Travel – Page 3 – Nutshellcity.com

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children, Travel

Getting away in a mountain stream

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Dang! Dogs sure do love mountain streams. The cool, bubbling, rambling ones. Strewn in river stones where they can run and bound and realize how their little wolf-like paws were meant to tear through the world like a brush fire or a blast of wind.

Free. Frantic. Frenzied.

Oh, to be a dang dog!

Same with kids. They like them, too, those streams. With the same gusto. Even at 14. Big splashes. Shoes soaking wet. Egging the dog on. No care in the world. “Come on, Lily, this way!” they yell, and the dog jerks about and tears down the other way.

Not a care in the world.

There we were. Out along little trails with no one else in sight. Somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina. Near to Blowing Rock, but not really near to anything. Anything civilized, it seemed.

Or anything that started with “c” and ended with “virus.”

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Travel

The over-the-top packing expedition

June 28, 2020 No Comments

Sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Forget the trip. The trip isn’t the issue. The trip isn’t even the adventure. In fact, the trip is the vacation you need just because of all the packing and the planning and the getting it to fit in the car.

Especially in a pandemic. When, after several months of social distancing in your house – venturing out only to buy groceries and see if the sky is still blue – you decide to take the family away from home. To a rented house in the North Carolina mountains. Easy to get to. You can take everything you need. You know the area. And you can spend all your time socially-distanced on trails and out-of-the-way places where hopefully no coronavirus will show its face … because of bears.

But … sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Sometimes, getting ready is so exhausting that you need an extra day just to recover from it all. Before you can go out and try to enjoy yourself. You need that time to recover from the planning. The loading. The fear that it would burst your car at the seams. Carrying it all in.

All so you can do it again a few days later … after you’ve used maybe 2 percent of everything you brought.

But I’m a planner. A worrier. A planning worrier. I’m so obsessive-compulsive that I keep detailed lists in order to manage my proliferation of detailed lists. That was certainly the case for this short, four-night trip designed to limit grocery store jaunts or anything that would take us out of the comfortable wilds and into the unknowns of civilization.

To achieve this feat was relatively easy. All I had to do was pack our entire house, plus our dog, into the back of our Toyota RAV4.

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Coronavirus, Florida, Travel

Getting along with gators on a lazy Florida river

June 5, 2020 No Comments

Only in Florida do you float along next to one of nature’s most dangerous predators and think to yourself, “Hey, look at that … now, where did we put the pretzel chips?”

And it was upon that realization that I started to wonder if we’re alright. We Floridians.

There we were, kayaking along Silver Springs. Paddling through the turquoise waters and lazy river grass. My daughter had asked if I thought we would see any alligators. My wife had warned us both. She had a bit of a dream about it. Not a good one. More of a nightmarish premonition. I think it somehow involved us being devoured by a gator on some kind of fancy cracker.

She was nervous about the two of us going, in particular because earlier in the week a curator at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm had been bitten and pulled from a canoe while retrieving some photo equipment. Luckily, even while injured, he was able to get himself to safety. He was an expert and knew what to do. If something happened to us, though, what chance did we stand?

Our epitaph would read: Went out as an adornment atop a fancy cracker.

Did I think we would even see any alligators, my daughter asked as we cruised along. Nah! Probably too many people on the river. Or the spring water was too cold. Or too much shade when they could be out on some sun-drenched bank somewhere soaking it in and …

“Hey, look at that …”

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, Travel

The travel bug dashed by the corona bug

May 20, 2020 No Comments

What does a socially-distancing summer trip planning aficionado do without plans for a summer trip?

That’s what I’m wrestling with as we reach the doorstep of the summer travel season. It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and the biggest plans most of us have is a journey to the grocery store. At least we get to dress up … by wearing a mask.

I don’t mean to complain. My family and I are healthy. We have jobs. We have toilet paper. And remarkably, we’re all still talking to each other.

But like everyone, boy, do we long to be free. Back to the good, old healthy days when you could come and go as you please. No concern for where you went or who you talked to. And you could safely plot out summer treks that took you to far-off exotic lands filled with adventure and intrigue. Like Orlando!

Or somewhere even further, and more exotic. Where there are waterfalls. Or cotton candy machines. Or skyscrapers. Or travel scams by street hustlers who can spot you a mile away because your shirt screams, “Easiest money you’ll make all day!”

Man, what I wouldn’t give to be ripped off right now!

2020 Nutshells, Family, Parenthood and Children, Travel

Planning for the empty-nest middle school trip

January 8, 2020 No Comments

So, let’s see. She has: Gloves. Scarf. Raincoat. Snacks. Toothbrush. Spare toothbrush, for when the first one falls in the toilet. More snacks. Compass. Notecard reminders to floss. Notecard reminders to set alarm clock. Notecard reminders to wake up for alarm clock. Notecard reminders to get on the bus. More snacks.

There’s a lot that goes into prepping for a week-long middle school trip to Washington D.C. That’s what my house has been undertaking for the past week or so: Setting up my 14-year-old daughter for a big bus trip to the nation’s capital.

There she will journey to some of our country’s most historic sites and museums: the White House, Mt. Vernon, the National Archives for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a side trip to Philadelphia for Independence Hall and, of course, the Medieval Times restaurant and jousting show.

If that doesn’t scream, “America!” I don’t know what does.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Travel

The forgotten suitcase at the top of the stairs

November 20, 2019 No Comments

So here’s what you don’t do: When you are about to go on a trip for several days to the mountains of North Carolina, which just happens to be at least eight hours away, and your wife says, “My suitcase is at the top of the stairs, can you bring it down?” When she says this, and you say, “The suitcase? Bring it down? No problem! I’ll take care of it,” make sure you don’t do one thing: Forget to take care of it.

Because what you don’t want to do – what would be incredibly irresponsible and dumb and possibly criminal, depending on the jurisdiction and the judge – is drive all the way to the mountains of North Carolina, which just happens to be at least eight hours away, and find you don’t have the suitcase.

Especially not after you told your wife, “No problem! I’ll take care of it.” Because that would now be a lie. And worse, the suitcase would still be at the top of the stairs … at least eight hours away.

Because when you carry everything into the North Carolina house you rented and your wife goes to unpack her suitcase and then looks around and says, “Hey, wait a minute, where’s MY suitcase?” you will have to gasp.

It will be an epic gasp. It will literally suck all the oxygen out of the house. If there is a fire lit in the fireplace, it will literally kill the fire. Because you’ll realize at that moment that the suitcase isn’t there. And of course it isn’t. You can go out and check the car (better do that anyway,) but it will be futile. Because it won’t be there, either. You know where it is. You know EXACTLY where it is!

2019 Nutshells, Travel

When trips open up a can of crazy

November 6, 2019 No Comments

It was like the trip that opened up the can of crazy. Ever have one of those? Not bad. Not dangerous. Not even majorly delayed or overly disrupted. Flights eventually got where they were supposed to go, and there was never any loss of life or limb (or baggage.) Yet, nothing about it seemed particularly normal, and I spent the entire time wondering what would go wrong – or crazy! – next.

It was a trip to Washington D.C. for a college media conference. The college newspaper I advise at Flagler College was a finalist for a national award for online publications and I was taking a student editor to collect the plaque. Yippee!

But it all started with a canceled flight that wasn’t canceled. My phone blurted at me in the middle of the night to tell me the airline had scratched the early morning flight because of “severe weather” and re-booked us to late evening.

There are few things worse than a frantic, beleaguered and futile middle-of-the-night airline cancellation quandary. When you desperately want answers, solutions and some remedy to your carefully choreographed trip, but can’t muster much in a bleary-eyed, early-morning stupor. Exhausted and finally resigned to doom, I went back to sleep, planning to wake up late and mope around all day. Only, when I did wake up, I came to find that the flight was miraculously back on and I had better hustle if I was gonna’ make it. Thanks, phantom cancellation!

2019 Nutshells, Childhood, Family, Travel

Two brothers, two ideas of ‘cool’ at an old timey village

August 7, 2019 No Comments

“Man, I got to make a real brass candleholder,” my brother said, plunging the little craft high into the air. “Isn’t it cool?”

It was tiny. If a mouse cared a lick about candlelight, he would be hard-pressed to put this puny holder to work.

“Wait, is that from the place where you pay $5 to turn a candlestick yourself?” I said. “You actually spent money on that? Hahahaha! We saw that and thought only suckers would go in there.”

We were in Michigan to see my younger sister in the Michigan Shakespeare festival. My daughter had traveled with me, and on this morning, we had been talked into going to visit nearby Greenfield Village, created by Henry Ford in the late 1920s as a re-created town to show off working technology from sawmills to living farms. It was my brother’s idea, and he had already sold my father on it.

Now he just needed two more suckers.

2019 Nutshells, Travel

Things you learn on an international vacation

June 12, 2019 No Comments

What a wonderful vacation. Two weeks abroad in London and Ireland. Seeing the sights. Taking in the countryside. Exploring the rich traditions and culture that go back centuries. And trying to make sense of what clotted cream is, and why I can eat it by the bucketful.

There were so many highlights from our trip: Windsor Castle. Riding Connemara ponies in Ireland. A jaunting cart trek through the Gap of Dunloe. Knowing that Cadbury chocolate was never more than 5 feet away in any direction.

You can read in guidebooks about the sights you can see on a similar vacation, so I thought I would share with you some lesser known travel tips that will be invaluable if you choose to take your own journey:

• Never try to do currency conversion math in your head. It will cause you great embarrassment when you’re buying a bag of crisps, look at the price and scream, “This is highway robbery! I will never spend $3,200 on potato chips!” Use a calculator, dummy.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Travel

Looking for luck of the Irish … on the road

June 5, 2019 No Comments

I’ve driven some pretty wild roads. Mountain roads where boulders the size of houses look ready to crush you. Roads with snow higher than the car. A road that had a wolf jogging alongside it. You want a bad omen for a road? How about a WOLF trotting next to you! That one screams, “Buddy, you’re going to die and I’ll to be there to eat you.”

But after a week of driving my family around Ireland – mostly along the Wild Atlantic Way on the western coast, where the rocky shore line meets the cold, raging ocean – I’ve found roads that redefine the meaning of “wild.”

Not wild in any traditional sense – the kind of roads where you might plummet off a towering cliff and people stand with mouths agape saying, “Did you see how the smoke spelled, ‘Holy crap!’ right before it exploded?”