Friday, September 30, 2011

My New England Vacation - Part 2

After getting into the house Tuesday night, (GF was already asleep) we pretty much also went to bed. There was only one guest room and we shared a bed. Suffice to say, I ended up on the sofa after a couple hours, due to various incompatibilities. The next day we went out and had a nice lunch at a place called Brittany's just over the border in Northboro. SIL had a crab meat sandwich wrapped in a tortilla, I had a Monte Cristo sandwich. Very tasty. Then we found an Ocean State Job Lot and bought an air mattress for the empty dining room. That took care of sleeping arrangements. We also bought a few other things, it's a cook store.

After work on Thursday GF, SIL and I left for Cape Cod and her family's beach house. Traffic for the Labor day weekend wasn't too bad though we did run into traffic for the Patriot's game in Foxboro. Now that it's 3 weeks later, I can't remember if we did anything when we got there that night other than watch TV, walk dogs (GF's dog Kimba and her sister's dog Kai were staying there with her dad), perhaps have some dinner? We got there around 9 pm, so who knows what we did?
Kai on the left, Kimba on the right.

But for the next four days we had a blast! There was lobster one night at a friend's house. we brought a Michigan wine. There was lobster at restaurants, there was clam chowder, lots of clam chowder! The best I had was at a place called The Skipper.

Some of the places we went were Dick and Ellie's Flea Market in South Dennis, MA. That was fun, I bought a rubberized rain coat, been wanting a new one of those for years, and there is was, my SIL actually found it for me. I also bought a cool looking straw hat, made me look very beachy, a colorful floor runner for my hall made out of 98% recycled plastic. A pair of earrings, a small costume ring supposedly from the 1940's and a faux Chamilia bracelet with lots of dangly stuff.

Saturday we tried to go to the beach but the winds were gusting to over 25 mph, last vestiges of Irene, so we gave up barely two hours into it, it was warm but not fun getting sand continually blown in our faces.

Sunday we stopped at the National Seashore for a short hike on the way to Provincetown, at the tip of the cape taking my BF's sister with us.  Again, a great time with more chowder, lobster, shopping, checking out the sights, etc. On the way back we stopped at the Truro Winery for a tasting, bought a couple bottles, it was rather pricey, definitely a touristy kind of place.


View form hiking trail at the National Seashore

Provincetown with the Pilgrim Tower in the background.
Monday was the day we were leaving but we did a few more touristy things, one was a visit to the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. Then we climbed an old stone edifice called Sago Tower. But this is enough for now, I'll post more photos another time.

Hell of a Couple Weeks

Haven't been in the mood to post more vacation stuff. Ended up with massive out ear infections in both ears a few days after my return. Horrible, horrible pain, even Tylenol -3's did not help. A fever closing in on 102 degrees. It came on fast on a Monday and of course, worsened that night. Couldn't see my physician's assistant till Tuesday afternoon. She put me on one antibiotic and ear drops, 10 in each ear twice per day. I ended up going back 2 days later because I had no relief in my left ear. She had to put a wick into that one to get the drops into the canal, it was completely closed up. Plus I got a second antibiotic. That finally did the trick but I was wiped out physically and my energy didn't return till today, almost 2 weeks later.

Then 2 nights ago I was stung by a bee on my ankle while walking back from Uncle Butch's with my dogs. I took 2 allergy pills, cleaned the spot and applied hydro-cortisone. It didn't really swell up or bother me very much till today when my ankle became red, hot, swollen and painful to the touch. So back to the doctor's office, and saw a different PA since mine has Friday's off. She cleaned it, put me back on antibiotics and after checking my ears decided it wouldn't hurt to do more drops for another week.

Do I even want to mention my neighbor's little dog Ernie, who decided to play eat my tire while backing out of his driveway? After rushing him to the vet doing 80 mph on back roads, they determined no broken bones, and the huge swelling in his groin is probably a hernia that will need surgery when he recovers from the initial trauma. I sincerely hope that this will teach Ernie to chase cars no more!

I need another vacation.

Good thing I have one coming up next week, assuming I live that long!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

My New England Vacation - Part 1

I invited my sister-in-law, my husband's favorite sister (yes, she's his only sister but still his favorite) to accompany me to the fair state of Massachusetts, my birthplace, a nice place to visit, but a place I have no wish to live because it's expensive, crowded, over taxed, and I plain like Michigan better! I left northern MI on Monday, the 29th of August and reached SIL's place by 4 pm. We left the next morning in my car at 8 am and were in Ohio by 9am. Beautiful day, sunshine, fluffy white clouds, temperatures in the high 70s, low 80s.  Ohio went by swiftly, more swiftly than I remember but that's probably because I usually take this trip alone with my dogs and dogs are neither witty nor talkative.

After we got into New York, had rather sad looking  and pricey pita sandwich rolls at a rest area, passed Buffalo and got onto the Thruway we noticed signs stating that US90 was closed between Syracuse and Albany and everyone must exit at 34 A. I thought it odd that there would be that much construction going on to close the entire thruway for such a stretch so as we approached we listened to traffic radio and discovered it was due to flooding from Hurricane Irene. She wasn't that powerful a storm wind-wise but apparently was so full of water there were major floods inland and the Thruway was not immune. However, the detour we were expected to take, US81 south to Binghampton, NY  (67 miles) then US87 north to Albany (104 miles) was insane. It would be a 4 hour detour, adding more than 2 hours to the trip that normally takes less than 2. Instead after a little debate and map wrangling we took route 20 which parallels 90 about 10-20 miles to the south. That turned out to be a lovely road and took us through many nice little towns and past lovely scenery. It was also much more enjoyable than the proposed freeway detour. Yes it was slower and in the end the detour did add 2.5 hours to the estimated 12.5  hour trip, but it was shorter and less stressful than the one the highway department recommended.

When we got to the end of the detour and were about to get on 87 just before it joined back up with 90 we saw lots of flood damage. Trailer homes off their foundations, round hay bales scattered and piled up at the edges of the road, one had a wicker chair tossed on top. Trees and brush flattened for many feet beyond still raging rivers, evidence of mud scraped away from the road surface. It even smelled muddy. Very sad.

In the end we got to my GF's house at 11 pm on the nose. She was already asleep since she had to work the next day. We crawled into bed and spent the next day relaxing and hitting a discount store for various sundries until the drive that night to Cape Cod.