Bavarian Cream Offically Gets Christened

Although we've had our boat and were calling her Bavarian Cream for almost 8 months, we had not officially changed her name from that chosen by the previous owner. To bring this about we broke down and ordered new name and hailing port decals which set us back a couple hundred bucks (geez, boating is expensive!). The lettering Jane picked was black offset with a reflective gold border, 8 inches high and 66 inches long in Brush Script font. The hailing port (Killian, LA) was done in a 5 inch Ariel font that matched. Then came the fun part- getting the old name decal off. Larry started with a heat gun and a scraper, but after removing only parts of the first letter after 25 minutes, decided that this method was just going to eventually result in scorching the transom's gelcoat (there was still the high setting left). Although he knew (the pharmacy degree and knowledge of chemistry finally pays off!) some good organic solvents (acetone, methylketone, methanol, etc.) would rapidly do the job, he was afraid they might turn the finish into something akin to a skin disease. Jane and Google came to the rescue with an internet search on recommended methods, the top two being Easy Off Oven Cleaner and a hair dryer-scraper combination with lots of patience. With a proclivity toward all things chemical, Larry opted for the oven cleaner, even though he had is doubts because it is basically inorganic lye. Well the first couple of sprays on the transom resulted in a nasty looking yellow stains and didn't budge the lettering a bit! Panic set in when the stains could not be rubbed out with soap and water and new spots were developing on the swim platform from the transom overspray. After several corrective measures, he finally broke down and used acetone, logic being it couldn't get any worse. Well it worked and the stains were rubbed out to where they only faintly appeared. At this point, Jane was on the boat with nail polish remove (primarily acetone) and some cute little cotton balls. Still leery of a widespread acetone application, Larry worked the hair dryer-scraper solution. About three hours later all of the lettering was off, but an adhesive film from the old decal still needed to be removed. From the start, he always knew that the job would involve chemical solvents even though he went to great lengths to avoid them. Having spent a great deal of time, patience, and energy to remove the old lettering, he grabbed the acetone and liberally applied it to the film. Yes, it was to the screw it point! Amazingly, the film was gone in minutes with little expended effort and no damage to the finish. He then quietly cursed himself for not going this route in the first place. After the transom was declared clean as a whistle, Jane and Larry applied the new decals according to the directions with really professional results. We celebrated by taking Bavarian Cream down the river so everyone (all 2 of them!) could see her new name.

But wait! It's not all that easy. Nautical lore has it that all boat names are registered with the ruler of the deep and bad luck will come to any boat that has it's name changed without the proper renaming ritual. You can read about this ceremony by following this link for renaming a boat. Now we don't want to offend the gods of the deep, but this idea of pouring good champagne into the water to appease them for re-registering our boat when we could be drinking it just didn't make any sense. So we decided we'd take our chances and drink their share which is exactly what we did. Besides, if they really deserved any libations, they could have helped get the old lettering off! Say, do you think champagne would work better than oven cleaner...

Thanksgiving on the River

We know it's almost Christmas, but we forgot (actually kept postponing!) to publish the post from Thanksgiving Day. We decided that we wanted to do Thanksgiving on the Tickfaw and invited everyone out for dinner later in the day. Having a dinner later in the day avoids some of the conflicts with other invitations and work schedules for some, and gives everyone a little time to more fully work off an earlier meal. We were surprised that all of the kids, except for Larry's son Nathan who was in Tennessee with his in-laws, said they were coming. With that response we cooked up a storm over three days. We feasted on bacon-oyster cheese dip, corn-cheese and green bean casseroles, spiced cranberry-kumquat relish (yeah, the one I sent to Chef John Folse's contest last year that just happened to appear, minimally altered, on one of his shows this year), au gratin potatoes, and orange-garlic glazed ham. We felt the ham would be a change of pace for everyone. Jane did desserts with royal rum pecan and pumpkin pies. To take the chill off and get everyone in a festive mood, Larry made his hot buttered rum topped with whipped cream and nutmeg. The whipped cream may not have been a very good idea though, because grandson Brennan kept squirting the can in his mouth! We think he will outgrow stuff like that, but who knows....

After we had dinner we all headed outside, turned on the Christmas lights and got a bonfire started. The fire was a real joy thanks to Brennan who helped Larry gather some of the firewood a couple of days earlier. Larry had changed the oil in both boat engines a few days earlier and the 10 gallons of oil that was poured on the firewood really got it going. Jane's son-in-law, Jamie, had not had seen the boat, so Larry showed him around while the kids played on the boat and near the fire. xEveryone seemed to have a pretty good time and left as the fire was dying down. Jamie, and maybe Milana, indicated they wanted the recipe for the dip, so here it is. Keep watching WAFB's Stirrin' It Up and you might see it in a slightly altered form sometime!

Larry’s Bacon and Oyster Dip

1 cup sour cream

1 bottle (3 oz.) real bacon bits, or ¼ lb. sliced bacon crisply cooked and crumbled

½ lb. extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated

2 packages (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened

1½ tbs. prepared horseradish

4-5 green onions, chopped

1 tsp. Louisiana hot sauce

¼ tsp. garlic powder

1 can (8 oz.) oysters, drained and coarsely chopped

Combine the all ingredients, reserving 2 green onions, in a baking dish and mix well. Sprinkle with remaining chopped green onions over the mixture, cover with foil, and bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes until thoroughly warmed but not bubbling. Serve with vegetables, bread rounds, crackers, or chips. May also be served in a hollowed sourdough loaf, wrapped in foil and baked at 350° for 30 minutes. Serves 10-12.

The Grandkids Get Thanksgiving Vacation

The weather was good and the grandkids, Brennan and Madison, were out of school for Thanksgiving vacation. It's likely that their momma, Millette, was running out of ways to entertain them, so it sounded like a great idea to go to Mimi's house and spend the day. We caught up on their news and what was going on in their lives, and Mimi had a couple of distractions to keep them occupied, but it wasn't long before everyone was eying the boat wanting to go for a ride. We got everyone rounded up and on board, then headed Bavarian Cream upriver towards the former Leisure Landing resort. After a short ride, Capt. Larry turned the helm over to Brennan who leisurely navigated us to our destination. When we arrived at Leisure Landing, Brennan was told how to turn the boat around using only the two engines. He did a fantastic job and had us headed for our home slip in short order. He piloted us through the "No Wake" zone adjacent to the resort then turn control over to his sister, Madison. Madison had piloted the boat before, so this was familiar territory for her.

Mimi started talking about the considerable wake Bavarian Cream throws when she is up on plane. Well, everyone wanted to get up on plane and go fast. Capt. Larry obliged and everyone enjoyed going fast on the winding river. We finally made it back to the slip, got the boat secured, and went in the house for pizza and refreshments. Madison and her Mimi then worked on some crafts while Brennan and Larry took the van to scavenge for some roadside pieces of wood that would be used in a Thanksgiving day bonfire. Everyone seemed to have had a good time and we would meet again on Thanksgiving day.

Fall Cruising on the Tickfaw

With fall upon us and cooler temperatures, it seems like we hadn't had much opportunity to take Bavarian Cream out for a spin. Either the recent rainy weather was uncooperative or we were spending time in Florida. We finally got a chance to hit the water and enjoy a warm fall Sunday afternoon. It wasn't a long trip, lasting about an hour, but we were able to head down the river and see the swamp in its fall dress. We went pass Warsaw Landing to see the changes and new houses being built in that area, then went down past Tin Lizzy's and Kingspoint Marina. At Tin Lizzy's we saw our next door neighbor in their boat Last Call and were able to hail them on the VHF radio. Not many boats have or use a VHF on this part of the river, so it was good to verify that we were sending and receiving (we know this is simple stuff, but it's new to us!). We went down the river to Kingspoint then turned around and headed back towards home. We were hailed once again by our neighbor who were at their house and figured that we were about 3 miles apart. The radio on the flybridge works pretty well, but we are still going to replace it along with most of the other electronics with newer stuff. We finally made it home, put the boat in her slip, then sat in the cockpit and had a couple of drinks. It was a good day on the water!

Our First Big Boat Trip

We had not had Bavarian Cream out for a while and decided with the beautiful weather that we had been having recently, it would be a good time to take her for a spin. Originally we thought about heading out for two days, but decided instead to spend one night on the boat in the boat slip and head out the next day for an overnight on the Madisonville wall. The overnight in the slip was uneventful and we enjoyed dinner on the boat, watched some TV, then had a restful night's sleep with cool temperatures and low humidity.

The next morning we got the boat ready to head out and our things on board (everything except the camera which is why this segment doesn't have any pictures). We left right after lunch for a leisurely 3-3 1/2 hour cruise to Madisonville. Since Jane needed to sharpen her piloting skills, she skippered the boat. We worked on positioning the boat in relation to the respective navaids, setting a waypoint on the GPS, and following a bearing to a waypoint. We encountered our first RR bridge in Pass Manchac which delayed us for almost 25 minutes. All was going pretty well until we got through Pass Manchac and set a bearing for the beacon marking the channel to the Tchenfuncte River. We inherited the charplotter with the boat and several waypoints on Lake Ponchartrain were already entered. One of the waypoints listed was TCHEFUNT which Larry assumed led to the Tchenfuncte River. Jane punched the waypoint up and we started heading across the lake to our destination. After about 20 minutes (it's a 9 mile leg to the river), Larry started to feel that we weren't approaching land and were in fact running parallel to it. We stopped the boat to collect our thoughts. We were on an 81 degree course, almost due east, and the course to the river was pretty much NE (around 45 degrees). When we got out the binoculars and looked ahead, we saw the causeway. Looking to the north we spotted the Tchenfuncte lighthouse and then realized that the stored waypoint was for the causeway. We turned north and headed for the lighthouse and found our beacon after a 15 minute ride. We followed the channel and headed up the river arriving at the wall and tying up with about 20 minutes of daylight remaining.

After walking Tarzan in the park along the waterfront, we headed over to Morton's seafood restaurant and had a delicious meal of crabmeat and mozzarella topped broiled tomatoes, house salad, fried catfish with shrimp stuffed baked potatoes, and topped off with bread pudding with rum sauce. We walked Tarzan again, then headed across the bridge to a bar for a nightcap. Our company at the bar was the bartender's extremely large cat which didn't move even after our drinks were served causing us to drink around the animal. We headed back to the boat and had a great night's sleep even though the noise of the cars crossing the Madisonville bridge could be heard.

The next morning Larry took Tarzan out then got coffee at a nearby gas station. Around 0900 we prepared to head back to Killian. Lake Ponchartrain was a lot choppier heading back as the winds shifted from the north to the east. We engaged in a lively discussion of the points of the compass and related degrees of bearing which Jane had to steer from either the compass or the chartplotter. After two or three go arounds we let it rest with the understanding that the compass is "kinda like a clock." We encountered the RR bridge again at Pass Manchac and Jane finally got us home around noon with the realization that her piloting skills are still pretty "blunt."

Goin' to the Big Boat Show

Back in June we read about a rendezvous of the America's Great Loop Cruising Association (AGLCA) at Joe Wheeler State Park in northern Alabama at the end of October. We knew that this was the group that could help us with the many questions we had in planning our loop trip and really wanted to attend. Jane called the park and got us reservations. We weren't members of AGLCA, but decided that we would join when we attended the rendezvous. WRONG! At the beginning of October we were looking at the AGLCA's website and noticed that the rendezvous was closed. Not really sure what that meant, we called only to find out that there was a limit to the number of attendees and since we weren't members we essentially missed the chance to attend.

Well, we really needed a road trip and looked around and found the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show over the Halloween weekend and made plans to attend. We wanted to go to a show that hosted a lot of vendors so we could look at and compare some of the products that interested us. We are particularly interested in upgrading Bavarian Cream's electronics such as new chartplotters, VHF radios and an autopilot. So we jumped in the car and headed to Ft. Lauderdale. We left Louisiana and went to Ft. Walton Beach and spent a night at our place. The next day we drove to Ft. Pierce and stayed at the same motel we stayed at when we went to Miami for our honeymoon cruise two years ago. In fact, we stayed in the very same room that we had for our honeymoon journey even though we only requested something on the ground floor! Talk about coincidences. Anyway we had a couple of drinks by the pool then decided that we should head down to Ft. Pierce's waterfront to see the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) that we would be traversing in two more years. What a delight! Ft. Pierce has a magnificent waterfront. We walked through the waterfront park, listened to some musicians, then strolled to the Ft. Pierce Municipal Marina. What a fine facility. We listened to the harbormaster talk another boater into the channel leading to the marina, then decided to get something to eat at "The Original Tiki Bar."
It was an open air restaurant and tiki bar with a band, good food, and waitresses in scanty Halloween outfits! We will definitely put this on our list of places to stop and spend a couple of days when we're looping.

The next day we drove to Ft. Lauderdale and went to the boat show. This is a really big show with six venues spread over the waterfront area with shuttle buses taking the participants from one venue to another. We started out at the main convention center. This was where the small boats (up to 40 feet) were, but we were mostly interested in furnishings and gadgets for our boat. We looked at outboard motors for our dinghy, and bought an anchor retrieving system. Jane got some nautical clothing and jewelry cleaner (they have just about everything!). We collected lots of information on marinas we will encounter on our loop and the ubiquitous array of safety literature. We had trouble finding the "electronics tent," and wandered into the "manufacturer's tent" which housed mostly naval architects interested in designing a multimillion dollar boat (or is it ship?). With about an hour to go before the show closed, we finally found the electronics tent and Larry was able to talk to the Garmin and Standard Horizon vendors about their products that he is interested in. We have a neighbor on the Tickfaw that has an approximately 38 foot fishing boat with four (4) 250 hp outboard motors. We thought that this had to be the maximum fishing platform, but on our way back to the convention center, we saw what looked to be in the ball park of a 40 foot open counsel fishing boat with five (yes, 5) 350 hp Yamaha outboard motors. Everyone was taking pictures, but it just didn't occur to us to pull our camera out, but it was a beast. We'd hate to pay the fuel bill for that outfit! We shuttled back to the car and on our way to the motel we passed an auto dealership that specialized in European cars. They had no less than 7 Lambourghinis in various colors and a Mercedes Benz gull wing sports car that Larry saw on MSN Carpoint for $360,000. Jane saw a baby blue Bentley driving on the road that she really liked and we saw a big black Rolls Royce. It's just so different in south Florida compared to Killian, LA! On our way to the motel we stopped in West Palm Beach and had a great dinner at a place called Island Jack's (also with waitresses clad in scanty Halloween clothing!). The next day we drove back to Ft. Walton Beach to chill out out for a couple of days. The trip was a real hoot!

Our Indiana Connections Continue...

We live about 30 miles from Madisonville, LA which hosts a magnificent Wooden Boat Festival each year. This is always a fun event because it focuses on water activities, wooden boats, and has a real family orientation (although you don't really need many family connections to just go there and drink beer!). This year we went and met up with Milana and Tracy who were hosting friends, Danny and Sherrie Johnson from Indiana. The weather wasn't exactly cooperative, but worked out that we were all able to do most of what we came to the festival for.

After looking at all of the food and craft booths, we hooked up with Milana & Tracy's crew and boarded the Robert E. Lee party boat which was brought to the Madisonville wall by Capt. Donnie Weiss. The Weiss's hosted a really nice party and provided riverside seats for the festival's fabricated boat race. In this race contestant teams have two days to construct a wooden boat that team members launch in the river and sail and paddle over a course to claim victory. Of the approximately 18 boats that were launched, about 12 actually completed the race with about a half-dozen sinking sometime between the launch and the start of the race. After the race we left the boat and wandered over to one of the band stages to listen to some music. The band was really good, but it started to rain and Jane & Larry decided that it was time to head home. However, before we left we invited Danny & Sherrie to join us for dinner at our place in Florida when they come over for Danny's graduation at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in a few days. It turned out to be a really small world as Danny's parents were flying in from Detroit Lakes, MN to attend the ceremony which was where Larry was stationed for 5 years at the White Earth Indian Reservation. We all got together and talked just about everything including Larry & Jane's motorcycle trip through MN last year, ice fishing, Water Carnival, Lake Sallie, and even lutefisk! It was a real hoot. We had a really wonderful time and Larry's shrimp fettuccine and black bean dip, and Jane's Bavarian cream were real hits. We parted for the evening, but we are all pretty sure that we will run into each other again in the future.

Overnighting on the Tickfaw

The weather got cooler and the humidity dropped from the summertime sweatshop level, so we decided that a night on Bavarian Cream was in order. We checked out the weather forecasts and thought that we had a really good weather window. Then Jane got a call from her grandson, Brennan, inviting her to his middle high school football game on Saturday. Jane told him about our plans and he said that we were crazy and were going to get caught in some lousy weather. We were pretty sure that we would be back at the home port before the weather turned on us. Cutting to the chase, Brennan was right and we were wrong! But the interesting part of the trip was the fact that we took Jane's dog, Tarzan, for an overnight on the boat for the very first time, which proved to be a really challenging experience as far as the controlling his bodily functions are concerned.

We headed out to Lake Maurepas late afternoon. Once there, we let the boat drift while we consumed the 1 1/2 dozen of blue crabs we bought and drank a lot of beer. Jane did her usual outstanding job of cracking the crabs, so all Larry had to do was eat and spit shells. We also grilled some steaks and potatoes, but decided that the sun was setting and we needed to get to an anchorage. We ended up anchoring just a short distance from the lake opposite of the Prop Stop. The Prop Stop is a really popular "river bar" that is only accessible by water. We got the boat secured just as the sun was setting, then enjoyed our steaks and potatoes. After dinner and a few drinks and admiring our first full moon on the boat and river, we turned in for the night expecting to get up in the morning and return to the boat slip. Around 0330 we were both awakened by thunder, lightening, heavy wind, and a hard downpour of rain. Our first storm on the boat. Larry was up for over an hour fretting about whether the anchor would hold. Jane hardly sleeps at all when we are on the hook, and the storm only exacerbated the situation. We really encountered a nasty storm and felt lucky that the anchor held and we didn't have any major problems. In fact, the anchor held so well that the windlass could not dislodged it the next day. We had to pull the anchor out with the boat which was a first, but gave us confidence on our anchoring abilities. After a light breakfast, we head for home with Jane at the helm. She piloted us home and even had the confidence to back Bavarian Cream into the slip. All in all it was quite an experience and much more than we bargained for.

Goin' to Buckeye Land

We are all getting old. This was pointed out so clearly when Larry headed up north to celebrate his 40th high school reunion. While he had made almost every reunion to date, he really felt that this one was special. All of the following reunions will start to show fewer and fewer faces just based on the actuarial tables. Anyway, we trekked back to Ohio for the reunion which was scheduled to coincide with the Wyandot County Fair. Jane was ecstatic to finally be able to visit the fair which she had heard so many stories about. If any of you really want to see a very fine county fair, try this one. It's always the second week of September in Upper Sandusky, OH and is, our opinion, the very finest fair you could every attend. Anyway, we went to fair with Larry's sister, Deb, and saw all of the animals, farm equipment, quilts and oversized pumpkins and had a really great time.

On Friday of our trip we had a family get together. Larry's nephew and fiancee, Brian and Janelle, came up from Columbus. They were joined by Janelle's parents who live up by Lake Erie and Brian's grandparents along with Larry's niece, Katie, and her son and two daughters. With his sister's Deb's help, he cooked a traditional jambalaya complete with white beans, garlic bread. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food as we cooked for about 20-25 people, about 15 showed up, and there was practically no leftovers. The party lasted well into the evening.

We spent Saturday morning enjoying Ohio State's victory over the University of Toledo, visiting with Deb and John, then heading off to the reunion. What a hoot! Everyone was so old, yet seemed to be so young and full of life. Jane had to comment that our group was unlike any that she had seen before. We danced, ate, drank, and visited until the late hours. It was so good to see all of those old f**** again!

On Sunday we said goodbye to Deb and John and headed to Columbus to spend the day with Brian and Janelle. Brian took us to a "blues bar" called the Thristy Ear and we got to see him play the drums with a blues band on one of the sets. We headed back to their place and had pizza and beer and a good night's sleep. Monday morning we got up and head south with the intention of going through the Smokey Mountains, hopefully for some glimpses of fall color. We were a little early for the seasonal change, but got on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina for some spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and a good part of the ride on on the Blue Ridge Parkway was in very foggy conditions. Needless to say, many of the scenic overlooks didn't produce the scenic vistas that we had seen before. We got off of the Parkway just before Asheville, NC and got on what might have been the most convoluted road I've ever encountered. We ended up in northern Georgia where we spent the night. The next day we expected to jump on some faster roads in the Atlanta area, but recent rains had caused some flooding, and many of the major arteries were closed. We had to snake our way along the Alabama-Georgia border for a good part of the day in order to get back to our place in Florida. We finally made it in the late afternoon. The next day we headed back to Louisiana to finish the trip. It was a really great trip!

Labor Day Cruising with the Family

Labor Day always signals the end of summer and most of the activities that occur on the water. Oh sure, you can still have some very pleasant days, especially at the more southerly latitudes, but things start to wind down after labor day. We decided that we had not got the family together on the river since the Mardi Gras boat parade back in February. So the invites went out for a day on Bavarian Cream and a leisurely cruise down the Tickfaw River to Lake Maurepas for some swimming and relaxing. We were joined by Jane's daughter Milana and partner Tracy and Larry's son and daughter-in-law, Nathan and Kristin, and their two daughters Hannah and Sadie.

We cast off and were not very far from the slip when Hannah, age 3, eagerly accepted the helm and "drove the boat." Capt. Larry had to scramble a couple of times to keep us in the channel, but basically she had the helm for about one-half of a mile. Hannah was thrilled and it was fun to watch her steer the boat like she would a Barbie Car. Further down the river there was a lot of local traffic, so Larry and Nathan took turns at the helm. We broke out snacks and drinks and took a very leisurely 8 NM ride to the lake. Once we got out there, we angled over to a shallow anchorage that is very popular for swimming. Capt. Larry is still a little conservative when it comes to anchoring in shallow water, so the chose spot actually turned out to be a little deep for swimming. However, with some floats and life jackets and the ability to get into some "toe-touching" depths about 30 yards astern, everyone got into the water and had a good time. Even though the water was deep, it didn't deter the girls, especially Sadie who seems to be about as fearless as a pit bull. We enjoyed a couple of hours on the lake then weighed anchor and cruised back to the house. After securing the boat in the slip, we fired up the grill and had a simple meal of hamburgers, hot dogs, and pasta salad. Oh, and the beer and wine flowed freely into the evening. When all was said and done, a good time was had by all.

Conky Tonkin' With Indiana Parrotheads

Back in February we heard that Jimmy Buffet was going on tour. Larry had been to a couple of his concerts over the years, but Jane had only seen him at the New Orleans Jazz Fest which is not a really great venue and the concert was quite abbreviated. We couldn't find anything that wasn't sold out until we got to August in Noblesville, IN, a suburb of Indianapolis. Since we have gone to the last three Indianapolis 500 races, we've become comfortable traveling to Indy and are fairly familiar with the area. Anyway, we bought a couple of tickets to the event on August 11 which was Jane's birthday present.

We headed up on the 10th and checked into a nearby motel. The next day we got up and decided to go shopping at a nearby mall. On the way to the mall we passed the concert venue and stopped by on the way back. We weren't sure what to expect because all we could see were corn and soybean fields all around. A young lady at the gate informed us that the gates would open around 1 p.m. for the 8 p.m. concert. We had planned on going out to a really nice restaurant then head over to the concert. When we got back to the motel, the parking lot was filled with partying parrotheads replete with fins, cheeseburgers, margaritas, and blow-up palm trees and flamingos. Well, this got Jane excited. She didn't understand what the gates would open so early until I told her that it was for the tailgating party prior to the concert.

Well, there went the plans for a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Someone from Louisiana just doesn't miss out on a tailgate party. We got changed into our parrothead clothes and got an ice chest ready then headed for a deli to pick up some fried chicken, a sub sandwich and an apple pie. Then it was out to the cornfields to get an attitude adjustment for the concert. We hooked up with some folks from the area and had a great time. We had great seats for the concert and Jimmy did not disappoint one bit. We got to hear some new songs due out in November and all the rowdy old favorites. The only downside to the whole thing was that we stood at our seats for nearly the entire 3 hour concert. Larry's knees let him know about that the next morning. All in all though it was a great time. We understand that this is a regular concert site for Buffet and so it just may become a regular trip for us too. Seems like we go to Indy so often now that we just may have to rent some place to stay...

We Begin Our Journey...

We begin our journey here on Blogspot trying to figure how this animal works. This exercise was started to share with friends an relatives our travel experiences and adventures that we are able to enjoy in our retirement. Basically we enjoy traveling around the country by car, motorcycle, and boat. In 2008, we embarked on a seven-week, 12,400 mile, 29 state motorcycle trip around the country and into Canada and during which we visited 24 U.S. National Parks. We were not blogging at that point, and in fact lost our computer on the third day of the trip in Big Bend National Park, TX. Unbelievably we got the computer back (yes, there are decent people out there!) after the trip, but were unable to share our experiences with everyone. Through these pages we hope to revisit our ride and share images and memorable moments with everyone.

Additionally, in April, 2009 we purchased a boat with the intention of traveling around the coastal and inland waters of the eastern portion of the U.S. in what is called America's Great Loop. This is basically a 6,000 mile plus boat ride which we plan to cover over a nine-month period in 2011. While we have owned boats for a number of years, our purchase represented a significantly larger boat and one with all sorts of "systems" that we are currently immersed in learning about in addition to trying to fathom what is involved in a boating adventure of this nature. We will share our plans and preparations as this baby unfolds.

Being retired allows us to take off on various excursions and some of the more memorable trips may make their way onto these pages. We hope it doesn't resemble watching old time vacation films, and will try to keep things as interesting as possible. However, if it does become tedious you can comment or choose to opt out. On the other hand, we are both hoping that this does not become drudgery in trying to maintain this blog. So bear with us and cut us some slack as we try and put on a show.