Addy Comes to Visit

On Wednesday, August 13th Jennifer picked up Addy in the morning and brought her to the house to stay overnight. She seemed to have a lot of fun . They went to the beach for awhile and there were great waves. She also played outside here and had fun with Josh.

Jennifer Takes Josh To NYC

Jennifer took Josh to NYC on Saturday, August 16th. She took Chris when he turned 14 and this year it was Josh's turn. They got on the bus in Syracuse at 6:15am and returned home about 1am on sunday. Jim went along with them also. They had a long day of sightseeing including Rockefeller Center, The 911 Memorial and a ride on the Staten Island Ferry s they could get a close up look at the Statue of Liberty. Josh said he had an "awesome" day.

Skeet Shooting

While Jim was here last week he, Josh and Jim did some skeet shooting. They always have a lot of fun ding this.

Chris Graduates From Fire School-July 12, 2014

Jim and I drove to Cleveland on Thursday to begin our adventure -a trip out west by train . We leave for the train trip on Sunday but before that we traveled to Hocking, Ohio to see Chris graduate from Fire School. We were up and on the road at 5:30am as it is a 4 hour drive from Hiram to Hocking. We arrived about 9:30 and made our way into the auditorium for the 10am ceremony. It was a nice event with a few short speeches, the handing out of certificates and then a short slide show showing some of the different scenerios the cadets had to go through. The hardest for Chris was repeling as he doesn't like heights. but he did it! After the ceremony we headed back to Hiram and arrived home around 4pm. Now we rest awhile before heading to the train station in downtown Cleveland at 1am to boardthe 3am train to Chicago. Let the adventure begin.

Amtrak "Empire Builder" Westbound

 

 

A few weeks ago, we embarked on an "epic" (according to my Dad) journey out to Washington State and back. We used Amtrak as our mode of transportation this time around. On previous trips, we had flown and drove cross country.

Our big observation about Amtrak is not to use them if you absolutely have to be somewhere at a certain time. Amtrak schedules usually state that trains run from several hours to occasionally a day or so late. This is due to the infrastructure of the railroad, freight cars being given priority, and the usual maintenance issues that may come up.

We left Cleveland on Sunday morning, about a half hour late on the onset. This turned into a 5 hour deficit due to track maintenance in Gary, Indiana. We made it into Chicago and our connection by about an hour (it should have been several hours). After a short stay in the lounge, we were off on the 2nd leg of our journey to Seattle. We had reserved sleeper cars, so this part of the trip included first class accommodations with meals and other services. The food was great, samples are posted.

One thing about your trip in a sleeper car, your porter can make/break your trip. My parents had a great porter, but ours was more along for the ride than to assist travelers.

Amazingly, we arrived into Seattle only 1/2 hour late. We were able to get our rental car and arrive on Friday Harbor several hours earlier than we expected.