SkyPark Adventures!

Category: Travel

  • Snowshoe – xmas 2021

    We were originally scheduled to go to Blue Knob in PA for our Christmas break ski trip, but it became apparent that they were not going to be open in time. At the last minute I had to change our plans to go to Snowshoe and I couldn’t get a room for all the days, so we skied one day at Timberline, stayed in Elkton overnight, and then headed to Snowshoe.

    Parker swam in the pool Monday night after Timberline, and Skylar and I were barely awake.

    We had a great time skiing, and the our room at Snowshoe (which somehow I don’t have pictures of) suited us well as they had a giant internet enabled tv in the main room and we brought the bed into that room so we could all sleep together at night.

    The slopes were about 65% open and there was enough challenging terrain to be fun. The sunset was beautiful on the ride home and Skylar wanted to snap some pics of it, but the phone camera doesn’t quite do it justice.

  • Maui – Hawaii

    After wrapping up with the conference on Thursday we flew out from Oahu to Maui on Friday morning. By accident we ended up at an excellent snorkeling spot one beach down from our hotel while trying to kill some time prior to checking in.

    The second day we drove up to the peak of the Haleakala National Park. It was no less than 20 degrees colder at the peak and everyone shivered as we walked around outside.

    The landscape looked like the moon and I’m told that NASA sent astronauts there to train for the moon landing back in the 60’s.

    On our third day we went to Black Rock beach and the kids and I enjoyed some amazing snorkeling spotting zebra fish, needle fish, and what I like to call bright yellow’s (I’m making all those names up).

    We were about 300 yards from shore with only 2 boogie boards to float on and at one point I noticed the tide pulling us out to sea and toward a bank of cliffs.

    Luckily, the kids had on their flippers and are good swimmers, because I don’t think I could have swam hard enough to get the three of us to shore otherwise.


  • Oahu – Hawaii

    Our bodies were so screwed up after leaving London (5 hours ahead of EST), spending one night in Virginia, and then flying to Hawaii (5 hours behind EST). The kids seemed to adjust fairly quickly to going to bed at 7:00 PM and waking around 6:00 AM.

    Susan kept her East Coast hours, waking up around 4:00 AM and going to the hotel lobby to do work. And I varied between going out until 10:00 PM and crashing at 8:00 PM, while consistently waking with the kids around 6:00.

    We ate at the hotel buffet every morning, which you can’t beat for convenience. Skylar and Parker primarily enjoyed the pools and did some fishing with Hadobogee.

  • London

    I went to London for training with work. Each morning I would walk a little over 20 minutes from the Waldorf Astoria near Covant Garden to the diamond district where our training room was located.

    I’d take a new route every morning stop at a different cafe for breakfast. The flat white is my new favorite drink – but forget buying one at Starbucks (they don’t know how to make it properly).

    The coffee is sooo good! Part of the reason is because the people there love good coffee and they have expensive machinery and experienced baristas. The other reason is because the milk actually has flavor to it, unlike the ultra-pastuerized stuff that tastes more watered down in the U.S.

    I enjoyed all my breakfasts except for the porridge, which is essentially oatmeal, and apparently Londoner’s don’t have cholesterol issues because I couldn’t find any place that had egg whites.

    The people in London are exceedingly polite, and the crowd is the most international that I’ve seen in any city including D.C. or N.Y. I told Declan that if I’d traveled to London at age 25 I never would have returned home. The city felt like the home I’d never visited.

    The size of the city is perfect, and unlike visiting NY, where I need a break after about 3 days of frenetic living, I never felt overwhelmed or rushed. You can walk or bike anywhere, and there is amazing history, architecture, and beautiful people of all types.


  • Samuel and Keelie wedding

    We went to Tampa Thursday to Sunday for Samuel and Keelie’s wedding. Our hotel in Siesta Key beach had the softest white sand I have ever seen in all my travels.

    The sand feels like walking on powdered sugar. The first inch of sand is super soft but underneath it the sand packs incredibly hard. I tried building a sand castle with the kids and after putting sand and water in a bucket it turned to concrete.

    One of the locals saw me trying to empty the bucket and informed me that it would never come out, and I would need to take the bucket into the ocean and fish the sand out with water. So bizarre!

    Skylar was a beautiful flower girl in Samuel’s and Keelie’s outdoor wedding at a local park on the water. The location was very serene. Ryland officiated the wedding and her speech writing was both funny and touching.