Waterford Crystal employee's retire early

As it turns out one American shopper by the name of Don apparently bought so much crystal some employees could retire early, Let's hear it for Don.

Well our group made it home safe and sound late Halloween night Click HERE for the latest pictures. For the members of the traveling group, if you see and want a picture from this site, just email me and I will forward them to you. Or if you have a picture you want me to post for everyone to see email me the picture and I will post it.

FYI when viewing pictures from the Flicker site you will notice you can do it one by one or via a slide show, however, when doing it by the slide show you won't see how I described each picture.

Lori and I had a great time with everyone and hope everyone's bed and shower felt as good as ours!!

Dublin

A quick update as we are having a difficult time getting online here in Dublin. First we heard about the Philadelphia Phillies, AWESOME!!!!

Two days ago, Lori and I ate at the oldest pub in Ireland, The Brazen Head, (I will update pictures later) I ate my first Irish meal of Guinness stew, which was very good. After that we walked through some pretty bad rainy conditions to view the book of Kells at Trinity University! The University was very impressive and old, located at the end of the book of Kells was a library of extremely old books, (we were not permitted to take photos) The old library was just an awesome site which made me feel like Indian Jones running for my life!!

Yesterday, we saw the Guinness plant/store, not that impressive but we did get some free pints of Guinness! Got to run.

More pictures of Flat Stanely later Finn, don't worry!

Today we are off for a visit to New Grange some old Tomb, afterwards we will have free time in Dublin hopefully the weather will allow us to get around?

Fore Abbey

We explored the ruins of the Seven Wonders of Fore today. It was a beautiful day and we took a lot of great pictures. Also, we saw the Children of Lir lake and Maryann's family church and land. What a magnificent countryside!

Cliffs of Moher

Unfortunatley two days ago it was really, really a rainy day here for us. This is a picture of the Cliffs of Moher, and when you click HERE you will see another picture of what the road looked like with all the flooding. It was actually quite funny- the wind was so strong that when we leaned backward it kept us from falling over. Everyone was already soaking wet from visiting the Poulnabrone Dolmen and the Corcomroe Abbey, so by the time we got to Tom Malone's Pub, we were ready for the warm fire, great music and liquid lunches. It was a long, wet day and after reaching Tullamore, we were exhausted!
The next morning we headed out to Clonmacnois, a beautiful shrine with stain glass windows, and then Tullamore Dew whiskey tour. It was a beautiful day minus a spot of rain at the church. We had an Italian dinner at DaVinci's which was quite good but took forever! (But we were rewarded with Limoncello in the end!) We heard the Eagles won and the Phillies too- hope it continues!

We met a Hooker

Annie pictured above is what the Claddagh fishermen used for fishing in the Galway Bay, she was used to take "pete" (bog used as fire wood) to the Aran Islands were they bartered for fish that the island locals caught. Then they would take the fish back to mainland and sell the fish for a nice little profit.

Click HERE for updated pictures of the trip so far.

Some observations I noticed so far here in Ireland.
1. Small cars
2. small roads (very)
3. high bath tubs (easy to misjudge and trip)
4. Guinness and lots of it.
5. Bacon is not so good, but the sausage links are!
6. Coffee and tea are great.
7. Not Cheap (pint of guinness 3.9 euros about $5, not too bad but the food seems to be more expensive 9 or 10 euros for a burger)

Lastly, we are learning a ton of History from our great bus driver Mick and each time we step foot in the bus he starts a new lesson along with some corny jokes. Tomorrow we head out of Galway and go to Tullamore for a few nights.

Day 2 (Galway)

The picture above reminds me of being in Vegas, first time there in the Venetian hotel in vegas at 3am we walked around and had a very similar view, just like this (very cool). However, this was picture was taken in Galway city Ireland. Again, we had a long day but we made it and Click HERE for some of today's pictures.

1st night

Well we had a great night out at the Bunratty Castle midevil dinner!! After words we went next store to Dirty Nelly's a very old bar (2nd oldest in Ireland) something like it was built in the 1600's and it actually just was sold for 20 million dollars!!!. Click HERE for a couple more photo's. notice in the picture of the plaque on the wall, if you read down at the bottom it says "admiral Penn" this is the father of William Penn and it was beleived that William was in the castle that we had the dinner in. For all of you who were on the trip with me in 2001 it is the same castle that we visited on the last day. Not much has changed! it is rainy hard at the moment and we are getting ready to leave, more to follow.

We made it to Ireland safe and sound!!!

Click HERE for a couple photos. Just a fast update, we made to Ireland with no problems except maybe the security line via JFK, otherwise smooth as can be. I just woke up after about a 2 hr nap as it is 4pm here Ireland time (I believe 11am back home). We did take a little tour with our driver around some very small back roads in and around Limerick to get to breakfast. After breakfast we checked out some local sites and headed to our hotel to check in and a much needed nap. Lori got a bit nauseous on the bus that lead to a little vomit but she is now feeling better with her nap. I am having a little trouble adding a picture but I will work that out sooner or later.

update

Now that we are home I have not felt like doing anything with the pictures... Click HERE for the latest. I have a lot of work ahead of me to manage and figure out what pictures I am going to print out. For those of you who are computer savvy, we took 20 gigs worth of pictures. In time I will create a slide show of the better pictures and leave them on my laptop to show whoever is interested.

The voting is over and the winner was "hell yes, I'd love to hang with the spouse" followed by "hell no, I'd rather go to the bar". thanks to all who voted!

It was fun keeping this blog to update our travels and it even helped me to keep things straight. Assuming the Ireland hotels have internet I will keep the blog going!

Home

We made it home really late last night after a short 800 miles drive! Total miles for the trip was 7,075. I will update after I get through the last couple of days' pictures. Happy to be home, and I think the cat is too.

Effingham, IL

We traveled some 700 miles and made it to Effingham, IL, we have about 800 miles to go. Depending on traffic and construction we could roll into Twp. by midnight, or we may stay somewhere in between? It will be nice to use our own shower!

Colby, Kansas

We didn't leave Utah until the afternoon yesterday so we only made it to Colby, Kansas. Yesterday we visited the Arches Nat. Park in Moab Utah and it was cool, I will post pictures when I finally get home or have the energy at the next hotel! It looks like we have about 1500 miles to go to get home.

Moab, Utah

Click HERE to see the newest pictures. The first picture here on the blog shows a shot of our SUV and more importantly the license plate, it occurred to me that if anyone who didn't know the SUV wouldn't understand my "white boy" reference. So, it you take a look at the plate you will understand-it spells it out. In the second picture Lori had her chance to kick me off the side of the mountain, it was a straight drop to the Colorado River. We were on a scenic drive (Rt.95) when we stopped to observe the beautiful red canyons and travel through canon after canon, very confusing if you were to try to navigate all by yourself. When we did a little hike about 2 miles it was very evident we would clearly get lost without markers and probably dry up and get eaten by coyotes! After about 370 miles we wound up in Blandings, Utah and would you believe it was a DRY town, and nothing like Haddonfield!!!

Today we had an easy day set up, we were only about 80 miles from our next hotel stop, so we decided to travel 60 miles out of our way to see the Canyonlands Nat. Park. If we were prepared to hike everywhere within the park, we may have seen a lot. But, since the park was under constuction we didn't quite see what we thought we would!

Now, we checked into our hotel in Moab eartly b/c we have a dinner cruise set up that will take us on the Colorado River with a light show on the canon walls. Once today is over, Lori and I will be making our way back home, if you notice in the linked pictures there is one of the GPS that was set on HOME, just a short way from here (over 2000 miles)

NO BEER ON SUNDAY (sold in Utah)

We left somewhat early from Teton village since the weather wasn't so nice (very overcast), no gondola ride to the top of the mountain.
We drove about 320 miles to Provo Utah, just south or Salt Lake City. To both of our surprise we really enjoyed the ride through S. Wy, S.E. Idaho, and N. Utah following rt. 89 (scenic byway, Oregon trail). We traveled up one side of a mountain and down the other which took about 1.5 hrs (35 miles) via Cache Nat.Forest, just down right beautiful! We caught the end of the Eagles game and had a great dinner at a local fish joint! Next up our scenic ride (450 miles) through south east Utah before turning our sights back home hitting CO via rt. 70.

The first picture above is of Lake Bear which is huge and sites half in Idaho and Utah. It was a very unique color blue as well as a very unique vacation area all together, very hard to describe, but very cool to see.

The second picture is one taken within the Cache Nat. Forest which also doesn't do justice to the entire area, but we were lucky enough to catch the fall colors amid the pines.

Kiss my butte

Well I know it has been a long time since we updated so I will try to make it brief. We left Kalispell MT, for Glacier but first stopping in Lone Pine State park. To put things in perspective, we stayed in a Rhodeway INN the night before (nice room, but horrible breakfast). We left the INN without food or coffee b/c it was so bad, stopped for gas and coffee but the coffee was awful, to drive to a scenic over look to find it (scenic overlook) was of the same town that gave us horrible coffee! We continued onward to the Hungry Horse Dam which was pretty cool finding these nice deer who helped finish the foreshadowing of our long day at Glacier Nat. Park.

Once to Glacier we learned the "road to the sun" closed that morning!! So, we decided to drive what was open then back track and drive around glacier to the other side and finish the road (missing the middle two miles that were closed (best part of the park!)) However, before driving to the other side we decided to head towards Canada to see the West side of the park only to learn we drove 45 miles on dirt roads to what was another road under construction and CLOSED that no ranger warned us about, In fact the Ranger station was closed closest to the closed road! So, we went back to the east side (2 hr plus drip) to finish what we started seeing some amazing beauty, but not all (closed). We had a bit of trouble finding a place to stay, but after almost blood, sweat, and tears we made it to the east entrance of Glacier to an INN with no bottled water, TV, Internet, onions, and Merlot (which Lori drank the last glass) not to mention the Eagles losing to Dallas (we did managed to watch on the only tv in the lodge bar).

Now, on to Yellowstone, we drove about 400 miles to West Yellowstone which was all booked up but after spending about 45min. on the phone we found a place. (again no tv or Internet) Nice town good coffee got the white boy (my truck) washed and slept well! Next day we entered the West entrance and drove to our Pioneer cabins on Yellowstone lake (2.5hr drive no stops) but we stopped many many times to make this trip all day. However, we saw lots of stuff including a bald eagle, coyote, springs, geysers, waterfalls, continental divide, and bison. Not to mention the crazy awesome landscapes!

The Pioneer cabins were not all that impressive but, provided a very good location within the park. Second day in Yellowstone we got on the road by 5:45am to search out some Moose and Wolfs! NO such luck but we did see a nice sun rise and plenty of bison and one massive elk.

Day three we checked out of the pioneer cabin and hiked some awesome trails overlooking the Upper and lower falls of the Grand Canon of Yellowstone. We continued on to hike the Norris Geysey Basin and finished up the day checking into the Old faithful Inn (nice place but no Internet, or tv).

That brings us to today (yesterday) and we left Yellowstone after having a great breakfast and watching a mediocre Old Faithful (she was late and temperamental just like a woman). We left out the south entrance not before seeing the Moose falls, which was very secluding and serene.

From there we entered the Grand Teton National forest which again was awesome (maybe the most awesome) It was very awe-inspiring and we witnessed a passing thunderstorm. We stopped for many scenic overlooks including Signal mountain and Jenny Lake. From there we arrived Teton Village and acting on a tip from a very nice old lady we arrange a room at the local Hostel! What a horrible mistake that cost me $95 since we check in and out in about 3 hrs!!! The hostel I will let Lori describe "creepy, leaky, noisy, and flat out disgusting" Now we are residing in the Alpenhof Lodge which is just down right comfy with a tv Internet and balcony!

going to watch SNL now so feel free to check out these random Photos (click HERE) and post some comments!
Rob

Yellowstone

Rob and Lori will be in Yellowstone for the next three days. There is no cell phone signal or internet where they're staying so Rob asked me to add this post. Check back soon for an update on the Yellowstone visit.

Kalispell, MT

WE drove about 450 miles today and arrived in Kalispell MT, about 30 miles shy of one of the entrances to Glacier Nat. Park. The picture is of FLathead Lake the biggest fresh water lake this side of the country (some 28 miles long). In the morning we plan to drive through Lone Pine State park before going to Glacier. The Rodeway Inn we are in is a bit hickish but it has a casino with about 20 machines and a bar with bud and coores lite on tap. So, we will no doubt get to sleep early tonight!
Cheers

Billings Montana

Since I have not fully posted I am going to list the things we saw and did. We traveled Needles Highway which was awesome, then from there we hit Custer state park, wind cave national park, crazy horse, and then took a 1880 steam train thru Harney peak. From there we continued to Deadwood were we had a nice dinner and lori managed to hit a four of a kind on three different machines for a grand total of $60 of nickels!

Today we traveled thru Spearfish Canon byway, which was breath taking and even had a few waterfalls. From there we hit Devil's Tower where we had a "close encounter" and I am not sure but we may have seen some human like aliens!
After that we drove to Billings Montana to spend the night which is a halfway point to Glacier Nat. Park. We hit the local walmart which must be the saturday night place to go because it was packed with locals!
My updates are coming in late as we are 2 hrs behind (mountain time)

leaving deadwood, SD

Hello all, I wasn't able to update last night as our connection failed. After avoiding a near collision with 3 deer we drove into deadwood, sd. Now we are leaving and heading towards Glacier Nat. Park. I will update once we get settled in, whereever that may be.
Ps. Lori won $60 worth of nickles, I got pictures to prove it!

Rob

Badlands/Presidents' heads

I don't remember how many miles but I think we covered some 300? We crossed the Missouri River and from there the landscape really began to change. We continued onward to the SD Badlands which our pictures won't be able to due it justice, but I will post them anyway. From there we traveled thru Rapid City (cool city) to Mt. Rushmore and called it a night in Hill City, SD.

Click HERE for photo's of today.

Day 2- Made it to Mitchell, SD

The first part of our drive we took a little detour up and over the Mississippi river other than being scenic there wasn't much to see. We continued our drive for another 300 miles and arrived for the night at the Kelly Inn. The Drive thru Minnesota was a bit boring, bumpy, and windy. There were a ton of wind mills but I am not sure if they were wind mill farms or just supplemental energy sources?
We did one of the most tourist things we will do all trip by stopping by the Worlds' only Corn Palace (there is a reason it is the worlds only!) Our highlight of our stay in Mitchell was the Buffolo burgers and pale al at the local pub!
Manana we will continue onwards to the President's Heads!
for some random shot of today click HERE

Rob

some random shots

Click HERE and see some random shots of today. I am not altering the pictures until I get home so they are what they are.
see you all tomorrow!
rob

I am still new to Flickr (where the link will take you to the photos) So, I was just informed I don't have enough space or sets, so I will have to work around that to post pictures via Flickr, I will figure it out later. time for a beer.

We landed on LA CROSSE, Wisconsin

Wow, after 19 hrs and just over a thousand miles we made it to the very edge of Wisconsin, we are just shy of Minnesota. We had a bit of a slow start as Lori remembered at the gas station she didn't have her glasses. I went into the house only to NOT find them as they were in the car all along!!!
On to the drive, we hit heavy rain in Ohio, heavy traffic around chicago and heavy fog near Rockport IL. However, it was very managble and we got to Cracker Barrel in (IL)by 8:30am.

We are now checked into the Best Western of La Crosse WI which over looks the Mississippi river and ready for a due shower and nap, followed by happy hour at 4pm and a comedian at 8pm in the hotel lounge (if we can keep our eyes open) I will post more pictures later.
Cheers
Rob and Lori

Crunch time

Well we are getting close to game time and needless to say we are not exactly prepared, it is hard with me working right up until we leave. But, once we get packed and put everything down stairs we should feel better. Going over our initial plans we might add in Glacier Nat. Park since it is only 370 miles north of Yellowstone. Please, keep in mind that we have no idea of how long we will spend in SD, WY, and MT, when I was there with Chuck we spent all of 5 minutes checking out the presidents heads, but I know Lori will read every single sentence on every plaque on every wall. We decided this isn't a race and we will take as much time in each location as we want. So, if we don't make it to Death Valley, we don't make it. My initial goal of reaching Madison on day one is one I would like to keep as it is about 900 miles away, from there we can slow down.

Well next step is to pack!

Forgot to mention that some of my nurses took a poll and decided there is no way in hell they'd take a road trip with the spouses for three weeks, so I set up a poll, let's see what everyone thinks.

Our trip is fast approaching!

In two weeks and five days we will pull out of our driveway and make our way to SD. As some of you know (I being crazy) have spent some time installing a security camera system to watch over our house while we are gone. I know I have no real reason for spending the time and $ on such a thing but I thought it would be fun and since I apparently have too much spare time decided to put it together. Above is a picture of the back of the house that I took while drinking a cup of coffee at the local Panera Bread. I am still working out some kinks with the system, but from the road I should be able to view live and recorded video and access the system to make changes if necessary. Next week will be Court's last week of summer vacation as she has to report to Rider University by the 31st, Then I work the next 7 days, then come home sleep and at around 7pm Monday the 8th we will be on the road. Stay tuned

Blog Update....working with this site

As I have been tweaking this site I have noticed that there are many quirks and I am trying to figure out how to tell everyone how to navigate and post comments.

1. I adjusted the settings within Blogger and now anyone should be able to comment without having to sign in or create an account. When you go to the comment page, it will ask you to sign in or click below a few spaces and you will see the "Anonymous" click that and comment away.

2. The site doesn't seem to update itself very well. According to Blogger they say to erase your browsers history and try refreshing your page. I noticed that this doesn't work every time. But I did notice if you go to the right of the page under "BLOG ARCHIVE" and click the newest blog entry that this will give you the newer updated page.

If you notice or have any problems please let me know by commenting.

Thanks
Rob

We are back from Raleigh, safe and sound

After a very long 8 hour drive we made it back to good old NJ. Had it not been for the 1.5 hrs of traffic it would have been a very very nice drive! Click here to view some more photos of our time with Bob, his family, and Rob. We had a very nice time in Raleigh, it was a little hot at 95 degrees but swimming at the Hoyles' pool help a lot. We have not seen Bob's family since his wedding 10 yrs ago, so it was really great to see them again.

As far as a warm up trip (pre-cross country) what we learn was driving wasn't a problem but how exactly we packed and what we drag into the hotels on a daily basis is something we have to work out. I am not excited about bringing in everything from the car, but unless I want to risk the car getting broken into that is what we are going to do. We will leave the dirty clothes in the car until we find a laundry mat.

Weekend in Raleigh N.C.

Lori and I have made the drive to Raleigh with no problems, we hit a tiny bit of traffic in the D.C. area but that was it.
Once here we went a to a surprise 30th party of one of Cocker's Co-workers, from there we headed to Hoyle's house for a few drinks and some time playing the wi. I have to say I woke up sore after playing that game check out some random shots of our trip so far.

testing page link to flickr pictures

click the link to view a sample of photos of mine.

IN MEMORY OF FRAN IVERS

Friend and Frank Sinatra fan, always remembered!
Dooby-doooby-doo

Going to raleigh

Lori and I are going to Raleigh this weekend and we are going to test our blogging/updating ability while we are there. As most of you know Rob Cocker (check out his site in my links) is living down there and we are going to pay him a visit. Also, living down there is Bob Hoyle who has not lived in NJ since he graduated high school. So, check back and see how we do.

test video, my co-worker

Early stages of cross country trip

I am beginning to plan our cross country venture. Instead of flying to Denver, renting a car, and flying home from Vegas, we decided to drive from NJ. Our initial route will be about 5,800 miles, not counting side trips. Our intention is to not have a real plan to allow for us to stay in one place for however long we want. We plan to fit in as much as possible in 20 to 21 days.

Places of interest include Mr. Rushmore, Yellowstone, Death Valley, and many national parks of Utah.

COMCAST BLOWS!!!!!

Not much on TV to be excited aboot, but Saturday night 8pm the Stanly Cup finals started. I had a glass of home made wine in hand and sat to watch the game on my relatively new HDTV. Three minutes into the game (count them 3) I lost all reception!!! What the Hell, NO TV, NO INTERNET, NO PHONE. I was told by comcast that the "general garden state area" was having outage problems and the techs were working on it. Keep in mind the houses across from me have cable and my brother who lives across town also has cable! My wife said we should just head to the local dive bar and watch the game. that's what we did.
Redwings kicked the Penquins asses

Day 2

Horrible weather here

test blog

this is my first blog and i am just testing the waters!