Keeping the Windmill Alive - Your last trip? - April 2012

My Nuvi 350 recently guided me around Puerto Rico. It was a necessity since street signs in the cities are posted on approximately 1 out of every 8 streets. It's a beautiful island with beaches, mountains & shows it's heritage quite well.

Fred

265wt to phoenix

Final planning for our annual trip North in June!
This year it looks like 24 days, 3600 miles (not counting local driving), 13 states,
This years events to attend - meet my new granddaughter (now 1 month old), 2 HS graduations, attend Rock'n Ribfest weekend in NH, 2 dance recitals for Granddaughters, four days visiting Maine Coast and tasting epicurean delights (lobster & mussels), partying at my oldest son's 50th b'day plus visiting old friends in various locations along the way !
We actually have 4 days with nothing planned - yet !
Motels all booked except for 2 nights !
Now if the price of gas will stay reasonable ?????????

Obviously Jack (1490) and Samantha (260) will be our constant companions !

I left BOTH of my GPSs at home this weekend. We attended church on the way home from Burlington this morning.

Made a trek to Baltimore and back. Lots of traffic out on I95 with New Yorker's apparently returning home. No major issues, but we did encounter a few congested and slow spots. Route 40 might have been about as quick. Google Nav and Waze both performed well, so no problems there.

Driving around Westchester County

to Jacksonville, NC

Took a drive through the Catoctin Mountains (near Frederick, MD) today while the wife and kids were sleeping in the car.

Drove last night to Stephens City, VA to the Drive-in movies.

My last one was my usual one up the coast. Visit family, bike around town and down to the beach. It's relaxing.

Just local around town driving with 1 trip to Cincinnati.

Just returned from trip to the Tuscany and Umbria region of Italy.
The GPS was a great tool.
Italy can be difficult at times, the GPS got us to the right spot every time.
The down side was addresses are hard to entry, even though I have European maps downloaded.
The GPS defaults to a US format.
Might be good to get the GPS rental for the rental car company, pre-loaded with European maps if you are only doing one trip.

My Garmin 2555lmt took me to Durham NC and back, traffic feature worked great.

Started in Pittsburgh monday, then to Saratoga Springs, NY. Later in the week back to Rochester and then back home late last night.

Had the Zumo 665 and Nuvi 1450 both running for a while for some testing. Jill echoing was great as well as the different alert voices along the way.

Zumo with the latest fW and maps did a poor job of routing. The 1450 with the latest FW but 2011.10 maps did much better. I'm almost afreaid to update the maps on it.

vegas !!! lol

Flew out to Sikeston today to go to Lambert's cafe for their famous throwed rolls. I almost didn't make it for the weight limit to fly back.

explored some backroads in my neighborhood - drove aimlessly and let my nuvi take me home.

Out to find a lumber mill.

Spring Break family trip. Drove to Toronto for a few days, then Niagara Falls. Good trip. Used Tom Tom App on iPhone for part of it. Recorded the main travel routes with a Garmin Edge 800 Bike Computer for fun. Coming home, I crossed the border into Buffalo, giving the passengers cell phone access for the trip home.

Used my nuvi 760 which is still going strong

including some time on the motorcycle. Tank bag works great for the old Garmin 260.

Used it to find a doctor on a unfamiliar part of town. The older I gets, the more my Garmin is used to find my doctors.

portland

Suffolk County Malls and outlet stores.

Although I didn't go anywhere, I did use my 265wt to load POIs to get ready for a trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

ohio

Merrillville Indiana

Wow, havn't been to adrive Inn since I was a kid, over 50 years ago.

So, Happy Monday. Nothing really special this past week.

DC sucks!!!

Had never been to downtown Walnut Creek before. My nuvi helped me get there during the height of rush hour and make it to my meeting on time.

I use my GPS for work everyday.

Went to Holland, Oh for the work week. Exiting the Turnpike I ran into 3 R/Speed cameras 2 or 3 blocks apart.

Thanks for the Camers files. They worked perfect as usual.

more wandering aimlessly around home......

Wandering around, and ended up in a few malls of course.

Ditto!

On Easter Sunday, I decided to take a scenic route through the eastern shore of Maryland on my drive home from the in-laws' house in Delaware. My route was through Elkton, Chesapeake City, Galena, and Chestertown, then across the Bay Bridge.

Last trip was this weekend... San Francisco bay area to San Luis Obispo for the annual Cal Poly open house weekend. Have been going to that event for the past 42 years. It used to be called Poly Royal.

DC to Boston, and all went well.

again!!!

Headed out for a few days in the motorhome. Get away from the honeydo work in the house from the winter.

Annual VW bus campout at Hagen-Stone Park. We pretty much know how to get there, but did use the GPS to plot a more interesting short cut between the park & I-85.

Cheapest gas price I saw was $3.619. (in SC) I settled for $3.659. Was in a major hurry, so ate fast food only. Best meals were community efforts between me & my friends at the three adjoining campsites. Lots of adult beverages were consumed and we played & sang some music.

Also did a walk/geocache, damn thing was up a tree which I spotted and volunteered to climb to go after, which I prolly shouldn't be doing at 66YOA.

Big deal

Rutland and Bennington...1490 did fine except for one unexpected shutdown.

to Columbus

Last week a colleague and I drove from northeast Ohio to a meeting in Spartansburg, Pa. First time there. Spartansburg is a small farming community in the middle of nowhere in western Pennsylvania and our destination was over a mile down a dirt road. I used Google Earth to find our destination and made a custom POI for my Nuvi 1450. Everything went flawlessly. 107 miles each way.

run errands all around town. I'll need the GPS to find some of the places!

Looking at lawn mowers, new & used. My old Dodge Ram got 17 MPG.

had a very nice trip with my GPS, traveling backroads between Houston and Port Aransas.

Spent all of last week in Orlando. Flew back to Motown Tuesday. Used my gps in rental car while in Florida. It was a real timesaver....