Tag: Travel

preview: costa rica

September 20, 2010

friends of ours are getting married this december — some of the very same friends who shared this charming RFK moment with us many years back.

he’s costa rican, she’s from ohio.

i’m not exactly sure how long they debated about which hometown would hold the wedding, but i’m guessing it took about as long as us deciding to attend ourselves.

the wedding is in the Guanacaste region of northwest Costa Rica, and we’ll tack on some time before hand around the volcanos of Arenal.

and, sparklet’s getting a passport.

part of the reason we’re going is because sparklet will be at such a good age — 15 months, which is old enough to walk and old enough to be amazed by the animals and old enough to eat sand.

we’ve already filled out her passport paperwork (that’s the photo we used, above) and we’ve bought us some plane tickets (sparklet get’s her very own seat).

now, we just need places to stay, some way to get around, and some really big suitcases.
photos: bear rocks preserve, west virginia

September 16, 2010

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photos: bear rocks preserve, west virginia
photos: monongahela national forest, west virginia

September 16, 2010

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photos: monongahela national forest, west virginia
photos: stonewall jackson lake state park, west virginia

September 15, 2010

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photos: stonewall jackson lake state park, west virginia
photos: West Virginia Route 55

September 13, 2010

route 55 cuts through the Monongahela National Forest, taking people from Front Royal, Virginia in the east through to central West Virginia, near where my conference is being held.

the landscapes along the route are exotic — much more like rural Australia and much less like what i’d have expected being only a couple hundred miles from D.C..

See Slideshow of Photos on Flickr:
photos: West Virginia Route 55
travel: stonewall, west virginia

September 13, 2010

i’m off for a couple of days — work is having an internal marketing conference out in west virginia for a couple of days, which means i won’t be back until Thursday.

the conference is actually at resort that is part of a west virginia state park, and isn’t too too far from Monongahela National Forest.

i’ve looked over the conference materials and there is less than three hours built into the schedule for us to actually be out in nature — which is ironic considering who i work for — but i’m taking the “good” camera for the pretty stuff on the drive out and back.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
travel: stonewall resort, west virginia
“you didn’t tell me there were people back here…”

August 2, 2010

sparklet’s first word is officially “hi”.

she said it once last weekend, and the lady sparkler and i nearly jumped out of our skin. this weekend, however, she said it about half a dozen more times to pretty much anything that moved (and a lot of things that didn’t).

anyway, it now seems to be less like an verbal accident, and more like an actual word.

so, there you go.

(photo from the flight from manchester back to baltimore.)
fenway park

August 1, 2010

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fenway park, boston, ma
isle of shoals

July 30, 2010

we’re up in new england for a family reunion, and on day one we took a boat out to the isle of shoals — tiny rock islands about 9 miles off the coast of new hampshire and maine.

not only is it a place we’ve boated to as a family for as long as i can remember, but it turns out that we have ancestors who used to live on the islands back in the 1600s.

of course, there were only two families desperate enough to live on the isles those days, and they inbred like crazy, but that’s a sign of courage and persistence, right?

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isle of shoals
sunset in rye beach, nh

July 29, 2010