Irish for a Year

March 23, 2018 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

I always got a kick out of those TV commercials for Ancestry’s DNA tests. I’d comment to Susie, “how can folks know so little about where their families came from?” I can understand for those who were adopted, or who grew up without one of their parents in the picture, but was always shocked by how little some folks knew or how wrong what they thought they knew was…like the guy who thought he was German, but turned out to be Scottish.

I mean, I had a very clear idea what my background was. My Mom was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, as were her Mom and Dad. My Dad was born in New York City with a 1st generation Italian/American mother, and a father who had come over from the Naples region of Italy as a young man. It was very clear in my mind that I was 50% Italian and 50% Scottish, end discussion.

Then for Christmas of 2016, Krissi, Kenny, Mike and Chris gave Susie and I Ancestry DNA kits. While like me, Susie was pretty sure of her ancestry, we loved the gift, and were excited to do the test, and see if there were any hidden secrets in our DNA. Early in January, we spit into the tubes, packed them up in their mailing cases, and sent them off. Very soon we got an email that they had received the kits, and that we could expect our results in 4 to 6 weeks. About 2 weeks later, we received another email stating that due to the high volume of kits received by them post holiday, figure more like 6 to 8 weeks until results would be available. Okay, so we’d wait.

March 27th, 2017 I got an email that my results were ready. I signed into the Ancestry site, and hit the DNA tab. This is what I found…

Okay, so Italy/Greece 27%, that tracks, but 25% Ireland? WTF??? Where did that come from?? IRELAND??? Well, I guess what I thought I knew, was not exactly the truth. Oh My God, I was one of those people in the TV Commercials!

I shared the information with my first cousin Jeanne. Jeanne is my Mom’s younger brother Bill’s daughter, who along with her husband Walt, is very involved in Genealogy. Walt can trace family back to the early colonial days of America, and they’ve done extensive searches through historical archives and cemeteries. In fact, a couple of years ago, they traveled to Scotland, and spent several weeks tracking our shared family. Frankly, she was stumped. She’d never found any evidence of an Irish connection on the Scottish side of the family. Could it be from the Italian side of my heritage? I pretty much figured that’s where a lot of the other listed ethnicities came from, but Irish?

Oh well, as the song goes, Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

So, Irish, huh? I have to be honest with you, although I have celebrated a time or two, and even did several parade remotes during my 40 years at ABC, I have never been a huge fan of St. Patrick’s Day. Always just seemed to me to be a day for drunks of all kinds and shapes to bother the rest of us. I remember driving to the ABC Building on 6th Avenue on a Saturday St. Patty’s Day a long time ago, and seeing drunks puking at the curb in front of every Irish Bar. I remember the already drunk celebrators on the 7:23 AM Long Island Rail Road train to Penn Station on weekday St. Patty’s Days, and I remember the folks who never seemed to leave Penn Station, who just hung around and drank all day. Oh, and I definitely remember the loud, obnoxious drunks of all ages, who would accompany me home on the 3:27 PM out of Penn every St. Patty’s Day! Then there was the year that St. Patty’s Day was on a Friday, and Susie and I were driving through the city, heading to Ocean City. She never really believed my stories of what happened in Manhattan every St. Patty’s Day, till we were driving down a block of 35th Street that contains several Irish bars, and in front of one, there was a very nicely dressed young lady, puking into the gutter while her two friends held her hair out of the way! No, not a huge fan of the way some folks celebrate the holiday, but to be honest, most weren’t even Irish!

But then there were years that we had a great time…like the year we were down in Walt Disney World with our friends Pat and Steve Grosskopf, and we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by drinking our way around the world at EPCOT. Or the many years, our St. Patty’s Day celebration was corned beef and swiss cheese sandwiches with cole slaw (the cabbage), in our own home. Much nicer IMHO.

But this year was going to be different. This year I WAS IRISH! I had almost a year to contemplate this situation and to come to terms with my new knowledge. Would I have to learn to like Guinness? Would I be switching from vodka and rum to Irish Whiskey? Would I have a green outfit, that I wore just one day a year? All interesting questions as March 17th, 2018 approached. Frankly, after 67 years of figuring that my closest connection to the Irish, was that I was half Scottish and both the Irish and the Scottish liked bag pipes and wore kilts, what was my first St. Patty’s Day going to be as an Irishman??

Well, I’ll never know. For some reason, on the morning of March 17th, 2018, I clicked on the Ancestry Dot Com app on my iPad, and then clicked on the DNA tab, and the following came up.

What the hell? Suddenly, after almost a year of being Irish, now it was totally wiped out?? Huh???

This is what Ancestry’s out was:

“Latest Update as of March, 2018. Your DNA never changes, but the science we use to analyze it does. We’re always collecting more data, and science is constantly improving, so your estimate may change over time.”

So that was that. My almost year of being Irish was over in the blink of an eye. No green beer or green bagels (thank God), no need to wear the blinking green tie I’d bought.

No drunken escapes as we chased a good time from bar to bar. We had a wonderful Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner, while Susie and I continued to drink Tito’s vodka and not Jameson.

All I can say is that the new DNA ethnicity report still contained my 1% European Jew, meaning I still have a legitimate right, to demand my Matzo fix every Passover!

That’s a Wrap!

March 12, 2018 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

So that’s it. Our visit to the Summer of 2018, from the Winter of 2018 is over, and we are back in Ocean City, waiting for the Summer of 2018 to get up north. If you’ve been along with us for the ride, I think you already know that it was a great trip, but on Sunday, as we were traveling up I-95, Susie and I already started our discussion about the trip. What was the best thing we did, the best meal we had, something that we learned we didn’t know, where would we like to go again, etc. We always do this after a trip, as a sort of wrap-up review, so that we can apply any lessons we’ve learned to our next trip. So, for your edification, and for our records, here’s a look back at our 3 plus weeks on the road to Florida.

First, the nuts and bolts of the trip. I re-set one of the Sonata’s trip odometers as we went 202300EF-53A2-4509-B4A2-1CD2DE5B8AAF across the 9th Street Bridge on the morning of Friday, February 9th. When we once again drove across the 9th Street bridge, the evening of Sunday, March 4th, that odometer read 3,241.6 miles. We were on the road 24 days, stayed in 9 hotels (plus 4 nights at my cousin’s house in Barefoot Bay, Florida), with our longest stop being our 5 days at Disney’s Boardwalk. This trip there were many more multiple days in the same hotel. We didn’t eat as many “free” breakfasts in hotels this trip as we have in the past, but we ate some very good meals out, and only made a couple of questionable choices.

This is the 4th longish road trip we’ve made in the Sonata, and once again, she proved to be a great traveling companion. While gas prices seem to be up a little more than they were when we made a trip to Florida last year, with this kind of mileage, that hasn’t been an issue! 30+ mpg is not unusual, and most times that’s going 70+ on the interstates. This picture was taken Sunday after we arrived in Ocean City.

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Now that we’ve gotten the numbers out of the way, lets talk about the more subjective parts of our trip…the things we liked and those that we didn’t.

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Best Hotel – This was an easy choice for us…Disney’s Boardwalk, where we had our own cottage and access to the Innkeepers Club! We’d also have to call this the winner of the Best Hotel View, as we looked out on our English Garden, and the Quiet Pool beyond our gate. We also have to list as the Best Surprise of our vacation. The room was great, the entire stay was perfect!

Worst Hotel – The Quality Inn in Darien Georgia. The funny thing is that on our second night out, we also stayed here, but it was on our return trip that we really found it to be a dump! We’d stayed in this same hotel a couple of years ago, but at that time it was a Comfort Inn.

Best Attraction – We both came up with the airboat ride we took with Jeanne and Walt, when we visited them in Barefoot Bay. It was a small airboat, we each had wireless headphones, and our guide was full of wonderful information…and he was from New Jersey!

Worst Attraction – Hands down, Weeki Wachee. Nothing like we remembered it from a long time ago. To us, a waste of an afternoon.

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Funniest Place – Have you ever been to someplace, that you would only stop at, because you were taken there? That’s how Susie and I got to Yee Haw Junction (formerly called Jackass Crossing) and had a nice lunch in the Desert Inn Bar and Restaurant…a place we would have driven right by had Jeanne not been driving!

Best Meal – There was absolutely no doubt in Susie’s mind, and almost as soon as it was put down in front of her, she said that the Ahi Tuna she had a One Duval in the Pier House Hotel in Key West was the BEST MEAL she’d EVER had! As runner up, we’d have to list the great Italian meal we had on Carnavale at Villa Galace, in Indian Rocks Beach.

Worst Meal – We got to Florida City, late on a Friday. The hotels were full, the town was crowded, and we settled for Taco Bell.

Best Waiter/Waitress – We have a tie in this category, between the waiter we had at Villa Galace in Indian Rocks (who was also their sous chef, and perfectly described every dish on the menu) and Linda, our waitress at One Duval, who made us feel like we were the only people dining there that night! A great server can make a good meal into a great meal, and that’s exactly what these two people did!

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Worst Waiter – Another tie here, and we have to say that in all the meals we ate out, these were the only two restaurant people we saw who weren’t hustling, and doing their best to serve their customers. The first was our waiter on our second visit to the Islamorada Fish Company in the Keys, who had no idea how to multi-task, and who therefore, took forever to get anything to you. The second was a waiter we had when we stopped for lunch one day at Duffy’s in Fort Lauderdale, who mumbled, wouldn’t look at us, told us his name 3 times, and again took forever to do anything.

Best Bar – Although we stopped at several that we liked a lot, we have to give the title to the Tiki Bar at the Double Tree Resort in Hollywood Beach, due to the beautiful setting. Located between the gorgeous pool and the Intracoastal Waterway, we spent two nice evenings here.

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Best Bartender – We have to give this title to our friend Lindsey, from Jimmy Guanas at the Holiday Inn in Indian Rocks Beach. She made great drinks, we loved the conversations we had, and her bubbly personality. She made our stay! We hope to see her in the future.

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Best Drinks – How can we call Lindsey the Best Bartender we had, without also mentioning that Jimmy Guanas was the site of the best drinks we had on the trip. They have an extensive drink menu, and we loved everything we asked Lindsey to make us. While we are on the subject, we also have to give Jimmy Guanas the nod for Best Bar Food that we had on the trip.

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Most Relaxing Day – We have several ties for this category. We loved the pool days at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn Quiet Pool, but also the relaxing days we spent with our cousins Jeanne and Walt in Barefoot Bay. We also had the Best Breakfast of the trip courtesy of Jeanne, who made Biscuits with Sausage Gravy! We cleaned our plates!!! And…she gave us her recipe!!!

The Most Tiring Day – That would have to be the day we walked all over Disney’s Magic Kingdom, putting our Fitbits into shock as we gathered over 12,000 steps!

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Our Worst Travel Day – No, it wasn’t our first two, nor our last two, when we covered 400 miles a day on I-95, it was the day we drove from Indian Rocks Beach on the West Coast, to Florida City on the East Coast. We detoured to Sanibel Island, where there was incredible traffic, and then crossed the state on the Tamiami Trail, which hasn’t changed much in probably 40 years. Compounded by extensive construction between the Tamiami Trail and Florida City, which we ended up doing in the dark. Now you know why we had dinner at Taco Bell!!

Worst Weather Day – We were blessed with incredible weather but for one day. Our one full day in Key West, started with questionable weather and lots of drizzle. When we thought the weather had passed through, we took the Conch Train tour of the town, and it poured, causing Susie to attempt to stay somewhat dry, by holding a small umbrella in front of her. It didn’t work. However, that evening we enjoyed a beautiful sunset during dinner as we ate outside at One Duval, so all ended well.

Biggest Surprise – As we pulled up to Valet Parking at the Doubletree in Hollywood Beach, somebody pulling in behind us noticed the Sonata’s license plate and started talking to us. Turns out he lives just up the road from us in Ventnor! We thought that was going to be our best “small world” moment on the trip, till our second day at the Quiet Pool at the Boardwalk Inn. Susie was talking about the recent nor’easter storm, and two ladies sitting next to us overheard us and started asking questions. Turns out that they were Roz and Nancy, who own Sun Rose books on Asbury Avenue, in Ocean City. Talk about a small world!!

Best Find – Hands down, the town of Indian Rocks Beach! Located on a barrier island off the Gulf Coast, south of Clearwater, Indian Rocks still has a small beach community feel, with just a two lane road and lots of atmosphere! We loved it so much that we rearranged our schedule to stay longer, and we are looking into returning for an extended period next winter.

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Mistakes we Made – Looking back, we think the biggest mistake we made was trying to relive our memories. Into this camp we’d have to place our visit to Weeki Wachie, Susie trying to find where her Grandparents used to live in Pinellas Park, and me trying to find places in First Lauderdale that I remembered from visits with my best friend David. Memories are just that, which we both found when we tried to compare the Magic Kingdom we both remember from the early 70s, with today’s reality. Things change….

Best Decisions – #1..we went on this trip! To leave the winter of 2018, for a preview of the summer of 2018 was a great decision. To spend 3 weeks eating outside, to be wearing shorts and capris, and to have our toes exposed to the sun was nothing short of wonderful! This is retirement, and if we can, it is something we will try to do every winter, because winter sucks! #2 on our list was making a couple of changes to our itinerary, allowing us to stay longer in a place we loved (Indian Rocks Beach) and return home a couple of days earlier. #3 would have to be everything else we did…from meal choices, to most of our hotels, to places we went and things we did, we had a great time. Frankly, I think we’d both be fine with repeating the entire thing over again, because there were only a few negatives, and even those weren’t earth shattering. In short, we think WE DID GOOD!

There you have it…a look back at our wonderful visit to Florida, during the winter of 2018!

Restaurants

February 24, 2018 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

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In the 16 days, since Susie and I drove over the 9th Street Bridge and left Ocean City on Friday, February 9th, we have eaten just about every day in at least one restaurant. This is a huge change for us, as we are folks who usually eat out maybe once or twice a week, at home. We’ve eaten in restaurants ranging from our first night in a Cracker Barrel in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, to an Italian Restaurant in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, to Susie’s self described, “Best Meal Ever” at One Duval at the Pier House in Key West, Florida.

Today, in fact, we had lunch at a recently reopened restaurant along the Indian River, that had been one of Jeanne and Walt’s favorites. They told us tales, of many wonderful evenings when they’d sit at the bar at Captain Butchers, have a couple of drinks on the side of the Indian River, and then enjoy a delightful light supper at the bar. They said that suddenly, without any warning, a couple of years ago, it just closed. Jeanne has been chasing their Onion Rings since then, and yesterday when we were driving back from the airboats, we drove by and they were pleasantly surprised to find that the restaurant was open again! This morning, Walt suggested that if we were willing to be co-guinea pigs, we should all go for lunch! Sounded like a good idea to us, so off we went!

We sat outside in the sun, on the patio, along the river, on a beautiful Saturday……and our judgement? Well, I’d describe it as “a work in progress”, with a staff that was more “earning while learning” than seasoned professionals. First off, no Onion Rings for Jeanne, and no Shrimp Cocktail for Walt. Our waitress was kind of unsure of herself and the menu, the bar wasn’t fully stocked, and they were rather unsure about how to make the drinks from their own specialty drink menu. The food however, was very good, and they seemed more than willing to take suggestions, which we all thought was a good thing. We will wait to hear future opinions from Jeanne and Walt, as time goes on, and be pulling for their success!

This brings up something that we’ve noticed in virtually every restaurant we’ve visited, that people working in restaurants hustle! . From the waiter we had at Villa Gallace in Indian River, who was a sous chef in addition to being our waiter, to our new friend bartender Lindsey at Jimmy Guana’s, who one night when we were there, bartended as well as waited tables because they were short staffed, to the single lady at the Yee Haw Junction restaurant yesterday, who ran the whole restaurant, waiting tables, bartending, and playing cashier, most who work in restaurants, work their asses off. Covering 4 or 5 tables, bringing drinks to one table, bread to another, meals to a third, and tempting a forth table with desert selections, is all part of a normal day for them!

With 2 exceptions, we have had excellent service all across our trip….at cheap fish houses, at 5 star dining locations, at Tiki Bars along the Intracoastal Waterway, and everywhere in between. The two waiters we had that were not up to snuff, both had the same issue…they couldn’t multi task! It seems to us that being able to multi task if you work in the restaurant is almost as big a requirement as being able to breathe!

Susie and I both like Service People. We respect what they do, how hard they work, and wonder how they have the patience to deal with some of the yahoo paying customers. When you dine with a good server, you know it, and you appreciate all they bring to your enjoyment! Bravo to all those that we have had the pleasure to dine with these past two plus weeks. Thank you for enhancing our experience, for your insight on menu selections, and for your friendship! You have made even great meals a little bit better, and we hope you know how much we appreciated that!

The Road Less Traveled

June 18, 2017 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 5 Comments

This morning, a little before 9AM, we left our house in Ocean City, heading to Raleigh, North Carolina, and Father’s Day with our Son Billy, his wife Lori, and our two Grandchildren, Layla and Henry. Having made this trip once before, for Layla’s birthday in April, we weren’t sure what kind of traffic we’d find on a Summer Saturday morning along Southbound I-95. Everything was going fine, until we crossed into Maryland, and approached Baltimore. Suddenly the GPS told us that there was “Severe Traffic Ahead”, and routed us off I-95. Figuring we were just going around Baltimore, we weren’t concerned, until the GPS said to follow US Route 301 for 99 miles to Interstate 95!

At first we were pissed that the GPS had routed us on this very congested road, surrounded by malls, fast food venues, and traffic lights….lots of traffic lights! But then we got into less congested areas, and the road took on a kind of Route 66 existence.

FullSizeRender Old motels from the 50s, and local restaurants replaced the fast food joints and Hampton Inns. The road was rural, with only a light every once in a while, and we were taken back to what the east coast was like before Interstate 95. Reminded me of road trips I’d made to Miami Beach with my folks, before the interstate existed. Heck, we even saw several restaurants that had obviously been Howard Johnson’s back in the day. All in all, not a bad way to spend some time on the road, especially if I-95 was crawling along, bumper to bumper!

Before we were re-routed by the GPS, we’d seen something we’d never seen before. A tractor without a trailer, pulling a car, like you’d see a motor home doing. I mention this, because after the almost 100 miles on 301, when we were about to join I-95 again, there was the exact same vehicle coming off I-95, meaning that they’d taken the same amount of time to traverse this section on I-95, as we’d taken on 301! Only thing was, we’d stopped for lunch, and hit the bathroom too, so we had scenery, lunch, a bathroom break, and done it in the same time! Thanks Ginger Peach (our GPS’ given name…by us)!

Day Nineteen

September 9, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

The end of our 19th day on the road, finds us in a gorgeous new Comfort Suites hotel, with a beautiful king bed suite on the second floor, in Kanab, Utah. Today was not a heavy mileage day, as we only drove 157 miles, and checked in a little after 3 PM.

We knew we didn’t have a lot of driving to do, so we had kind of a lazy morning, and also did some tasks we’ve been meaning to do for a couple of days. After breakfast at the hotel at about 9 AM, we started to reorganize and clean out the back seat of the car. After all this time on the road, we had garbage that we needed to get rid of. Susie also repacked the food in a smaller bag, and because of the way our days have turned out, and the fact that we are eating breakfast most days at the hotel, she threw out a box of Cheerios and paper bowls we left home with. We had honestly figured we were going to eat cereal and milk in our room, and then lunch in the car, but the hotel breakfasts have turned out to be so good, and included in our room rate, that those plans have changed.

One thing we have noticed about the “free breakfasts” is that an awful lot of people are pigs! My God, some of their plates look like they are in a Vegas Buffet, rather than a Comfort Inn! One day last weekend, we were in the breakfast room, and were unlucky enough to be behind this couple. When they got to the eggs and sausage, they both filled their plates and Susie and I found the cupboard was empty when we got there! On the way out, we passed their table, and they had 4 or 5 plates full of food with everything from eggs to sausage to toast to waffles, not to mention the cups of juice and coffee! Not going to eat lunch? These two were not eating for the rest of the day!!! A lot of selfish human beings in the world, but then I’m sure you all knew that already!

Another area that has been effected by those changed plans, is our cooler. If you remember, last week in Rock Springs, Wyoming we downsized our cooler at a Walmart and then donated our old cooler to the Rock Springs Fire Department. We were obviously still thinking back to road trips from long ago, and having lunches in the car. Well, because of the hotel breakfasts, we rarely eat lunch, so that almost never happens. Frankly, yesterday we had to throw out the remaining items we had in the cooler, because they were 2+ weeks old. After doing that, we seriously looked at the notion of food in the car and the cooler. The fact is that we just don’t need the items we have to keep on ice. Buying ice every day or 2 is a pain, and all we were doing was preserving something that we’re really not using. So, the cooler is now on the back seat floor, all our water is in it, and if we get to keep it cool, fine, but if we don’t also fine! We’ve still got cheese sandwich crackers, some Goobers peanut butter and jelly, and Ritz crackers…we won’t starve! Compared to buying ice all the time, if we have to have a hamburger at Mickey D’s every once in a while, we are still ahead of the game. We still have our little zipper soft sided cooler we take into the hotel every night, but since most rooms we’ve had have refrigerators, the contents gets unpacked every day, and kept cool. We will probably shop for a better soft sided cooler in the future, and as long as it’s big enough to fit a bottle of rum and vodka, we will be happy!

Once we got the car back together, we headed back to the room for a few minutes before heading out. Rather than get right on the road, we headed across the street to the self service car wash. Nothing gets the bugs off the windshield and the front end of the car like the power wand at these car washes, and we have availed ourselves at several along the way in the last couple of weeks! A couple of minutes and $3.25, and we have a clean car again! Nothing dries a car as well as going 80 MPH on an Interstate, so off we went on Interstate 70.

As we had all the time in the world today, Susie found something in one of the guide books that she wanted to stop at. It was called Fremont Indian State Park and Museum. It cost us all of $6 to go in, and we saw a very nice movie and got to wander through a very well put together museum. The museum and the park are dedicated to a group of Native American’s who lived in the area by the Fremont River from about 300 AD to 1300 AD. A lot of the material about them had been discovered in the 80s when they were building Interstate 70, which is right out front of the park. All they know about these people is what they have found in the area. They don’t know where they came from, or why after a 1000 years of residence in the area, they left. It was another interesting little stop along the way.

We were the only ones in the place, besides the older gentleman working the counter. On the way out, we told him we were going to drive route 89 to Kanab, and he said, “If I drove 89 every day from here to the state line and back, I’d be a happy person.” So, that’s what we did! The road goes between mountains, so there are a lot of turns, but the scenery is beautiful. We will backtrack a bit tomorrow on this road heading to Bryce Canyon National Park, but we really don’t mind.

These next two days before we head to Vegas are kind of relaxing days. This is just the 3rd time on our trip that we have spent 2 nights in one hotel, and Susie already has done laundry, and is now reorganizing suitcases for Vegas. We both realize that we took too many clothes, as we have worn things more than once, and today is the 3rd day that laundry has been done. We found it hard to plan for 2 months on the road, especially since two weeks of that time will be a Caribbean Cruise, where we will obviously need different clothes than we’re wearing on the road and in National Parks! Not sure yet. but we may even send a suitcase home!

Susie commented today as we headed down 89, that we had great timing on this trip. First, with the exception of one full day of rain in Pennsylvania, and a couple of showers last week in Colorado, we have had perfect weather. The days have been warm, but with 20-30 percent humidity, it doesn’t feel like July in Florida! Also, as most kids are back at school, the folks traveling have been our age, and the crowds are less.

Another thing to share with you, as today is a little light on National Parks, cog railways, or incredible sights, is our National Parks soundtrack. A number of years ago, at Red Rock Canyon National Park, just outside of Vegas, we bought a beautiful Native American flute CD, that we always took to Vegas with us. The haunting melodies just seemed to go with the other worldly sights we were seeing in Red Rock. It wasn’t until we were at Badlands National Park, our first park of the trip, that Susie realized we’d left it or something like it home. In the gift store she found a CD called National Parks Soundscapes, and it has been our sound track of every National Park or National Monument we’ve visited. Jimmy Buffett and Sirius/XM’s Margarita Radio is our #1 audio companion on the road, but once we hit the entrance gates, the satellite goes off, and the CD starts playing. Just sets the right mood for us!

Dinner tonight was at another local place…Houston’s Trail’s End Restaurant. Nothing fancy, just a local place, full of local people, with good food. It’s been in business for 32 years, so it must be doing something right!

Hope you have a good night…we plan on a drink and some TV!

Nightie night!

Our Big Adventure, Day One

August 22, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 6 Comments

So, the end of day one on the road finds us in the Econo Lodge in Streetsboro, Ohio! We left the house in Mineola at 8:20 this morning, made a stop in Astoria to drop off our daughter Krissi (she came on Friday night to spend the last weekend with us), and then it was over the Triboro Bridge (or the RFK if you choose to use it’s new name), up the Major Deegan Expressway to the George Washington Bridge, and onto Interstate 80, where we spent the entire day. We drove up to the hotel at about 5:10, so not a bad day of driving at all. We went from New York, to New Jersey, to Pennsylvania, and now Ohio. Four states in day one and we drove a total of 451 miles and are are still on our first tank of gas!

The weather was sunny when we left Long Island this morning, and there were occasional sprinkles all through New Jersey, but when we got to Pennsylvania, boy did it start raining! We stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom, and took a shower at the same time. I felt bad because Susie was driving through a lot of it, and on a couple of occasions, it was almost like a switch was flipped as we went from showers to torrential rain in the blink of an eye! Not fun to drive through! Then we came upon an accident in one of the more mountainous regions of Pennsylvania. Some yahoo in a pickup truck was sideways off the road (I say yahoo, because rain or shine, we see folks driving like they are late for their wedding and not giving a damn about safety). There were Police and a wrecker already there, but as we were 3 cars from the accident, they stopped all traffic so that the wrecker could pull the truck back on the road. We sat there for better than 15 minutes…in the rain…such fun!

Some highlights of today…First breakfast. We chose to stop at a place we have eaten at more times than we can count, the Landmark Diner just off exit 309 of I-80 in Pennsylvania. This place has a lot of history in our family, and in Susie’s family before there was an us. For years and years, Sue’s Mom and Dad would spend a week at a golf resort in Marshall’s Creek, PA called Mountain Manor. Over the years, they made good friends who also vacationed there during the same week and who lived near them on Long Island. The Landmark Diner was about 2 hours from Long Island, and they would all rendezvous there on the morning they checked in, and have breakfast. Year after year, more folks would join in the group, and eventually we were part of the group who would have breakfast at the Landmark. The summer of 1983, we took a very young Billy there and Frank’s folks even joined the group! When Kenny and Krissi joined our family, we would still head up to that area and always stop there, Turn the clock ahead a few years to when Billy was going to Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. We discovered the best way to get there was to head out Route 80 to Pennsylvania and then go north back into New York State, and yes, then too we would pull off 80 as soon as we crossed the Delaware Water Gap Bridge and have breakfast. Susie thinks that the last time we were there was about 4 or 5 years ago, and we were thrilled to find this morning that it was just as good as we remember! Susie had Creamed Chipped Beef over toast (probably the last time we see that on a menu) and I had a Pulled Pork Omelette! Oh, and don’t forget the home fries….they are still wonderful! The restaurant is a little bigger, the counter is gone (where you could watch them cook the food) and the bathrooms are no longer behind the building, but enough is the same to still make it a special stop off!

Then we were back onto Interstate 80 West heading towards our adventure! At mile marker 111(FYI..at the NJ/Penn border on 80 you are at mile marker 310 and at the Penn/Ohio border you are at mile marker 0) we came across an interesting sign. It said, “You are now at the highest point on Route 80 east of the Mississippi – Elevation 2,250 Feet”. Impressive for Pennsylvania, but not where we are going. Forget the Rocky Mountains or even Pikes Peak, when we are at Mount Rushmore this Friday we will be at 4000 + feet already! Start storing oxygen now!!

So dinner tonight was at Ruby Tuesdays, a place we haven’t been to for years. Even though there is one less than 2 miles from our house in Mineola, we traveled 450+ miles for their salad bar tonight! Then we filled the car up with gas (Sheetz Gas…I kid you not) at $1.95 a gallon, headed back to the hotel and are relaxing with some vodka on the rocks (in our travel plastic cups!)! Tomorrow we hope to cover just under 500 miles and stop near Janesville, Wisconsin…a place we’ve visited before when Kenny was performing at the Armory Theater there.

Oh, The Big Adventure tip of the day has to do with an App that my cousins, Jeanne and Walt Pratt shared with us called iExit. It cost me 99 cents at the iTunes store, and Jeanne and Walt said it was useful finding what kinds of food, gas, hotels, etc. are at every exit on the interstates. In addition, it gives you the latest prices for gas at the various stations so you always know what you are getting into. When we started trying it out today, Susie started talking about a little hand held digital gadget we had way back in the 90s. After you told it what road you were on, what mile marker you were near, and what direction you were heading, it would tell you how close the next rest stop was and what services they had there. She said it’s too bad they don’t make an App for that. Well, I hit a couple of buttons on iExit and discovered it will also search for rest areas! It was perfect, and we made use of it several times today looking for places to switch drivers. Thanks Jeanne and Walt…welcome along!

On the Road Again…….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvwojnLeMH4

The Number One Question We Get Asked

August 11, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

We honestly thought that the next time you heard from us, we’d probably be on the road, or just about to start our Big Adventure, but because we keep getting asked the same question over and over again, we thought it might be worth exploring the question, our answer, and our reasoning. For as long as we have been contemplating and talking about this trip, almost every time it comes up in conversation, we get asked this question. In fact, just yesterday, at a lunch with some former workmates Sue was asked it, while at almost exactly the same time, Frank was asked it by our Dentist. Invariably, as we are talking about our route and some of the stops we’re making, someone pipes up and says, “So are you renting a Motorhome for the trip?” Our answer is always the same, “Nope…we’re going in our 2013 Hyundai Sonata Limited and staying in hotels.” Sometimes you see a little disappointment at our answer, because I guess this is the kind of trip many see doing in a Motorhome, but for us, it’s just not what we’re looking to do, and here’s why.

PRICE

Here’s the first downer for using a Motorhome, unless you already own one, the cost of rental. They are not cheap vehicles to rent! From research we’ve done, it looks like a smaller Motorhome, that would be perfect for 2 people rents for around $100 a day. Then, there is a fee of 35 cents per mile driven, plus it gets about 9 miles to a gallon of gas. On the other hand, our 2013 Sonata with 47,000 miles on it is fully paid for. Any service costs that we’d have to pay in preparation or during the course of our trip would be normal wear and tear items that we’d already have to pay for, and it will get close to 35 MPG on the highway all day. “But you’ll save the cost of hotels in the Motorhome”, you might say. Well, lets take a day out of our trip and compare the costs of the two styles of travel, and you decide.

For argument sake, lets take a day when we travel 300 miles and as a stop, let’s talk about our visit to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

Motorhome

Daily Rental………………………………$100
Mileage Fee………………………………$105 (35 cents X 300 miles)
Cost of Gas……………………………….$ 75 (300 miles @ 9 MPG X $2.25 a gallon)
Campground………………………………$ 63 (KOA Hill City, SD)

Motorhome Total……………………………..$343

Sonata

Daily Rental……………………….$000
Mileage Fee……………………….$000
Cost of Gas………………………..$ 22.50 (300 miles @ 30 MPG X $2.25 a gallon)
Hotel……………………………………$ 86.51 (Econolodge, Keystone, SD)

Sonata Total…………………………….$109.01

Some might try and throw in the expense of food, but as we already travel with our cooler and supplies for breakfast and lunch, the only meal you might be able to argue about would be dinner, and we’d bet the difference there would not be enough to tip the balance towards renting a Motorhome. Add in the fact that our current plan is to be on the road at the very least 2 months, and to cover upwards of 6,000 miles, and you can see just how much the Motorhome would cost us in terms of daily rental, mileage charge, and gas! Score one for the car!

CONVENIENCE

Ever notice that when you see a Motorhome driving down the highway, if it’s an owned Motorhome and not a rental, it’s almost always towing a car or some motor bikes on a trailer? That’s because if they didn’t have this other form of transportation along for the ride, every time you’d go anywhere, you’d have to take your home with you! Think about it. You stop for the night at that KOA Camp Ground near Mt. Rushmore we used in the price example. We’re staying two nights in the area because there’s a lot to see, so let’s assume we’re doing the same renting a Motorhome. That first night you pull in, get the unit level, hook up the electric service, the water, the cable TV, and you settle in for the night. The next morning you’re off to Mt. Rushmore and what do you have to do? Yep, unhook the water, electric, cable TV, put away anything and everything you took out of it’s storage the night before, and like the turtle, head off to Mt. Rushmore with your house on your back. Then you get to Mt. Rushmore, and you’re not looking to park a car, but a Motorhome. Everything we’ve read, parking for a Motorhome at a lot of these sites is limited, and in many instances far away. We’ve also read that in places like Yellowstone National Park, it’s even a bigger pain to try touring in a Motorhome. But say you do have a successful day touring around the Mt. Rushmore area with your rented Motorhome. When you are done for the day, do you get to open the door of your hotel room and flop on the bed? Nope, you have to start the hookup procedure all over! And what about any cities that may be on your itinerary? How convenient do you think it’s going to be going around Denver or Salt Lake, or even Las Vegas in a Motorhome? All reasons that we think the car wins again.

LOCATION

You know the old Real Estate adage, Location, Location, Location. Well, when you are talking about campgrounds where you can spend the night in a rented Motorhome, it also comes into play. Campgrounds need lots of space, and because of that, are often farther afield from tourist destinations than hotels. In the Mt. Rushmore example we used earlier, the hotel we have reservations for is a mere 8 minutes from Mt. Rushmore, while that KOA we used as an example is 30 minutes away. The more populated the area, the bigger that time difference. You can stay in a hotel in Denver or Salt Lake, but a campground will probably be well outside the area that you wish to see, which will mean added travel time, and then the nightmare of trying to park the Motorhome! Some may disagree, but for us, another win for the car!

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Back when the kids were young, we owned a succession of pop-up campers. For about 6 or 7 years, we towed the pop-up behind our van. Many times, it was to return to a known campground where we went every summer, but there were also sightseeing trips that we went on. One year, it was up to Mystic, Connecticut, another year a 10 day journey through New York State and into Canada. On those sightseeing trips, most days we stayed one night in a location, so each afternoon it was set up the camper, and the next morning it was pack it up. Different campgrounds every day, setting up and knocking down daily, dealing with dirt and campground bathrooms, finding parking at tourist sights for our van/camper combo, driving down the road with a vehicle that was more affected by wind and the force of passing tractor trailers than a car….we’ve been there, and done that. It was great back when we did it, and it may be great for many people today too, but it’s just not what we want on this trip. Once again, for us, and based on past experience, the car wins out!

So, no, we’re not renting a Motorhome for our Big Adventure. We will be driving our Sonata, staying in a succession of national chain hotels, and National Park hotels, and enjoying clean sheets and good air-conditioning (or heat) every night! Nothing against Motorhomes and if your own one, we’re sure that they are a great way to travel, but it’s not just for us! The trip itself is going to be a Big Adventure enough for us, without adding the cost and inconvenience of a rented Motorhome. We’re just not prepared for that Big an Adventure!

Hope that answered your question.

Our “Big Trip”

March 22, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

Our recent sojourn down to Florida was, if you will, just an appetizer to our retirement road trip; what we call “Our Big Trip.” We’ve been talking about this for years, and actually figuring dates out once the decision was made that I was going to retire at the end of this past January. The time line in our minds was to leave sometime mid August, and to return, at the very latest, in time for Thanksgiving. Our plan was to drive west, seeing some of the great sights this country has, and to check them off our bucket list. This would be a Bucket List trip for us.

We started by collecting AAA Tour Books for most of the states. We also have added a couple of books with listing of things you absolutely must see across the United States. Some are wacky, like the World’s Largest Ball of String, but many are just not to be missed attractions. Susie has been going through the books taking notes, and the last two days we have both been working diligently on the tour books, and putting together a list of MUSTS for the trip. We also figured that places like Chicago or Detroit were close enough to the East Coast to be other shorter trips, and our intention is to concentrate on more of the Western United States. We figured to head west on a northern route, and return east on a more southern route, hopefully keeping summer weather with us for most of the journey. The first “must” we planned on hitting was Mount Rushmore, to satisfy Frank’s long desire to see it in person (too many viewings of North by Northwest).

While our plan is to basically wander in the general direction of the west coast, we understand that to stay in some places that are on the “Must List” of ours, we were going to need reservations. Three of those places are Yellowstone National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Monument Valley. We’ve read online that reservations at these 3 places need to be made months in advance, but figured that as we were 5-6 months out from our dates, we were still within the window of opportunity. Yesterday afternoon, we discovered that we didn’t have all the time in the world, and that our window of opportunity was about to slam shut! So our trip, that before yesterday was still kind of in the imaginary stage, just moved into the realm of reality! We discovered that there were very few availabilities left, and that if we wanted to stay on-site in these three places, we needed to act ASAP. Needing to make those reservations meant that we had to really look at the trip in earnest, decide what we really wanted to see, and forced us to actually come up with a timeline, while still leaving lots of open time to just check out neat looking things and places along the way.

Our “real” trip will commence with us leaving Long Island on Saturday August 21st. Our first reservations are for the nights of August 28th and 29th when we are booked at the Lake Hotel Sandpiper Lodge in Yellowstone Park. From there we have 2 open weeks, as our next booking is the nights of September 14th and 15th at the Yavapai Lodge in the Grand Canyon. Then, on Friday the 16th, we have one night booked at the View Hotel in Monument Valley. The only other defined part of our trip is the October 2nd to 16th two week period when we will be cruising on the Liberty of the Seas out of Galveston, Texas, and visiting with Kenny and Chris and their shipboard family. We still have lots of open space on our calendar to do the wandering part of this trip, and even if we have had enough, and just return home after the cruise, we will be gone 2 months! We always had a plan, but now we really have a plan and the trip is much more of a reality than it was just 24 hours ago!

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Final Florida Recap

March 19, 2016August 12, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 1 Comment

Okay…this is our last look at our Florida trip…kind of like our road trip by the numbers. You may find some of this interesting, but honestly we are doing this as much for us, as you, so that we remember some of this information when we next venture out on the open road.

Miles Driven:

The one way distance from our home on Long Island to Walt Disney World is 1,126 miles. During our 11 days on the road we drove a total of 2439 miles, so did a little less than 200 additional miles during our trip. Some of those miles were spent driving to and from restaurants on our way up and down, and some were used in Walt Disney World. We drove to Epcot, the Magic Kingdom (2 days), and our spring training game at ESPN World. Yes, we know that WDW has a great transportation system, but a number of years ago we waited forever with tired kids for a bus at one of the water parks, and frankly, it’s just easier to do it on our own. Also, since one of Frank’s retirement perks is free parking, all we waste is time!

Days to Florida:

“Lets Drive RightThrough!” Ah, no, thank you! Yes, you can indeed get to Florida in less than 24 hours by driving straight through, but this was supposed to be a fun trip, so we left on day one, and arrived on day three. We did the same thing on the way back. Our daily mileage averaged around 400 more or less. We didn’t set alarm clocks, we left when we left (usually sometime around 9AM), but always tried to stop between 4:30 and 5:30. A long time ago, when Susie was pregnant with our oldest Billy, we drove to the midwest, and her doctor told her to stop every hour or so and get out of the car and walk around. Since then, that has been our MO on the road. One of us will drive an hour and/or 100 miles, we will stop, hit the bathroom, and then the other will take over.

Gas:

Gas prices have really dropped lately, and that makes a road trip even more affordable. As we said in an earlier post, the Sonata got great mileage (we regularly saw numbers in the low to mid 30 miles per gallon), so we stopped for gas about once a day. The lowest price we saw was on the New Jersey Turnpike on the way down, where it was $1.57 a gallon for regular. As soon as we crossed the bridge and entered Delaware, gas prices jumped 30 cents or more a gallon. The next cheapest state was Georgia, where it was in the $1.80 range. Around Disney World the prices were high (of course), but Frank just read on the internet of gas stations close to the Orlando Airport that change $5 and change a gallon to screw those folks looking to return their rental car full! Even with Frank’s Cleaning product purchase, we didn’t come close to that!! We only spent $146.98 for the total trip for gas, and we just drove down to Ocean City on that last tank we got on the New Jersey Turnpike on the way home!

Motels:

So, its been a number of years since we’ve taken a trip like this, and frankly, before we left, how much nightly accommodations were going to cost us was something we had no idea about. There are also a lot of new chains out there. Sleep Inn, Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, etc., so the landscape has changed since the last time we did this. One great new tool is to join hotel’s chains “frequent flyers” programs, and then load their app on your phone. Many different named chains operate under the same corporate flag, so having a couple of these apps on your phone really gives you a lot of choices. We spent 4 nights on the road, and our hotel costs ran from a low of $69.49, to a high of $94.75 . A lesson we quickly learned, however, was that the extra $20 we spent on our more expensive nights made a huge difference. Save the $20, get old 1970s motel type accommodations. Spend the $20 and get nice, clean, modern rooms, and even a full free breakfast. Our opinion, save $20 somewhere else and enjoy the night…your next day depends on it! We spent a total of $329.13 for our on-the-road accommodations. Even with Frank’s 50% Disney Discount, our 5 days in WDW cost us $753.75….but we loved it!! Our total was $1082.88 for the entire 11 days.

Food:

We’ve already talked about what we did for our lunches, and truly think that having the cooler and food in the car with us, is by far the best solution for lunches on a road trip. It saves you money, it saves you time, and keeps the journey focused on moving forward. Occasionally, we’d take advantage of the hotel’s breakfast offerings, but most days we opted to just hit the road and start driving. We did in an Applebees and a Dave’s Famous BBQ, but the two best meals we had on the road were in local, non-chain restaurants. On our way down, in Darien Georgia, we had a wonderful fried shrimp dinner (a pound of shrimp each) for $73.49 at B&J’s Steak and Seafood (thanks Abe Gorin for the tip!). Then on the way back up, in Ridgeland, South Carolina, we had an incredible southern meal at Jasper’s Back Porch. We sat on the back porch, overlooking a lake, and had a soup to nuts meal for $85.78. We had a couple of very nice, and pricey dinners in Disney World (like Wolfgang Pucks at Disney Springs that cost us $205 including Frank’s discount), but our on-the-road meals ran between $60 and $85.

Wolfgang Puck’s at Disney Springs

Walt Disney World:

Okay, so Frank gets a discount on hotels, food, and merchandise thanks to his Disney Retiree status, but even with that, it is not a cheap place. Every night, we ended our day at our resort’s Jazz Club (the Scat Cat’s Club), and spent around $100 for drinks and appetizers (the appetizers was our dinner several nights!), but we loved ending the day this way, and after a couple of days, became “regulars” to Laura the waitress. Breakfasts were about $20-$25 per day, but we figured if we were going to walk our asses off, we needed some sustenance! These 5 days were really our only breakfast expenses. Lunches, drinks (at Epcot’s World Showcase) cost us too, as did purchases we made (sweatshirts, little things for the Grandkids, etc), but that was the price of admission if you will. Not something we’re gonna do every day or every year. We figure we spent around $390 for Misc items, and those ran from a car wash for the Sonata to laundry we did at the WDW resort.

Keeping Track of it All:

We are only able to report most of these figures, because of a great app Susie has on her phone, called Trip Wallet. It was a very easy way to keep track of the $$$ we spent on everything from gas, to hotels, to food. It cost around $1.99 at the Apple Store, and will get a lot more use going forward. Much better than a pad and a pen, and as it was on her phone, she always had it with her.

What it Cost us to Drive Round Trip to Florida:

Our gas for the trip cost $146.98, our 4 hotel nights on the road cost $329.13, and for 4 road night dinners we spent $296.10. Lunches we had in the car, made up from stuff we brought from home, so maybe $30. The only other expense related to driving our own car, was $9 we spent for a car wash on the way home because the car was covered with Florida tree pollen. So, our grand total was $811.21. We went up on the Jet Blue site, and we’re sure you could get a round trip flight cheaper, but just doing a dummy booking from JFK to Orlando for 2 people for 7 days in Florida came out to about $895. We did the same thing at the Hertz site, and their cheapest car for week came to about $307. As we said, you could probably get both cheaper, but that’s probably in the neighborhood of what we would have spent, so flying and renting would come to about $1200. We spent almost $400 less than that, and had a great road trip on top of some savings. A win/win situation we think!

So that’s it, our last look at our 11 days on the road that included 5 days at Walt Disney World, two Spring Training Mets’ games, and a visit with Frank’s cousin Jeanne and her husband Walt in Bare Foot Bay, Florida. See you on the road again, or on our next adventure real soon!

A Good Idea We’d Like to Share

March 15, 2016 / Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

One of the things that we did differently on this past trip, that we will probably do on every future road trip, had to do with our pillows. Frank has long complained about the fact that some hotels have great pillows, while others have the worst. Some are like a lump of concrete, some are as flat as a pancake, and occasionally, not to sound like Goldilocks, some are just right! In fact, a couple of years ago, Frank did find one of the 5 pillows on our king sized bed at the Rio in Vegas that was just right. The problem was that every night he had to figure out which one it was! Now, Sue is not as pillow conscious on the road, but as she does have pillow likes and dislikes, she agreed to Frank’s plan.

Now I know a lot of you do this, but the plan was to take 2 of our favorite pillows with us. That way, whatever we were thrown in terms of beds and pillow comfort, we always had our own pillows to ease our heads to sleep after a busy day. Well, it worked out incredibly well, and probably led to some of the best travel nights’ sleep we have ever had. Now, my thought was just that we’d throw the pillows into some kind of a bag, and throw it in the trunk of the car, but Sue came up with such an elegant and all encompassing solution, that we just had to share it with you.

Behold, Pillow Bag 101!

What we started with was a multi pocket duffle bag measuring approximately 26X15X12 inches.

The main compartment held our two pillows.

Below the pillows we stashed our PJs.

In one side pocket, Frank’s underwear lived.

While Sue’s were stored in the front pocket.

In the left side pocket was our toiletries bag.

And in the back pocket, our two Kindles.

Every night we’d grab this bag out of the trunk and in one place we had everything we needed for our stay. It made it so much easier than dragging in our big suitcase and rummaging through it, looking for what we needed. In fact, with the exception of the 5 nights we stayed in Disney World, the big suitcase lived in the trunk. It was easy enough to open the bag and exchange a shirt or pants and we never had to remove it from the Sonata’s trunk.

A simple but elegant solution to being on the road and staying in different motels nightly!

R New Adventures

Come with us as we journey through our next chapter

Things we learn along the way