Category Archives: Travel

Cruise 2026: Key West

I guess everyone chooses a cruise because of the destinations, but our reasons for choosing these destinations were very specific.

Panoramic photo of Key West from our stateroom.

Key West has long been on our list of places to visit. Kenn also decided that if he truly hated being onboard the ship, we could disembark in Key West and rent a car to drive back to Tampa to pick up our car.

Since we only had five-ish hours in Key West, we booked a tour on the Old Town Trolley. The tour would allow us to hit the highlights of the town and hop on and off as we wanted.

Our Old Town Trolley tour guide.

The tour would have been more informative if we could have heard the tour guide over the lady behind us; she talked incessantly. At one of the stops the tour guide started his informative spiel and the lady behind us piped up, “He sure talks a lot.” You think? It was almost like talking was his job!🤦‍♀️

We got off the trolley at the famous buoy marking the southernmost point in the continental US. Usually, taking a selfie somewhere like this is an absolute free-for-all; this was incredibly organized. Everyone was in an orderly line and the people at the front of the line gave their phone to the people behind them, who took the photos, gave the phone back and then repeated the process for their own photos. I was impressed!

We walked from the buoy back to where we boarded the trolley locating the Zero mile marker along the way. Oh, and I got to see the feral chickens of Key West, so I am a happy woman!

The Zero mile marker and the beginning of Hwy One.
Handsome guy at a gas station.
Mom and baby.
Another mom and baby.

Have you been to Key West? If so, did you cruise, fly, or drive?

Cruisin’ Together

Kenn and I have long had a cruise to Alaska on our bucket list. Cruise-savvy friends pointed out that, if we haven’t been on a cruise before, we’d probably want to start with something shorter to make sure we actually enjoy cruising before signing up for something lasting seven to ten days. Good point! Kenn has never been on a cruise and I’ve only been on one – when I was twelve. We looked into cruises and discussed several options. At Christmas, we pulled the trigger and booked a four day cruise. We departed Tampa, Florida onboard the Norwegian Star on March 12th and made stops in Key West and Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas before returning to Tampa on March 16th. I’ll write separate posts for our shore excursions.

We learned a few things along the way:

While neither of us had problems with seasickness, I was prepared with Dramamine, acupressure wrist bands, and inhalers just in case. (My daughter-in-law and a couple of the grandkids suffer from carsickness, so I have passed everything on to them.) However, I have now been warned that the Pacific tends to be rougher than the Atlantic, so we shouldn’t skimp on preparations whenever we go to Alaska.😬 Long-lasting patches have been recommended so I’ll add them to our anti-seasickness kit next time around.

We have also agreed that paying for a stateroom with a balcony was worth the extra cost. I don’t think either one of us would have done well without having a view.

Paying for valet parking at Port Tampa Bay was the way to go. We dropped off our car and the parking crew handled getting our luggage to the ship. When we returned, our car was brought to us. Easy-peasy.

“Checking” our luggage the last night of the cruise worked like a charm. It allowed us to disembark without wrestling our luggage through all of the various checkpoints. Our luggage was waiting for us in the baggage claim area, which was the next to the last stop. Also, Kenn’s bright orange suitcase and my bright blue one were easy to find amongst the sea of black and maroon luggage.

While we had no major problems with Norwegian Cruise Lines, our next cruise will probably be on a different line so we can see how things vary.

Have you been on a cruise (or cruises)? What cruise line did you use? Would you recommend it? Why or why not?

Road Trip 2025: Ohio

After West Virginia, we moved on to Ohio for the next leg of our journey. The Cleveland SE KOA Holiday in Streetsboro functioned as our base of operations. Streetsboro (and the surrounding area) was so stinking cute! (This KOA was also the home of the Pig Rock.)

Our first point of interest was Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Unlike some national parks, Cuyahoga Valley is spread out over a wide area. The visitor center we visited was at the trailhead for the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail which is popular among cyclists. Not having travel bikes, we walked a portion of the trail before moving on to the Brandywine Gorge Loop Trail. The Brandywine Gorge Loop Trail is an easy walk. Water levels were low so Brandywine Falls was rather small during our visit. (Pro tip: Waterfalls are directly impacted by the amount of rainfall in the area so, if water levels are low, the falls will be smaller. I know this seems obvious, but people still write reviews complaining about things like that.🙄)

Obligatory photo at the park sign.
Under the bridge behind the visitor’s center.
Brandywine Falls
Awkward selfie at Brandywine Falls.

The “24 hours of A Christmas Story” marathon on TBS/TNT is a Christmas staple at our house. After attending the candlelight Christmas Eve service at church, we go home and begin prepping the monkey bread and pigs-in-a-blanket for Christmas morning; we always have the marathon on while we work. We couldn’t be in the Cleveland area and not visit the House from A Christmas Story. (Tour tickets must be purchased online.) The tour was fun and we were given plenty of time to roam around and take pictures. The tour includes the small museum containing a lot of props from the movie and a wall of fan art. Of course there is also a gift shop where I bought a few stocking stuffers. (The house next door has been turned into the Bumpus House bed and breakfast.)

It’s a major award! (Kenn’s best creepy look.🤣)
Fan art.

Kenn even found a pretty park for us to visit – complete with a “Cleveland” sign perfect for pictures, LOL. It was a nice place to sit and chill for a while. It was also my first view of Lake Erie.

We meet so many wonderful people when we travel. There are always others willing to take photos for us (like the one above) and we do the same for them. Many times this turns into conversations about where everyone is from and where we have traveled, etc. There are plenty of good people in the world.

What are your holiday traditions? Do you watch A Christmas Story?

Road Trip 2025: West Virginia

Our first destination was New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. I love West Virginia; it’s a beautiful state, totally worthy of its own song. We learn from each trip we take. One of the reasons we start our trips in early-to-mid September is because school is back in session which (usually) means crowds are smaller at high traffic locations such as national parks. (Mount Rushmore and Glacier National Park in July were not for the faint of heart.)

The first step for us is to check out the Visitor’s Center. At the very minimum, we need a stamp and sticker for our National Parks Passport and I’m always on the lookout for interesting stocking stuffers and/or souvenirs. Then we grab a map of the park and determine what we want to see. We decided to check out the scenic outlooks near the visitor’s center followed by a scenic drive.

No selfies in front of New River Gorge National Park’s non-traditional sign.

After completing our selfie attempts at the overlook nearest the bridge, we noticed people walking on the girders under the bridge. My first thought was, “What are those idiots doing?” We then realized they appeared to be wearing safety harnesses which were attached to an overhead cable. So, these weren’t just random people being careless. It turns out there is a company named Bridge Walk just before the entrance to the park. Per their website, “Bridge Walk offers guided tours of the New River Gorge Bridge from the catwalk 25’ beneath the Bridge.” If you are brave enough to do it, I’ll wish you well and wave goodbye as you begin your journey; this girl is not a fan of heights and my feet are staying firmly on the ground.

It was a beautiful day to spend at a beautiful park.

When we finished up at New River Gorge, we made the twenty mile drive to Babcock State Park. The scenery at the park was gorgeous; I’m sure when the fall colors arrive it edges into spectacular. (Water levels were really low during our visit.)

The grist mill is still functional, but wasn’t running the day we were there.

Next stop: Ohio!

Have you been to either of the places featured here?

National Parks Passport

Kenn and I travel primarily to see parts of the country we haven’t seen before. While we’re seeing the sights, we also make it a point to visit any national parks, national monuments, etc. along our route. A few years ago I discovered the existence of National Parks Passports and gifted Kenn one. The “passport” is just a fun way to document the parks that you’ve visited. The book is broken out by area of the country and within each section each page gives spaces for the official cancellation and a regional stamp (decal) for the location.

Each park has “cancellation” stamps for the location. The stamp includes the date, name of the park, and the location (state, town). The stamps are usually located at the visitor’s center, but not always. At the Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania, the stamps were located at the memorial plaza instead of the visitor’s center. While the stamps are free, the decals (or regional stamps) are not. There are usually a variety of these decals to choose from and they are less than five dollars.

There are also a couple of handy accessories for the passport books. The first is stampable sticker sets. Each of the stampable stickers is round and just the right size for a cancellation stamp. These stickers come in handy if you forget your passport; you can just stamp the sticker, then place the sticker in your book later. As I’ve learned, they also come in handy when the cancellation stamp is incomplete or illegible as sometimes happens when there is too little (or too much) ink on the stamp. In those instances, I just stamp one of the stickers and place it over the original stamp. Problem solved.

The second helpful accessory is the expander pack which provides extra pages that can be added to the passport book. When we took our trip out west in 2023 we quickly filled up the section for that area, so it was nice to be able to add a couple of pages. Of course, the passport book is rather small so there are only so many pages that can be added. I’m not sure what we’ll do when we can no longer add pages. Maybe we’ll just pick up a second passport.

As one of the perks to turning 62 last year, Kenn gifted me with a Lifetime America the Beautiful pass. Now, rather than needing an annual pass to the national parks, we’re good for life! There are some national monuments, etc. that don’t accept any of the parks passes (I’m looking at you Mt. Rushmore), but they are few and far between. If you plan to visit several parks, monuments, etc. in the course of a year, an annual pass is your best bet. At only a few dollars more for a lifetime pass, it is definitely a steal once you hit the right age.

Now, we have an excuse to go back to the parks we visited before getting a passport to collect the stamps from those. I don’t consider that a hardship, LOL. Any other national park “collectors” out there?🙋‍♀️

Road Trip 20205: A Summary

I thought I’d do a quick summary of our trip before getting into detailed posts. After all, all I had to do was copy and paste most of the info from a FB post. What was I thinking? This is WordPress – it doesn’t do easy. Instead, it converted every individual line of the copied text into a separate paragraph. Ugh. It probably would have been simpler to re-type everything rather than fix the resulting mess, but I’m hard-headed so I did things the hard way. Anyhoo, here is the promised summary:

Trip Length: Twenty-five days and 4,505 miles

States Visited:

  • North Carolina
  • Tennessee
  • Virginia
  • West Virginia
  • Ohio
  • Indiana
  • Michigan
  • Wisconsin
  • Minnesota
  • Illinois
  • Kentucky
All of the states we have visited with our camper.

Places visited:

  • New River Gorge National Park
  • Babcock State Park (West Virginia)
  • Cuyahoga Valley National Park
  • The House from A Christmas Story
  • Indiana Dunes National Park
  • Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
  • Castle Rock (St. Ignace, Michigan)
  • Mackinac Island
  • Tahquamenon Falls State Park (Upper Peninsula of Michigan)
  • Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
  • Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
  • Atomic Antiques (Madison, Wisconsin)
  • The Bronze Fonz (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
  • The Kaskaskia Dragon (Vandalia, Illinois)

Great Lakes:

  • Erie
  • Michigan
  • Huron
  • Superior

We’re only missing Lake Ontario!

I’ll break the future posts out by state, assuming I survive grooming (aka shaving) Kota, our long-haired cat. Wish me luck!

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity

Rain or drought, heat or cold, the weather is always a popular topic of conversation. Feeling awkward in a social situation? Discuss the weather! Once summertime – or at least summer temperatures – roll around, the humidity becomes the primary topic of discussion among us native southerners. It’s hard to think of anything else when the humidity slaps you in the face before attempting to suffocate you every time you step out your door.

After the traveling we’ve done over the past few years, I’m here to tell y’all that it really is the humidity. Once of the first times this was really brought to our attention was when we visited Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming in 2019. The park rangers were all very apologetic that the humidity was so high during our visit; it was 25%. I told one of the rangers that, while I appreciated her concern, I’m from Georgia and 25% humidity doesn’t even register with me. As a matter of fact, it felt wonderful. (Just as a point of reference, the current level of humidity is 68% and that’s not particularly high for July.)

Image courtesy of depositphotoscom

However, it took out trip out west last year to fully bring home the difference between heat with low humidity and heat with high humidity. All of the parks we visited had signs stating that visitors shouldn’t hike when the temperature is above 90℉ and recommending the amount of water that should be carried per person per hike. We were blown away by the whole idea of not hiking when the temp is over ninety. Around here, that would knock out hikes any time between April and October. It took a few days before it dawned on me that the lack of humidity is exactly the reason why it would be so much easier to get dehydrated. (Apparently I can be a little slow sometimes.) When the humidity is low, your sweat evaporates (as it should) without you ever realizing how much liquid you are actually losing. Around here, when you sweat, it literally runs down your skin and soaks into your clothes because it doesn’t evaporate. When your clothes are soaking wet, it’s easy to realize that you need to increase your liquid intake.

I’ve never dealt well with the summer heat and humidity and it seems to be getting worse as I age. I work two days a week and most of my tasks are outside. I’m going in a little earlier and looking for indoor tasks these days because I just can’t stay out in the heat after around 2:30pm. I’ve already had one day where I got too hot and don’t want to have a repeat performance anytime soon. Fortunately, September is coming. We only have to get through August first and August sucks.

Do you prefer hot weather or cold weather? Do you live in a high or low humidity area?

The End of the Road… Trip

The Great Road Trip of 2023 is complete! Kenn and I were on the road for 30 days and 5,857 miles.

  • States Visited:
  • Alabama
  • Mississippi
  • Louisiana
  • Oklahoma
  • Texas
  • Colorado
  • Utah
  • Arizona
  • New Mexico
Ruby and Serenity
  • Places visited:
  • Cadillac Ranch
  • Capulin Volcano National Monument
  • Great Sand Dunes National Park
  • Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel
  • Dinosaur National Monument
  • Red Fleet State Park Dinosaur Tracks Trail
  • Canyonlands National Park
  • Arches National Park
  • Capitol Reef National Park
  • Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
  • Scenic Byway 12 (Utah)
  • Bryce Canyon National Park
  • Zion National Park
  • Winslow, Arizona

As usual, I took my laptop with me and used it maybe once. I’ll be posting details over the coming weeks. Oh, and happy Fall y’all! Fall is my favorite season because it marks the beginning of the end of the miserable Southern summer heat and humidity. What’s your favorite season?

Road Trip 2023

Kenn and I decided that, once we retired, we would take a road trip every year in order to see and do the things we’ve never had the time to do before. We did take a trip in 2019, but it was limited in scope due to the fact that I was retired but Kenn was not. Of course, 2020 was a bust since everything was shut down but we did manage another trip in 2021. We didn’t take a trip in 2022, but that’s okay – we were traveling back and forth to South Carolina to visit our kids and help out with the twins. Visiting family is always a win for me! Our 2019 trip was 17 days long and our 2021 trip was 28 days long. If all goes as planned on this year’s trip, we’ll be on the road somewhere between 4 and 5 weeks.😬 Can I go that long without cats in my life? I guess we’ll find out.

Image courtesy of depositphotos.com

The ultimate goal for this year’s trip is to visit all of the national parks in Utah. We’ve been on the road for 11 days now and won’t get to the first park until next Sunday. However, we have visited one national park in Colorado and two national monuments: one in New Mexico and one in Utah. I’ll make detailed posts on them later.

I had big plans for having several posts written and scheduled during the time that we would be gone, but I got lazy and that didn’t happen. I’ll be posting as I can throughout the trip. I’ve got tons of photos for Wordless Wednesday so be prepared to be inundated with photos of one of my favorite things – rocks. That’s right, rocks. I probably should have been a geologist, LOL.

Time to run. I’ve got another busy day of hiking and photographing rocks ahead of me tomorrow!

Do you like to travel or are you more of a homebody?

Congaree National Park

Did y’all know there’s a national park in South Carolina? I didn’t until I read about it on The Adventures of Grammi and Grampa. Since we spend a lot of time in South Carolina, we added Congaree to our list of places to visit and finally got to do so in March 2023.

According to the park website, Congaree is “the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States.” Knowing that Congaree is one of the least visited national parks, I was surprised to find a full parking lot the day of our visit. (This CNN report lists Congaree as number 12 out of the 15 least visited national parks in 2022.)

Congaree has a number of trails available, but since our visit occurred during a period of frequent torrential rainstorms in the southeast, we decided to stick to the elevated boardwalk. Since some portions of the boardwalk were underwater, I’m sure the other trails were probably unpassable.

Congaree boardwalk

While I love a good swamp (the Okefenokee is my favorite so far), I can understand why Congaree is one of the least visited parks – swamps aren’t for everyone. The following photo is one of my favorites because it’s hard to tell where the trees end and the reflections begin. (Can you find the squirrel in the photo?)

One of the things I didn’t expect was the caterpillars. They. Were. Everywhere. Caterpillars on the railing of the boardwalk. Caterpillars hanging from trees on silken threads. Are those raindrops pattering on the surface of the water? No, it’s caterpillars. The end of the boardwalk was a platform overlooking a lake; very few people spent any length of time there because the caterpillars were raining down from the trees like little multi-legged paratroopers. (We also got to meet Ares, Dog of War and his family at the overlook.) According to one of the park volunteers, the number of caterpillars varies from year to year, but based on the numbers present during our visit, 2023 was gearing up to be a banner year for them.

We haven’t been able to travel much this year due to all of the expensive home repairs we’ve been dealing with. However, mentally revisiting Congaree for this post has me excited about our upcoming roadtrip. I’m ready for new adventures!

So, where do you stand on the subject of caterpillars? Yea or Nay?