooms—they were delicious!

Easter Sunday—we went to church. Ross has a friend who’s a minister at a Lutheran church right near Central Park. He and his wife invited us for brunch before church—we met some of their friends and then went to church. The church was beautiful with lots of beautiful stained glass windows—one was even by Tiffany—worth several million dollars! The pastor mentioned that the Church was used in a CSI New York episode—so we had to watch for that. We saw it, but they changed it in to a Catholic Church—I guess interviewing someone as ‘Father’ is more impressive than ‘Pastor’.

The service was very impressive with a wonderful choir and musicians. And, of course, Easter services are always so moving. We enjoyed fellowship following the service and then we hopped on the Subway and went to 5th Ave to experience our first Easter Parade.

‘Parade’ is a little bit of a stretch—mostly it’s people milling around—a lot of them have hats of some sort on—one was even a roller coaster. There are lots of little stands selling junk and snacks and there are some street performers. We watched a really neat group of dancers who combined gymnastics, rhythm, and dance. The crowd was a little sparse, but I think that’s because it was really cold and even snowing!

Sunday night we went to the restaurant at the top of the Marriott—it had a revolving platform that took about an hour to go around once—we went around two times. Our meals were off the set price menu--you got an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert (for only $69.99)—but it was delicious and we had a great time.

Bob and I had to get up really early to catch our flight (to Nashville). The kids had until 4 pm before their flight, so we took off and they caught a few more sites of the city. What a wonderful time in a great city with our kids!

Catching Up – March

2007-05-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

March was relatively quiet—travel wise. We had only one trip—back to Seattle, WA. I’m not sure why from here to Seattle includes all red eye flights. We left around 4 pm from home and got to Seattle at 1 am (3 am our time—yawn). Once again it was raining and dark. I had the directions to where we were going and Bob was driving. I did have the thought that if Bob didn’t travel with me to some of these places, I probably wouldn’t last too long. There is no way that I would have wanted to be driving myself around in the middle of the night. Even with me reading the directions, we missed a turn—so had to go on up a road and turn around. As we were coming back, we got into a lane that went out on the freeway, so we headed back the way we came—we’re getting really good at making U-turns!

I was in Seattle for the region’s convention. They have a new regional coordinator and a few issues to address, so I spent a fair amount of time helping the regional coordinator lead some strategic planning for the region. It was a fun and productive session.

When we were going back to the airport, we decided to follow along Puget Sound and maybe find a place to eat that looked over the water. So we crossed this floating bridge, but missed the road, so we turned around to go on it from the other way—missed it again and went back across the bridge, so turned around and went across the bridge one more time—I do have to admit—it was a neat bridge, but I’m not sure we had to go back and forth three times to get the full enjoyment!

Anyway, we followed some wooded and curvy roads, ate supper and caught our flight at midnight—which put us in the cities at 6 am and home at 10:30 am. Time for a nap!

Catching Up

2007-05-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

After a busy few months--and my technology is still not cooperating. I'll try and do some catching up on trips.

February was an interesting month, to say the least. After having a winter with no snow and very little cold weather, we got hit hard. We had three weeks of below zero temperatures—and several -35-40 degree nights. But we traveled anyway…

The first trip was to Helena, MT to charter a new chapter at the College of Technology, UM. I talked with the advisor before we were headed out there and she said, “It’s supposed to be very cold this weekend, so make sure you bring warm clothes!” I laughed and said “you’re thinking I’m from Jackson, MS, aren’t you? I’m actually from Int’l Falls, MN!” We both agreed that I would have no problem with the cold weather. (And it was warmer than at home!)

The neat and interesting thing we learned about Helena is that the town was built by gold—it was part of the gold rush of the late 1800’s. In fact, one source said that by 1888, Helena was home to 50 millionaires—per capita, more than any other city on earth. Many of those millionaires build beautiful mansions. Even though a lot of them are no longer there, tucked in the foothills is the city’s Mansion District—with lots of examples of 19th century architecture. We drove back and forth on streets just looking at the beautiful homes.

One afternoon, we decided to travel over McDonald’s pass—the pass through the Rocky Mountains, west of Helena. I love the mountains, so looking at all the beautiful vistas is wonderful. When we got to the top—the wind was blowing something fierce and swirling all around. It was really neat!

We hardly got unpacked from the Montana trip, when we headed out again—this time for Wichita, KS. This was a pretty short trip, without much free time. We were able to have a nice Kansas Steak Dinner—yummy. They have the best beef!

Right after we returned from Wichita, we headed out for Portland, OR. Mom was supposed to go with us to visit my cousin, but she ended up in the hospital, so wasn’t able to go. (Bless Kara and Paul—they were able to come home and be with her right after she got out of the hospital!)

We got in to Portland and found our motel—which was wonderful—Oxford Suites. The motel is right next to the Willamette River, which was rushing down a rapids—and I do mean rushing! They were having some flooding in the area—so the water was pretty high.

Since we had some time before the retreat started on Friday, we went along the Columbia River Scenic Road and visited some waterfalls. That is one of our favorite roads—it twists and turns with waterfalls all along the way. We stopped at the Vista House, which has a spectacular panoramic view of the entire Columbia River Basin.

Then we stopped and hiked to the Latouralle Falls and along the stream. It was interesting hiking, because all we had were our winter jackets—it was in the 50’s, but a steady drizzle. With the jacket on—it was too hot, but with it off—it was too wet. One of those times when you’re going to get wet—either from the rain or sweating.

Next we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls. I don’t think we’ve ever been there before, because usually we come from the east and we’ve already stopped at several waterfalls and it gets to be “One more?!?” But Bridal Veil is beautiful and aptly named. It’s very wide and since they had lots of rain—it was very big and the water was a brilliant white.

It was past lunch time, when we got to Multnomah Falls—so we ate in their glass room that has a wonderful view of the falls. They also had some interesting food. I had a smoked salmon, cheese, and fruit entree—it was delicious. We took our time eating, because it had started raining pretty hard and we were hoping it would let up, so we could hike up to the Falls, but it just kept on raining, so we headed back to Portland.

As part of the retreat, we went to see the play “Where’s Charley?” It was a fun evening and a nice light-hearted play.

The retreat ended on Sunday and since Monday was President’s day, we took a couple days to visit Astoria. This was Bob’s trip that he had to plan because he lost the super bowl bet. We ended up staying at a Holiday Inn that was right under the bridge that crosses the Columbia River (it’s motto was sleep under the bridge tonight). So we were right at the mouth of the Columbia where it flows into the Pacific. The advisors from Oregon gave me a cutting board and knife with lots of smoked salmon, cheese, cookies, crackers, dried fruit, etc. So on the drive over to Astoria, we had a little picnic in the car.

Even though it kept on raining the entire time we were there, we had a great time—Sunday night we drove into Washington State along the ocean. There weren’t too many towns, but some nice parks. On Monday, we drove south along the Pacific on the Oregon side. Although we never did get out and walk along the beach, because of the rain, we found a neat little fish restaurant that had a great view of the ocean.

Pretty good, two pages and I’m only through February!

Technology--a royal pain

2007-03-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

I love computers--I love the great things technology can do for us. But somedays technology can be a real pain.

I have had a series of viruses on my computer since last summer. Since the place I work is in Mississippi and I live in Minnesota, the computer has taken three trips down there. Every time I get it back, I need to set up all my preferences, redo all my bookmarks, and (the really hard thing) figure out all my sign-ins and passwords. Just about the time I get it done, the computer goes back for another 'dumping' and we start all over again.

So there hasn't been too much posting on this site, because too much of my spare time has been spent with all those other tasks--and sometimes it takes quite a few trys before I get the right password.

So I may be taking some time to get caught up (there have been several trips).

I'll be Home for Christmas

2007-02-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

I wrote this quite a while ago, but haven't gotten around to posting it. So here goes our Christmas story.

Bob and I were home for Christmas—with the kids (Ross, Richard, Kara and Paul) here too. We had a wonderful time and the weather was so warm and nice. It was in the 30’s most of the time—and clear and sunny quite a bit also--although Ross and Richard did have trouble getting out of the cities on Thursday afternoon. They had rain that had turned to snow and there was lots of traffic. Ross said he decided the dog hadn’t had much of a walk, so he and Alfred got out and walked along side the car for 3 blocks and got back in.

One night we had friends out for Chinese—including Sweet and Sour Chicken, Stir-fried Beef, lemon chicken, vegetable fried rice, and egg rolls. Ross & Richard brought along Sushi, Sake, and some other Chinese wine. Kara and Paul arrived just in time for Dinner. We had a great time, eating, visiting and playing a game called “help Barb & Bob and Sandy and Al get rid of some of their stuff”. It was a gift grab bag.

The next day we cut down some trees and built a bon fire—and did a lot of playing around on the 4-wheeler. The 4-wheeler still had the blade on it—so every once in a while it would catch and stop us dead in our tracks. The first time I came through the snow bank, the blade came down and I plowed up a good sized pile of snow. Later, I was driving with Richard sitting backwards—and we hit that pile of snow and it flew all over us—FUN! That evening we had a good sized bon fire. Although it needed nurturing to keep burning—it didn’t have the small brush and dry wood to really get it going quickly.

Since Christmas Eve was on a Sunday—we had Church all day. We went to the morning service and then Ross and Kara sang with the choir at the 4 pm service and Bob and I assisted with Communication. We all went back to the 10 pm service because Ross played and he and Kara were special music. I love the candlelight service and all the wonderful Christmas Carols! That night we had to stay up late and play Santa!

Christmas morning, we had all our traditions—the egg bake went into the oven and we dove into the stockings—what great treats Santa brought us! Then we ate breakfast and moved into the solarium for more gift opening. As always, the family gave some great gifts—including tickets for Wicked and Avenue Q when we are in NY in April, and mom really outdid herself with a unique bag full of all kinds of goodies. Then it was time for some cards and cooking—and then more food—Turkey and all the trimmings.

Tuesday everyone enjoyed one of their ‘gifts’—a massage—which felt really good—although with six of us getting massages—it pretty well took the whole day. Kara and Paul had to leave that morning to go to St. Cloud for Christmas with his family. Ross and Richard left the next morning and then mom went home—so it was really quiet at our house. We dumped out one of our new jigsaw puzzles, put it together and then dumped out another one, and then another one, etc. We’ve put together quite a few since.

On the Road for Holiday Parties

2007-01-05T20:20:00.001-08:00

Our traveling ended in early November, so we started traveling for visiting family and having holiday parties with them. The first was Thanksgiving, and we went to Kara and Paul’s at Wilderness North, the camp where they live. Grandma went with us. First we stopped at Mesabi East HS and helped proof the newspaper that Kara’s journalism class was working on. We went on to Wilderness and enjoyed a great meal that Paul had ready. The rest of the weekend was dedicated to cooking, baking, eating and playing games. We had decided that we would do our Christmas baking while we were there—so we make 4 batches of chex mix, 4 batches of lefsa (with two grills going and one roller—it worked slick), Swedish Rye bread, chocolate chip cookies, molasses kringles, short bread, decorated sugar cookies, and fudge. We had enough that we were able to divide it, so all three of us had plenty of baking.

In addition, we went for a walk to see where the new cabins will be built and Kara and Paul scoped out Christmas trees. They found one and put it up on Friday. The theme of their tree is ‘Snow White goes camping’, because most of the ornaments are either Snow White or Camping/Hiking. It was fun to spend Thanksgiving with them.

A couple weekends later, we went to the cities for Ross & Richard’s annual Christmas party. We picked up Kara after school and she went with us. Their party is an open house that starts around 3 pm and went until 2 am. It’s always fun to watch the ‘waves’ of people who come and go—about every hour and a half, there’s a turn over of people. Since Ross had just turned 30 the week before, every time there was a new group—they sang ‘Happy Birthday’. Since so many of Ross’ friends are Pastors, Seminary Students, and former camp staff—lots of times there were many really great singers.
We were able to get shopping a little bit—so got started on the Christmas list. We also were able to get to the Dayton's (Marshall Field's, Macy's) 8th floor Christmas Display. This year the display was based on Mary Poppins. We have seen it just about every year--it's always so much fun. We went Sunday morning and had a bit of a wait--the first time we went was a Saturday morning and waited for hours (the kids were just little at that time). Other times we have walked right up to the entrance.

The next weekend, we went the other direction—to Bottineau, ND for Christmas with my sister and her kids. We had a really great time. Played lots of cards and other games, ate a lot, and did a couple of Christmas Swap games. The first time, we brought ‘good stuff/junk’ from our houses and wrapped them up and did the drawing numbers and stealing game. We ended up with some really goofy gifts, including a bag containing milk of magnesia and granola bars that mom had bought, a glass pie plate that Kevin was returning to his mom, and a fake cactus plant—just to name a few. We had so many that we were able to do three ‘rounds’—it included a lot of laughs. Then on Sunday we did a serious gift exchange of some better gifts—it made for more serious ‘stealing’ of gifts. Scott’s little four-year old Dylan is so funny—he and Scott were singing the song that has ‘I’ve been watching you, ain’t that cool, I’m your little buckaroo’. And he runs and moves constantly—it makes me tired just watching him!
On Monday, I visited with the MSU-Bottineau Campus Dean to talk about them starting a Phi Theta Kappa Chapter. I hope they decide to charter a chapter—then I can go over there again.

Visiting family is always so much fun—and we have such a wonderful family. I like spending time with them.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2006-12-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

Our New York Trip had the ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ song going through my head constantly. Part of the reason is that anytime I’m getting ready to fly to someplace—I’m always humming it. The other reason was while we were in New York—we went to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert and heard it sung first hand—WOW!

I’ll start at the beginning and write what I can remember—it’s been quite a while ago now, but there were some definite highlights to the New York Trip. The first thing that needs to be explained is that even though we went to New York, we didn’t go close to New York, NY. It seems that every time I would say we were going to New York, people would automatically assume that it was to New York City. We actually flew in and out of Syracuse and the retreat was held in Utica. This is just a little ways from the Finger Lakes region and also from the Adirondack Mountains.

Our first pleasant experience is when we checked in to our hotel. We stayed at the Historic Utica Hotel. It’s an older hotel that has been totally remodeled and refurbished. It is absolutely beautiful—and yet has kept the charm from an earlier period. In the lobby and a little coffee shop, there were signs saying all the famous people (Winston Churchill, William Taft, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, Harry Truman, Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt, Judy Garland and more) who had been at the Hotel.

The Hotel has a very unique history—it was designed and built as a ‘grand’ hotel in 1910. In 1972 it closed down as a hotel and became Hunter House Adultcare facility until 1995, when it was expected to be torn down—after much lobbing, the hotel and several other downtown historic buildings were saved. In 2001 it reopened after a $13 million renovation. Much of the downtown area right around the hotel has been restored as well. There are many neat shops.

As part of the retreat, many of us went to a Peter, Paul, and Mary Concert at the Stanley Theatre. This theatre was build as a showplace in 1928—complete will lots of baroque gold leafing. In the last 25 years it has been completely restored. One thing that was really unusual was the ‘chandelier’ or lack of… I guess when they were building the theatre, they ran out of money to get the chandelier—and then WWII came along and it was put off—and then put off some more. So they have this wonderful space for a chandelier—that has a single light bulb hanging at the end of a cord. It looks really funny—and even the performers mentioned it. But I guess since it’s been restored—it would need to be just right.

The concert was so wonderful. We have been Peter, Paul, and Mary fans for many years (probably from the first time we heard “Puff, the Magic Dragon”). We even saw them once at the MN State Fair—probably some time in the 80’s. I love their sound—and all of their songs. They are such great ‘sing along’ type songs—and I think I knew all of the words to most of the songs. P, P & M are wonderful entertainers—they encourage the audience to sing along a lot.

P, P & M said they first started performing together 46 years ago. That’s hard to believe—although we did notice Mary, especially had aged. Of course, she was fighting leukemia—so had lost her long hair—a definite trademark. She had also gained quite a bit of weight—probably from the leukemia also. Mary was also having problems with her knee—so she was moving pretty slowly, and with a crutch. But she certainly could still belt out a song—wow! What a voice!

On Sunday, after the retreat, we drove up to Old Forge—which is a neat little town in the Adirondacks. As we were going up into the mountains—there started to be a little snow on the ground and some in the air—then a little more, and a little more—and pretty soon it was snowing really hard. We just wandered around the area for a while and then decided to head back down. I think it would be really pretty to visit in the summer—especially if there would be some time for hiking as well.

We picked up Phylliss at the hotel and decided to go for supper. I must have been really ‘out-of-it’ (like I usually am after a retreat), because after we parked the car and were going into the restaurant—I remarked, ‘look at how many New York cars are in the parking lot’. For some reason, I was thinking that we were in Virginia. We laughed so hard for the rest of the evening.

The next day, we had some time and decided to drive back up into the Adirondacks again—partly so Phylliss could see snow (those MS people don’t get too much change to see it) and also to go a little higher. We drove for a ways farther, but decided we’d better turn around and head back. We stopped at a cute little store and then a restaurant and then hurried back to the airport. We were a little panicky because we couldn’t find a gas station to fill up the car and didn’t have time to look for one. So we brought the car back with ½ tank of gas—boy, did that cost a lot extra! We were rushing so much in the airport that we forgot our camera in the car. Although—thank you AVIS, because I called their customer service line and after talking to a couple people—we got it back!

We flew home—Bob and I both got upgraded to first class to Detroit, but Phylliss didn’t—so I brought her back some snacks and told her goodbye—because we both went our separate directions at Detroit. We had some time in the cities, so Ross picked us up and we went to our favorite TGI Fridays for supper. Yummy!

Washington to Washington (and Virginia)

2006-11-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

One week we flew to Washington State and the next week, we were flying to Washington DC. The retreat was actually in Staunton, VA, but tickets were much cheaper to fly to Dulles—so that’s what we did! BUT we got there around 4:30 pm, which means RUSH HOUR. We had to go on Hwy 28 from Dulles for about 10 miles and it took us close to an hour. We were stopped an awful lot of the time and crawling along at 5 mph part of the time. Even after we got on the interstate—it was moving pretty slow—we rejoiced when we got up to 20 mph. So it took us quite a while to get to Staunton, VA—even though it was only 120 miles.

When we got to Staunton—we could see our hotel from a distance. It was the Stonewall Jackson hotel and it’s on the registry of Historic Hotels. It’s wonderful—huge lobby with chandeliers and lots of fancy windows and trim. The rooms were interesting—the closet was a little hallway-like thing. You couldn’t even fit the suitcase in sideways—and when the suitcase was there—you couldn’t get to the clothes rod. But it was a neat room—high ceilings, and neat molding around the top of the walls. The hotel had a really nice conference center and restaurant.

Since we had part of a day to explore the historic downtown area, we walked around the area. The city of Staunton is a wonderful example of a great town, with lots of history and some great architecture from the late 1700’s. One of the historical facts that I read said that Staunton was fortunate because it missed a lot of the civil war battles that happened in the Shenandoah Valley. There are several colleges right near the Hotel and a few schools (both colleges and prep schools) that were specifically for women—even 200 years ago. There were many beautiful brick churches—practically on every corner.

Bob drove to Richmond on Friday to pick up Phylliss and they made it back just in time for supper, when the retreat started. According to my schedule, we were supposed to go until 10 pm, but they had changed it to end at 9:30 and had a reception at one of the advisor’s home. Ooops! Oh well, we went to her home a little late, but still had a wonderful time. She has a beautiful old home that has been restored. Every room, hallway, and nook was painted a different color—and bright colors at that. You would expect that to be really gaudy—but it wasn’t. The advisor’s husband repairs watches and clocks, and he had a wonderful collection of antique clocks. There was a huge one over the fireplace that was amazing.

After lunch on Saturday, we had PAM training and we drove over to Blue Ridge Community College to use their computer lab. The Fall colors were at their peak and it was a beautiful drive over there. Following the training, several advisors, Phylliss, and I attended the BRCC’s Induction Ceremony. It was very nice and a lot of fun to be a part of their induction. I’ve always loved Induction Ceremonies. Seeing the excitement as students are recognized for their academic accomplishments is so heartwarming.

That evening, we went to a really great Italian restaurant. Since there were 14 of us, we had made reservations. When we got there, they told us to go up the stairs and through the door and someone would take us to our table. After we climbed those stairs, they took us up another flight, and then another, and then another—we ended up on the fourth floor—but had a great view! They had wonderful pasta dishes that were really yummy!

Following dinner, we went to the Blackfriar’s Playhouse and saw a production of Othello. It was absolutely wonderful! The Blackfriar Playhouse is a recreation of the early theatre that Shakespeare used before he moved into the Globe Theatre. Rather than having regular theatre seating, this one has hard benches—although for an extra $5 you could rent a cushion to sit on and a back for the bench (we all did get that little extra)! Before the play began, the actors talked about how theatre was produced back in Shakespeare’s day. During the intermission, the actors played instruments and sang. They didn’t have any break at all.

After breakfast on Sunday, we brought Phylliss back to Richmond to catch her plane. As we were going over the Blue Ridge Mountains we could see into the Shenandoah Valley—the colors on the trees were absolutely spectacular and the view was wonderful. We decided to drive over to the coast and check out the ocean. So we drove to Virginia Beach, where we had to cross over some very large bridges and tunnels. It was really cool—there would be a bridge that was about 10 miles long and then it would go underwater and become a tunnel for several miles and then we would end up back on a bridge. We had two long bridges like that—I really like bridges and water! We needed to get to Washington DC by that evening, so we decided to drive up the eastern shore of Virginia.

Last summer we heard about the Delmarva Peninsula from the speaker at the Honors Institute. The Delmarva Peninsula is only about 100 miles long, but has parts of three states—Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. He said one year, Virginia even ‘forgot’ to include it on their state maps. So we wanted to see it for ourselves. Although as we drove up it—we couldn’t see the ocean very much. We did drive over to one island for supper. We ended up eating at a restaurant that looked out on a marina. As we went in—they asked if we wanted to be in the outdoor seating or inside—we decided to go to the outside seating—big mistake. We discovered they only had ‘bar’ food—complete with plastic silverware and glasses, greasy food, and noisy people watching a football game.

We headed up for Washington DC and ended up driving right through the middle of the city. We got lost several times, reread our map, and had to backtrack, but did OK. We ended up driving pretty close to the Capitol Building and Washington Monument. It was fun to be wandering around there—and since it was pretty late on a Sunday evening, there wasn’t too much traffic—although it was harder to see street signs. Finally we were heading toward Dulles airport and found a motel for the evening. The next morning, we boarded our plane and headed for home, but having enough time in Mpls to meet up with the boys and have supper with them—our favorite TGI Fridays!

I do like Washington DC and would like to spend some more time there—I’ve been there three times—two full weeks at Honors Institutes and one other time when we were traveling, but still feel like I haven’t seen it all. Guess I’ll have to do another trip….

Visiting long lost cousins

2006-11-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

Another trip to Washington State, this time we flew in and out of Seattle, but the retreat was in Moses Lake—which is half way across the state. And, we brought my mom along and planned a visit with my cousin and her family who we hadn’t seen in many years.

The trip started with Bob, mom and I driving to Mpls and staying at Richard and Ross’ for a couple nights. It works really slick when we go to the cities, because they have wireless internet, so I can work there just as if I was at home. Also since Richard is our computer tech guy—he’s able to work on our computers—which he did while we were there—HUGE thank you Richard.

I wanted to see “Singing in the Rain” at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre, which had run over the summer and was about to close. We were able to get tickets for Wed. evening, so Mom, Ross, Richard, Bob and I went. We had a lot of fun, ate a lot of great food including desserts that we shared, and the production was really good. And, of course, for the next couple days I had the songs “Singing in the Rain” and “Good Morning, Good Morning” going through my head. A colleague of Ross’ was at the theatre with her family, so we got to meet her.

Going to the theatre did put us home late on Wed and we had to get up early on Thurs. to catch our plane, so we were a little tired. And, we had an unusual experience at the airport. They weren’t open! We got there a little before 5 am and none of the counters were open. Our flight was at 6 am—and they tell you to get there early, but I guess ‘not too early’. Even after we got checked in—there was only one security gate open—and that was at the opposite end of the building from where the ticket counter was. The others didn’t open until 5:30 am. But we had mom with us and had asked for a wheel chair, so they took us through the medical and employee security—and we did make the plane in plenty of time.

The flight was uneventful and we were able to nap a bit. After we got to Seattle, we found my cousin’s house and settled in. We had a nice visit and then went to a neat restaurant for supper. Since we had a short night, we went to bed early.

The next day, we left mom with my cousin, picked up Phyllis, and headed over to Moses Lake. It is so beautiful going through the mountains. Although the last time we did that trip, we took Hwy 2, which winds through the mountains more than the Interstate does. I think I’ve mentioned that I love mountains—so anytime we get to drive through the mountains—we usually take the slower route. This time we had another person riding with us and wanted to spend more time with the family.

Moses Lake is a neat town—it’s in Eastern Washington—so is located in the high desert. That means it’s usually hot and dry. Although there is a huge lake there—which is really pretty. The college is an old Military Base that they purchased for $1. We were on that campus a little over two years ago. They were doing some remodeling at that time—it looks really good now.

The retreat went very well—we had great food which was prepared and served by the college caterers. On the way home, we stopped for gas and there was this neat store and coffee shop (there’s a coffee shop on every corner and in every little town in Washington). The store had lots of wonderful Christmas decorations and lots of gourmet food—which was set out so you could taste. We bought some ornaments and Chai teas.

When we got back to my cousin’s house—three of her kids and their families were there. We had a nice visit with them. This is the first time we had met a couple of them and the others we met only at my uncle’s funeral. The family is really fun loving—lots of practical jokes and smart remarks. It is wonderful to realize that we are related to such neat people.

The next day, we went to a McDonalds for a birthday party for one of the little girls. All four of my cousin’s kids were there, as well as their families and some friends—so there were about 8 little kids and 12 adults. I sure wish there had been restaurants with the neat play areas back when I was a kid—or even when my kids were young. They look like so much fun.

After the birthday party, we drove over to the sound and hopped on a ferry and went out to one of the islands. It was windy and cool on the ferry, but fun to be out on the water and see the islands. Seattle has the most elaborate ferry system in the world. We had lunch at a seaside restaurant which overlooked a marina. We had some great seafood! When we were going back to Seattle—it was just getting dark—so the lights from the city were coming on—really beautiful!

We were on the red eye back—so our flight left just after midnight and we got back to Msp at 6 am. I think we all slept pretty good on the flight, but we were still really tired when we got back. Ross picked us up at the airport and we went out for breakfast. Then he dropped us off at his place, he went to work, and we went to bed for naps. When we got up, we drove home. Another great trip! Have I mentioned lately that I love to travel?

Why not Minot?

2006-10-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Minot ND is a city out in the middle of North Dakota. That sounds like an oxymoron since Garrison Keillor just said the population of ND is dispersed 9.6 people per square mile. So to have a ‘city’ in the middle of it, takes some of those 9.6 people from the country. But I love Minot. It’s nicknamed “The Magic City” and it really is. There is a wonderful Scandinavian park right in the middle where the “Norsk Hostfest is held every October (and thousands visit).

We visited Minot a few weeks ago. It’s amazing that you’re driving across the flatlands of North Dakota and suddenly you come to some rolling hills and down in the valley is the city of Minot.

Of course the real reason that I love visiting Minot is because I have family living there. Our three godchildren (niece and nephews: LeAnn, Scott and Kevin) and their families live right neat Minot and my sister lives fairly close (by ND miles) by. After we got to Minot, we went out for supper with Scott, Stacy and Dylan and visited with them for a while. I wish I had half of the energy that Dylan has. He is four years old and the cutest motormouth that you ever saw.

On Friday, we met up with LeAnn and after overeating at a Chinese buffet, we went to her house and picked tons of apples—maybe not tons, but we had ten 13-gal garbage bags pretty close to full. We decided to try the 'shake the tree' method with LeAnn wielding a huge fishing net and Bob a garbage bag to catch the apples. I climbed up the tree and gave it a good hard shake. Apples went everywhere—some out into the street—which is on a hill--so they rolled down the street. When we were leaving, we noticed apples along the edge of the street for two full blocks.

We were driving our little Focus and it was full to the brim with apples and our luggage. While we were picking apples, I must have stepped in some doggy ‘bombs’. There sure was a horrible smell in the car. So we had to stop and clean out my shoes.

We drove up to Sandy & Al’s Ranch and immediately started dehydrating apples. Sandy gave me a really nice dehydrator for an early Christmas president. So we had two dehydrators with 9 racks on each. We had it down to an art—the apple peeler spewing peelings all over, cinnamon and sugar flying, buckets of apple cores and peels going out to the chickens and baggies of dried apples filling up. I think we could fill up all the racks in about an hour.

Sandy and I visited one of their ‘favorite’ stores. It has lots of slightly damaged things—really cheap. I brought a $20 bill with me, so I wouldn’t get too carried away. I was mentally keeping track of how much I was getting and I figured it was about $18.70. When the lady rang it up—she kept saying “This is on sale”, so my total came to $13.50. There were watermelons on sale for $.20 a pound so I got a 30 lb one and it took my last $6.

We had a great time and ended up leaving with 10 baggies full of dehydrated apples, a bunch of squash, peppers (red, green, and hot, hot), pumpkins, eggplants, and two bushels of apples. We brought part of a bushel to Kara to dehydrate and finished up the rest at home. We also brought some of the veggies to Ross and Kara—and the hot peppers to Richard and Paul.

It’s always so wonderful to visit family.

2006-10-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

California—land of the gold rush, Hollywood, and lots of people and freeways. One of my favorite cities is in California—San Francisco. And we were lucky enough to visit there. We flew in to San Francisco airport and drove into the city.

We stopped for lunch at Pier 39 at a wonderful seafood place. We even had a great view of the Bay and Alcatraz. I was surprised at Alcatraz—you can see condos or something built up on one side of it. The last time we were there—which was over 10 years ago—we took a tour out there and the only thing on the island was the dock, some run-down buildings and the prison. Now it looks like a tourist spot. Pier 39 is where all the sea lions climb up on the docks and lay there barking. They are fun to watch—although you can smell they pretty good. We walked around the area a bit, but—as usual for San Francisco—it was cool and very windy.

We had a hotel reserved in San Rafel, which is north of San Francisco. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge—I love big bridges! And the Golden Gate is one of my favorites. We stopped at a wayside rest right after we got off the bridge to look around. The wind was so strong; it was hard to walk against it. But at least it was bright and sunny and no fog.

That night we met up with a cyber friend that I have. It was the first time we had met in person and we talked like we were old friends. Bob is such a sweetheart—he just sat and listened and didn’t even get bored. We were at a neat microbrewery in Larkspur.

The next day, we drove north on Hwy 1. We traveled through the Muir Woods—which is really a wonderful winding road through the mountains. From there, we went through the Napa Valley and on to Sacramento where the retreat was being held. That’s a beautiful area.

The retreat was held on the Delta King, which is an old riverboat that has been converted to a hotel and convention center. It floats right on the river (although you couldn’t feel the boat move at all) and is located in Old Sacramento. This area has cobblestone streets, a great pathway along the river, and lots of docks area. There were also some museums, the old railroad depot, some tourist things like tour boats and trains, neat restaurants overlooking the river, and lots of unique little shops.

We had some time in the afternoon, so walked along the river and found an ice cream shop. There was a Pony Express Gathering in a park. We saw lots of shirts with Pony Express and then different states on the back. I guess this organization reenacts the Pony Express Route. They were having a barbeque, complete with a band. We sat and listened to the music for a while—they were really good.

That evening, 40 people from our group—which included advisors and some of their spouses—went to a murder mystery dinner theatre. It was so much fun. The host for the evening was Rowbar and he was hysterical. He had the highest voice, wore different gloves for each course that was served and a big feather boa. There was a really bad magician—who didn’t speak, but did some tricks. His manager kept saying he was so wonderful and the women all loved him. This guy came in and shot him and the sheriff shot the killer. Several audience members were given latex gloves and were called on to haul them out. Between courses, two more people were poisoned. Throughout the evening, people would be questioned about what they saw. It was funny because when they asked a lot of the people what they did for a living—so many were professors.

One funny thing that happened was one of the men in our group had gone to the bathroom and when he came out, a woman started to kiss him. He mentioned it to the actors and they really took off with it. It turned out that this woman (who had had a few drinks—surprise) mistook him for her boyfriend. They were both wearing brown shirts. It made for lots of funny jokes. At the end of the evening, the man who was playing the sheriff came out with a trophy for the person who figured out who the killer was. He had a tiny pair of nylon shorts and a tight, bright orange muscle shirt on. He strutted back and forth with the trophy. We were laughing so hard!

After the retreat, 14 of us went out for supper. We were going to Joe’s Crab shack, but there was 1 ½ hour wait, so we ended up at the Rio Café—which had great seafood and a little more classy (and expensive) than Joe’s. We had a lot of fun.

Since we were free after 10 am on Sunday and didn’t leave until Monday, we decided to drive up to Lake Tahoe. I worked there in 1971 with my two roommates from college. We were motel maids at a Rodeway Inn and lived in a little cabin. Bob and I had driven through there in 1973, but hadn’t been back since—so I was curious at how much it had changed. And it had quite a bit.

We did find a Rodeway Inn, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the one where we worked. The one where we worked had quite a long driveway, with the parking lot between the hotel and the lake and a nice big beach. Well, of course, it’s grown up so much that there are no long driveways and every inch near the beach has a large hotel on it. We went to a great restaurant that had a huge buffet—all the breakfast foods, plus crab legs, shrimp, crab stuffed sole, carved prime rib and turkey—just to name a few things. I should avoid buffets, because I overeat. But it sure was good. We sat out on the deck—it was really warm in the sun, but when the shade covered us—it got a little cool. We walked on the beach a little ways, although you couldn’t walk very far because there was private land next to the restaurant and marina.

When we were there in ’71 there were hardly any docks or boats in the lake. I remember them saying Lake Tahoe is very deep and because it’s so high in the mountains and it’s very cold and blue. Now there were lots of marinas and boats moored out in the lake, plus places you could rent jet skis. The lake is still very blue, but it must be getting a little polluted, because some bumper stickers say “Keep Lake Tahoe Blue”.

We found the post office where we used to pick up our mail and the area where our cabin was, but didn’t find anything that looked like our cabin. The road is much wider than what I remember, so it might have disappeared so the road could be widened.

We had a four-hour drive back to San Francisco, so had to get going fairly early. I really want to go back and spend a week or two there. On the way back, we drove up to Echo Lake. I remember Kathy, Jean and I picnicking there on some of our days off. We hiked down a fairly steep path to the lake and walked around a bit. Then had to climb back up—we took it easy, because we weren’t use to the altitude.

We stayed in Berkley for the night and then left the next day for home. As much as I love to travel and wander, I also enjoy coming home and relaxing in our solarium! It sure beats the traffic and crowds of people.

Visiting the Show Me State

2006-09-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

I ended up getting quite a ways behind on Blogging, so I'll end up posting two this morning.

I had a quick trip to Missouri for an advisor retreat last weekend. It was basically fly down on Friday and back on Sunday. Phylliss from HQ did some computer training with the group, so we were able to meet at the Kansas City airport and drive to Trenton together. She's so much fun to travel with--we laugh an awful lot when we're together.

Trenton is northeast of Kansas City and it is close to an area that has a lot of Amish people, so we saw lots of horse and buggys. On Sunday, we stopped at Jamesport which is a neat little Amish town--but most everything is closed on Sundays, so there was only one store that was open. It would be fun to visit on a weekday.

The scenery there is really pretty--rolling hills and lots of green. Many herds of beef cattle were grazing in the fields--and we had steak one night and it was so good!

Right now I'm in California for a retreat--but that's fuel for another post!