It was another beautiful yet brutally hot day for the second day of our trip. We got up bright and early and made our way to Gettysburg National Military Park. Now I’m going to be honest, we didn’t spend a lot of time here because we’ve been here a couple of times before and didn’t feel the need to explore the exhibits again. It was a quick pop into the park store for souvenirs, some stamps in our passport, and then part of the driving tour. So this post will mostly just be a photo dump. Of course we had to hang out with Abe before we started our tour……
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Today was the first day of our NY-PA-MD-WV whirlwind tour of ten-ish National Parks units. We left home and hit the road first thing this morning, and we made sure Buddy the Bison was actually in the car this time (we forgot him on our trip to Seneca Falls a couple of weeks ago). Yes, you can expect a pre-trip selfie of us on all of our trips. It’s just something we’ve always done. I guess Buddy gets to join the selfies from now on. We made it to Steamtown National Historic Site in pretty good time. It was a gorgeous day for travel, with beautiful blue skies and fluffy,…
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I’m such a bad blogger. Here we are, almost two weeks later, and I’m finally getting around to posting about the second half of our Day of Badass Women.🤦♀️ After leaving the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, we had a quick picnic lunch on the shores of Cayuga Lake, watched people fishing, and saw some cute dogs. And then we were off to Auburn, NY to check out the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park. This site encompasses two buildings situated next to each other. The Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church and its parsonage underwent recent renovations, and had actually had their grand reopening the morning of the day that we…
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Saturday’s adventures were all about incredible women. We started our day with a short drive to Seneca Falls, and visited the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Seneca Falls is one of those places that I’ve always thought about checking out, because it also has the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum, and of course the George Bailey bridge… (Spoiler alert: George Bailey totally could have survived a jump from this bridge. Sorry, Clarence.) And I’m kicking myself a bit for not visiting sooner, because Seneca Falls is an adorable little town, and it’s only a little over an hour away from home. But we only…
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Sunday was another beautiful day here in Central New York. Again it was bright and sunny, but not overly hot or humid. As it was Father’s Day, we let Vance decide what the day’s adventure would be. He chose a hike at Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wolcott, NY. Boy #2 had the day off from work, so the three of us hit the road and headed west down Rt 104. We started with the Bluff Trail, and it had changed a lot since the last time we were there, back when the boys were small. Record high water levels in Lake Ontario in recent years have caused major erosion…
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After our visit to Fort Stanwix on Saturday, we decided to check out Chittenango Falls State Park, which one would assume is in Chittenango, but is apparently in Cazenovia. And I have no idea whose crazy idea it was to visit this place. That’s not true. It was 100% my idea, and as a result I am no longer given clearance to make these kinds of decisions. Don’t get me wrong, the falls are lovely. Standing 167 feet high, it’s pretty impressive. But let’s do the math on going to see something that’s 167 feet high. In order to get to the bottom to see the whole thing, one would…
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My husband and I are crazy. I mean, he’s mostly sane, it’s really just me that’s crazy. But he has put up with me and my nutso ideas for almost forty years, so that’s really on him at this point. But I digress. The latest crazy thing that we have decided to do is to visit all 63 of the National Parks. Which, you know, cool! We’ll be empty nesters soon and we’ll need to do something with our time. But then that kinda morphed into visiting all of the National Parks and all of the other sites in the National Park system. No big deal, that’s only 429 places…
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There was this trend going around Bookstagram recently in which folks asked their spouses or significant others or non-bookish folks to try to guess the titles of romance books based only on their cover art. Of course I had to join in, so I asked my husband to give it a try… His answers provided some good laughs for my Instagram followers, including one of the authors, who called on their publisher to change the title of their book… And because more is always better, I also asked Griffin to supply his answers… You may notice that he got book 4 almost completely correct (it’s the only one that’s not…
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Another highlight of my summer was attending Foreigner‘s farewell tour with Griffin. Foreigner 4 is one of my all-time favorite albums, and I just could not pass up the opportunity to see the band live just once. And – BONUS – Loverboy was their opening act. If we go waaaaay back, the second concert I ever attended was Loverboy at the New York State Fair grandstand in 1983. My best friend and I had been turned loose on the Fair with no parental supervision and we screamed our way through the concert, banging on the corrugated metal back wall of our last-row seats. It was loud and crazy and a…
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I had the absolute privilege of meeting so many incredible authors at Steamy Lit Con. There are so many more I wish I had taken pics with, but I just got to chatting with them and then totally forgot to take pictures. They were all so friendly and gracious with my fan-girling. Definitely some special memories. I’m really hoping I can go back next year!
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One of the things I got up to while on my blogging hiatus was attending my first-ever convention. It was a book convention, which should surprise absolutely no one. Even better, it was a romance book convention! Steamy Lit Con took place in Anaheim, CA and it was held almost literally across the street from Disneyland. This was the first year for this particular convention, and in order to raise funds to make the convention actually happen, the organizers offered some special perks and packages in addition to the standard convention tickets. One of those perks was the opportunity to spend a day at Disneyland with some of the attending…
