@Geneva and @hav77 Started talking about vacation in the USMNT thread, and since I've done a lot of traveling recently, and want to also hear about others' travel/vacations, I thought I'd start this thread to post stories and pictures about your vacations/travels. It's been a brutal soccer year, and it's gonna be a long off-season. Maybe we can use this to cheer ourselves up.
Here's some pictures from a trip I took last April. It was a two-week road-trip from Oregon to Minnesota and back with my brother-in-law. We stopped in Yellowstone, Roosevelt National Park, and the headwaters of the Mississippi on our way to Winona. https://goo.gl/photos/DK6DW75eZHfrsa2K6
I had a long road trip this June/July. First I drove to Knoxville with a stop off in Memphis. Attended an acoustic music camp, and then went to Nashville where I met my daughter and son-in-law. Together we drove the Kentucky Bourbon Trail stopping at half a dozen high end distilleries. Then went to Cincinnati where my son, daughter-in-law and grand daughter joined us, took in a Cubs/Reds match at Great American Ballpark and then drove to Michigan to spend a few days with them, To top it off, I returned to LA driving Route 66. All-in-all it was excess of 6,000 miles over the course of a month. This was my second Route 66 trip and can't wait to do it again, good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.
Looks like a good trip and the van!!! Cruising in style! Are you from Winona? I have a friend who hails from there. I have yet to make it to Yellowstone. I hear that Ye Old Faithful has been weakening over time. My original itinerary was to climb in the Moab area, head up to Yellowstone, and then to Missoula for some whitewater kayaking and fly fishing. However, unfortunately the Missoula plans fell through and ended up just staying longer (about a week) in Utah, which turned out fantastic. I've been climbing for about 2 years now and have been wanting to climb at Indian Creek for some time now. The area is acclaimed for it's splitter cracks in the wingate sandstone. After climbing for a few days, I did a mellow 15 mile mountain bike ride in the Moab area before heading up to paraglide in the SLC area. While there, I visited Rio Tinto, which is a very nice stadium. Here are some photos from my trip: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B36N6DEuxTrxUUNBME9valIyak0?usp=sharing
Yikes, 6,000 miles! That is a proper American roadtrip. Driving back to and from Utah was tiring enough! Sounds like a good time.
A couple of things made it tolerable. Since I am retired there was no need to travel huge chunks on any one day, and I could stop along the way to see things. That made the journey itself part of the vacation, as opposed to just going somewhere to get there. And I have a taste for American Kitsch, so seeing "The World's Largest Rocking Chair," "The World's Largest Bottle of Ketchup," and the like were right up my alley. There actually are many things well worth seeing in "flyover" country, but they require time, and before retirement I never could have done this. California is so fantastic that many people I know never set their sights on anything outside the state. But there are experiences to have, people to meet, places to eat, and after you open yourself up to those opportunities your life will be richer.
The wife and I are going to Europe in January for 3 1/2 weeks. We're spending time in London, Italy, Paris and Madrid. We'll be catching a Real Madrid game. Unfortunately, it's winter break for most of the time I'm there so I can't catch any other good games. Any other soccer related things to do in Europe other than attend a live game? Great thread idea btw!
Those climbing pics are out of this world! Seems like I know many people who took driving trips this year, probably because of the eclipse. My husband and I did. It started with a - where can we see the eclipse? - and the plan expanded from there. We didn't make it to totality, but did take a 3000 mile jaunt around the west. The farthest east and north we went was Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of South Dakota, both of which I thought were awesome. We also hiked Maroon Bells in Aspen, Mesa Verde National Park and the cliff dwellings, Kanab, Utah area including short trips to Zion and Pink Coral Sand Dunes, and finally the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. All fabulous. We were gone two weeks, and covered a lot of ground in the car and hiking, and we camped at Mesa Verde and North Rim, both highly recommended. I have some photos on Flickr - will try to link something suitable. Thanks for the thread, @Ghosting
This summer I drove down south several times to watch live soccer games. It was a really sh#!ty time.
We didn't do any big trips this summer. Just some camping trips. We are saving up for next summer -- a big trip to Ireland to see the ancestral homeland of the O'Trickhog's and celebrate the oldest Mini-TrickHog's graduation from high school. So next summer I'll have cool photos to share.
Amazing pictures!!! Makes me want to start climbing... and then I remember that I'm afraid of heights. My daughter climbs a little (mostly in a gym), and I sometimes wonder if climbing really wouldn't be a great way to address that fear of heights. I would think it makes you feel more in control. The van has been amazing. We got it in Feb of 2016 and have put almost 40k miles on it since then. Traveling in it (mostly with my wife and son) is so nice compared to driving a car, and with a couple of apps, it's easy to find places to just pull off the road and sleep. We've done two trips from OR to MA and back. @The Cadaver, my problem is that have trouble just taking it easy on those drives. I really need to learn to chill out and not schedule too many things in the time we have allotted.
That sounds awesome. I haven't had the opportunity to spend any real time on mainland Europe. Love to see pictures when you get back. I did get the chance to spend three weeks in Iceland in June. It was actually work, as I convinced some unsuspecting company to let me help guide student research trips now and then. I worked with another guide, and we had a total of 17 students in two groups. Here's a bunch of pics: https://photos.app.goo.gl/lXYgEid5y5n1Mjm23 One of the coolest things about the trip was that one of the students (Tim) was studying the soccer culture in Iceland. He interviewed officials from three different professional clubs as well as one of the top agents in the country. He also spent a couple days with one club and actually trained with one of their youth teams. The Interesting thing was that many of the complaints that he was hearing were very similar to those that we hear in the US: The older generation of players worked hard, but the younger generation are all a bunch of entitled, spoiled brats; They need to bring in soccer people from mainland Europe to get real expertise and improve their tactical naivete; more kids just need to play socc er because they love the game, and it needs to be less structured at a younger age. Tim plays at Skidmore College, and he actually felt like the youth players that he saw there were not really that different than what you'd see in the US. He also happens to have dual US/UK citizenship, and is an admitted Eurosnob, so it was interesting to see what he heard from the folks he talked to, and what his observations were.
Vacation is my wife's middle name. In the last year we've been to Machu Picchu, Bora Bora, New Orleans, (between these trips she went to Everest Base Camp and left me home), Cancun, Mammoth Mountain (the drive up the 395 is amazing), Washington DC and Baltimore, and are going to London for a week beginning Christmas. Every trip was amazing. Bora Bora was my favorite of those trips. Staying in those above water bungalows is so much fun. If I could ever figure out how to do those photo sharing sites I would share some pics.
Here are "a few" pics of my excellent vacation - I really did try to cut down the number! https://www.flickr.com/photos/lauracamp/albums/72157686232153222
Great photos, @hav77 and @Ghosting ! Makes me want to find time to travel more (and bring my camera with me!)
Haha. I did the same on a trip with family visiting Panama. I took so damn many pictures that when I got home it overwhelmed me. I can't leave this beautiful scene out... or that one....or this one either. Here want to look at a thousand Panama pictures?? Please?
"Want to see my Google Photo Album of my trip?" The dreaded two hour slide-show of our generation....
Amaaaaaaaazing pictures, team. Truly awe-inspiring. And yes, the extremely low marginal cost of taking an extra picture nowadays probably means I take more pictures on a given week long vacation than people probably used to take in a lifetime.
I could make it worse by linking to videos from trips... Then again, if @TrickHog had videos of his trips, I'd jump on those!
Took a quick trip to Vegas to catch the Kings' first regular season match vs the horribly-named Vegas Golden Knights... which we lost. and yes, that's Lil' Jon in attendance.
I'll be in London January 3-12. FA Cup 3rd round is the 5th-8th. I'm thinking of heading to Liverpool for LFC vs. Everton, or staying in London for Tottenham vs Wimbledon. Anyone have experience buying tickets for games in England? Any advice? I'd love to secure tickets soon.
I hope everyone is safe with all the fires rampaging everywhere. There are literally fires to the west, east, north and south of me.... Stay safe everyone!