2011 New York Trip-Day 22 – 08/10/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 22 – 08/10/2011

Left at 6:45

For some reason I find the landscape of New Mexico and Arizona much more appealing than Texas.  When I saw the Las Cruces road sign, I really felt like hanging a right and detouring.  When Jimmy and I went to Socorro so long ago, I think we went through Las Cruces on the way back from Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns – great memories.

I saw some road crews in Arizona – at around 2:00pm they were out in 105 degree heat using rakes and shovels to spread asphalt on the freeway.  Now there is a job I would truly hate to have.  I almost hit my goal of a 600-mile tank of gas.  I chickened out at 575 miles.  The next station was about 30 mile away, it was 103 degrees, the gas light was on, and the thought of running out in the desert was really unappealing.  As it turned out, I had just under 2 gallons left, so I could have made it.  I found a gift shop west of Tucson in a town called Picacho – I spent about 30 minutes perusing the goods.  I have to stop there on my next trip.

Once I get into the mountains west of El Centro, I always s forget just how frickin’ far El Cajon still is.  Those hills just seem to go on forever.  Finally parked in the garage at 7:30 pm.

Home sweet home.

Total time for the day:12:30

Total miles for the day: 700

Total miles for the entire trip: 6825

Counting end-points, I hit 13 states in each direction for a total of 23 different states,

If I do this again, I think I may make the “to New York” leg the fast one – but try to find a route a bit south of I-90.  A woman at a visitor center in Minnesota said that you can see a lot of plains if you go a bit south of I-90.  On the “back to CA” leg, I think I would like taking the I-81 south again, but instead of hooking up with I-20 and staying on that for 2,000 miles, I would break off in Mississippi or Louisiana and head up to I-40 and then in Aluquerque head back south (after eating again in the Route 66 Diner there) to pick up I-10/I-8.  I just did not enjoy Texas.  I saw a lot of places along I-81 and along I-20 that looked interesting . . . especially Civil War battlegrounds.

The end

2011 New York Trip-Day 21 – 08/09/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 21 – 08/09/2011

Left at 9:45

Texas is DULL.  When I went through Midlands (which is a particularly unattractive town), I exhibited great self-control and did NOT flip off the “Presidential Library” sign.  Most of the rest stops have parallel parking – not diagonal – even for trucks.  I got to see an 18-wheeler parallel park.  The truckers must love that.

About 70 miles east of El Paso, I started seeing lot of lightening.  I saw a great cloud-ground strike and another that had one bolt between two clouds and one from one of the clouds to the ground.

Checked into the El Paso Motel 6 at 10:50.  The A/C was not on and some idiot left the refrigerator open – and on – so that the top of it was really hot.

Total time for the day: 13:15

Total miles for the day:788

2011 New York Trip-Day 20 – 08/08/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 21 – 08/08/2011

Hit the road at 9:15

Made it through TN, MS, LA and into Texas.  Tennessee and Mississippi and Louisiana were all pretty nice – lots of green and lots of trees. 

Checked into the Marshall, TX Super 8 at 10:30

Total time for the day: 13 hours

Total miles for the day: 782

2011 New York Trip-Day 19 – 08/07/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 19 – 08/07/2011

I hit the road at 9:30.  I managed to get in the car quickly enough so that the sadness did not hit me until I was out of sight.  I hit a really nasty thunderstorm in PA.  It slowed me down to 45.  Cruised on through MD and WV.  In VA hit another storm.  I got down to 40 for this one.  I almost got off of the freeway – but I figured out I would get out of it quicker by driving.  I realllly do not like driving in rain that is coming down that hard.  It seemed to take forever to get through VA.  I was on a roll and not feeling tired, so I kept going until 10:00 when I checked into the Morristown, TN Super 8.

Total miles for the day: 682

2011 New York Trip-Day 18 – 08/06/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 18 – 08/06/2011

We went back to Lake Wawayanda.  This time they rented a 4-person paddle boat.  They did a rotation where one kid would stay on shore and either Jenny or Andy or both would take the other two out for a spin.  Andy’s problem with the peddles was that they were so close to the seat that he could never extend his leg enough for his knee to exceed a 90 degree angle – really awkward. Nathan had one of his little obstinate rebellions and tried to refuse to hold a hand while sitting by himself in the back of the boat . . .Andy lifted him out by his life jacket and took him ashore to have a chat with him.

Later in the afternoon, Andy got his pellet rifle out and let me try it.  That thing has a hell of a kick.  Using that scope makes me appreciate why you almost always see snipers laying on the ground . . . it is just about impossible to hold it steady enough to keep the target in the scope.

Jenny and Andy went out to dinner and some music.  So . . . I introduced the kids to Despicable Me.  I explained how the bad guy is really not so bad – but he wants everyone to think he is.  I think the minions are what sold them on the movie.  At one point Zoe (in her tiny squeaky voice) said she was scared. . .  but she could not tell me why she was scared or what was scaring her and she did not want to stop watching the movie.  All three of them seemed to really like it . . . a lot of laughing.

2011 New York Trip-Day 17 – 08/05/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 17 – 08/05/2011

Pretty much just hung around the house. The kids went swimming in the afternoon.  Jenny made a Chinese dish for dinner that was really pretty good . . . I had three helpings.

2011 New York Trip-Day 16 – 08/04/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 16 – 08/04/2011

Tried making a paper airplane with the girls from a kit they had.  A resounding failure.

Jenny and the girls set up a car wash outside that was really funny.  They took a rake and put the handle between the tops of two lawn chairs.  Then Jenny suspended strips of crepe paper from the handle to look like the washing thingies that are in car washes.  They had an old vacuum hose that was either a gas pump or vacuum – depending on who was using it.  They would take turns driving something through the wash, and then someone (usually Olivia) would use a spray bottle to spray the “car” and a sponge and towel to dry it.  Whoever was driving would have an umbrella to shield them from the spray.  Olivia and Jenny had chalk signs on the ground.  There was even a tip jar, except that with their car wash, the customer does not give the tips – rather the customer takes the tips.

Later, all three of them were running all over the yard with their umbrellas. One of them would have a spray bottle, chasing the other two around.  It was funny to see how much fun they had with just three umbrellas and a bottle of water.

I made my journey into town to Shop Rite to buy food supplies for the trip home.  Last time, I don’t think I found the ATM that was supposed to be in the store – this time I had no problem.  That store sure has a lot of slow old people wandering the isles.

Dinner was a real battle of wills. Jenny bought a chicken pie from “the pie lady”.  It was really good, but neither Nathan nor Zoe wanted to even try it.  When Nathan refused to try it, she started removing anything that he was playing with – water glass, spoon, extra fork. It was hard not to laugh when Jenny told him that everyone else was being “awesome” for eating their chicken pie, he went around the table: “Is Olivia awesome”, … and would end up with “I’m not awesome”.  Zoe only wanted to eat the crust.  Andy got home and she still balked.  Eventually, she would eat a microscopic piece of chicken and then a piece of crust.  Jenny, Olivia and I finally left the table and left Andy to deal with Zoe and Nathan.  About 10 minutes later, Zoe gave in and ate enough.  About 20 minutes later, Nathan finally gave in.  I have never seen anyone who can drag out the process of eating as much as Zoe.  At one point, Andy told her that at the rate she was going, it would be bedtime by the time she finished – so she might as well go to bed right now.  I would love to have gotten the entire process with Nathan on tape – it would be great to show it to him 10 or 15 years from now.

Before the girls went to bed I was finally able to let them look at the moon through the telescope.

2011 New York Trip-Day 15 – 08/03/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 15 – 08/03/2011

We went to Lake Wawayanda State Park in New Jersey.  It was pretty amazing.  Less than 30 minutes from Warwick – and I saw a sand beach with sunbathers and people swimming in the lake.  We hiked for a total of maybe 2 miles.  They have boat rentals that might be kind of fun.  The lake is beautiful.  I kept seeing what looked like big patches of pond scum – but turned out to be big “fields” of densely growing water lilies.

For dinner, we went to Taco Hombre.  It is a real hole in the wall.  You walk in and they have a long buffet-type counter with all the ingredients.  You tell them what you want and what you want in it and the girls behind the counter put it together for you.  I had a burrito that was really quite good.  Whenever Nathan sees the restaurant from the car, he starts yelling “Taco Hombre”.  Jenny said that for the first year or so that they were here, they just made sarcastic remarks about it based on the name.  She said when they finally tried it, they were amazed.  It is the only Mexican restaurant they have found that they like.

I was explaining to Olivia why I like my umbrella with the long handle – because of Singin’ In The Rain.  I managed to pull up the scene with Gene Kelly doing his dance in the rain and she really got a kick out of it.  She asked if he could tap dance, so I told her that tomorrow I would show her a movie where he tap dances with Jerry the mouse. 

2011 New York Trip-Day 14 – 08/02/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 14 – 08/02/2011

Went to G’s for lunch, followed by the good old Toy Chest.  Got some tinker toys (but not called tinker toys) for Jenny to wrap for Nathan’s birthday.  Got the girls jump ropes and Nathan a small stuffed monkey.  They had a thing on sled runners that was a snow stroller.

I have had a ton of notebook problems.  For one thing, it virtually never closes properly – in order to restart it, I always have to go in to “processes” and kill it first.  For almost a day, I lost all of the info from LastPass.  I finally figured out how to re-sync. But I have to re-sync virtually every time I start Firefox.  And to enter the LastPass password, I have to pull it from Password Safe – since Andy does not run with any encryption on the router, I am just too nervous to enter the password through the keyboard.  And . . the mouse wheel click stopped opening URLs in new tabs.  I spent three days trying to figure this one out – I finally downloaded the mouse drivers from Microsoft and installing them manually.  Once I did that, I was finally able to get the wheel click to work.  And . . , for three days, I could not re-arrange photos at SmugMug through Firefox.  That did not start working again until Wednesday.

2011 New York Trip-Day 13 – 08/01/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 13 – 08/01/2011

Last night was OK again.  As long as I can have the windows open, I am OK.

Pretty much stayed around the house today.  Pretty hot – and humid, of course.

Andy showed me his pellet rifle.  Pretty nice.  It has a heck of a scope – and a silencer.  I am going to have to give it a try one of these days.

There was (at least for me) a heck of a thunder storm fairly close.  The thunder was kind of like a drum roll in an orchestra that builds to a huge crescendo.  Jenny left a battery operated lamp with me in case the lights went out.

2011 New York Trip-Day 12 – 07/31/2011

2011 New York Trip-Day 12 – 07/31/2011

The temperature and humidity were decidedly better last night.

We went to Rogowski’s Farm for breakfast.  This is the farm where Jenny has a membership thing that allows her to go once a week and actually pick her own produce – can’t get much fresher than that.  The breakfast menu has maybe three or four things on it. The omelet I had was really good.  I had a taste of Zoe’s OJ and wished I had ordered one of my own.  They have a neat little terrace with a couple of tables so you can walk out and look out over the farm.

After breakfast, we went to the farmers market in Warwick.  The kids got some cotton candy.  Nathan’s hands were soooo sticky.  I felt bad, but every time he needed to hold someone’s had to cross the street, I would just take his wrist.  I just could not bring myself to grab that sticky gooey hand.

Andy must have spent at least five solid hours working on the lawn.  He says he kind of enjoys it – but in the heat and humidity it has to suck.  Everyone (except me) went swimming.  Olivia can go in with no flotation devices – she is tall enough by several inches.  Zoe can just keep her mouth above the water,  so she still wears water wings, as does Nathan.

All three kids want to play with my Droid.  I introduced them to Angry Birds – even Nathan gets a kick out of playing it.  Nathan spends most of his time talking to the “Taking Hippo” and related games.  It is funny to watch how Nathan practically crawls into the lap of whoever has the phone, trying to watch every move they make.

The girls kept wanting to take pictures with my camera, so I gave them an old HP digital camera that I had in the car.  They have been having a ball with it – especially Zoe.  The problem is that it has a really bright flash and Zoe has a tendency to stick it too close to whoever she is taking a picture of.

Andy made a great dinner.  Some kind of grilled kielbasa (or something like that), sauerkraut, black beans . . and other stuff.