Travels with Gunther and Kara

Now Ima only a bear and if I piss the humans off too bad they won’t feed me…but Neil finally got around to processing the photos from our 2 week trip so I can finally catch ya’ll up on what happened and what we saw. I’m hesitant to report much about our trips until we get back home because advertising that you’re out of town seems…foolish.

Anyways…home news first.

As I may (or then again, may not but I didn’t go back and look at previous posts)…we bought ourselves a new stove. Neil grew up cooking on a gas stove and until we moved into this house always had a gas stove. The advantages of a gas stove are legion…higher heat for things like wok stir frying (but then we do that outside on the propane camp stove anyway because our exhaust fan over the stove sucks up all the smoke and then instead of exhausting it though a hole through the cinder block wall like anybody with even a quarter of a brain would have done…it exhausts back into the kitchen area so any smoke just stays inside. We learned pretty early after moving in that cooking anything that was going to generate smoke needed to go outside.

But I digress…sorry ‘bout that. Besides the higher heat output…a gas stove has the advantage that if you turn the burner up or down you pretty much get more or less heat instantaneously which is a good thing…much more and finder control. Electric stoves have a lot of carryover heat if you turn them down and take awhile to start making more heat if you turn them up…and basically cooking on them is a pain in the butt…so we always wanted and had a gas stove. Then we moved into Magnolia Landing…and that resulted in 2 problems. First off…gas to the house is practically non existent in SW FL in the first place and it’s especially non existent in any sort of community with an HoA. Second…the crazy HoA rules don’t allow you to install a propane tank…even if it’s underground and out of sight…so that means no gas stove for us. We persevered for 3.5 years with the crappy electric and decided to buy ourselves an induction stove. It’s still electric…but rather than the burner getting hot it just generates a magnetic field and you use a a magnetic pot on top and only the pot gets hot…and it gets hot a lot faster (and cooler when you turn the burner down) than a regular electric stove. So…all the benefits of gas (well, most anyway) and all the benefits of electric as well. The only drawback is Neil’s beloved Calphalon pans…which are aluminum…don’t work because they’re aluminum and therefore not magnetic and therefore won’t work. So he looked around and bought himself a set of All Clad…they’re still mostly aluminum so they remain light but have a base of stainless steel which is magnetic…and they’re all non stick which makes cleanup a lot easier. In addition, after cooking on the new stove a couple of times there’s a lot less sticking and stuff that needs to be scraped off when he does the dishes. Here’s what the new one looks like…which is basically what an electric one looks like but the stovetop itself doesn’t get hot other than by heat transfer from the pot which does get hot when cooking.

Basically…he likes it…a lot. Four total burners and he can gang the left two together if he needs to for using a griddle or tortilla pan or whatever.

Ok…let’s get on to our trip.

The overall trip was to head out to Daytona Beach for a couple of days for the Ladies of Elks Annual Meeting. Following that…we were headed up with a stop overnight in the Florence SC area to Annapolis MD with the intention of catching up on the eastern end of our US-50 trip that we took in 2019 in the RV…we missed a few of the miles and Fun Stuff© on the eastern end due to Neil’s kidney stone and associated 6 week layover in Cody WY (which if you have to be stuck somewhere for 6 weeks is actually a pretty decent place as it’s right next to Yellowstone National Park…and it’s orders of magnitude better than being stuck in NW Indiana which is where we got stuck when Connie had her detached retina back a few years before. Our plan was to spend a couple days gallivanting about Annapolis (the capital of MD) and the eastern shore of MD in what is called the DelMarVa Peninsula (for Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) seeing the places we didn’t see but had planned to back in 2019. Following that…we were to transit back to northern VA for (1) a meeting with an old friend from Connie’s work, (2) a meeting with our financial folks at Cassaday and Company, and (3) to see the kids and grandson Alex for a couple of days…our schedule was designed to arrive in Midlothian on Friday and spend the weekend before leaving Monday because school is back in session ya know.

After visiting the kids and grandson…we would transit home but as Charleston SC is just ab out halfway home we figured to stop there overnight (although it’s 70 miles or so off of I-95 which is the direct route home) for a dinner at one of our favorite restaurants High Cotton in downtown. The next morning…we would head home.

So…off we went and from here on in I’m going to just give you the details of our trip and some photos.

After arriving in Daytona on Thursday…Connie had some Ladies of Elks stuff on Friday and Saturday but Neil’s only commitments were in the evenings…so his plan was to go down to a couple of birding places in the morning on Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately…Friday was raining pretty hard so he cancelled and picked what he thought would be the best of the two locations for Saturday morning…Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR…so accordingly he got up early Saturday, picked up a coffee and couple of donuts fro Dunkin’ and got there just ab out 0700 which was both opening time and just about sunrise.

Unfortunately…wildlife mostly did not cooperate with him and he only got a few shots that morning.

A pair of Snowy Egrets.

A little gator  at the porta-potty near the halfway point on the drive.

A Great Blue Heron and Louisiana Heron.

Little Blue Heron.

And that was about it for the trip…very poor wildlife sightings…so bad in fact that he skipped doing the beach road part that he originally planned…and headed back to Daytona instead. He told Connie later that it was about the worst day he had ever had at Black Point out of probably a dozen visits.

A few more shots from the LoE convention.

Connie parading in for the Memorial Service for Ladies that passed away this year.

And later on that day…she was installed as the Chaplain for the 2023-2024 LoE State Officer slate.

After finishing up our LoE (Ladies of Elks, or more accurately FLOE Florida Ladies of Elks) duties on Saturday…we were up early Sunday morning for Mass and headed north.

Nothing happened for 2 days as we stopped overnight near Florence SC and then continued north and east to Annapolis for Fun Stuff© there as well as in Ocean City MD and other points over on the eastern shore.

 At the easternmost end of US-50…there’s a sign saying how far it is to Sacramento (the western end)…there used to be a similar sign on the other end but road reconstruction there eliminated that sign so the eastern one is the only remaining indication.

Yep…3,073 miles west from Ocean City MD you get to Sacramento and we’ve now driven every one of those 3073 miles and seen most of the great places to see on the way…what a trip it was albeit we had to do it in a couple of phases due to kidney stone.

Other sights from the Eastern shore of MD.

In Annapolis…the state House of Representatives chamber…the Senate one is similar except for red leather chairs, fewer chairs, and red carpet.

The original house chamber.

The original Senate chamber (or maybe the last two were the other way around, can’t remember) where General Washington resigned his commission as commander of the armed forces of what would eventually become the USA.

Neil next to a life size statue of old George…the weather was colder and rainier up there than we’re used to now that we’ve been in FL permanently for 3+ years.

The dome in the capitol building in Annapolis.

At the Maritime Museum in Ocean City a model of one of the early oyster harvesting vessels.

You’ve probably heard of the Mason Dixon line…it was surveyed by a couple of guys named (amazingly enough) Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon between the years 1763-1767…and served as the original boundary between the states of PA, WV, VA, and MD. Most of the markers they installed are gone but this one remains over on the eastern shore.

We visited the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Museum.

A lighthouse over on the eastern shore.

Had some wine at lunch.

And noticed this map…an actual location for one of the inlets in the inside of the barrier island that Ocean City MD is on…Big Ass Woman bay. Normally…that woulda been in the Interesting things found on the net section…but this was found on a map at the Ocean City Lifesaving Museum.

Had dinner and drinks at this place on the boardwalk in Ocean City.

Walked on the boardwalk in 30 miles an hour winds from the Tropical Storm Phillipe as it made its way north for eventual landfall in the northeast someplace.

Some other Ocean City shots.

Right after we had the wine above…we spotted this neat building…it’s actually a hotel.

After all of that we headed to the DC area and spent a couple nights in McLean near Fairfax for 2 planned evolutions. First up was a dinner with Cynthia, an old friend of both of ours who used to work for Connie. We took her to dinner at our favorite restaurant in the DC area…the Cafe Renaissance and the same fellow that opened in in the early 90s still owns and runs the place…we’ve been eating there for special occasions since shortly after it opened. It’s your typical French-Italian place; dinner is expensive, comes with wine, and takes 2-3 hours but a good time was had by all.

After dinner, the next day we went to see our financial guys at Cassaday before heading to see the kids and grandkid on Friday.

Mostly we visited, ate dinner out a couple times, and family stuff. Here’s a shot of Alex at his tennis lesson on Saturday morning.

Monday we weighed anchor and headed for Charleston via an Hampton Roads and an overnight stop in Emporia VA for dinner at what used to be one of our favorite places…High Cotton. Before we got there…we decided to go visit the Yorktown battlefield in the Hampton Roads area.

This is Redoubt 9 or 10…which was one of those captured from the first siege line that General Washington established and thus finished the establishment of the second siege line which when combined with the French fleet preventing Cornwallis from retreating cross the Chesapeake Bay resulted in his surrender and the eventual end of the Revolutionary War.

The Second Siege Line itself…it’s the raised portion on the left side although not much is left of it really.

The Moore house where the terms of surrender of General Cornwallis were discussed. The building was extensively modified in later years but has been restored to the configuration it had during the surrender negotiations.

The dam and lake that Mr. Moore built to support his mill near the house…you actually drive over the top of the earthen dam to get to the other side even though it’s almost 300 years old.

And we visited the field where General Cornwallis’s troops marched out to lay down their arms after they surrendered.

We also stopped by Fort Monroe…which turned out to be (although it was built before the Civil War) to not be a historical site but an actual US Army base and its associated lighthouse. Neil was disappointed as he expected it to be a historical site but it was still a pretty cool place to visit.

Charleston SC was our final stop and really, we went out of our way to visit and eat at High Cotton even though it was 70something miles out of the way from the straight shot own I-95. He loaned her his hat for the shot at the bar.

Unfortunately…the food there has gone downhill…we had She Crab Soup, a Beef Carpaccio appetizer, and shared a slide of Buttermilk pie for desert. All had some issues…and while we expected Disneyland prices in downtown Charleston foodie district…we thought that $200 for a pair of cocktails, 4 glasses of wine and the aforementioned light dinner was pretty unreasonable…so we’ll seek out a new place if/when we go back to Charleston as there are plenty of good eateries in what is now known as a foodie city. Drinks were average, dinner was below average, the bartender was very nice but not enough to overcome the other deficiencies in food and drink.

Next morning we were up early and hit the road south on US-17 out of Charleston until it joined up with I-95 again and continued home by the end of the day.

It’s already been a pretty extensive photo laden post…so I’ll skip Interesting things found on the net this time.

Cyas.

Ok…the last part of our trip we are over in the Yorkshire Dales National Park area and stayed in the town of Skipton…well, to be scrupulously correct we did spend 2 nights in Oxford but (a) we were pretty much down hard with the bronchitis by that point and (b) it poured rain just about the whole time we were there so other than going out to dinner the first night we never left the hotel. We were originally going to do the walking tour and also have a drink at the Morse Bar which is the location where the author of the Inspector Morse novels sat and wrote all of his books…but sick/rain pretty much cancelled everything. After Oxford we drove back to London, dropped the car off at Heathrow Hertz and flew back…landing back in Miami about 1700 and then drove home so it was like 0200 the next morning body time by the time we went to bed.

As I said in my last post…there are a lot of good things about the roads and driving around in the UK…nice standard speed limits and roundabouts instead of traffic lights for the most part. A lot of Americans don’t like roundabouts but that’s mostly because they’re not used to them…but in reality they’re way more efficient than lights until the traffic load gets pretty heavy and at that point some of the roundabouts at major road intersections also have traffic lights installed but mostly they’re absent and we’ve always found roundabouts to be a brilliant idea.

On the other hand…their ability to design a proper shower door is…extremely lacking and the primary one we found is impossible to use without flooding the floor. First off…most of them have a half dozen or more controls and figuring out which ones worth together how without instructions is a bit awkward the first time…and second off no two shower setups have any sort of standard control layout. Second…instead of a door that shuts or a shower curtain that one pulls around…most of them have this half door thing.

They’re terrible…just terrible.

Anyway…on to photos around the Dales…you’ll notice a lot of gray skies and rain clouds…but hey, it’s England so whaddya expect?

Connie took this at one of the places we stopped at…the fellow in the food truck there said that in All Creatures Great and Small season III (which hasn’t made it to this side of the pond yet) there were some scenes filmed in this barn…and one of the stars and his lady friend in the series had a picnic just in the green area past these sheep alongside the brook above.

An old train trestle.

These striped cows are a breed known in the UK as belties.

This is Janet Foss…that means waterfall…just a few hundred yards from where the shots above were taken…it’s a bit upstream on the brook with the sheep above.

Middleham Castle…favorite residence of Richard III…he’s the one whose grave they found a few years ago under a parking lot. Close. Up of some of the construction.

And yes…it’s got a moat so it’s a real castle.

And a statue of old Richard himself.

Another nice waterfall we visited…although the flow is kinda minimal as despite the rain the days we were there the area has been in a drought for a bit.

And our last castle ruin…although again…no moat so is it *really* actually a castle? Neil thinks not, but it was up on a hill so it’s at least a bit defensible I guess.

So…over all how did we like our trip? It was pretty decent even though the bronchitis and rain had us skipping some of our planned activities but that’s the way it is I guess. He got used to the wrong side of the road and wrong side of the car a lot quicker than on our trip to Ireland back in the RVing days…and this time on return to the US driving normally did not seem strange for the first day or so like it did that time…by the time we got out of the Marriott where we left the car at CheapAirportParking.com he was back to normal. One thing we did learn though…we ain’t spring chickens any more so if we’re flying back from over there again and lose the 5 hours making it a really long day…and if we fly out of Miami we’ll stay overnight in Miami before driving home…we wuz really wiped out by the time we got home.

After getting home Saturday…we went to the Urgent Care clinic on Monday and got some drugs for the bronchitis that I already talked about and essentially spent the next 2 weeks (Connie) and 3 weeks (Neil) finishing getting over it. As I write this on Aug 3 they’re finally pretty much back to normal…thank goodness for that because they were getting really, really tired of it.

Interesting things found on the net.

Equal opportunity gender ones here…

And finally…

Cyas.