Travel – Page 2 – Mary Louise Eklund

Happy Birthday Patricia My BFF For Life

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Patricia and I have been BFFs since 5th grade for me, 4th grade for her. This photo is from 2006 when we met in Chicago with our kids and took the Gangster Tour. She’s as silly as I am. Her lack of sense of direction but ability to find cardinal points on the compass compliments my sense of finding things via landmarks and gut feeling while never being able to point to North. We enjoyed taking weekends away each year when the kids were growing up. I’m heading down to Hollywood Florida to see here sometime around the first of the year. In the meantime go wish Patricia a very happy birthday on her Facebook account.

December 27, 2016

Monday Marginalia – Another Trip To Biltmore

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Those who know me know I have a penchant for Biltmore House and Gardens in Asheville, NC. I have two short stories set in a house inspired by the location. I went there often on school field trips through Middle School and High School. I once held a season pass when in High School. I quit counting my visits when it was over 30. It’s no surprise moving close and with new rooms and new tour available I wanted to go back. So we took a long weekend in early November to go to Asheville. Mike patiently went with me to my kind of Disneyland. The place is one that the more I learn about it the more interesting it becomes.

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December 26, 2016

Thursday Throwback – We picked him from the patch

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Can you spot Aaron among Granpa Mac’s pumpkins? LOL! This was 1994 on the McAllister’s Michigan farm. Aaron’s orange jacket (his ‘go Vols clothes’ as he called them) just made it too irresistible not to put him there among the pumpkins. I think we picked the best one that year don’t you?

November 3, 2016

Monday Marginalia-New Orleans

We didn’t see much of New Orleans before our departure. Just dinner in the French Quarter the night before our departure. We’d saved our touring for after the cruise. It was here we used Uber for the first time. One trip was great, the other – well we wound up going the wrong way on a divided highway and miles from our hotel but he corrected and all was good. The worst trip was in a cab from the hotel to go home, so I’ll Uber again. What did we do here? We did the World War II museum, a ghost tour, ate, played with a ghost app, stayed in the House of the Rising Sun that was supposedly haunted. All I can say is I didn’t like the old elevator – it felt like a coffin… was slow and cha-kunked it’s way up. That scared me the most, I closed my eyes and clung to Mike on the way up. Then we walked our way down. What take the stairs up! Pfft you gotta be kidding and miss riding in the coffin-vator? There’s a small photo of him in it looking worried for me. Oh and the photo of Mike sitting in the sidewalk cafe looking all relaxed after breakfast is my new phone’s wallpaper. Love that man, love that photo.

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October 17, 2016

Monday Marginalia – Norwegian Dawn

In February the week of Valentine’s Day Mike and I took a cruise. With the crazy changes that hit fast and furious after mainly related to the move I didn’t get to post about it. Instead of details there will be a series of photo posts on the trip.

This time we went on a slightly smaller and older ship the Norwegian Dawn. Our last cruise had been on Norwegian Getaway. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. We had a inner lower room with no window, last time a balcony. But given we had some rough seas going out, it was good there were no windows. It wasn’t terrible and we just slept, watched a movie, and enjoyed the morning after the storm.

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October 10, 2016

Wednesday Wildcard -Cozumel

In Cozumel Mike chose the Jeep excursion. It was one where you drove a Jeep about the island in a tour to see ruins, a national park, spent time on the beach, and have lunch. He was keen on driving but there were four to a jeep. I cautioned that maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t drive the whole thing. But we were paired with two lovely ladies, Mary Lou from Michigan and her sister (please forgive men 6 months later I can’t find my notes and the name escapes me), neither had an interest in driving. So Mike gleefully drove the whole day! There we enjoyed the sites, had a great lunch, I loved playing in the ocean, and even got me a nice wool blanket. It has the lighthouse of the national park pictured here on the design. The blanket was a must for Wisconsin winters as Mike had taken back the one he’d given me in college.

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September 28, 2016

Wednesday Wildcard – Roatan

Another stop on our cruise was Roatan, Honduras. Though there the natives were quick to disassociate themselves from Honduras on the mainland. They really thought of themselves as different and separate. Here we did an eco-tree walk in the rain forest canopy. It was high suspended bridges where we could see both ground and treetops. The leader of the walk was a local who was very knowledgeable bout flora, not only the botany of it but traditional and medicinal uses too. It was very interesting, informative, and lovely.

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September 21, 2016

Monday Memories – When Flying Was Fun

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I got this card simply because it brought back good memories when flying wasn’t a humiliating human herding slog but instead an event, an adventure, and FUN! (more…)

September 19, 2016

Wednesday Wildcard – Costa Maya

With all that happened in my life, travel posts got shoved to the very back burner then put in the freezer until later. One was our wonderful week long cruise to Central America. So here are photos from our visit to Costa Maya. A small port made to give cruises access to Mayan ruins in Mexico. There’s nothing much in the town except the port. Expect tourist prices and nothing else here but we did have a wonderful tour of some ruins with a guide that was a professor of Mayan art. So enjoy a quick photo essay of that stop.