Category: Vacation

On our recent cruise, we traveled into South Carolina to get to the port in Charleston. It’s common for us to use our GPS to navigate our trips and this one was no different. While it is more desirable to take as many major roads as possible, GPS software will usually take you through some less traveled areas in an attempt to find a shorter and/or faster route.  It is not unusual to see a GPS take you off of the main road even for a short period of time in the name of taking you the shorter route when it would have been faster just to leave you on the main road.  If you are like me, these shorter routes usually lead through neighborhoods or narrow roads with anything from speed bumps to school zones that seems designed to slow you down.  So, I was suspicious on this trip when we were told to turn off a major interstate and directed down a two lane highway.  My wife looked at an overall map and assured me that staying on the interstate would take us a more roundabout route than this South Carolina shortcut.

Overnight on the third evening of our cruise to the Bahamas, my wife was awakened by my voice coming from the bathroom of our cabin.  “Can someone come help me!” was the plea that she heard.  I wasn’t yelling, but I was speaking in a voice louder than what I usually use. She got up, came to the bathroom, and opened the door.  Looking into the bathroom from our cabin, there was a shower to the left, the sink and a toilet to the right and a grab bar mounted on the wall across from the door.  I was tugging on the grab bar like I was trying to open a locked door.  She spoke to me waking me up.  I don’t remember ever being a sleepwalker before this night.  But there is an explanation for what I was saying.

My wife and I recently went on vacation to Ashville, North Carolina.  On our way home, we planned to drop by and visit our daughter who lives in Waverly, Tennessee.  Our daughter lives a little over an hour away from us.  It had been a couple of weeks since we had seen her.  We had talked about going with her to a new restaurant she had discovered in that area for some time.  Stopping by to eat would be a good excuse stop and see her.  The fact that it was just an excuse for visiting was made more obvious by the fact that the place we planned to eat was closed on that day, but we still stopped, finding another new local restaurant to try.

We recently took a vacation to Ashville, North Carolina.  My sister had been there a few weeks before we went and recommended that we take a food tour. She said it was a fun way to experience a variety of local restaurants in a short period of time.  My wife made arrangements for our food tour weeks before our trip.

Several years ago, my wife saw a bottle of pre-mixed margaritas called Stinky Gringo.  She asked the store clerk if it was any good.  Their response was, “Oh yeah! But don’t plan on going anywhere after you drink it.  It’s strong!”  We tried it out and liked it.  It has about twice the alcohol content of most pre-mixed margaritas.  A lot of margaritas that come pre-mixed along with the standard ones you get at Mexican restaurants taste like lime Kool-Aid. But you can taste the tequila in this one.  It has become the go-to margarita at the Wheeler house.

Libertyland was an amusement park with a patriotic theme located at the Mid-South Fairgrounds in Memphis.  It was probably best known for the roller coaster called the Zippin Pippin in part because Elvis Presley declared it as his favorite ride.  This ride was built at the Fairgounds around 1912, years before the amusement park opened on July 4, 1976.  I have several friends who were music performers at Libertyland in its early years. One of them was even an Elvis impersonator.  Libertyland was only a moderate success.  Most of my visits to Libertyland were made during the Mid-South Fair in the fall and rarely a summer trip when it was just the amusement park. 

When my kids were young, we would visit my mother-in-law in San Antonio, Texas regularly for family vacations.  My mother-in-law would buy our family season passes to Six Flags Fiesta Texas.  One year when we were there, I rode a ride called the Frisbee with my son and youngest daughter. Wikipedia describes the Frisbee as “type of pendulum amusement ride featuring a circular gondola that rotates as it swings back and forth. Riders are seated on the gondola facing inward.” Most years my kids weren’t interested in riding this and I did care to go on it for my own amusement.  It’s not the style of ride that I would normally be attracted to.  This year was one of the last years that our family made this trip. My kids were more willing to try different rides.  I encouraged them by riding this one with them.