Category Archives: Travel: The Americas

Sooper Cheap Mini Vacation

I was going a little stir crazy and needed to get out of the house. I also was not interested in spending any money, so I chose a few very free/cheap activities in a location we could drive to fairly easily. (We could have saved even more $ by just driving home that night, but the safety concerns of driving home after getting up early, hiking in the morning, running around in the heat all day and then going to a double feature at the drive-in was not worth it.) So I found a no frills motel room and packed a picnic basket and cheap food to offset the splurge.

So we hiked along the American River in Folsom:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredlet/5629652805/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredlet/5629650775/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredlet/5629650305/in/photostream

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Made the pilgrimage to REI in Folsom (its like collecting), looked at the lake, went to a double feature at the drive-in of Hop (cute but just ok) and Rango (loved it, twisted and bonus, Bill Nighy!)
Drive-in - Sacramento

We missed all the crowds that normally block up 80 coming home from Reno/Tahoe and didn’t get sunburned.

(Hurrah!)

Next trip I think will be Mono Lake and looking at Yosemite.
Logistics are under way.

If you don’t like the weather in Texas

just wait 15 minutes.

I arrived Saturday to 75 degree weather and stopped by to see Kramer’s parents (who fed me the most amazing Mexican food) before I headed up to daddy’s house.
Sunday was lovely as well.
Sunday night we decided to cover the rental car with tarps (folded for padding) to prevent a repeat of what happened to one of my cars in college-serious hail damage. I wasn’t interested in the rental company trying to stick me with a large bill. It was fine, rainy but fine.

The next day (after a long icky night full of snot and tornado warnings – I did get sick – I’m totally sexy right now – honk.) I woke up and put on flip flops and a tshirt and looked at the weather station my dad has and noticed that it was about 40 degrees and dropping steadily. So I put on more than that and we went out to lunch.

That night, we watched the weather on the web show us a monster cold front moving all over the part of North Texas we were in. After letting the dog in we watched as big, fat flakes of snow started to fall.

We got about 3 inches in the few hours before I went to bed. I woke up to the rental covered in about 5 inches of snow and the weather about 68 degrees again.

Gotta love it.

Today I wore my orange flip flops and my new orange and red tie dyed shirt from a local pub while I ran out for Starbucks and breakfast burritos from Taco Cabana (breakfast of champions, baby.)

To date its been a lot of sleeping, knitting, and hooking Pam II on knitting (she isn’t in love with knitting at this point, but its only been about 2 hours for her so far-though I think she wants to love knitting because the yarn is so lovely to play with.) There are cats to snuggle with, a farting dog and lots of mexican food and brisket.
Not too bad.

Off to grama’s tomorrow and then on to Kermit. I’m looking forward to the road trip.
😉