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Mills Alumni Association/AHI Travel Tour of SE Asia: February/March 2024

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Feb 18-20: United SFO to Singapore to Bali One cannot prepare for any 17 hour flight--you just gotta go with the flow, catch as much sleep as you can, and hopefully you can tough it out at the destination particularly once you lose a day crossing the International Date Line, leaving late on the 18th, and finally arriving in Bali on the 20th.  Here is the laundry list of movies I knocked off on both flights: The Holdovers: meh Wolf of Wall Street: excellent Ron Burgundy, Anchorman: not my kind of humor Blade Runner 20-something: confusing Drive (more Ryan Phillope): meh Barbie: very clever and funny The Singapore airport, where we had a significant layover, is quite the stimulant, despite spending most of our time in the Singapore Airlines lounge.  EVERY terminal, and there were several, had multiple copies of luxury designer shops, and all were very busy.  Somebody's economy is booming... The two-hour flight to Bali/Denpasar was perfect for watching Barbie, and we got picked up by
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September 2024: This is how Retirement works for us, all over Morning Coffee!

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That's Half Dome out there...it was windy too! Janet and I do a lot of our travel planning first thing in the morning while having our coffees.  Late in 2022, Janet was trolling around the United Airlines site and blurted out, "hey, flights to London have really come down...you want to go to London in March?" London is neck and neck in my rating with Paris and Munich, so I said, "Sure!" and over the next cup, we had the flight, an AirBnB right by Covent Garden and Chinatown and close to five different Tube stations...all booked that morning! Next winter (2023), again, over morning coffee, Janet asks, "do you want to go to DC this coming January?"  I love all the Smithsonians and spending all day in a museum in the dead of winter was a no-brainer..."Absolutely!" This summer (2024), Janet signed up for a "Knitting Retreat" in Cambria, and when she asked if I wanted to go, I said yes.  I don't knit, but the riding between Cambria a
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October 2023: We went somewhere we would NEVER go on our own, and we LOVED IT!

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Sometime early this year (2023) Janet, over early morning coffee, asked if I wanted to go to Jordan?  Jordan?!?  That's the Middle East!  She had received an email from her women's pilot organization, The 99's, announcing the 2023 International Conference in Amman, Jordan.  We spent the rest of that morning noodling over flights, details of the conference, etc.  The conference was reasonably priced, and included transportation and lodging from Amman to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba.  After Indy Jones 3 featuring Petra's Treasury, I was hooked.  We do a lot of independent travel in Western Europe, but I'd think hard before traveling to the Middle East on our own.  So, the prospect of being on a guided tour with tough, independent travelers (you can't say women pilots are timid at all) in a place we'd never see on our own sold us! A few hitches arose: the first was in checking the dates of the tour and my Passport expiration showed my Passport would expire within
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Road Tripping to the Utah Big 5 National Parks: Notes from an Email to Bob F

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  Here are some notes from our latest road trip, starting in Reno with renting a tear-drop trailer: We really love the "bleak" landscape of Nevada, and getting across the state on US50 rather than I-80 is worth it to us. Our first night was at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in the teardrop.  Middlegate has a hole-in-the-wall joint right at the intersection of 50 and the small road to Berlin, NV...great burgers! We then headed south to US95 & 93 to head over to Cathedral Gorge State Park just west of the Utah border. We then (day 3) headed to our hotel (we split about 50/50 teardropping and hoteling) in Springdale for Zion Natl Park. Zion's shuttles start at 7am, so we got to the visitor center at 6:30 and still had to wait a bit (we got on the 4th shuttle)...no cars in the main canyon unless you are staying at the Lodge.  We hiked to the Narrows and the Emerald Pools that day, but still a lot of people on all the trails. An interesting side trip is to the northwest cor
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Road Trip #6: The Bristlecone National Forest and the White Mountains

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  November 1, 2020: Drove from Incline to Bishop, stayed at Creekside Inn, dinner at Aaron Schat's Roadhouse  November 2: Drive up to Bristlecone National Forest Visitors' Center at 11,000+ feet.  Incredible drive up from Big Pine: CA168 to White Mountain Road ro the end of the pavement.  A gravel road continues for several miles beyond that to a UC Research Station.  Stunning 4.35 mile loop hike through the forest, with very few people unlike the Fall 2020 Big Five Utah Road Trip ((#5).  Cold but no snow at 11,000 feet.  Came back through the drive on Movie Road below Mt. Whitney, and had dinner at Copper Top BBQ in Big Pine (they were having a soft opening at a new location). November 3: return to Incline after getting provisions at Schat's Bakkery
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Pictures, Pictures Everywhere and no where to display them, but here

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We've taken literally thousands of pictures on our Retirement Road Trips over the years, with a good portion of them taken with our various iPhone models (all the recent ones were taken solely with my 2nd generation iPhone SE), so what better place to display them but in this blog.  Enjoy! We'll start with the latest trip, Number 14, and work our way back through the years.  Retirement Road Trip (RRT) 14 took us from Reno (after picking up a outdoorsy.com-rented teardrop trailer) across Nevada to the "Big 5" Utah National Parks with a dip south to the North Rim as it closed for the season. Here is the "rig" in RVer parlance: Retirement road trip 14  Saturday, October 8, 2022, Day 1: drove from home to Reno to pick up Teardrop, rented through outdoorsy.com,  from a very talkative owner of the trailer, Jun.  He had six trailers in his driveway: two or three Teardrops, some new insulated small trailer, a boat...lots of toys.  We're glad he doesn't live
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