Each New Year’s Eve we try to do something special. Dawn had recently been to Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Nakatish) on a business trip and raved about how beautiful it was. It was the site of the film “Steel Magnolias”. If you saw that film you saw a good amount of the local scenery. The Cane River runs through the middle of the town. There is a nice little park along the shoreline. Shops and restaurants line Front Street which runs along the river and is the centerpiece for tourism and events. The main attraction at Christmastime is the “Festival of Li [View Full Entry]

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Cruisin' In Santa Cruz My 27 year old niece, Erika, was getting married I Santa Cruz so I planned a weekend trip to attend. I wanted Dawn to go with me so she could meet some of the family she hasn’t met yet as well. I had just spent a week in San Jose with a short side trip to Santa Cruz three months earlier so I knew the area fairly well already. I hadn’t gotten to see Santa Cruz beach or the boardwalk though so I definitely wanted to see that. Dawn had earned a free ticket on Southwest and [View Full Entry]

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San Francisco Treat! My brother, who lives northeast of San Francisco in Benecia, thought it would be a good idea to have my mother and I come visit his family during the Christmas holidays. It sounded like a good idea so I started looking at package deals online. I wanted Dawn to go with me so that meant that we would drive to Dallas to pick up my mother and fly from there to San Francisco. I looked extensively on expedia.com for a good deal for the period of December 26 to December 30. The prices on Expedia were a little [View Full Entry]

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Das Mueller Haus! Our New Year’s Adventure in Fredericksburg, Texas I can’t recall how Dawn got the idea to spend New Year’s Eve 2007 in a rental house in Fredericksburg but it was a great idea. It’s a quaint German town in the central Texas hill country. It’s Main Street has numerous touristy shops and restaurants and museums. Nearby are Enchanted Rock and Pedernales Falls which are both great places to hike and experience nature. She found a nice little three bedroom cottage near the center of town called Das Mueller Haus. We im [View Full Entry]

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New York In a New York MinuteDawn had to go to New York to pick up her kids who were returning from Greece after staying with their father for the summer. She decided to make a little trip out of it and made reservations for two days before they arrived to spend a little time sightseeing and asked if I wanted to go as well. I thought, “What could we do in just two days?” But we always manage to have a spectacular time wherever we go so I started looking for cheap airfares on Priceline and Expedia. Dawn booked the [View Full Entry]

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Rio, Baby! Spectacular Travel on the Cheap Where to go? I’ve had the travel bug for several years now. Earlier this year I felt the need to take a trip. I had enough mileage for a free domestic plane ticket so that meant we only had to buy one. Then a credit card deal came in the mail for 25,000 free miles on American Airlines if you signed up for a Citi credit card. Normally, I only get a credit if there is a great deal on the interest rate but this was too tempting. With this, I thought, Dawn [View Full Entry]

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