Tag: Travel

#AtoZChallenge | Travel gallery wall puts our memories on display

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I use to travel with a large black camera bag. It had padded dividers that you could move around and secure with velcro to change the storage configuration. There was enough space to hold my 35 mm camera along with a telephoto lens and multiple rolls of film. Depending on the destination, I needed to have enough film for the entire trip. When I was finished shooting a roll, I would insert the end of the film all the way into the canister so I wouldn’t mistakenly use it again. The system worked for me although it was heavy to carry around.

During our trip to Costa Rica, after one long transfer that included crossing a lake by boat, I realized after arriving at our hotel, that I had left my camera bag on the boat. While heartbroken at losing my camera, it also meant all of my pictures that I had taken of our trip up to that point were also lost. For a memory keeper like me, that was the truly devastating part.

The hotel called the tour company that managed the boat transfer and they located the bag. We were only at this stop for another day but the tour company promised they would send the camera bag on their next transfer. Miraculously, the camera bag showed up at the hotel the morning before we moved onto the next stop on our itinerary. Everything was still in the bag including all of my film. It was such a happy surprise. I really thought it was lost forever. Continue reading →

A sad goodbye to Goecco. You were one of the best!

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The best travel tour I ever took doesn’t exist anymore. All that is left are the memories of one spectacular two day adventure that I’ll never be able to duplicate. I should be happy that I still have the photos to fill in the spaces as my memory fades but today I’m sad.

We are scheduled to go to Scotland this coming August but with the continued uptick in positive COVID-19 cases and delayed re-opening of the entire world, it is becoming less likely that we will be able to go on our planned vacation. While I’ve spent months meticulously planning every moment of our trip, at least for now, the itinerary will remain untested. Probably. I’m still holding out hope that with a negative COVID-19 test in hand, we might still be able to go.

But, practicality is taking over and I’ve started looking at alternatives. Maybe an elaborate staycation exploring those more remote areas of Maine that we can’t easily get to during day trips or long weekends. It’s on the list of possibilities. Or, maybe a quarantine friendly destination, if any really exist. A remote island perhaps?  I’m not typically a beach girl but I can adapt. Continue reading →

AtoZChallenge | V is for Vacation and obsessively planning our Scottish adventure.

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When my alarm went off at 4:00 am, I was immediately awake and hit off rather than snooze. An unusual move for me. I grabbed my phone, turning on the flashlight feature so I could see my way downstairs without waking up my sleeping family members. When I reached our home office, I sat in front of our desktop computer hitting the escape key to wake it up. I navigated quickly to the website I needed and got into the virtual queue to buy tickets. Even though I’d logged in within five minutes of tickets going on sale, the covered grandstand was already sold out. I grabbed two for the uncovered section and felt a sense of relief once I finished entering my credit card information through paypal and saw the pop up message that everything had been processed successfully. On a whim, I also emailed them to ask if there was a wait list for the covered section and quickly got a reply that they would put me on it. We had our tickets to the Braemar Gathering for the Highland Games this coming September.

I have spent so much time planning our upcoming trip to Scotland that we will actually spend less time in the country than the time I’ve invested in mapping out our adventures. The Braemar games also weren’t the only time I got up during the night to buy tickets for a planned vacation. I’m sure it won’t be my last.

Continue reading →