Janet and Mark's Retirement Trips

Lunch Stop on Day 2 on the Avenue of the Giants Again, I'll add the disclaimer that all these pictures were taken with my iPhone 2nd generaiion SE, with absolutely no Photoshopping...and there are some awesome shots here! Wouldn't you know it: the first time in my life I'm towing a trailer, we proceed to have a Biblical Downpour in late October, no less.  Janet's magic laptop scored us a 19' Airstream Bambi trailer on outdoorsy.com, and several campsites at private campgrounds as well as at the Redwood National and State Parks.  In the intervening years since we took family trips to state parks such as Patrick's Point, Humboldt Redwoods, and Prairie Creek as a kid, the Feds and State decided to pull all those state parks under the umbrella of the National Park Service.  And, Mr. Patrick did not treat the indigenous population very well way back when, so we now have Sue Meg State Park instead of He Who Shall Not Be Named Point SP. Sunday, October 24, 2021: We pic...

  Some obbservations from our latest trips (2020 - 2024) abroad: Cairo/Egypt is rated dead last in many magazines and travel blogs as places to visit, even lower than places like Kazakstan, and I kind of see why.  We were in our little UniWorld bubble, with an effective (and aggressive, and from the reactions of other guides, well respected among his peers) guide in Essam, sitting apart from the chaos of the Cairo traffic and the aggression of the ever present vendors at every sight.  It would have sucked had we been traveling on our own trying to navigate through the nightmare.  But, the trip was absolutely fantastic and I would highly recommend visiting Egypt, that is if you can afford a quality bubble like we did. From our trips to Paris, Bordeaux, and Donestia, and London: Everyone still smokes or vapes, but at least laws now prevent smoking indoors.  But, much of the Parisian cafe 'scene' involves sitting outside the cafe people-watching.  But then you...

  Another one of our "Hey, you want to go to Crater Lake?" trips, as if a 5,268 mile road trip in July wasn't enough, Janet was able to score a couple of nights at the Crater Lake Lodge from September 27 through the 30th despite the horrible recreation.gov website.  Leaving Alameda and heading up I-5, we stopped for a late breakfast/early lunch at Nancy's Airport Cafe in Willows, a favorite "$100 Hamburger" hangout for private pilots. We continued up I-5 to Castle Crags State Park, which we frequently passed on our way north to ferry Karen to college in Tacoma, but had never stopped.  We hiked the Kettlebell Trail and the Crags Overlook burning off much of Nancy's fare.  Castle Crags State Park From Castle Crags, we continued on the Medford and a night at another Bonvoy/Marriott property, about a 700 mile day.  In the morning, we poked around Medford for breakfast and found the "Yelp Five Star" Buttercloud Bakery and Cafe, another Biscuit and B...

  Brought to you from the summit rim of Cinder Cone I'm not sure if that's Shasta in the background Before we took off on our half-way-across-the-country Oshkosh Road Trip (#9), Janet scored two cabins, one in Manzanita Lake in Lassen, and one in McArthur-Burney State Park, in early June no less.  Neither of us had been to either park in a long time, and since she was able to score the two cabins, we were on our way.  We were leaving on the Oshkosh trip from Incline Village, so we thought we'd circle north to Lassen and then head east to US395 down Incline, since neither of us had driven on US395 north of Tahoe/Reno. June 1, 2021: Lassen isn't too far away for us from either house, just 200 or so miles from Incline up US395, with a turn west at Lake Almanor on CA36 then CA89, where we stopped at Kohm Yah-mac-nee Visitors' Center, where we learned our favorite feature, Bumpass Hell, was closed due to trail damage.  Bummer.  We checked out some mud pots and fumaro...

  Photobombed in my own selfie The entrance to the Oshkosh Air Show Janet had flown in to the Oshkosh Air Show (formally the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture 2021 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) a couple of years earlier with her friend and flight instructor, Liz, and her tales of the sheer number of WWII airplanes on display (and in the air) convinced me to give it a go. In our planning, we decided to make it a near-cross-country hotel-only road trip from Incline to Oshkosh and back.  We basically routed ourselves east on I-94 and back west on I-90, where we could pick up a ton of National and State Parks, and states neither of us had been, like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas.  My baseball trips have taken me to some of the fly-over states, but those five states were missing on my checklist (and as of our Alaska trip in 2023, I now have seen all 50 states, and it only took me 68 years to do it!)  And we'd make the trip in my s...