70 Days: Adding To The List, Pisgah Inn Edition

This trip was in reality a business trip for the lovely and talented Lisa. The North Carolina Association of Municipal Clerks held its summer conference in Asheville, and since Lisa had a room anyhow, she wanted John and me to tag along. This was great for John and me as we got a vacation in Asheville, but we didn't get to see as much of Lisa as we'd have liked. Nor did Lisa get as much time to tour around as she's have liked. But Saturday afternoon afforded us time between lunch and a dinner reception to go adventuring as a family, so off we went.

Finally together on an adventure

Since John and I drove north on the Parkway on Thursday, we decided to take mom south, somewhere none of had yet been. It was raining as we left, but we were undaunted, because, I mean, why worry about something you can't change? We found a very nice visitor center, which everyone enjoyed despite my family mocking me on the way in over my love of informational signage and maps. Oh, and speaking of maps, I was woefully unprepared for this trip as I felt miserable the night before and didn't study my books or maps before we left. We survived.

Not only did we survive, we made a new discovery, the Pisgah Inn, the Peak of the Parkway. Well, it wasn't completely a surprise. I may have a little bit of a fascination with maps and my have (as John predicted on the way in) found one I didn't have in the visitor center. I saw on that map, while the boy drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway (how cool is THAT!!??!!) and I was in the back seat, the little dude-in-a-bed symbol on the Parkway and hoped we'd make it that far before having to turn around.

The clouds made it even more beautiful

The ride up was awesome. The rain stopped, or we drove above it, and we were treated to cloud-covered mountain views to the east and clear as a bell mountain views to the west. It was a pretty package and quite a treat to get such different views on one short trip. And there were tunnels, which are always fun.

Lisa took a few tunnel photos....

We finally did make it all the way to the Pisgah Inn, which sits plop on the side of the mountain at nearly 5,000 feet. All the rooms have porches or balconies looking out over the Pisgah National Forest, there's a restaurant and a general store. Rooms are not cheap, but nothing in Asheville or the vicinity is and at $155/night, it is really pretty reasonable considering the view.

So now we have unspecific yet very real plans to go stay there for at least a long weekend. Turns out the drive to the Asheville area isn't as long as we thought. We could leave here in the morning and be in Asheville by early afternoon. It's a totally do-able long weekend.

So, one more destination added to the list :-)

90 Days: Memory Maker: Letting the Dis Help With The Photos

First off, 90 DAYS!!!!!! Woot Woot!!!!!

Ok, got that out of my system.

My favorite Disney photo. Ever.

Today I decided to try to put all the Disney photos I have on a portable hard drive so it will be easier to access them for this blog. Turns out we have over 3000 photos from our trips to Disney since 2006. We like taking photos :-) And Disney World is a great spot, every time we go I see something new, some new angle. But I think for this trip we're going to enlist some Disney help with the photography and buy the Memory Maker.

A Handy Dandy Map of PhotoPass locations in the Magic Kingdom

Both Lisa and I love photography and John is really good at composing and shooting photos as well, so we have great photos of all three of us. The problem is one of us is always behind the camera, so we have very few photos of all three of us together. Disney's PhotoPass to the rescue! Disney stations photographers all over the parks ready to shoot you and your family all together. They are at all the character meet and greets as well as some of the more photogenic and iconic spots, like entrances and in front of the Cinderella Castle. These folks are happy to take photos of anyone, no purchase necessary, and photos are pegged to MagicBands (if you have one) or a special PhotoPass card. You can view your collection of photos at the park or online and decide if you want to purchase any. What Memory Maker does is get you access to all PhotoPass photos as well as ride photos and dining photos in one pre-paid package. For $149, I'm thinking we're going to go for it this trip.

Disney's PhotoPass Service is explained really well here. Page down for maps of all the parks with the PhotoPass spots marked. These maps are also on the My Disney Experience app.

You can find out all about and purchase Memory maker here

Impressions from a Pretty Nice Weekend

I spent a lot of last year using this space to vent frustrations. I have dedicated myself to making this year different; not just trying to ignore the bad and focus on the good, that's mumbo-jumbo, I mean changing circumstances to lessen the bad and create more good. So far, so good, as evidenced by my weekend. I started out Friday getting all my work done that I wanted to while also visiting the BLT prop and costume storage and figuring out some geeky stuff on my new GPS. Saturday was a great day spent with Lisa while John was at band Districts Auditions (he didn't make it, but had a good time). So to celebrate, I'm going to share highlights :-)

The Crazy Uncle's Attic -- I always liken the Brunswick Little Theatre storage units to the crazy uncle's attic. I've loved digging through old stuff since forever (hence the anthropology minor) and BLT has lots of old stuff. Looking through this stuff for props and costumes for use in our upcoming Once Upon A Murder mystery party (buy tickets today, it's going to be great) and the Winnie-the-Pooh Let's PLAY! show was every bit as fun as I expected it to be. Well, digging through this stuff with Jen was every bit as fun as I expected it to be. She's like having your crazy uncle (aunt?) around to ID the stuff you find. Max or I would hold up a kimono or a jacket or an urn or a crystal ball or a plumy hat or a giant fake joint and ask "Hey, what was THIS used in?" and Jen would rattle it off. Great fun! For Max and I at least. And just having time to chat with a pal is always good for the soul. Better than any medicine when you've been feeling blah.


My New Toy -- OK, so I recently came into a little bit of money from my grandfather's estate, long story. Anyhow, I used a small bit of it on myself and bought a brand new handheld GPS to replace one that had died about a year or so ago. This new one looks much the same but it's color and has much more memory and new capabilities for geocaching. One feature is its ability to accept map downloads to augment its internal maps (which suck). I spent some time Friday tinkering around and found a great site full of free maps for download, and also figured out how to get them on my new toy. It's pretty damned cool, trust me. I just bought a micro SD card so I can find MORE free maps. I have a thing for maps.

Big Retail Sucks -- Ok, it's hip to hate on Walmart and "big box" stores and all, but I resist that as much out of my distaste for group-think as anything else. Saturday, though, really brought the failures of major retail outlets to my attention. We went to Kohl's so Lisa could spend a gift card that has been burning a hole in her pocket. While we were there and she was looking around, I was tasked with finding a few long-sleeved shirts and a jacket for the boy. Turns out almost all the clothing that is even remotely fit for the weather we are actually experiencing outside has been thoroughly picked over with the residual inventory on a collection of 70% off clearance racks. Really? No long sleeved shirts in January? I'm too much of a realist to get all choked up about the clothing being produced by 5 year old Bangladeshis, but at least have the freaking little slave kids churn out some sleeves for sale in January, ok?

Next stop is Target, where they carry everything. Everyhting, it turns out, except the two things I wanted to buy. I wasn't looking for anyhting exotic, just some tupperwares to hide in the woods (see Geocaching above) and a micro SD card for my new toy. I batted zero, so today I placed orders on Amazon.com that will be at my house Wednesday. Easy peasy. Screw driving to Wilmington.

But Local Kinda Rules --  I love the "Buy Local" movement in theory. In practice, if you define local as really close to home, the SE Brunswick County area, it only really works if you're in the market for weird artwork, quasi-locally grown produce, or other people's discarded items. The retail options in the Southport-Oak Island area aren't exactly expansive. But Wilmington, now there is some cool stuff. We went to a camera shop on the advice of an ex-reporter friend and camera aficionado and I can't wait to go back. The place was a little like the Crazy Uncle's Attic of photographic......stuff. They had all sorts of new and shiny things, but also loads of old and funky things. I can't wait to go back and browse for, like, ever.

We Regress -- Lately, Lisa and I have been able to have more "couple time" than we've been accustomed to having. John's involvement with marching band and indoor percussion have him busy all day on a bunch of Saturday's, leaving Lisa and I up to our own devices. John's having fun and we have discovered that we still have as much fun together, just the two of us, as we did when we were dating. In fact, we kind of tend to regress to those days a bit. This is great for our mental health, sometimes not so much for our physical health. Yesterday, for example, we had hamburgers with Marianna sauce and fried mozzarella sticks on top of them for lunch. Then, since we decided we had eaten so much and weren't hungry for a "real dinner," we had Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and popcorn for supper while sitting on the couch watching Penny Dreadful on Blu-ray. Good times :)

Museum Book Stores Are Nirvana -- Even small museums have them and they are ALL awesome. The one at Brunswick Town-Fort Anderson is no exception. I found so much worth buying I need to go back. They have Stamp Act Defiance t-shirts (if you don't think THAT'S cool, you were probably the kind of person the opposite sex talked to in high school). None in my size yesterday, so darn, I need to check later. I did declare that since Lisa made me leave the house before my coffee I was buying myself a book. A Big Book. With lots of maps. So there!

Oh, The Places You'll Go

The Oak Island Geohound

We Stiteses are wanderers, goers, doers, seekers. One hobby we indulge in that plays to all those traits is Geocaching. If you've never heard of it, geocaching involves hiding and seeking containers of various sizes all over the world using a GPS enabled device and the geocaching.com web site. There is a great video right here explaining it all, if you are interested.

Geocaching has given us an excuse to wander more times than I can count, and when we are in new places, we always check for caches and often end up finding spots we would never have seen otherwise. I can go on and on about the joys and rewards of seeking tupperwares in the woods, but today I wanted to talk about my Geohound, who has been places I've never been even close to. Yet.

Not only do we geocachers travel from cache to cache ourselves, we also send proxies out to travel the world, called travel bugs. Soon after I found the hobby of geocaching, I ordered my first travel bug dog tag, that's the metal tag you see on the chain in the above picture. The tag has a number unique to itself that is used to track the item, in this case a Happy Meal toy my son gave me to keep me company in my car at work, as it is discovered by geocachers and moved by them from one cache to another. Cachers log the number on the geocaching web site and the tag's movements are recorded, along with comments and often pictures, on its very own web page (the Oak Island Geohound can be found here, complete with a map of his travels). Trackable items often disappear and get lost, it's just the nature of the game, but I really lucked out with the Geohound. I set him into the world on May 29, 2007 and he is still active and traveling today. I got an update on him just this morning, in fact, from Germany.

Skijorring outside Fairbanks

The Geohound was charmed from the start. His first trip was a long one, from Oak Island, North Carolina to Fairbanks, Alaska. He spent some time skijorring, which I had never heard of. Apparently, skijorring involves putting cross country skis on and tying yourself to a few sled dogs. It's like dog sledding without the sled. I can't wait to try it next time we get enough snow. Or not.

He went with the cacher who found him to St. Paul and then back to Alaska before being picked up and moved to Maine, where he traveled a bit before once again going cross-country and ending up in Washington State. He seemed to be having a fine time. He moved back and forth between Washington and Oregon for a bit then headed south for California. I started getting a few pictures from the beautiful Los Padres National Forest and watching him tour all over the greater Los Angeles area.

The North Fork in Los Padres NF

The Smallest Post Office in Wheeler, CA

This morning, I got word that my little Geohound had left the bounds of the good old US of A and landed himself in Germany, Niedersachsen, Germany to be exact. It's near Hannover. I think I have some extedned, in-law-type family there. 

In 5 1/2 years, this little stuffed dog has traveled 23,600 miles. I'm frankly shocked a Happy Meal toy has held up for that long. Following his travels, we've learned new things and been put in contact with new people from all over the country and now the world. I've checked out the places he's visited and added to my own "bucket list." Now I'm using Google translator to read the logs. As an educational experience, this really can't be beat. As a bit of arm chair globe-trotting, it is perfect. Even when we're sitting still, there's no reason to stay at home after all.

"Treasure Hunting" In the World

A US Geodetic Survey marker in New Bern, NC

Ok, maybe it isn't treasure in the usual sense, but it's got me excited. It's the perfect storm of Geekdom! We have the opportunity to combine two of our family's favorite things, a trip to Disney World and geocaching. Geocaching involves using a handheld GPS receiver to find hidden "caches." These caches could be anything from a large metal container to a tupperware to a tiny tube and are hidden everywhere from the deep woods to parking lots. No geocaches are hidden on Disney property, they aren't allowed, but I find that an offshoot of geocaching called benchmark hunting is possible in the parks.

Benchmarks are small markers, usually a metal disc, used to permanently mark a location. Most are placed by the government to help with surveying and keeping track of boundaries. Most markers are embedded either on roads or walkways or the sides of buildings, but some are on concrete posts out in the grass and trees. They tend to often be in interesting places and/or hidden by time and disuse, so finding them can be a lot of fun. Private companies use survey markers as well, and thanks to a blog post in MiceChat, I find Disney has them scattered all through it's property.

A Disney Benchmark

Being Disney, these aren't just plain old brass discs with some initials and numbers on them. Disney benchmarks feature Mickey Ears placed on a globe with lines of latitude and longitude on it. There are a few web sites devoted to finding and cataloging these benchmarks. One of the best I've seen so far is Patty Winter's Disney Benchmark Pages. She has them broken down by resort and park and "other places," so it's easy to find the locations near where you plan to be. Each section features a .loc file with the coordinates so geeks like me can easy transfer them to a GPS unit. I'm sure from looking over the site that there are many she doesn't have listed. Most of the resorts don't have a list yet and I'm sure there are more in the parks as well. This presents the fun part, the challenge if you will. Not only will the Pooh Sticks family be seeking out all the previously found benchmarks, but we will be keeping our eyes to the ground hoping to discover, photograph and mark some "new" ones.