There are a couple of other things I’d like to post on, but I’ll save that for another time (mostly because I still can’t bring myself to sit down and write about how fed up I am with this election season).
I accomplished my 50@50 goal when Sherry and I took our Alaskan cruise at the end of August. It was a great trip and our first cruising experience was great as well.
Sorry it took so long to post this. In Sep, I visited my 49th state, Hawaii. We had a wonderful time. We spent most of the week on Maui, but we went to Oahu for a day, most of which we spent at Pearl Harbor. Our last day there, I rented a C172 and flew around Molokai, Lanai, Molokini, West Maui, etc. Temp 26°C, wind 050@15, alt 30.09, a few clouds @ 4000. Alas, I didn’t turn the GPS on to get the flight track.
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| Lanai from our timeshare the first morning |
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| Honolua Bay |
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| Arizona Memorial |
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| USS Missouri |
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| 2 Pearl Harbor survivors, ages 91 & 95 |
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| With BGen Jerome Hagen, USMC(ret), author of War In The Pacific series |
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| Sunrise at Haleakala |
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| Elephant Island (off Molokai) |
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| Molokai |
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| Molokini |
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| Bay on the way to Hana (don’t remember the name) |
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| Sunset over the surfers near Ho’okipa Beach |
Yup, two posts in one day from me. We got home Monday from a 10 day, 3400+ mile road trip. We went up to Grand Forks, ND to see Matt, then to Medora, ND for the musical, then to Miles City, MT where I checked off state #48, then to Sturgis, SD to check out a cemetery where some of Sherry’s relatives are buried (I have geo-tagged photos of the tombstones that she’ll probably put up on ancestry.com soon), then to Rapid City, SD, then Mt. Rushmore, then over to Sioux Falls to pick up my mother, back to Mitchell for a family reunion, then down across Iowa to the Amana Colony, to Galesburg, IL and on home. It was a lot of driving, but we had a good time and it was great to spend time with Matt and my aunts, uncles, and cousins. As a result, I have now been in all of the contiguous 48 states. The only remaining ones to accomplish 50@50 are, of course, Alaska and Hawaii.
I guess I didn’t mention at the time that I added state number 47 to the list last month when I attended SANS Security East in New Orleans. The class that I facilitated, FOR408, Foresic Essentials, was a really good one that I think I’ll probably try to bring to central Ohio, probably in the late summer or fall.
I thought I had already posted this months ago when I started the blog, but I guess I hadn’t so I’ll do it now.
Two years ago, I went down to FL (well, AL) for my flight review and while I was there, Clint told me I could have the plane on Saturday afternoon to fly wherever I wanted for little more than the price of fuel (much better then than now). I took it and flew to Pascagula, MS. That made the 44th state I had been in at the (then) age of 44. That was when I made it a goal to visit all 50 states by age 50 (before my 51st birthday). I’ve since added 2 more states (AR and ME), so I am currently at 46 states and age 46. I lost a week of vacation this year, though, which (combined with spending 1.5 weeks in Nicaragua) means I’m not sure if I’ll be able to add another state this calendar year. The only ones I still lack are LA, MT, AK, and HI.
