some friends of mine are on a road trip this summer, going from Sebastopol across the county and then back.  i’ve never been much for road trips, but i think seeing the greater US sites would be fun.

as much travel as i’ve done, i haven’t seen a lot of the US.  places like Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are just places on a map, not pictures in any of my photo albums.  it’s kind of sad really.  there are so many beautiful places to visit, yet i always seem to pick places quite a bit further away.

maybe this summer i can take a long weekend go somewhere i haven’t seen before, but the question is what will it be? hmmm. if i had thought about it sooner i could have tacked something onto my Bonneville trip, there are some pretty spectacular parks in Utah.

photo courtesy of thecanyontrust.org

i checked out yesterdays blog post today on the laptop, and i think the image is less than stellar due to the download from Shutterfly.
i think that if i was to upload an image from my tablet it would be better.  we shall see.

it dawned on me that the tablet i’m using on this trip is different than the iPad i was using during the last couple of bigger blog trips. not an issue at all, until i realized that i don’t have the adapter to get the photos from my camera to the tablet.

not an issue right, i can just look up and see what kind of connector i need to get and pick one up at the Best Buy.  why are things never that easy??  i found what i needed online, and yes Best Buy, Office Depot and Office Max all have the item, but for online purchase only.  i leave tomorrow, i can’t order online. sigh.

thankfully my awesome boss had exactly what i needed  at his desk and loaned it to me for the trip. yay for kind bosses with lots of gadgets!

image courtesy of tomshardware.com

since i haven’t traveled for awhile, i didn’t have the need to use the Blogger app to post anything, but that is all changing Thursday.

ladies and gentlemen, i am going away for a long weekend and i plan to write a couple of posts while away.  in order for that to work i’ve had to reacquaint myself with the app and see what has changed since i used it last, which was…….2013. yikes. so far so good, but i have realized the space bar on my tablet needs a firm touch.  nothing like having to go back thru a post and space where appropriate. i think all is good with the app use and i’m looking forward to being on a trip with blogging potential.

oh,  where am i going?  you’ll just have to wait and see.it was all going well with the app until i tried to put in a photo.   i forgot what a huge pain in the ass it is.  so forgive the random placement of future images, i do the best i can, with my limited amount of patience.

                     

i moved to Sonoma County aka the North Bay, last December and since then i’ve been involved in a whirlwind of activity revolving around my vacation rental the Sebastopol Guest House.

this wasn’t just getting the property itself ready, but it was learning the ins and outs of running a business, starting an LLC, business licenses, permits, planning committee meetings, tax preparation, the list is endless.  all of these new learnings  combined with my past experience in the hospitality business and my education in hospitality management lead me to believe i am pretty well versed in what it takes to start a vacation rental business and how to list a property, at least in Sebastopol.

May-October is the peak season and i have been booked almost every weekend, not bad for the first season.  i think it will be really quiet come November, but hey that works well for me too. i can take more time to check out fun things in my area to do and maybe go on a real vacation…….where will it be??

adaptability.  that is a word you have to know and embrace when you travel, adaptability. plans can change in an instant, and you may or may not have any control over the situation.

last weekend i was lucky in the fact that i hadn’t left the Bay Area for Wendover and i was able to cancel all of my reservation from the comfort of my couch.  most participants were already on site and some had driven cross country or even come in from another country for the races.  not as easy for them to just, “make new plans.”

the closing of the Wendover door opened the door to Sebastopol weekend activities, and i made good use of the time in town.  this weekend was the annual Gravenstein Apple Fair at Ragle Ranch Park so i headed over there on Saturday with my Mom and a friend of hers.

yum.  that is a good word to sum up the fair….yum.  i LOVE apple pie, and there was plenty to choose from at the fair, that’s for sure!  i opted not to buy an entire Kozlowski apple & blackberry pie, a decision i regret today and purchased a piece of their apple pie instead.  it was SO good and the perfect treat for a Saturday afternoon.

the fair was full of arts & craft vendors, live music, food trucks, and of course….apples.  it wasn’t what i had planned for Saturday, but it was a really fun day at the park, and i’m glad i had the opportunity to enjoy the event!

image courtesy of gravensteinapplefair.com

well i did it.  i managed to put all of the Argentina pictures into the blog posts where they belong.  it really took all of my control not to rewrite things and make corrections, but i thought i should preserve what was there, what was written back in September 2011.

i look back fondly on the trip, and can only hope that at some point i will be able to take another month long trip.  i still have Peru on my mind, and feel that after three years if i’m still feeling strongly about going back that it is something i need to do.

i have some time off in October but not enough to go on a long trip, so i decided for cost and time sake to go to Hawaii and visit some friends there.  although i’ve been a number of times, it will be nice to get away and sit on a beach for a few days.

ok, we all know how little i actually post to this site, but that doesn’t mean i don’t look at it from time to time, or talk about it. so today, i’m proudly sharing info about my site and it is brought to my attention that all of my pictures from September 2011 posts are gone. i mean ALL of my pictures are gone.

what happened? i have no idea. do i need to remind you i’m not a tech savvy person? could it be that i did all of these posts on my iPad and at some point last year i had to have my iPad wiped clean? maybe that was it? but i could have sworn i created other posts on the iPad and those pictures seem to be there. or so i think.

an entire month of post pictures gone. vanished. and you know it was that month spent in Argentina and there was a post a day with numerous pictures per post. sigh. i can only hope that i was prolific enough in my writing that i can figure out what pictures were there originally.

this reminds me a little bit of when i erased my memory card by mistake on my Peru trip and thought i had lost all of those pictures forever. only to realize that you don’t ever completely erase everything and you CAN recover erased images from a memory card. all it took was a camera shop and $60.

realistically no one really reads this blog, so wouldn’t i just be reloading images for my own sake? i have a hard copy photo album of Argentina and an electronic photo album (which you can link to from this site), do i really need to put in the effort to reload? i think i do, i can’t leave things partially complete, i just don’t work that way.

but hey, maybe this has all happen so i can get back in touch with my inner-blogging self……..probably not, but it was a thought.

it’s worse than usual isn’t it?  here it is four months into the new year and not one post.  i could chalk that up to the fact that i haven’t been anywhere since January 1, but really that hasn’t stopped me in the past from writing a little something about nothing.

the real issue is that i sold my house and bought a new one and i’ve been in the process of getting it all fixed up.  you might think that doesn’t have anything to do with travel, ah… but it does.

you see, my new property is in beautiful Sonoma County in the town of Sebastopol and there are two homes on one lot, and i’ve been fixing up the larger one to use as a vacation rental.

it’s walking distance into town, which means good food, wine tasting, galleries, live music and movies, all within 5 minutes from my doorstep. a short drive away you can visit wineries, the beach and a slew of little coastal towns.

i love it there and look forward to having more free time to poke around, as weekends have been filled with trips to Home Depot and a lot of housework.  i think this is going to be a fun summer.

my poor blog.  it really is neglected so often, and it’s not until i’m printing out an itinerary do i realize that i haven’t written anything in a long time.  a very, very, long time.

although i haven’t traveled much in the last few months, i have been a couple of places, one being my home away from home, Seattle.

i was there over Labor Day weekend for a work event, but i managed to get out a bit with friends, and as usual good times were had.

it had been quite awhile since i had been to the Pink Door, so i thought i’d go for dinner with a work colleague and as usual it didn’t disappoint. we enjoyed a rain-free evening on the outside deck and the meal was wonderful, from the cocktails to dessert, everything was scrumptious. and the service, awesome. i really do appreciate good customer service, it makes all the difference.  i also had the opportunity to eat at Matt’s in the Market and Dahlia, both were good, but not as good as the Pink Door.

normally i’d be going back to Seattle for Thanksgiving, but not this year.  i’m going to be out of the country the week before for work and i didn’t want to have two back to back trips, even if one would be for fun.

next on the horizon, visiting some friends in Melbourne, FL and then to NY.  stay tuned for more on that trip.

it is now the end of April and sadly i haven’t made a post since January.  it’s not that i don’t care, i do.  but life happens.  you get busy and you forget that somewhere out there there is a little electronic journal collecting cyber dust waiting for a little bit of new text.

there has been some travel since i wrote last, so at least i write with something to share.  in February i went to London for a few days for work.  as always with work trips, i managed to have a little non-work fun while there.  in addition to getting to spend time with some old friends, i went to the theater one night.

i caught show at the Harold Pinter Theater called Old Times with Kristen Scott Thomas and Rufus Sewell.  it was really good.  not uplifting by any means, but hey, it’s Pinter.

shortly after i returned from London i headed out to Austin for SXSW.  again this was a work trip, but i love Austin and being there for SXSW was fantastic.  unfortunately i had a horrible cold so i wasn’t able to enjoy much of the nightlife.

 i was able to recover at home for two weeks and then it was off to Boston for another work trip, this time to go to a show called PAX East.  again, i was able to combine work with pleasure and was able to see friends and a couple of sites while i was there.  i really like Boston, and always enjoy my time there.  my heart goes out to the city after the tragedy last week.

last weekend i was in Las Vegas with my friends from Colorado.  not a huge fan of Las Vegas but when you’re there for fun with friends you haven’t seen in awhile, it’s all good.

next week i’m off to Riviera Maya, Mexico.  i’ve only been to Puerto Vallarta and La Paz, so i’m excited to visit a new destination in Mexico.  i will do my best to post shortly after my trip, if not during.

until then………………….