Vacation as seen by Chuck - Part 1

My Mother In Law lives in Arkansas, the Spouse & I live in Michigan.  He drives down to visit her (almost exactly 1000 miles) several times a year.  The plan this year (here's the post from my other blog about the non-trip from January) was to fly into Little Rock, spend a couple days in Hot Springs, then we drive home together, spending our 20th anniversary on the road somewhere. 

I sent Chuck to Arkansas with the Spouse and mini-Chuck was my travel buddy again.

This poor thing has had several different names - I need to settle on one!

They have a lot of paper airplane art in this terminal!

I was supposed to leave Friday, July 3.

Since I was flying one way, I left my car at Sis1's house and she took me to the airport.  But first became the delays. 

Weather, air traffic control management issues, lack of flight crew, etc.

This is a regional shuttle between Flint & Chicago that goes out twice a day.  Then I would have got on another plane in Chicago to Little Rock.

The morning one on 7/4 was already cancelled. 

So I rebooked for evening of 7/4.

At least I got to go to the parade with my family and let off fireworks with the grandkids!

Shout out to J.A.Haunts for always having a skeleton in the parade!

I got stickers from them last year because they saw me with Chuck.

But here we go again with delays for the 7/4 departure!

Same reasons.

And since the delays out of Flint made me miss my connection in Chicago, the airline rebooked me for Chicago to Little Rock on the morning of 7/5 with a 9 hour layover in Dallas!!

Aw hell no.  So I rebooked AGAIN for the evening of 7/5.

3rd time was a charm - the trip was uneventful.

Other than not getting the preferred seats I paid extra for - at least I got ON the plane!

Hooray!

Finally made it to Little Rock!

West Mountain Overlook

We spent Monday in Hot Springs, just sort of hanging out with MIL and planning the rest of the week.

Happy Hollow Spring Fountain

one of the cold springs available in town.

Tuesday, on the way to Fayetteville

the Bobby Hopper Tunnel on I49 thru the Ozark Mountains

One of the main stops was at the Spouse's BFFs house!  

We'd been married this long and I'd never met him or his family in real life!

Up until then, Chuck stayed in the car, but he came out to play in the Model T!

Next stop - the University of Arkansas!

 

Happy Spring!

We'll just ignore the fact that I had to scrape ice off my windshield this morning. 

That's the extent of my Easter decorations - except for the little bit I have at work. 

Last weekend I had a drill with the search & rescue I volunteer on.  I had to leave before we found our missing person, but I did find a deer skull (and pelvis with 2 vertebra) which led to several off-color jokes.

Is it? 

So I had to leave early because I didn't look at the calendar before getting tickets for the family to Monster Jam!  

I opted not to take Chuck - and I'm glad because Ford Field was sold out and I've never seen that many people at Monster Jam in all the years I've been going! 

But I did take Tater Tot

 (formerly known as Mini-Chuck)

He had a good time. 

Grave Digger (on fire)

Mayhem (possibly on fire)

El Toro Loco (on fire)

I've also never seen the ground teams have to use fire extinguishers before!  Usually, it's just a little poot of flame that shoots out of the bottom of the truck, but these were straight up on FIRE.

Next adventure.... another trip to Ohio!

 

#Creepmas - Glenlore Trails

Glenlore Trails is an "immersive night walk) thru the woods that my sister found somehow and we all went shortly after it opened for the season. 

Of course, Chuck had to go!

I'd never heard of it, since it's not terribly close to our house, so I googled it and got the impression they do a haunted trail at Halloween, too! 

Might have to check into that next year....

They had projectors on the snowmen so it looked like they were singing & talking. 

You could open the doors on these little buildings and there were short videos playing. 

Gingies!

These ornaments were actually kind of creepy.

They must have had hundreds of little projectors out there, since once area had a bunch of these faces on the trees, another area had floating presents, another had ornaments, etc. 

Gnomes aren't really my thing, but he was cute. 

Chuck's hand may have gotten in front of this projector so he was waving on the moon!

These were super cool. 

If you wanted to pay an extra $20, you could get an interactive wand to make some of the displays do stuff.  But we opted not to and there were enough other people there who did have them so we could see what was happening. 

 

Creepmas