Ocean City, Maryland

Ocean City was a good choice for a celebration of my 58th birthday. We only needed to use 2 days of annual leave, it is only a 3 hour drive from home also. We stayed at a Hilton this time, Ed has a lot of points with that chain. The hotel was really nice, had 3 pools, one indoor and two outdoor. The pools were great, the kiddy pool was large, with slides and nice fountains and lazy river features. The "Adults Only" pool had a swim up bar and a drink of the day. We spent time at both pools, the Kiddie pool was quieter and had the hot tub. And we like kids, they are pretty entertaining. At both pools you could raise the flag on your chair and a waitress would bring your stuff. It was fun. We never actually made it to the ocean, as the water there was only 66 degrees. We will have to go again, don't you think? We rode the tram on the boardwalk, and walked on the boardwalk, it is about 3 miles long. We walked 5 blocks to get started on it. It was a great weekend for walking, gentle breeze and not too hot.



The people at Ocean City have done a great job on the boardwalk. It felt clean, safe and fun to walk. Lots of families and all kinds of people about. Clean and available bathrooms too!

The Life Saving Museum was really nice, beautifully done vintage building. Top notch exhibits and displays. Life Saving stations eventually became the Coast Guard. The floors in that building were highly polished original wood floors. Beautiful!



We ate some of our meals here on our patio. We were on the 7th floor. The valet boys told us of a nice nearby deli, and we had a full kitchen, so we bought stuff for some meals at this deli and had our meals here. Can't beat that, it was awesome! This hotel was spotlessly clean, we thought the staff here was exceptional.

We didn't have to drive a lot, but we did drive some. We had my birthday dinner overlooking the harbor at Sharks, it was a mostly local, organic type place. Our food was good, place had live music, but a little too loud. View was awesome.
We visited Rehoboth also, but could not find a parking space there, in spite of our best efforts. So, we just smiled at Rehoboth as we drove away, and went back to Ocean City. I think Rehoboth is notorious for parking problems.

June Lake CA in the Sierras

The inn we stayed at was called Double Eagle, so I now see where they got the name!





Neat balance rock, one of the largest I've seen lately.










This is the lodge where we walked to breakfast in the snow. They had the fire roaring for us!

Sunday and fundays ...

Can't believe Sunday has already whizzed past. I'm listening to Emeril talk about Super Foods with a nutritionist on his half hour show I have on TVO.

I drove Ed to Reagan National Airport today. He is off to Penseacola, where Obama is going tomorrow I think. He changed planes in Atlanta, then on to Penseacola. He will be at the Naval Air Station there, looking at the VA cemetery. I wonder if Obama will fly into that place? That would be interesting. Our old friend from Concord, Jason, is stationed in Penseacola. He was in the Scout troop with Joey.

I bought a new digital camera. I had trouble seeing the LCD screen on my Olympus. (Only when we were outside taking photos.) (Also, my Olympus had two spots on the lens that I could not get cleaned off.) So, I hunted around until I found a digital with an optical viewfinder. I bought a bigger memory card for it at Target, and an extra battery, so we are all ready for our little trip to the beach. I like the new camera, it is a Canon SD850IS. Actually, it is an old model from 2007, but I got a new one at Amazon. (New in Box or NIB as they say!) The models they are making now do not have the optical viewfinder anymore.

We are going to take off work for my birthday, Thursday! Yay!! We will have a long weekend at Ocean City, I remember enjoying the boardwalk there. We haven't been there in years and years. It is good to re-discover the fun things around DC. We haven't done much of that in the last 5 years, so it is time.

I got a free breakfast Saturday with a coupon for my birthday from First Watch. Tonight I got a free dinner at Silver Diner! Too bad Ed was gone already, but dinner was nice.
I have a Ruby Tuesday coupon I will try to use this week too! Woo-Hoo! I hope Chipotle sends me a free coupon!

This is busy time in our office, as we begin to work on processing those applications for the RFP. They are huge and there are at least 13 lengthy proposals, as there are 8 Regions and 3 Centers. Some have competition, but not all. However, we do have to go through the technical evaluation process for all proposals, competition or not. We will read them all and propose questions and suggest things. It is a laborous task.

Joey leaves for Geneva Thursday! Yay Joey!

We are attempting to find space for Ed's things again....somehow I guess I absorbed all the extra space when he left....no room for his crap now! We'll figure it out in time. Glad he is here, we can do a little maintenance! Feels funny to have cars in both my condo parking spaces!! I hardly know how to act. (Or how to park the cars!)

We need to de-clutter again. We've lived here 5 years, stuff multiplies when you aren't looking.

June 10th, it is the Day Before Friday! Yay!!

This was a photo I snapped on the road leading out of the Desert View Watchtower in the Grand Canyon East - heading toward Arizona highway 89. I had several photos snapped from the passenger seat as we drove hell bent down the highway. Some just were not fit to share, but this one looks OK.

It was a wonderful drive! I love it more looking back on it than I did in the moment. I worked pretty hard to be "in the moment."

Most every evening, I uploaded photos and did a tiny bit of blogging, depending on our internet connectivity. Usually, I was pretty tired at night and not fit to place coherent sentences together, so I let the photos do the talking.

One observation we found was that the economy has made some changes - many rest stops are now closed. That is pretty sad to see, as sometimes the rest stops offered information about the area you are traveling through, and often an interesting person to talk with. We decided to rely on McDonalds restrooms or Walmart restrooms, as they are ubiquitous. Some of the newer McDonalds have pretty interesting decor. One had a fireplace and beautiful glass tiles on the walls, crystal light fixtures.

And Walmart can cover any need you might have, from food to eye drops to new music to place in your CD player. Pretty handy to have a Walmart app on a trip.

Speaking of apps, we had a lot of fun looking at our apps during the trip, not just for the Walmart locator, but the Homewood Suites App, and the Target app, and the Sit or Squat app, and the TripAdvisor app for finding the best restaurants in nearly any town. It is a whole new element to travel. Oh, yea, and the Roadside America app, which uses GPS to tell you what crazy things are nearby you might want to see. It was pretty fun.

2010 Road Trip - Lexington, KY to White Sulphur Springs, WV

Pool at the Greenbrier, original tile, Olympic size.

Ed Nicholson, tea time at the Greenbrier.

Sandstone Falls in WV on the New River, near Hinton, WV

Ed Nicholson, near Sandstone Falls, near Hinton on the New River.

Ed and Barbara Nicholson at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, WV

2010 Road Trip - Mount Vernon, IL to Lexington, KY

Part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail! We didn't have enough time to do all the trail, guess we'll have to come back. Joey says I should bring Amanda, as Ed cannot seem to do the bourbon tasting...who knew? "Barbara, my throat hurts, it burns, ouch!" Amanda has been here before though!


Lunch in Louisville, KY - Ed admiring the horse under the warm sky.