h20skibum

Adding my Happy Birthday wishes to William. 🎂🎂🎉

Still hard at work, collecting ducks.

I don’t think 315 miles for a one day drive is bad. When we make our drive to Florida each winter, we break it into three 400 mile segments. Of course, depending on how bad traffic is, even short distances could take a long time. I was just reading about the 12 hour traffic backups on the interstate in New Hampshire after the eclipse. Sounded like people faced some challenges with that.

Sorry to read that about Bella. Condolences to John and Laura.

Smooth finishes seem to show imperfections. Our house, built in 1970 has plaster walls with a swirl finish. What I didn’t know, until we did a full kitchen remodel in the 90’s, was that the kitchen designer could tell who did the plaster work by looking at the swirl pattern. We dropped the ceilings over the new cabinets and put in can lights. We said we wanted the dropped part to have the same swirl pattern as the rest of the house. They said “Oh, so and so is still working, so we can have him in to match it.” When we had a guy redo our small bath a couple years ago. We had him do the same finish. Our next project is just a repainting of our master bath. Took the wallpaper border off last week, and the new one arrived yesterday. New curtains are here, so now we are looking at paint colors to go with all of it. This is the swirl pattern that will get a new color.

That looks like a nice park we may be interested in. Thanks for the info. It would definitely be an overnighter for us. Waze says it is just under 4 hours, but maybe the time estimates are being impacted by eclipse traffic at the moment.

We just had our total eclipse here. Clouds cleared and it was a good view. Got dark as night and dropped probably 10 degrees. Traffic was pretty crazy when I was out earlier. I went to Walmart about a half hour before, and there was hardly anyone in the store. I guess good things can happen during an eclipse.

That is her in the mauve sweater in the squeeze thru the rocks photo and the cave video. She is camera shy, and usually turns away from the camera when I take photos. Just glad we are healthy and fit enough to do these things.

PA has the second highest gas taxes, just behind California. They also say that our higher prices is due to our stations being supplied by the New York market vs. Ohio getting theirs from the Chicago market. Our local stations try to keep their prices a little lower than stations in our county that are not as close to the border. For us, it makes sense to make a short drive and save.

We are about 2 miles from the border, which is nice, because we can get gas $0.70-$1.00 a gallon cheaper than here in PA. The place we hiked was about a 50 minute drive for us.

That looks similar to the layout of the Cabana Cabins on deck 9 of the new Sun Princess. This is a portion of Iona deck 8 plan It looks like the promenade in front of those cabins On Sun Princess, it is similar, but it is a cabana deck where anyone in a cabana on that deck could be in front of your cabin. That was one reason we didn’t book there.

I would add that “it depends”. We took National Express from Heathrow, then walked from the station to the Holiday Inn. But then, you know we are walkers. This map is from my report.

We have had the Alltrails app for a few years. When we are traveling, we will use it to find walking trails near where we are staying. The extreme trail was only 0.2 miles long, so I guess we figured if it got too bad, we would just turn and go back. I think the only extreme portion was getting to the end, and realizing we had to climb the rock face to get out.

Our house is within the path of totality also, so we just have to go outside and look up. We have rain forecast this morning, but it should clear out in time for the eclipse. They are projecting 35% to 55% cloud cover at that time. Yesterday would have been perfect with no clouds in the sky.

I do admit that you had to be a contortionist to squeeze through some places. One small cave we went in, we found this guy trying to squeeze through this opening. He did make it through, but not without help. We opted to go back out the way we came in.

It was a beautiful day for hiking today, so we traveled to Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park in Ohio. They had four short trails. One listed as easy, two listed as moderate, and one listed as extreme. There were quite a few large sandstone rock formations that made for an interesting hike. We hadn’t watched any videos or researched the trails prior to jumping in. On the extreme trail, we made it through the fat man’s peril. The trail kept getting narrower, and we got to the portion appropriately named “the squeeze”. When you got through the squeeze, you ended up in the devil’s ice box. The way out is straight up the rock wall where you can see a little daylight about 15-20 feet up. I had to climb up to a ledge, help Susan up, and repeat until we made the top. There were a couple waterfalls along the trails. This one was at the end of an easy trail. Our last trail at this park took us on a moderate path. Through the “dwarf’s pass” And on to find the waterfall at the end of this trail. If you look at the top right of the photo, you can see someone sitting at the top of the rock, so it gives an idea of scale. One neat thing was the the gold miner’s cave that was behind those falls. IMG_0924.mp4

I second that @grapau27 Graham. That wonderful food is making me hungry.

Spring break for schools in the US do not always correspond to Easter break. My grandson in CA starts their spring break tomorrow. They are headed to Universal Studios in CA again.

Great photos. I can see me enjoying this!

That really should have said he, and not we. No zooming on our part.😂😂

Now, for the important question. Has anyone done the “Swimming with Pigs…” excursion at Nassau? I just booked it this morning for the seven of us. I already have an idea how this will go. My granddaughter will probably try to latch on to one and ride it like a dolphin. Her brother will be a little more cautious and will wait to see if one eats his sister before getting close to one. My CA grandson will probably try to keep away from them at all costs As for the four adults, who knows how that will go? At least it didn’t say I was too old to book this one. So, has anyone done it, and how was it?

Oh, we will be getting medallions for our January cruise. Our last sailing on Princess was 2017, and they were just introducing them on one ship but not the one we were on. I am looking forward to seeing if they can really do everything they advertise they can do. I would hope so, especially since we will be on their newest ship. Sitting by the pool and ordering a drink or food with it, and them delivering it to your lounger sounds fantastic. Speaking of medallions, evidently they will be giving out Pioneer Medallions at my 50 year college reunion this summer.

Unfortunately, they do not have pet insurance. Now the question becomes if they can get some going forward. Or, do they charge higher rates for pre existing conditions. From what I read, there are several things that can cause anemia in cats. They were of the opinion that it was something he had picked up at the shelter that got worse over time. They thought probably from worms, that he had been treated for, and maybe that was contributing to him being such a docile cat. I don’t know yet if they have any instructions, diet or otherwise. They did tell them what to look for though. Ricky was the perfect therapy for all of them, after the passing of Lucy. (The only cat my grandkids knew before Ricky) That seems to have been the case, so hopefully they have things addressed going forward. We were over at their house this morning, when Ricky made his triumphant return. My granddaughter was worried his fur would not grow back on his front legs that had been shaved. They must have given him the high octane blood, because we was zooming around the house.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ovechkin play in his 40’s. Jagr did, and he is still playing at 52, although no longer in the NHL. It has been a treat to see some of these greats play.

I learned some things about cats, this week, that I didn’t know. You may remember a few of my photos of Ricky, who lives with my daughter and her family. Ricky, is arguably the strangest cat I have ever encountered. Never once has he ever nipped or scratched anyone. This week, Ricky became very lethargic. Not interested in food, wouldn’t play, and was not himself. When they took him to the vet, they diagnosed him as anemic, and sent him to a facility in Ohio to have his blood typed. Once typed, they had to find another facility that had his blood type to do a transfusion. I never knew there were such things as cat blood donors, or transfusions for cats. There is no such thing as a universal donor blood type for cats. They said that Ricky would not have survived another day if they had not acted so quickly. He should be coming home today, from Akron, where he finally ended up for his transfusion. I know everyone will be overjoyed to see him return home. They just wish he wasn’t bringing that $$$$ bill with him.