Category Archives: Uncategorized

four NEW national park visits

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Happy Monday! I’ve finally updated my National Parks Bucket List. In the last few weeks, we’ve visited 4 more parks. We’re up to 33 with only 30 more parks to go. The photo above is the New River Bridge in New River National Park in West Virginia.

This is Mammoth Cave National Park. We visited during the government shutdown, so we were unable to take a cave tour, but we were able to go down into the historic entrance to the cave, and we also enjoyed bike riding through the park – so I’m counting it, haha! If we’re ever in the area again, we’ll be sure to take a cave tour.

This is, of course, is Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri. Even though the government was still shut down, they were still allowing people to take the tram to the top of the arch. It was a clear day, so we were able to see quite far.

Lastly, this is Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. We drove the Skyline Drive. Beautiful! It was a bit nippy for hiking (in the 30’s), so if we come this way again, we’ll try to make it in warmer weather!

Our travels next spring will include the next batch of parks. Little by little, we’re crossing them off our bucket list!

Have a terrific day. I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

Miscellaneous Monday…NEW stuff i gotta share

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Happy Monday! Since we’ve been traveling for the last 3+ months, we’ve enjoyed a lot of beautiful scenery, we’ve done a lot of hiking, biking and sightseeing and we’ve learned a lot of random stuff about a lot of random stuff! The photo above is near Blowing Cave Park in Kennebunkport, Maine. The photo below is a pond at our campground in New Hampshire.

This is a four-faced Buddha surrounded by a suspended halo at Bedrock Gardens in Lee, New Hampshire.

We rode our bikes around Martha’s Vineyard, then took a tour out to see Aquinnah Cliffs and the Aquinnah Lighthouse. (see more lighthouses on my lighthouse bucket list).

We’ve hiked to find trolls! We found all 5 in Rhode Island! (See sculptures of Thomas Dambo)

We hiked to more waterfalls (see updates on the Waterfalls bucket list). This one is Sabbaday Falls in New Hampshire.

And this is the labyrinth, designed by Marty Cain, located in Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts. The labyrinth was initially created by using a dowsing rod to find the garden’s natural energy and, therefore, the best location for the labyrinth (only one of the many random things I’ve learned). We’ve also learned random things about cranberries and carousels, but that’s enough miscellany for one Monday.

We’ve learned or done something NEW almost every day on our travels. I hope you have a terrific day and do or learn something NEW today too!

a NEW thursday thought

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Happy Thursday. I fell in love with all the layers in this photo, taken recently in Newport, Rhode Island. The sky…the horizon…the ocean…the waves (in all their various strengths and sizes)…the birds, the wet sand, the drier sand. Therefore, I would edit this quote just a bit… I’d add that we are the sum of all the layers and layers of our experiences. Because I believe one experience wouldn’t be quite the same without a previous experience. It’s the layers of experiences, not the individual experience that make us what we are. What we will, eventually, become.

I hope you have a great day and get to do or learn something NEW today.

another NEW photo challenge entry

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Happy Monday. Wow…I’ve participated in 2 photo challenges within a week! (I must not have a time-consuming job anymore! Haha!) Here are my entries for Lens Artist Challenge #363. The rules were to go through our photo archives and find at least 5, but no more than 10 of the following: Zig-zag lines, something with green eyes, some cool jewelry, something circular, something rectangular, something with a design, something with a pattern, something with a bumpy texture, something with a soft texture, something with water in it, a set of keys, something glass, a zipper, shoelaces, or art supplies.

I took the challenge a step further and challenged myself to find any 5 from one trip. These all came from our 2017 trip to Europe. I chose the photo above as “something rectangular”.

Here’s something with a pattern:

…something zig-zag (does this roofline count?):

…something circular:

…something glass (do “glasses” count?):

…something with a bumpy texture:

…something with water in it (does the Mediterranean Sea count?)

That’s about it. I guess I didn’t take any photos of cool jewelry from the British Crown Jewels Museum that I remember going to on that trip (maybe photography was not allowed?). But hey, I found more than 5 photos for this challenge! Win.

That’s it for today. I’m off to find something NEW to do or learn. I hope you do too!

a NEW reading challenge

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Happy Saturday!

I realized I haven’t posted about my NEW reading challenge. This year, I wanted to join the “When Are You Reading” challenge. Below are the categories. I have a few more to fill in. Any suggestions?

The time periods are:

  • Pre 1200: Pope Joan
  • 1300-1499: The House on the Strand
  • 1500-1699: The Miniturist
  • 1700-1799: A Girl Called Samson
  • 1800-1899: Where the Lost Wander
  • 1900-1919: Moloka’i
  • 1920-1939: The Christie Affair
  • 1940-1959: The Last Year of the War; The Book Woman’s Daughter
  • 1960-1979: Necessary Lies
  • 1980-1999: I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives
  • 2000-Present: The Girl in the Glass
  • The Future: Illuminae

There are so many fun challenges. I’ve got 6 more to read for this challenge, and then I think I’ll start an Around the World reading challenge. As always, send any book recommendations my way! I’m always looking for wonderful NEW books to read!

Have a great day and I hope you do or learn something NEW today!

a NEW photo challenge entry and other miscellany

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Happy Friday! It’s been a while since I joined in on a photo challenge. So, when I saw this week’s #362 Sports, Sporting Events, and Fun Games challenge at Wandering Dawgs, I thought of a fun event we recently attended and wanted to join the challenge. This baseball game was played at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The players dressed up in vintage baseball uniforms and played with rules from 1867. That means NO baseball mitts (they weren’t invented yet), and many other slight variations from current baseball rules. It was a lot of fun!

And other miscellaneous NEW experiences:

Thanks to reading Travel Means Life, I was “in the know” when we saw several Quilt Gardens in Indiana.

Then, in Genesee County, New York, spotting quilt blocks on barns, houses, or sheds etc. is a thing! There is even a website about it {HERE}. Are there any other quilt related I-Spy-type hunts that I don’t know about??? :o)

And lastly, I thought I’d list the random museums we’ve visited in the last few weeks….just so you know that we do more than hike to waterfalls and visit national parks, haha!

We’ve visited:

Jell-O museum! (Did you know there’s such a place?!?)

The Corning Glass Museum

The Safe Haven Holocaust Museum

The Detroit Art Museum

The world’s largest Christmas store! (Bronner’s)

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Town of Stafford’s Historical Museum

The George Eastman Museum and House Tour

I think that’s enough for now. I gotta go research more NEW things to do, see, or learn about! Have a great day!

another NEW update to my waterfalls bucket list

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Happy Monday! Boy oh boy, if you want to visit waterfalls, the Finger Lakes Region of New York is where to go! We hiked to different waterfalls nearly every day last week! I’ve added 12 NEW waterfalls to my 100 Waterfalls Bucket List! Only 20 to go until 100!

To be clear, I’m not counting some we attempted to see. Some were duds – hardly any water at all (it is August, after all. Namely Aunt Sarah’s Falls, Hector Falls, and Shequaga Falls were the duds :o). But most were fantastic! Here are a few photos.

The top photo is Rainbow Falls at Watkins Glen State Park in New York. The best part of that hike is that you can see many little falls on your hike (something like 19 in a span of 2 miles), like these little ones:

Ithaca Falls near Cornell University was a good one:

A favorite is the Middle Falls at Letchwork State Park in New York:

Although the Upper Falls at Letchworth were great too!

The hike up Stony Brook Creek in Stony Brook State Park was a nice (and a good workout!). It is a well-maintained trail with rock or wooden steps placed at the steep areas. I Googled how many steps there were. Here’s what my friend Google told me: “Stony Brook State Park has approximately 800 stairs, though a specific count is difficult as trails are a mix of stone, wooden, and dirt steps. The trails, particularly the Gorge Trail and West Rim Trail, are known for their many steps, with the West Rim Trail’s section sometimes called the “thousand steps”. We hiked up the gorge trail and came back on the West Rim trail. Here’s a photo from one of the Stony Brook trail waterfalls:

I hope you have a great week and get to do or learn something NEW!

visiting NEW botanical gardens

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We’ve been visiting several NEW (to us) botanical gardens on our travels. I can’t help myself from snapping photo after photo of the lovely blooms or foliage! And if they have a butterfly or bumble bee on them – extra bonus!

This tree in the Cornell Botanical Gardens caught our eye. The tree had a rectangle cut out of it with a wind chime inserted in the trunk, but it was still growing! We asked a gardner about it, and she said a few years ago, they had to cut down the tree, because it was a safety risk, but this year, it is obviously sprouting new growth! If you saw my “New thursday thought” post from yesterday, this tree would also apply…where new growth appears, so does hope!

Here is a link to an article about cutting the tree and inserting the wind chime {Link HERE}. You’ll see the photo of the tree looks vastly different!

I have many more photos of blooms, but they might have to be uploaded another day.

I hope you get to do or learn something NEW today!