Sheep Guarding Llama

Min and I slept in very late today. We were very exhausted after fighting so hard to find a hotel last night. Luckily the room worked out well and we got a good night’s sleep.

We went to breakfast back at the Buck Horn before driving back to Greely, PA for the reunion. After breakfast we ran over to Walmart because I had forgotten to pack shirts to wear so we needed to pick some up.

We only took about fourty minutes returning to the camp for the reunion. It was a nice day, cool and overcast. We didn’t get back to the reunion until after lunch. Unfortunately, the reunion was winding down a bit this afternoon so we really got very little time to hang around. We had a good time for the short time that we were there. I volunteered/was elected to create the family reunion web site.

After the reunion, we hit the road south. We decided to take back roads through the Poconos instead of heading back to the main highway. That was definitely the wrong decision. We ended up spending hours sitting in stopped traffic around all of the resorts. They really have a poor infrastructure in that area. It took us as long to get to DC as it would have if we had left directly from Ithaca.

We finally arrived in Annapolis around 9:30. Cookie and Tommy were over and the drinking had already begun. John’s birthday is coming up on Tuesday so we were celebrating tonight.

This morning Min and I slept in a little and then drove down to Nate’s for the Party at the Whatever. We managed to get down to Ithaca around 1:00 pm or so. The party was good but small this year. We stayed there until everyone went off to go swimming and then we hopped in the Camaro and headed out to go to the reunion in Greeley, Pennsylvania in the Poconos.

We didn’t get down to the reunion until very late, well after dark, which made finding the place a challenge. It was at a small boy’s summer camp. We stopped in for about an hour before heading out to find a hotel. That was quite an adventure in and of itself. We spent three hours driving to each and every exit in the area and going to all of the hotels looking for a place that had rooms. Everyone was sold out and there were very few hotels as it was. We went to Milford, PA, Port Jervis, NJ and then on to downstate NY. Nothing in Middletown or Goshen. We finally managed to get a room at the Super 8 in Montgomery, just minutes away from where John grew up in Marlboro. We didn’t get into the hotel until around 1:30. We got the next to last room and they had sold out by the time we were finished checking in. It took us so long to find a room that we should have just driven back to Ithaca and saved the money. After checking in, we went to the Buck Horn just down the street for some supper since we hadn’t had the opportunity to eat yet.

Dinner was good. The assistant manager there happened to be the only one working because none of his waitresses showed up. But we were the only ones there by the time we were finishing so we ended up talking to him and found out that he was originally from Herkimer. Small world. After dinner it was off to bed to get some sleep. It wasn’t all that late but boy were we tired.

There was a change of plans. I started feeling sick today so decided not to travel. I was light headed and felt like I might have a light fever. I have been on Cimetidine for my acid reflux and those are the side effects so I stopped taking the medicine. Min and I decided to change our schedule for this weekend and instead of me going to DC and then rushing back, we are going to go to the family reunion on Saturday night after going to the Party and the Whatever on Saturday morning. Then we will be going to Annapolis together for Labor Day. That worked into our schedules far better especially since I am not planning on spending any time working while I am down there. Eric and I have a tripped planned in the next few weeks to go down and spend some serious time training.

Just a quick update today. I am traveling to Ithaca today and then on to Washington tomorrow after working in Ithaca for a little while. I am leaving around 3:00 this afternoon to head down so I will be in Ithaca around 5:00. I will be hard to reach since I have to Internet access there or cell service while I am at the apartment. If anyone needs me, email me I guess and I will get with you tomorrow. I will check my mail periodically at the Lifestyles and Autoworks offices.

I got up this morning and wasn’t exhausted as expected. I had breakfast with dad at the Omega Grill and then spent the rest of the day packing trying to get on the road by a decent time. There is just SO much to get done before leaving for any length of time, it is really frustrating. Luckily, I am only going to be gone for four nights at most so I will be back home on Friday. That makes it a little bit better, but not much. There is still lots of things that need to be done.

Okay, no time to write today but I will try to write tomorrow and catch everyone up a little bit on the vacation news and all the latest.

I hope a lot of people are reading SGL this week while we are out of town. The updates must be much more interesting than usual since we are in an exotic land and no one is able to talk to us directly very much… although I am on email and instant messenger on and off throughout the day. Today will likely be the last update, though, while we are on vacation since we will be leaving Halifax tomorrow and we don’t think that we will have much chance of finding and kind of Internet access once we are out of the main city.

It is another totally overcast day in Nova Scotia again today. We haven’t seen a hint of the sun since we crossed into Canada three days ago. It is less foggy today, but the clouds hang low and storms are threatening. Last night, there was a really high wind making it hard to walk around town.

We started the day off by going to the Maritime Museum down on Water Street. We had hoped to start the day with a nice brunch, but nothing was open yet. So we started at the museum. We did about an hour at the museum and then left to get brunch across the street at Mother Tuckers. It was a really amazing brunch. They had four rooms of food to choose from. It was really a great brunch. Min really loved it and we ate until we were really stuffed. It turned out that one of the girls from the dinner theatre last night was eating in a room right next to ours so she came over to say hi to us.

We went out on the double decker bus tour of the city after brunch. The sun had finally come out and it was by far the brightest that it has been since we have arrived here. The tour was good. We got off at The Citidel and took a tour there. That was really interesting. We got to go through a lot of the structure and I managed to take a lot of pictures. We did some shopping at the Regimental store at The Citidel and I got a key chain of my family crest.

We got back on the tour bus and rode down to the Alexander Keith brewery. We took the tour there, it was realy good. The beer wasn’t bad either. You could tell that the people giving the tour were really enjoying themselves. It made the tour a lot of fun. We also had a lot of fun because we were getting to know other people who were taking different tours around the city. Apparently there aren’t really all that many tourist here because we were beginning to recognize quite a few people. Everyone is really friendly here and it is easy to strike up conversations with people.

After the brewery we returned to the Maritime Museum and did about another hour there. It was good but nothing to blow your socks off. Lots of stuff about the Titanic… blah blah blah. I am pretty tired of hearing never ending stuff about the Titanic. It has been beaten to death.

After the museum we headed across the street to McKelvie’s. We had a good dinner there (a bunch more tourist that we recognized ate there too.) Then we went over to Cow’s for some ice cream and for Min to do a little shopping. She got t-shirts and a fleece.

We were pretty tired after eating and shopping and touring all day so we went back over to the hotel. We were looking for something relaxing to do so I am updating the site and Min turned on Star Trek Enterprise. Neither of us have ever seen this show before so we were interested.

We are planning on going up to Cape Breton Island early in the morning so we need to get some relaxation in tonight. We are thinking about heading back a little early on Tuesday and crashing in Montreal on the way home since it is right on the northern route and we will have to go right by anyway. Since neither of us have ever seen Montreal, we thought that it would be nice to at least be there for one night. Plus it lets us get some sleep in during the drive. We won’t have Internet access on Nova Scotia after today. We might get lucky and get access in Montreal, but we won’t know until we get there.