RIP Bob

This week I got to pay my respects to my Dad's best friend. Growing up this long haired, motorcycle riding, game loving guy who had a whole room devoted to music seemed the epitome of cool. He was such a generous and jovial spirit and one of the few good male role models I had growing up. I'll miss you Bob.

https://www.ofieldfuneralhome.com/obituary/Robert-Jousma

Return to Travel

Back in the Before Times we tried to do a big trip more or less every year and I would write up travelogues for them. Obviously we haven't been doing that, but with our recent trip to Italy I'd like to get back to it. This was our first big trip in 5 years (since Alaska, https://kmusser.dreamwidth.org/484437.html) and our first International one in 7 (since Ireland, https://kmusser.dreamwidth.org/tag/ireland). We have however been doing travelling since Alaska, I just haven't written about it, so I'll do some catching up, probably over several posts.

We did do two short trips before Covid hit. One with family to Gulf Shores, Alabama which featured beach time, alligators, and some kayaking. And one to California to visit friends which is a treasured memory of normalcy before everything shut down.

2021 saw some very tentative returns to travel with visits to see family and a weekend to Ocean City which has since become an annual thing. 2022 saw a return to more regular travel with a weekend getaway to Nelson county, Viginia in February which felt very much like it was still testing the waters and was pretty booze-centric with visits to wineries and cideries. May saw our return to air travel with a quick trip to upstate New York which I'll talk about in my next post.

2022 Travel - New York

So upstate New York, photos are at https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipPpyjwEyTLl6Ck2DfQOlJRKnAeYcPSgo7rH-GU5

Day 1 was flying to Albany, and driving to Schuylerville (yes, named after that Schuyler) where our stay place is a weird little "cabin" made from a converted shipping container on the banks of the Hudson River. Nearby is Saratoga battlefield (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Saratoga) which has a nice hiking trail. I have a weird personal connection in that one of my 5x great grandparents, John Davis, was captured early in the war as teenager by native americans and spent the war in a pow camp in Montreal and this was the site of a prisoner exchange towards the end of the war that set him free. Also within walking distance of our stay place is Phillip Schuyler's vacation home, nice looking place - Alexander should have taken a break.

Day 2 is a visit to Ticonderoga and we continue to get our history on with a visit to the fort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ticonderoga), but perhaps more important to our geeky selves Ticonderoga is also home to a recreation of the original Star Trek set and so of course we had to go and get pictures of ourselves in the infamous captions chair, the whole tour was pretty cool, definitely recommended (https://startrektour.com/). I think it was also this day we did a short jaunt into Vermont just so I could say I've been to Vermont and picked up maple syrup and chocolate.

Day 3 was Lake George and we go on a steamboat tour of the lake on a boat that claims to be the oldest passenger vessel in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohican_II) and get some lovely views of the lake and some of the Victorian mansions along it.

Day 4 we head home with a brief stop in Albany to gawk at the Schuyler Mansion. Also had the bonus adventure of a run in with a deer on the way back to the airport, but we were ok and the car still drivable so we made it home and in the end insurance did cover it. Though just a long weekend, this felt like our first "real" post-covid vacation and was a lot of fun.

Then just two months later our next trip was to Kentucky for a family reunion. Only a few pictures at https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipPRl2ZqoHPejqA_hnPLyZ-YGTJ9doyJc37eZAyg. This time we just drove and stayed near Taylorsville, right in the middle of bourbon country. highlights were getting to see family that I had not seen in a long time and many many bourbon tours

Last trip of 2022 was to New Mexico which will get its own post.