I've been on a number of vacations over the years, and thought it might be interesting to come up with some sort of record of my journeys.
This page is still mostly a work in progress.
| Location | Details | Date | Comments |
|---|
| New Jersey | Ocean City
Cape May | 1975-1982 | Summer vacation to the Jersey shore. How original! |
| Quebec, Canada | Holiday Inn Montreal | April 1981 | This was my first trip somewhere by plane. I remember my Dad showed me the cockpit and I got a little airline pin. I do remember that it was bitterly cold -- the guide for a tour of some old fortress exclaimed "geez, it's cold!" first in French and then later in the English version. |
| Pennsylvania | Wellsboro camping | July 1983 | A trip to Pennsylvania?? What??? That's crazy! |
| Zihuatenejo, Mexico | Hotel Irma | February 1984 | My first trip to a tropical resort. Life would never be the same. Mostly I remember driving past really poor people, beach guards with machine guns, really warm water, and buying a lot of stuff. |
| Maryland | Elk Neck State Park | June 1984 | Simple camping trip to test a new tent. |
| Maine | Hermit Island
Acadia National Park | July 1984 | First major camping trip with my parents. It was a long time ago, we were camping, and it rained. |
| Sanibel & Captiva, Florida | some condo | November 1984 | A trip with my parents and a family friend -- the weather wasn't great, but I do remember getting up early and collecting clams during really low tide. |
| Cape Hatteras, North Carolina | camping | June 1985 | This trip had quite the excitement: a park ranger drove through one night telling everyone to get our of their tents because of a severe thunderstorm. |
| Mauai and Kauai, Hawaii | Kihei, Maui
Waialeale, Kauai | December 1985 | My family's first trip to Hawaii was over Christmas, which was strange -- we had a small tropical evergreen as a Christmas tree in our condo. |
| Antigua | Hawksbill Beach Hotel | May 1986 | Another tropical beach resort - again quite nice. The paddleboats were fun. |
| Assateague, Maryland | camping | July 1986 | Another interesting camping trip, this one with wild horses frolicking past our tent. |
| Williamsburg, Virginia | some hotel | December 1986 | The traditional colonial America experience. |
| Kauai and Hawaii, Hawaii | Waialeale, Kauai
Hilo, Hawaii | July 1987 | Second trip to Hawaii, Kauai again and also the big island. |
| Sicily, Italy | private home, Fondaco Nuovo | July 1988 | A trip with parents AND grandparents. Trust me, don't do it. |
| Zihuatenejo, Mexico | Hotel Irma | March 1989 | Second trip to Mexico - the hotel had more than doubled in size and it wasn't anything close to the same. |
| Belize | San Pedro Holiday Hotel, Ambergris Caye
Chaa Creek | June 1990 | A real adventure trip, including a stay at a jungle lodge near the border with Guatemala. |
| Cape Canaveral, Florida | Holiday Inn Cape Canaveral | May 1991 | Before he retired, my Dad worked as a quality assurance manager at the place known as [RCA Astro Space - then Martin Marietta - then Lockheed Martin]. He took me down to the Cape for a satellite launch once. |
| Milan, Rome, and Sicily, Italy | private home, Milan
some hotel, Rome
private home, Santa Domenica, Sicily | July 1991 | Second trip to Italy, much better than the first. This time we demanded a car with air conditioning, and got a BMW 5-something. |
| Costa Rica | Rancho Naturalista
Drake's Bay | July 1992 | Our most adventurous trip - to a jungle ranch where I collected no end of exotic beetles, and a "beach" resort where the electricity only ran for part of the day and the shower water was sun-heated. Good barracuda fishing. |
| Cape Canaveral, Florida | Cape Winds Condo | August 1992 | My parents and I made another trip down to Cape Canaveral, part business, part pleasure. |
| Anguilla | La Sirena Resort, Mead's Bay | July 1993 | Tropical beach resort - actually quite nice. |
| Tonga | Fafa Islet Resort, Tongatapu
Sandy Beach Resort, Foa Island, Ha'apai Group | March 1996 | Interesting but way too long. Don't take 3 week vacations with your parents. Lasted me five years. |
| Bahamas | Breezes Bahamas, Nassau | August 2001 | All inclusive but not recommended! My first solo vacation. |
| Turks & Caicos | Club Med Turqoise, Providenciales | November 2003 | Like college with only the parties and on a tropical island. |
| Grenada | Coyaba Beach Resort | March 2004 | Magnificent. Very nice people, beautiful, deserted beaches with cinnamon in the air, and lush mountainous jungles. Perfect. Then Hurricane Ivan. |
| Golden Princess | Southern Caribbean Explorer cruise:
Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. John, St. Kitts, Grenada, Isla Margarita (Venezuela) | April 2005 | A very nice tour of some less common destinations, although I'm not that big a cruise person. It was very depressing to visit Grenada and see all the damage done by Hurricane Ivan. |
| Tortola, BVI | Long Bay Beach Resort | March 2006 | BVI is British Virgin Islands for you cretins out there who don't hang out at the yacht club. I pictured a tropical paradise with lush mountains leading right down to palm-fringed tropical beaches. Then I visited Tortola and realized it existed. Unfortunately Kim and I both got some awful flu on the way down, but we did stay an extra two days to make up for it. |
| Northern California | Occidental Inn, Occidental, Sonoma County
Wine Country Inn, St. Helena, Napa County | August 2006 | Kim and I got married on this trip to the wine country. We stayed at very nice places and got very spoiled! Kudos to the redwoods for being so tall, quiet, and mystic. |
| St. Lucia | Discovery at Marigot Bay | February 2007 | We decided that St. Lucia would be a nice place to visit, given its reputation for stunning scenery, beaches, snorkeling, etc. We also happened to find that the Discovery at Marigot Bay resort had just opened. Marigot Bay is a wonderful little bay, barely 100 yards wide in places, full of sailboats, very good restaurants, and enormously expensive yachts. We had a good time! |
| Atlantic City, NJ | Harrah's, Caesar's | April 2007 | Although a memorable trip in certain ways, especially for the brunch at Caesar's, this trip in no way changed my mind about the gambling or casinos in general (waste of time, and rather unpleasant). |
| Smokey Mountain National Park, Tennessee | The Lodge at Buckberry Creek | May 2007 | After much secrecy, Kim finally revealed to me in May that my birthday present was a trip to the national park, one of the top destinations for nature photographers. We were only there for a few days, over Memorial Day weekend, but it was a great experience, and the truffle butter at our lodge was incredible. |
| Avalon, NJ | 239 West 23rd Street! | August 2007 | After a string of more exotic destinations, a week at the shore was in order for some much-needed rest and relaxation. I did take some bird pictures at the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, but it just doesn't really compare. |
| St. John, USVI | Gallows Point Resort | February 2008 | After two day trips to St. John, one on our cruise and one from Tortola, we decided it was time to stay there for real. Awesome decision! I'll say that St. John sucks just to try to keep other people from going there. The margaritas at Margarita Phil's are mammoth and they give you your money's worth with the tequila. |
| Avalon, NJ | 239 West 23rd Street | August 2008 | After a crazy summer that culminated in moving into a newly purchased house, we went to the shore for a week two days later. |
| St. John, USVI | Gallows Point Resort | April 2009 | Yet another trip to the best place I've yet encountered. They might as well put a permanent reservation for us on the table for two out front at Margarita Phil's. |
| London, UK | Hotel Russell | June 2009 | I spent a week in London on business in 2009. My hotel room was most notable for its tiny balcony and the large collection of cigarette butts to be found on it. Yes, the London buses are really red double-deckers, and the taxis really the quaint little ones that look 50 years old. I was astonished at how much of the Parthenon was sitting in the British Museum, and found out later that it's a point of contention between Greece and the UK. |
| Utah and Colorado | Hilton Garden Inn, Sandy, Utah
Best Western Canyonlands, Moab, Utah
Lumière hotel, Telluride, Colorado | August 2009 | Isn't August the best time to visit the deserts of Utah? Actually, part of the trip was in Salt Lake City, where it was unseasonably cool. This great trip covered some family visits in SLC, lots of hiking in Arches and Canyonlands national parks near Moab, and the Telluride Food and Arts Festival in Colorado, where we even met "Top Chef" Hosea Rosenberg one morning, since he was staying at our hotel. |
| St. John, USVI | Gallows Point Resort | April 2010 | Seeing a pattern here? Actually the weather was only so-so, but we did rent a real Jeep and got to Coral Bay, Saltpond Bay, and Anneberg Plantation. |
