WhirledPeas

I'm pretty sure I have a Travel Blog post with the exact same titlefrom 2017. In fact, when I'm done writing this blog post, I should compare the two. I suspect they'll be very similar! Just like in 2017, we hopped in our car to chase totality. We're staying in Austin, Texas. Our original plan was to watch the eclipse from the hotel to avoid having to deal with traffic afterwards. It was a great plan except for the clouds. Today, Austin is forecasted to have almost 90% cloud cover. I scoured the weather reports for nearby towns. Things are worse to the south and southwest of us. Cloud-wise, it's about the same directly west. North is slightly better. But northwest... northwest is where it's at! We decided our best bet was to head to a ... read more

What a day! With so much travel, it's hard to believe this is one single day. It feels like two! Over a year ago, we began planning our trip to Texas for the total solar eclipse. We went eclipse chasing for the 2017 eclipse and loved the experience. However, there was one thing I learned from it: traffic is just terrible after the eclipse! So, we wanted to stay within the path of totality and hopefully see the eclipse from our hotel without having to travel on the day of. So, we booked our hotel in northwest Austin (that area was predicted to get 2 minutes and 58 seconds of totality). This location was picked because it was great for the eclipse. However, it made it longer to go visit family. Then came some discouraging eclipse ... read more

Crossing into Canada yesterday went smoothly. There was a $5 toll for the bridge, and they only needed to see our passports (I had packed things like the kids' birth certificates just in case, but we didn't need them). Then, we finished crossing the border, and the kids became international travelers! Immediately, Andrew's phone switched to giving us directions in meters. I'd turned off my phone before the bridge, and we'd set Andrew's up for a $5/day international plan that Verizon offered. Our plan was to stay the night at the Sheraton, but we decided to check out the falls first. Remember how parking at the falls in New York had cost us $20 for less than an hour? Well, parking in the falls in Canada was $35 Canadian (about $26 US). Niagara Falls has definitely ... read more

After a fun- and family-filled few days at Hocking Hills, we had a new destination today: Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We set out from Hocking Hills around 9am. The drive was very windy at first as we were driving through all of the hills. Joanna started to feel car sick, so we stopped at a random gas station in Columbus and hung out there until she began to rally. The drive was all interstate after Columbus, so she fared much better from that point on. Driving from Columbus to the Cleveland area was an easy drive north, and the drive had plenty of trees to keep it feeling forested and interesting. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is just south of Cleveland, and the entrance is basically in the suburbs. In fact, it appeared to us that some ... read more

My grandma was born 100 years ago today. Some of us had casually been talking about having a family reunion (our last was in 2016). My aunt mentioned that it might be nice to do something in honor of my grandma's would-be 100th birthday. So, we decided to plan a reunion in honor of her birthday! Last summer, I spent some time putting together possibilities for a reunion and sent it to my aunts and uncles. The idea they liked best was Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio. We lucked out that a new lodge was opening at the state park in October 2022. It meant we could utilize that option for the reunion in July 2023! About half of our family opted to stay in the lodge. In addition to lodge rooms, there is a ... read more