Summer - Heck That Means A Road Trip...

...is upon us, or at least the time to take one certainly is upon us. Brendan's last day of school was yesterday, I have vacation that starts on Saturday, and we hit the road on Monday (or maybe Sunday afternoon, after he gets out of work). I sort of figured that this year, instead of doing something far away and over the hills, we might just keep it local sort of, and visit upstate New York. Of course, this will require driving pretty far away, and over lots of hills, but you get my drift.

New York State has a lot to offer in the scenery department, and it has a lot to offer the outdoorsman. Along those lines, if we actually decide on upstate NY as our road trip for this year, we will probably go hiking, herping (looking for things like snakes, turtles, frogs and salamanders), fishing, swimming, canoeing, and so on. There will also be lots of other things to do, and we may go sight seeing at places like Fort Ticondaroga, Ausable Chasm on the Ausable River (and we will fish there too if we visit it - can you say nice trout), Brewery Ommegang (if we get over that way, near Cooperstown you can bet this will be one of my stops), Howe Caverns, and whatever. We only have 5 or 6 days to enjoy, and we will probably cram in as much as we can. Then you never know, we may just find one place that is paradise for this trip and stay there. One of the great things about a road trip is the spontaneity with regard to places you visit, and things you do.

I will start getting ready tomorrow night. I have a list all prepared of the things we will need. A car that is fueled up, cash and credit cards top the list. Maps are optional; I mean heck this is a follow you nose kind of a trip, so who needs maps! After those I figure I'll bring along some things like:

5 days worth of clothes
Raingear
Fishing Gear (poles, reels, full tackle box, minnow traps, minnow bucket, aerator, nets)
Fishing licenses
Ice Chest
First Aid Kit
Flashlights
Tent
Sleeping Bags
foam ground mats
Lantern
A couple of rifles (so we can have a blast if we get bored)
Ka-Bar Knives
Handgun (I like to have protection)
Pepper Spray (so we taste better if a bear eats us)
Maybe a live catch animal trap (for nature study purposes only, so we can see what was eating our food, and keeping us up all night, if we camp out)

Well, you get the idea, we are off to have out of doors fun. I only hope all this junk fits in the Corolla so I don't have to take the Taurus.

If we do head upstate instead of to some other state, I figure we will try to make it to Lake George or a bit north of there on our first day. That will get us close to a lot of places to which I'd like to take Brendan. Then again he may have some other ideas. We will see what happens once we put the car in gear.

I guess a road trip kind of precludes a lot of blogging, if any, being dome by me while we are away. If we stay in any hotels with a computer that has Internet access, I will try to bring you up to date, if not, well then I guess I'll blog about it on our return home Friday or Saturday next week. I'll still be blogging up until the day we depart though, which will likely be Sunday or Monday.

All the best,
Glenn B