Friends, it's time to close out the Big Beautiful British Columbia trip. It's Friday afternoon, we've been here just over a week, and after the weekend we'll be going home. What could there possibly be left to see?
Answer: a beach binge!!! We're going to see things this weekend that will make everything that we've seen up to now on this trip look ugly in comparison. Weather wise, the temperature was the ideal "warm enough for shorts, not warm enough to break a sweat".
Picking up the Big British Columbia saga from last time, it's now Thursday morning. It's time for us to pack up and leave Vancouver behind for Victoria, which is the provincial capital. We're going to see how it stacks up to Vancouver and see if visiting Canadian provincial capitals in any way compares to visiting US state capitals.
The last time we talked, I had just left Bridal Veil Falls. After a drive through the most gorgeous mountains you have ever seen, I arrived in Kelowna and turned onto Boyhouse Street.
I am on a mission to spend at least one night in every state and to tour all of the State Capitol buildings. Now that I've been to 10 of the 50, it's time for the state flags post to move over. Let's do a round up and ranking!
One night when I was in San Francisco, the thought for a packing post popped up into my head, and I took pictures of my all my stuff. Afterwards, a voice in my head said "No one cares. You're not the first human to do a carry on only trip. There is better advice on the subject to be had elsewhere."
That's true, but a conversion with Julie changed my mind. At one point we talked about why we read blogs, and the consensus is that we both like hearing the really mundane details of other people's lives. I'm always looking for tips and tricks, which you may not get out of this post, but sometimes you have to write the kind of content that you want to see.
Let's go through my stuff!!!
Friends, the California trip has been such a great time, but we can't stay here for ever. Pretty soon we're going to have to wrap it up and go home. But not quite yet!
We still have two full days left on our trip, so there are a lot more adventures to be had. We left off our story on Sunday night, and now it's Monday morning. We're going to have a some epic werk drama, we're going to get all up in Golden Gate Park's business, and then we're going to spend another day hanging out with Julie. Let's get back to our adventures!
Let's pick it up from where we put it down last time. It's the weekend, smack in the middle of my California trip, and we're going on a deep dive of San Francisco. Our weekend journeys will take us to the wharf, prison (calm down, that just means we're doing a tour of Alcatraz), and then we'll find an unexpectedly apt way to tour the city. We're also going to see if I can figure out how to take a bus.
When we last talked, it was Thursday and I was on a train heading from Sacramento to San Francisco.
This is the story of what happened next. Lunch with a friend, a tour of the town, settling in to my new digs, some FLW, Muir Woods, technology drama, and a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. And that was just my first two days in SF!
Friends, it's time for me to tell you the story of my 10 day trip to California in May. We've got a lot to talk about!
Let's start with Sacramento. I went there to tour the Capitol and meet a friend, and came away with so much more. Let me take you to the Land of the Yellow Bridge.
Do you know what your state flag looks like?
Until a few years ago I did not, and honestly it took me a bit longer than that to figure out that each state had an official flag. The first time that I remember state flags being on my radar was this picture, which I snapped in Sandusky, Ohio back when I took The Goodtime I Island Hopping Cruise on Lake Erie. This is a port of entry between the US and Canada, so the US and Canada flags made sense, but I wondered what the other two flags were. The white flag is for the city of Sandusky, and the flag on the right is the Ohio state flag.
I make a point of visiting State Capitols when I can, and a few of the other state flags have features that have made me ponder. The idea for a post about state flags started brewing in my brain, and then this morning I clicked over to the Washington Post and was stunned to see this top story: Texas schools nix lesson over Virginia state flag’s exposed breast.
Say what? To save you the trouble of clicking on the gift link, the first sentence reads: "School officials in one part of the Lone Star State are no fans of the lone nipple on the Virginia state flag". Yes friends, Virginia's state flag depicts the goddess Virtus, and 100 hundred years ago someone thought that the lady looked like a dude so they lowered her neckline to clarify things. Since I have not yet been to Virginia's Capitol, I don't think it is fair for me to show the picture yet, but you can see it here. In any case, if state flags are making the news, it's time for me to start writing about them.
Since we last talked I've completed a slew of firsts for 2025: first trip, first blogger meetup, and first lighthouse visit. This is the story of how it all came to be.
If you've ever driven through West Virginia on I-77, you've seen the golden dome of the State Capitol as you've passed by Charleston. I've driven by it many times in my life, and now it was finally up next on my travel list.
A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads. In this week's edition I actually cooked something, I've got books, and there was a family getaway.
Content warning: the family getaway involved a stop at the Trump Tower in Chicago.
Friends, today we are going back to the beginning of my solo travels. How did I go from being someone who wasn't really into travel to someone who now drops everything to build a long weekend trip at the drop of a hat?
It started with lighthouses. Let's go back to the summer of 2022 and I'll take you with me on my first tentative steps outside the house.
Oh man oh man have I got a travel story for you. It's about winning the lottery, FLW, and lighthouses.
Don't get too excited about the lottery thing. It was for a slot on the 2024 tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Boynton House in Rochester, New York. This is a privately owned home that does tours once a year to benefit the Landmark Society. Due to popular demand, you can only buy a ticket if you win their lottery.
Rochester is four hours away, and I figured that I'd cut out of work a little early and get there on Friday night, tour the house and whatever else I could find on Saturday, and come home on Sunday. As soon as I saw what the offerings were in Rochester I adjusted my schedule to take a full day off on Friday.
In March of 2023 I had the pleasure of spending a weekend in Buffalo, NY, and it was on my list of places that I wouldn't mind going back to. My interest was renewed last month when Wayward went there.
In the meantime, I've been chatting with Kyria, who is currently biking her little heart out all around the US and Canada. She was in Ontario, and suggested a meetup somewhere in the vicinity of Ottawa, Toronto, or Buffalo. Getting to Ottawa or Toronto would have been tough with my work schedule, but Buffalo is just three hours away. However, I didn't want to drive three hours to say hi and drive back...I wanted to stay a few days to make the drive worth while and see more of Buffalo. That's how the blogger meetup went from being a few hours to a mini vacation for both of us. Good times were had, incredible food was eaten, and postcards were sent.
