Category Archives: travel

Jun26

One of my favorite beaches on earth

Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 by Dianne

After we went to the aquarium (on the 20th), we headed to the island of Chincoteague. We had gone last year and loved the hotel (alas it was booked solid this year) and the beach in the park. We stayed in America’s Best which had the door that opened right up to the outside. This isn’t good in Chincoteague as it is known for it’s mosquitoes. The room was a bit tight also. We went right to the beach at around 6 pm.

You drive a few miles through the park, a national preserve where the wild horses and other wildlife live. We saw lots of herons and a few turtles too.

Got to love that a gorgeous beach is at the other end. Of course when you are driving to the island, there are stretches and stretches of marsh and wet land.

I think Sean got a few shots of the ponies, but it takes him a while to upload his pictures….I’ll share if it’s good.

Look at this sunset-that’s their library

Here’s Misty!

The next morning we got on the road to Ocean City, MD and ended up in a little town called Pocamoke City, MD. We went into the museum there and it was like $10 each, so we passed on that. Little did I know there was a big cache right in the lobby! I use my phone a lot for caching and saw this several miles later.

We also went to Snow Hill, MD. We actually back tracked! Sean knew I wanted to see the buildings and look for a cache there.

We ate lunch here-very nice.

Snow Hill it one of the only intact Victorian towns left (I think that is what the brochure said).

We went to this little museum to find a nano cache. It was kind of funny seeing three adults looking in crevices and tapping bolts to see if they were fake. We had no luck. A nice side story is that the cache owner (part of a family of 8 who geocaches) answered my email to where it may be. She told me exactly where it was (I had logged it as a didn’t find already) and she said to message her anytime if I am stuck on a cache. Cool.

After we got to Ocean City, I did a virtual cache (photo), a small cache (near the old life saving station) and a web cam one-that last one was too hard to do as it was really bright and you were suppose to save the shot of you to show the person who did the challenge. We walked several blocks in the heat and I think we at least tried to do it! : )

We then headed to Rehoboth and grabbed a hotdog at Nathan’s and tried to do a web cam challenge there-not easy again. We weren’t there long as it’s a pain with the 30 minute parking meters you have to run back to again and again.

That was about the extent of our trip and now it’s time to weed the gardens and get that bathroom finished.

We are going to see the Bacon Brothers (Kevin) on July 10th at Longwood Gardens. We also want to see the night light display there, but we have until September. I’d rather wait a few weeks as the crowds there have been crazy. I made Sean drive past there a few night ago and they were parking in the grass near the parking lot as overflow.

Tomorrow-cache collecting-up to 20!

Jun25

Blog neglect, vacation stuff

Posted on Monday, June 25, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

Since my whirlwind of activity is dying down, I can get down to brass tacks again with blogging. I went and got my mom on Saturday for a two day visit. We all went over to the father-in-law’s house to wish him a Happy 89th Birthday. From the get go, I felt pops was uncomfortable having my mom and me there. Brian and Sean were installing his new a/c (birthday gift) in his room and it was a messy job. Well Bri’s dad starts up about something ‘we need for the house’. I’d rather not say exactly what it is (send me a note if you want to know) and I said we didn’t really need it right now. Well he wouldn’t let it go and got mad at me and left the living room to sit in the family room. He’s living in a 4 bedroom split level. Mom and I were shook up and I took the car down to a local shopping center so pops would simmer down. We never did go back in the house again and never sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. I sure was hoping it would make him happy to have a house full of people (well almost), but that didn’t happen. It was going on 6:30 and we had to go out to eat. Too bad pops wasn’t along, but he got so grumpy that it ruined our visit.

So….we were away from early Monday to late Thursday. Our trip didn’t quite go as planned. Monday and Tuesday we were in Virginia Beach and had a nice time. We got on the road Wednesday to head to Williamsburg, but got in traffic as the tunnel there had a disabled vehicle. We got off at an exit, tried to go another way, but of course they weren’t letting anyone in. We heard it was a 5-9 mile backup, so we decided to go to Norfolk, VA for an hour and see if that changed. We tried to see the historic society, but that was closed and they were painting. We got to see the nice garden and only a few of the buildings there. We passed by the General Douglas MacArthur statue.

Here are a few Norfolk shots:

The city in the late 1880s

The backup never got better, and we had to go to Chincoteague later, so we headed to the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach. It’s a neat one!

Turtles sunning themselves in the entrance area-it was very warm here.

Wow, a Komodo Dragon. He was checking everyone out!

I like this shot

Menacing sharks

Lion fish

Jelly fish-amazing!

A few more shots from Virginia Beach

The King Neptune statue was amazing and had a cache hidden under it-shhhhhh!

Sean and me under him!

Tuesday I got to met Rachael who I know from cross stitching and Facebook. She is from CA, but lived in Germany for a while, now is in VB as her hubby is working out of Norfolk. We went to the Contemporary Art Museum to see an Andy Warhol exhibit. We couldn’t take photos of the Warhol art, but I did think this glass chandelier was fascinating.

I wish I could meet all of you!

I’ll talk about the last few days of our trip tomorrow.

Jun23

Photo Hunt-Hot

Posted on Saturday, June 23, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

We stopped off in Ocean City, Md on the 21st on the way home from Virginia. It was in the 90s-hot time to be traveling. I was doing some geocaching. Here was a ‘virtual cache’ of me with the island of Assasteague behind me at the inlet area.

Jun16

Whirl-‘windy’ time at the shore

Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

Brian and I were down in Atlantic City, Margate and Cape May, NJ from Thursday to early evening Friday. Monday we are all headed to Virginia Beach, Williamsburg and Chincoteague Virginia! Wow!

From parking garage

We were way up there!

Out the window near the elevators from the 35th floor of Trumps

We ate near here and then went to the Atlantic City Aquarium

I knocked off a Geocache challenge of finding an anchor!

Creatures on the Aquarium. I was fascinated by the 17 yr old turtle.

Jellyfish

They had a sweet garden with wire structures that had vines planted to cover it. I was so glad I brought that jacket as it was chilly and windy on Thursday. My hair took a beating.

We were in the area of the Absecon Lighthouse where there was a ‘virtual geocache’. They wanted you to count the steps on the front porch and tell you the hours of operation. : ) No, I didn’t climb up it this time like Sean and I did back in 2008.

More tomorrow!

Zoey-we haven’t worked on the bathroom-most are cleaning jobs and me painting the medicine cabinet. Guess I’ll be finishing that at the end of June.

Mar27

Maryland’s Northern shores

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

Blog post 3,330!!

I just had Sean help me with the title of my post. He said that the Ocean City area is on the eastern shores.

Saturday we went downstairs at the inn to a nice quiche, fresh fruit and strained tea (I had to pick out tea and use a tea strainer-they sell a lot of it there at the inn) breakfast and headed to the town of Elkton. There wasn’t much going on, but we found a cute wedding chapel there to admire from the outside. Elkton was famous for being the place on the east coast where you could get married without a waiting period. My maternal grandparents Alan and Ruth got married there in 1921 at the ages of 20 and 18. My sister-in-law’s mom and dad got married there. I thought for sure we had found the chapel were my grandparents got married. When I got home I read the historic marker in my photo and the entire Main Street was dotted with chapels! So if they got married here, it was a hit or miss thing.

I would have liked to see the Cecil County Historic Society, but we found out they are open only one Saturday a month and we missed it. There were ‘corner stones’ in the side yard, so I’m thinking they were just saved from demolitions and put here.

I’m not surprised by this:

This was interesting too:

I bought a lovely handmade purple beaded necklace with an ‘silver’ loop that had an Irish saying on it from a shop in Elkton to remember that I visited here and that I just found out how Irish I was with my DNA test!

“May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart might desire.”
– Irish Blessing

Our next stop was Chesapeake City where we grabbed a bite in a place called The Bohemia Cafe. The area use to be called that and I’m pretty sure my Mom-mom Ruth’s 1st cousin had a house in the general area. I loved this little area! The homes were so quaint. The vision of the steel bridge over their roof mixed old with new.

This was a gift shop, but they kept the original store’s wording.

This use to be the town bank-another gift shop! The boats can dock and come to town and shop a bit.

Easter is near!

The lady in the above ‘bank’ shop said North East was a nice little town, so we headed down to there. I didn’t take photos here. We went in a few shops and a really neat antique place-it sold other things too, like some Phillies baseball t-shirts that I had picked out of a case and the lady forgot to ring them up! I got a clear glass Easter egg that is etched with violets for mom, a trio of Snowbaby Bunnies and a water pitcher. We’ll have to ride down in a few weeks to actually buy the shirts.
Our next stop was Port Deposit, a little town right up smack up to the Susquehanna River. We didn’t see the restaurant we were looking for, but again, it’s not that far and we can drive down some other time. The restaurant was a Colonial style one.
It was raining, but I at least got a shot of the town clock!

They had terrible flooding there last summer and you can tell that they are still recovering. We did notice some newer townhouses right on the river. Guess they were built to withstand flooding.
We headed down the road, less than a mile to the Hollywood Casino. We had driven by here several times and we thought we’d try our luck with $20 and leave. There were 1 and 2 cent machines-you put $1 in and it gave you 90 bids with one push of the button. We never came close to winning, so we left, true to our promise, about 1/2 hour later.
I had a $20 postcard gift card I had gotten in the mail for a place in Newark, DE. You had to go on your birthday, so we went there and I guess we broke even doing that! We had pasta dishes and I had their trademark gelato. You know when things ‘bug’ you about a place and you just need to complain? Well they had coarse pepper in a shaker with little holes-we unscrewed the lid to get to the pepper. I told the waitress. Then at the end of the meal, I used the restroom and there was a squooshed roach on the floor. Our waitress happen to be going by and I pointed it out. She went in and got it up with a piece of tissue! Hope she washed her hands. I guess she was told to watch for them? She was a bit snooty with me saying we’ll take care of that and the pepper shaker. She had just gotten a good tip on the full cost of the meal, not with the $20 taken off! It was a pretty place and the manager ran out and put more quarters in the meter for us. Too bad I had to see the last thing. We walked around this town. Sean goes here to a few bars once in a while. I found a bookstore and got a few good reads for $5. We headed back to the hotel and they had a small wedding reception going on in the conservatory. They were singing a bit and having fun, but not enough to really bother us.
On Sunday we headed home a little before 11 am and went to church. It was great to go away with the birthday boy. I love to learn about towns and see their historic homes and museums. I hope to keep venturing further away in all directions in the future.

Mar25

Weekend in Maryland

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

Lovely king size bed in our room, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

It was nice to get away with the birthday boy from Friday afternoon until Sunday. Just look at this lovely room. I have more photos to share and will do so. This was called ‘The Philadelphia Room’ (pretty funny-we can’t seem to not get something related to where we live). The ‘water closet’ is through those doors there.

Last August, a Livingsocial.com deal came in the email for the Elk Forge Bed and Breakfast in Elkton, MD. Though not far away, under 20 miles, I thought it would make a great birthday getaway for me. As you may have remembered, Brian was sick with pneumonia and I cancelled it the day we were suppose to check in. I had to use the deal soon, so we went for his birthday this past Friday. Here is the birthday boy under the lovely Magnolia next to the inn. The warm weather was making it fall.

What a lovely place! The original is from the late 1700s and they added on, so they have 14 rooms now.

The ‘back’ of it is really pretty, we didn’t venture around to take a shot-this is from their website:

Our room was spacious and relaxing. Only two complaints-the big window behind the fireplace was back lit all night as there are steps right in that area. They need to camouflage that with something. The water was scalding hot and I did burn the toe I dipped in the tub!

Pretty mural in the dining room

Lovely conservatory

Dove couple-they had a baby!

Sweet common area near our room

Down the hallway

We left this on all night-it threw out heat too!

It surely was the Philadelphia room!

Pretty front door

Gnarly tree out back

Our trip to different Maryland towns tomorrow!

Mar22

Spring has sprung, but it’s like summer too!

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

I’ve heard that my pals up in Canada and Michigan and getting nice 70 degree temps like we are down here in Pennsylvania! Tomorrow it will hover around 80! We haven’t had much rain lately and the ground is cracking. I had a circle of daffodils out where we planted the tomatoes and zucchinis and I guess us working the earth made them bloom ever so nicely this year. They look like this:

The forsythia are blooming and my PT looks pretty near them. Brian gave her a wash for me this week.

My friend Rachel had a little girl on the 15th of this month and I sent her a few gifts. I couldn’t believe I found an outfit that had a cross stitched bear on it! We met through cross stitching! I said I’d give her one of my passes if she wants to bring her two year old son and newborn for a walk in Longwood sometime. She lives closer to Philly, but to the north more.

Brian and I are off for our trip tomorrow afternoon. It’s about 25 miles or so, but a B&B. I have plans to see a few little towns and there is a casino not that far away. We’ll keep busy! I have to wrap up his gifts after I get off from here. I have only a few, but one was a little pricier than the others. He should like the main gift (from Sean and me). Speaking of Sean, he did Turbo Tax and got his refund in less than a week! How lucky is that? We probably won’t get a refund, but we hope to use the program also.

And to live up to my blog name, the person I sent the poppy ATC scanned it when it got to The Netherlands as I forgot:

Mar10

Photo Hunt-Symbolic

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

Pilgrim Statue, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Oh, I have plenty of ‘symbolic’ statue photos!

This one, the Pilgrim statue was taking in Plymouth County, Massachusetts back in the fall of 1984. My fairly new hubby and I went on a driving trip to New England. Never been back, but want to! And it’s a film camera print-gasp!

My newest is of George Clymer who is down in Philadelphia near Independence Hall.

He signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution! This is a wee dark as it was dusky. We were about to take a ghost tour of Olde City Philadelphia which was neat!

Mar1

Solemn Sunday in NYC

Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

The last day we were in NYC, Sean left to go to his meeting before us. We then all met up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where we went to mass like we did almost 5 years ago when we attended Karin’s wedding.

This was taken the night before:

It was a nice service and not as long as our church services here! We then decided to head over to Central Park and Strawberry Fields to see the Imagine plaque in memory of John Lennon, the Beatle who was killed across the street outside of his home, the Dakota building.

Brian on the left there, our biggest Beatles fan:

The Dakota:

What pretty sights here! I can just ‘imagine’ how pretty it is in the summertime. We’d like to see it all green and lush too. I believe Sean said it had over 800 acres here.

For it being a brisk day, there were still a lot of people milling around.
Our next ‘must see’ place was the new WTC Memorial which was in lower Manhattan. We had timed tickets for it. Sean paid for the almost $20 taxi ride as Central Park was on his ‘wish list’ of places to see, so that’s why we went. I am really glad we did though.
When we got to the memorial area, we were a bit confused as to where to go as they had fences with blue signs all around the area (lots of construction here). We went down one way, though the signs had arrows pointing the other. I saw other people walking the wrong way. We got in the line, which moved quickly, but they have a security check point where we had to put our coat and belongings through the x-ray machine! I believe our tickets were checked 3 times. With all the walking, etc. and no lunch, I has a bit light-headed going in the memorial area-so I was keeping my head up, believe me as it was hard to go in there. It was quite a place to see-such large flowing squares of waterfalls where the twin towers use to go. You start to read the names, but then you start seeing names like ‘Sean’ and you can’t read them anymore.

This is the museum under construction

I read that the remains of about half the victims will be placed somewhere in the museum as they couldn’t be identified.

I happen to look up Vanessa’s name and read a little bit about her. Her mom is a writer who said 3 days before Bin Laden was killed, an angel fell off her table and the wings ‘perfectly’ broke off the back of the piece. She feels her daughter earned her wings then.
We only stayed about 20 minutes or so. We stopped to hear an excellent guide say how the letters are chiseled out to make the names, so something is missing, like the people here. The falling water is like ocean tears. He stood near a tree that survived the attacks, it was being nursed back to health and had wires, etc. to train the branches. It may have been a sweet gum tree. I had no desire to have my picture taken here, though Sean did and his face told it all. We nodded to the police officers standing near the exit to pay our respects to their deceased brothers and sisters in uniform.
We found a little place to eat a block down from here, after we had gone through the gift shop. We bought pens, a wristband and a ‘gold’ sweet gumball tree leaf to symbolize the trees they will be planting in this area. Most of the money goes to the memorial. They had moving videos playing and items like a wallet from a victim with his lucky $2 in it as he asked his fiance to marry him, it being the second time for both.
The restaurant was near the Freedom Tower

I believe they said a floor a week goes up. I heard there is also a Subway Sandwich shop a floor or two below that follows the workers up so they have a place to grab lunch or a drink.
The restaurant was nice with Picasso like painting and the shine from the Freedom tower coming in through the window

I ‘check in’ at the different places we go to with the phone app ‘FourSquare’ and this restaurant had a link to another NY app and we got $20 off. Too bad they didn’t take any off the price of beverages. I tell the guys to get water, but they don’t listen. They made me peppermint tea as I was chilled to the bone.
So we walked up a few blocks-it was about 4:30 and not one taxi was stopping. When we thought we had one, the guy asked where we were going and we said 42nd and he shook his head. The young woman said we should have just climbed in as they aren’t allowed to refuse passengers. After 20 minutes or so, a taxi did stop as he was headed in the direction we needed to go. A few times the 3 of us were squeezed in a Ford Escape taxi. We gave him a good tip for helping. He said that time of day the shifts change so they won’t stop that much.
We had a busy 3 days and saw a lot of neat things and we’d go back again! The more you go, the more you can find your way around. Not driving was a good idea. The bus was convenient as were the taxis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I got a Connect My DNA kit from a LivingSocial.com offer as I thought it would be fun to see the distribution of my DNA. I knew I was English, Danish, Swedish, German, French and Irish. They send you the cotton swabs on sticks to collect DNA off the inside of your cheeks and you send it back in an envelope with a barcode on it. I remembered to look last night and low and behold, they must have messed up or mixed me up with someone else as I am not, Russian, or mostly Irish or Syrian! I wrote to them this morning and let them know I know my heritage from genealogies from both sides of my family. I’d like a re-test for the money I spent. We don’t have one Russian that I know of in my family.
I guess I’m off to go shopping with my mom soon. The above info made my mind wonder a lot last night until I told myself it just couldn’t be true for goodness sake. : )
Last but my least:
Our view going home Sunday night:

Feb28

Getting around NYC

Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by Dianne

Standard

I’ve not been vegetating here, well maybe a little. We’ve been trying to get ourselves on our regular schedule again as a few days away can mess up your system. Brian’s dad was suffering with his right leg so much, Brian took him to the ER on Monday. They said it looks like arthritis to them. He’s going to get to the point where he won’t be able to get around or drive-your right leg is important for that. I think the next few months will be very telling in what the future will be for Brian’s dad. We all have to face this I guess.
Yesterday Sean took me out for pizza and I headed across the street to Kmart to get plastic boxes. There must have been a dozen or more racks with the sign ‘$5.99′ displayed for nice things like corduroys, Jaclyn Smith items (I got a $79.99 jacket for $5.99), Sofia Vergara (Modern Family) items. I bought several pieces and tried some on that just fit too snuggly, so they are going back shortly.
We got home from New York late on Sunday, after 8:30 pm. We arrived about 2 pm on Friday, grabbed lunch at an Olive Garden and then got on the bus to the city around 4:30 pm. Repeat this, never take a bus to NYC between 4-7 pm on a Friday. A 15-20 minute ride took 1 hour and 15 minutes. There were 4 of us on this huge NJ transit bus. The one problem with that is I saw dozens of near empty buses-so that made more traffic. We were punchy when we got off the bus and found our way through the bus station. We got outside and it was raining and very crowded. Silly me thought Sean knew his way to the hotel where his GIS conference was-he didn’t. It had been almost 5 years since we were there to boot. Sean was like a deer in headlights and didn’t know where to go! A cop directed us to the Hilton in Times Square-nope, we needed the one near Rockefeller Center. So we walked a block or so out of the congestion and hailed a cab-got us to the Hilton, he signed in and then we headed across the street to the Museum of Modern art (MoMA) as it was free on Friday nights between 4-7! And it too was crowded. I love art and got to see so many masters’ work like Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso,Matisse, Gauguin, etc. Here is Monet’s Agapanthus

There are two of these large murals by Monet which took him 4-5 years to finish:

I was thrilled to see ‘Starry Nights’ by Van Gogh:

We didn’t get to see Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell soup cans or Jasper James Flag-some other time.
We then headed to the Rockefeller Center area. It was raining off and on, so we were glad to have umbrellas. Unfortunately the bottoms of our pants and shoes got very wet.
I thought this was cute of Sean near Radio City Music Hall.

We then saw this pretty area.

Prometheus lit by colorful lights

We asked the young lady guard in the concourse, under this area where we could eat and she suggested Billy’s Burgers. So we headed there where Sean enjoyed a large turkey club (yes, he blew Lent) and Brian and I had shrimp burgers, though we messed up for Lent in Olive Garden earlier.
We walked along and saw the following:

Set from Today Show

Chase Bank

Window of Christie’s Auction showing the Elizabeth Taylor auction (I think one took place already and they sold one of her Van Gogh’s)
We ended up back in Time’s Square-we walked many blocks too.

Sean would go here Saturday night

And we stopped and bought cupcakes to eat later-Sean had a toasted coconut and I had a white chocolate and Brian a Chocolate Snowball. I thank them for showing the calorie count (about 1/3 of your daily intake if you are a lady on a diet-oy).

And yes, they were yummy.
I’ll talk about the next few days in different posts.