ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Traveling is fun and sometimes it seems like work. Rita and me get quite excited each time we plan a trip(perhaps a lot more me than her)and we are always glad to come back home where everything goes back to somewhat normal. I am considering going back to work full time so we thought we should be off again before I get tied up with work hours and not be able to travel so much. Rita has always talked about someday moving to the Carolina's which she likes so much so... We took off on the 16th of April and drove down to the Raleigh area of North Carolina. I know, I know, the price of gas and all but we decided to go anyway. Heck! Raleigh is only about 475 miles from our home so that shouldn't break the bank right? We had earned two free night at Hampton Inns with the use of our Hilton Honors card. My brother Ron turned me on to the the use of this card where you earn points for everything you buy and the points convert to hotel stays at Hilton properties. We use the card for everything each month, gas, food, paying bills etc and it really adds up. The key is to pay it off each month, because you have to pay those costs anyway so you might as well get points for them. Rita even figured that we buy gift cards for places that we go each month, charge them on our card(to get the points)and then we also get 10 cents off on gas for each $50.00 we spend, at our Giant Eagle Food store here where we get the gift cards. If you keep this up you are getting free rooms each month and saving quite a few dollars on the gas bill. Put this together with the coupons and life can get better. Gosh! you have to do something to get ahead these days... Anyway we used two free nights for our Raleigh stay and checked out the area. Duke university and the University of North Carolina are there and that excited Rita. Beautiful area but a lot of traffic around the University. We also looked at property, which is a little bit cheaper than here in Pennsylvania and a lot cheaper for property taxes. The weather was very pleasant in the high 70-80 degrees and it was an enjoyable visit. After leaving Raleigh we moved on to Richmond, Virginia and had a nice lunch downtown and drove through the city. We than set up camp at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia and spent a week there and used our time share points to enjoy a two bedroom condo on the golf course(don't golf but the green looks good) What made it so nice was that we had a chance to visit with Patty Gaeto, my niece and her daughter Lizzy, who attends school at William and Mary College in Williamsburg. Lizzy brought along her new boyfriend Nick and we had a nice Sunday brunch before Patty had to return to Peoria, Illinois. The sad part was that my nephew Dan and his wife Judy were coming to Washington D.C. during our stay but we were not able to coordinate their travel and ours to have dinner together or visit, maybe next time. During our stay we relaxed at our time share, enjoyed Williamsburg and took a day trip out to Virginia Beach for some beach walking. On our way home on Saturday the 26th of April we stopped for about three hours in the historic town of Fredericksburg, Virginia and toured the city and some of the homes there including Mary Washington's home, the mother of George Washington. After an enjoyable lunch we got back on the road and made it to Pennsylvania in the evening. We got caught up in the worse rain storm I have ever been in. We had so much rain on the road home we had to pull off the road for about 20 minutes until we could see enought to move on and drive out of the torrent. Rita and I definitely were a little scared, not because of our car but because of all the crazy people who tried to keep driving and almost went off the road near our parked car and others. God protected us and we made it home to find we ended up going into a closed part of the freeway and had to take another detour which got us home about 9pm, a few hours later than we expected. Anyway it was a great trip all in all and I went to work at UPMC for a few weeks as a temp when I returned. I have accepted a new position as a Senior Ultrasonographer(everything I do is senior these days) at the Veterans Hospital here in Pittsburgh and I expect to start sometime later in May when they get all the paper work completed. It takes so long for them to check me out but we are getting there and I am looking forward to a new challenge of doing some new types of procedures and getting out of bed every morning to a regular work day. I have been spoiled since I retired having the time to do pretty much what I want around the house and taking Rita to work each day. The nice thing is that the Veterans Hospital is almost right next to where Rita works at the University and we can travel together to work, which we have done so much in our work life so far. Time will tell if I like the work and how long I might continue, at least for a year or so, maybe two. It's quite nice when you can work for pleasure and do it or not, takes away a lot of the stress. I have enjoyed doing temp work because I get to work at different places and acquaint myself with the City and hospitals, but I am looking forward to staying at one place for awhile. The VA will give me credit for my military service and maybe I can get another small retirement before Rita is ready to quit again and we can travel more. I have included some pictures of the trip, hope you enjoy them. Sign off for now.