Feb 2, 2020 - Heading home

The airport in Aruba was a maze of lines with TWO security checks. Granted that the idea was to allow us to skip Custom and Immigration in New York, the over 1.5 hour standing in line was brutal. Lunch was at best filling, and lacked the finesse of the ship! We are spoiled! Jet Blue’s ‘Mint Class’ proved to be just that - Mint, a wonderful experience and extended our cruise ship feeling. Ready to travel with us again? How about next year?

Jan 29, 2020 - How I Made my Trip to NYC Stress Free

New York is the center of so many things. For me, it was the perfect place to complete a master's degree in public health. I'd always wanted to help the world. My education in the heart of it all would give me the tools I needed to do just that. When I made my move from North Carolina, I was a bit scared. After all, New York City is America's largest city. The prospect of moving here on my own felt quite daunting. I'd only been there before for a week. Now, it was going to be my permanent home. I was looking forward to it, but it was a big...

Jan 24, 2020 - Honoring "Uncle Jack"

Who would think that right after we arrived in Tucson with the warm weather I would be making a trip to NY where it was 0-17 degrees, except it made it to 33 one day. The day it reached 33 was the only time I left the house willingly and that was to go snowmobiling with my brother-in-law Matt. That was a glorious day. My brother-in-law Jack died after a long, painful struggle with lung disease. My sister’s world became increasingly smaller during the last five years as she made his final years as comfortable as she could. Our nephew, who...

Jan 15, 2020 - Getting there

Three-fifteen in the morning is awfully early! Our Jet Blue flight is the first in the day from the Rochester Airport and we opened it. There were only a handful of passengers and with TSA pre-chek on our tickets, we breezed through security and into our gate with lots of time to take a nap before boarding for the hour flight to New York’s JFK terminal.

Nov 16, 2019 - fly to Tel Aviv

When we first started planning this trip, we were shocked at how pricey it is to fly to Israel. We had enough frequent flyer miles to fly to Israel on United in Premium Economy. This price category is relatively new. Often Business and First Class are totally out of our price range, but anything we can do to make a long flight a little more comfortable is worth a few extra dollars. Last year we took Premium Economy on Delta when we went to Antartica. We couldn't see what we were getting for the extra $$$. The flight we took today was on a...

Nov 15, 2019 - timing is everything

Timing is everything. The night we got here we ran into a vendor on the street who wanted to sell us $50 tickets to Hadestown, the latest Tony winner. It's never a good idea to buy tickets from a guy on the street for cash, but he offered to walk us to the theater a block away to make sure we got in. It was tempting, but we didn't have $100 in cash and and had not had anything to eat. Regretfully, we said no. The next day we were in Rockefeller Center and ran into a girl with a clip board that wanted to take us to a Late Night was Seth...

Nov 13, 2019 - surviving Siberia

If we were at home wearing our normal winter clothes, today's temperatures around freezing would have been no big deal . So we layered our clothing suitable for temperate climes and headed out into mid-town Manhattan and made the best of it. We went to two cathedrals: first the Apple pavilion where even Ken learned a few new things about his Apple watch and I learned a lot. The pavilion is an architectural marvel: all the reflective surfaces inside the pavilion made it challenging to know when we were looking at the outside and when we...

Nov 12, 2019 - Broadway bound

One of many reasons we love to live in the Chicago area is that it is easy to get almost anywhere in the world from there on a non-stop plane. Unfortunately, Tel Aviv is not one of those places. You can get there non-stop from New York City and so here we are. You never run out of things to do in the Big Apple and we love Broadway shows. We didn't need a lot of excuses to stay here for a few days. Last time we were here it was very hot and humid. We had to jettison some outdoor plans for A/C museums. When we planned this trip, I thought we...

Nov 11, 2019 - Florida, NY

We became more and more alarmed about the weather when we saw the predictions this Monday morning. The cold front is moving faster than previously predicted and is now projected to hit Hartford at about noontime. While we were on the road on Monday we came up with a new idea: travel farther north on Monday while the weather is good so that we will only have a few hours of travel on Tuesday. The problem with this is that there are very few RV parks still open. We stopped at a rest area in Maryland, found one, and made the arrangements: We...

Oct 25, 2019 - New York, New York

For the past three days we have taken the shuttle from the Bergan hotels into the heart of NYC.....41st and 8th Ave. The roads are extremely busy. Sometimes I think they make 3 lanes out of 2 lanes...the road seems so narrow. The worst is the Lincoln Tunnel. We saw a bus pass so close to an Uber SUV that it took the driver's mirror and placed it on its hood. Apparently this happens quite often. As the traffic prepares to enter the tunnel it is confusing but once in the confusion seems to sort itself out and all continue to their...

Oct 23, 2019 - paying the bills

After doing 2 loads of laundry and paying $600 in car repairs (ignition coil, spark plugs, valve adjustments), I drove up to Albany to pay for generator repairs. That cost almost $3000 because they found a leak, a broken rotor and did regular maintenance on it (I would have done it once back in FL). They assured me the generator is working fine now. I didn't use it, however, because I could use their 30 amp electric overnight. After turning on the fridge, unpacking, and doing a little grocery shopping, I slept in the motorhome, and got...

Oct 6, 2019 - Lake Seneca and Taughannock Falls.NY

What a great three day road trip of the Finger Lakes with friends Andi and Andrea. Andi our terrific driver and Andrea the dedicated photographer and selfie expert Our home base in Auburn was the Finger Lake Inn. We saw Seneca Lake, Cayuga Lake, and Owasco Lake. Also a little of Lake Ontario. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, but unfortunately this last day is cloudy but no rain. Heading back south we stopped at Taughannock State Park to see the Taghannock Falls, the tallest single drop fall east of the Rocky Mountains and three stories...