2008 - Washington DC
2010 - Cuba
2011 - DR, Bermuda, & Cruise
2012 - DR & Costa Rica
2013 - Cruise, CR, & USA
2014 - SE Asia
The Year Off 2015 - 2016
- Preamble
- Thailand & Malaysia
- Italy
- Germany, Belgium, & Lux
- Czech, Poland, & Germany
- Austria, Slovakia, & Hungary
- Slovenia, Croatia, Austria & Germany
- England & Scotland
- Turkey
- Colombia
- Peru: Lima & Amazon
- Peru: Cusco & Inca Trail
- Peru: Cusco to Lima
- Mexico, Guatemala, & Belize
- New Zealand
- Australia & Thailand
2017 - The Balkans
2017 - Hungary, Romania, & Switzerland
2018 - New York
2018 - Amsterdam, Poland, & The Baltics
2019 - Costa Rica
2019 - France
2020 - Thailand
2023 - Mexico
2023 - Iceland & Cruise
2024 - Philippines
2025 - Japan
2025 - Iceland
Short Trips
Lists
Links
| 2013 | Various | Caribbean, Costa Rica, USA |
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I don’t have a day by day account of 2013, but I do have a bit of a
narrative: 2013 was a busy year with four vacations. I started the year off with a cruise aboard the Norwegian Epic (Jan 12 - 19). The Epic is one of the largest cruise ships in the world and has a unique feature that I really like. They have interior one person staterooms. This means that I don't have to pay for a normal stateroom and also pay for a non-existent 2nd person. My brother also came on this trip and he also had a one person stateroom.  I really liked this ship. They had a great comedian and also had a performance by the Blue Man Group which I enjoyed so much I went twice. They also had a group of musicians that played mostly blues, and they were pretty good. I spent a couple of nights in the bar listening to them play. The cruise started and ended in Miami, with stops at St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and the Bahamas. I believe we did snorkeling trips at each stop. I was still studying Spanish on my own, but decided to go back to Costa Rica to take another two weeks of classes. So this summer from July 20 - August 4th I was back in San Jose at the same school as before. This time I stayed at a hotel about a fifteen minute walk from the school. The hotel had an amazing chef so I ate there almost every night. While in San Jose I did go to their gold museum, the jade museum, and their national museum. None of them were great and not much else to do in the city, so not much else to report about this trip. A little over a month after I got back from Costa Rica I did a road trip down to the US (September 12 - 17). The main objective of the trip was to see Mount Rushmore. The first day I drove down to Billings Montana where I stayed overnight. The next day I drove into South Dakota. My first stop was the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, located near Rapid City and just outside of the Ellsworth Air Force Base. Aside from the usual airplanes and other related stuff, the museum operates a bus tour that takes you inside the actual military base and stops at an old Minuteman Missile Silo. We got to go down into the silo which was pretty cool. 
 Bright and early the next morning I went to see Mount Rushmore. It was a perfect day, not a cloud in the sky. I got some great pictures of the monument and the little museum that tells the story of how it was built was very interesting. I then drove over to the Jewel Cave and did the tour through it. I think this was my first cave tour and was pretty good. Next I went to the Crazy Horse Monument, which is still under construction (and likely will be for a long time). I didn't enjoy this very much and would say that it is safe to skip. I finished the afternoon off with a short hike in the Black Hills. They have some interesting geology/rock formations there. On the way back to town I went the back way and saw some bison. After dark I returned to Mount Rushmore to see it all lit up at night. I liked the daylight better for it, and my pictures of it at night did not turn out very well. 
 The next day was dreary and wet, but it was not raining to hard. Not far from Rapid City is the Badlands National Park. This is an area of buttes and pinnacles that are eroded so you can see the multiple layers of the rocks. Even though it wasn't a nice day the area is very scenic. I got out of the car a few times and did the short walks/hikes. I noticed signs that said "beware rattlesnakes". I hate snakes, but figured if I stayed to the well traveled paths and didn't stick my hands into any dark places I should be okay. It was also not very warm out so the snakes probably were not very active. I spent the morning in the park and then drove back to the motel and didn't do much for the rest of the day. 
 The following morning I left South Dakota and headed back to Billings, but I made a little detour into Wyoming to visit Devils Tower. It is a massive tower just standing out in the landscape with nothing else like it around. It was pretty neat to see, and I walked around the entire thing. That afternoon I was back in Montana and stopped off at the Little Bighorn Battlefield. This is where Custer made his famous Last Stand. I thought this was okay but didn't do much for me. A short drive from there and I was back in Billings for an overnight and the next day I was back home. 
 My boss, two of the VP's, and a director of my company all owned places in the Phoenix Arizona area and thought it would be a good idea to hold our November board meeting down there instead of at home. I flew down on November 24th which was a couple of days before the meeting. I drove south to Tucson and the next day visited more military stuff. First up was the Titan Missile Museum. The Titans are bigger than the Minutemen missile I had seen earlier in the year. They give you a tour of the facility and I would highly recommend this if you are in the area. 
 After the Titan museum I stopped briefly at a church was over 200 years old (Mission San Xavier del Bac). This is okay, not worth it unless really interested. I then drove up to the Pima Air & Space Museum. This museum has over 300 planes displayed in a massive hanger and also outdoors. They even have some NASA airplanes. This museum is my favorite military museum I have ever been to. I also took the bus tour which takes you into the Air Force base to see the "Boneyard". The Boneyard is where the military stores unneeded airplanes. 
 The dry desert air is great for preserving the planes. The next day I drove back to Phoenix, but on the way I made a detour and stopped off at Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 was a completely sealed facility designed to see how humans could survive in a sealed environment. In the early nineties eight people were sealed in for two years. They had to grow their own food and fix anything that broke. I won't get into too much detail, but I found this really interesting and the tour was really well done. Nowadays the facility is owned by a university (and obviously not sealed) and they conduct studies and experiments there. They also tour you around to almost all areas of it. When I got back home I purchased a book written by one of the people that was sealed in and it really helped me appreciate the place after having been there. After leaving this site I drove to Phoenix and went to my boss's house for dinner. The next day we had our meeting. The following morning I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight home so I went to an aquarium which was pretty decent. 
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