Tag: travel writing

SubscribeStar Saturday: Universal Studios 2025

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This past weekend I took my first trip of the year to Universal Studios, a perennial destination for my family.  February is always a fun time to go, as the Mardi Gras decorations and theming are out in full force.  I’m not a big Mardi Gras guy, but it’s fun to see French Cajun decadence on full display, albeit in a sanitized, commercial form.

It was a whirlwind weekend, as trips to Universal Studios always are.  We kicked things off with a hastily-planned birthday for my grandfather, who turned 90 (!) this past Tuesday.  That necessitated a rapid retreat from school on Friday to link up with my younger brother and his wife and kids, so we could all drive down to our old hometown together to meet the family for dinner.  Needless to say, I slept like a big fat baby after a busy Friday and a bulging barbecue buffet belly.

The trip began early Saturday morning, with my parents meeting us at my younger brother’s house, and we commenced to convoy down to Orlando, Florida.  The drive is not that bad, and we break it up with a bathroom stop (or two) and a trip to Cracker Barrel.

(For my English readers, Cracker Barrel is a country cookin’—note the dropped “g”—restaurant that, like Mardi Gras at Universal Studios, is a sanitized, commercialized simulacrum of a “meat-and-three”; that is, a form of restaurant that serves “comfort food” like fried chicken, usually with three vegetables or sides.)

We actually managed to get away quite early and make good time, so that we were in the park around 4:30 PM Saturday.  My older brother had flown in from Indianapolis and had already spent a full day in Islands of Adventure, so we synced up with him and commenced our adventure.

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TBT^2: More Mountain Musings

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It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the mountains—the last trip was hiking with a friend of mine in early August—and the mountains of western North Carolina were devastated during Hurricane Helene.  One does not typically associate the Appalachian Mountains with severe hurricane damage, but there you have it—the hurricane hit in just such a way that western North and South Carolina suffered terrible damage.  My hometown of Aiken, South Carolina still has massive piles of leaves and tree trunks awaiting pickup from overextended State work crews, and it’s been two months since the storm.

Regardless, it’s fun to look back on my various mountain adventures.  I find that I need to get up to the mountains periodically to rest and recharge.  I’m not sure when I’ll get back up there again, but I’m looking forward to it, hopefully with Dr. Girlfriend, her dog, and Murphy along for the fun.

With that, here is 18 January 2024’s “TBT: More Mountain Musings“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Back to the Mountains, Part II

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Three years ago my family took a trip to the mountains around Burnsville, North Carolina, to celebrate my older brother’s fortieth birthday.  I wrote about it extensively in my book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Stories (currently just $12.68 in paperback).  The area is truly lovely, and is very accessible from South Carolina.  My girlfriend and I had the opportunity to do just that over the long MLK Weekend.

After a Saturday full of adventures in the small towns around Mount Mitchell, we decided some hiking was in order for Sunday.  First, however, we rose just early enough to catch the sunrise.  Sunrise in our little patch of the mountains on Sunday, 14 January 2024 was around 7:38 Eastern Standard Time, so we were up shortly after 7 AM.  We threw open the curtains of the large windows, which faced westward.

Because we weren’t facing the rising sun, we watched as the sunlight crept down the side of the mountains to our west, their eastern faces slowly melding from a blueish grey into a glowing red.  Sipping coffee and marveling at God’s daily light show was the perfect way to spend a day spent largely in His Creation.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Back to the Mountains, Part I

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Three years ago my family took a trip to the mountains around Burnsville, North Carolina, to celebrate my older brother’s fortieth birthday.  I wrote about it extensively in my book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Stories (currently just $12.68 in paperback).  The area is truly lovely, and is very accessible from South Carolina.  Ever since that celebratory trip, I have been eager to return.

The long MLK Weekend—which yours portly extended by burning a personal day—offered the perfect opportunity to get back there.  My travel-loving flight attendant girlfriend and I were super excited to hit the road with Murphy for a few days of hiking, exploring, and good eating, and scored an excellent deal on three nights at a cabin/barndominium in the mountains.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Some of the links in this post are links through the Amazon Affiliate Program. If you make any purchase through these links, a small portion of the proceeds go to me, at no additional cost to you.

TBT: More Mountain Musings

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Over MLK Weekend my girlfriend and I took the dogs up to around Mount Mitchell, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia.

I love the mountains.  The mountains are in my blood, and although my home is the coastal South Carolina, every so often I need to baptize myself in the solitude and ruggedness of the Appalachian Mountains.

This trip was not my first to this region.  I went there four years ago to celebrate my older brother’s fortieth birthday.  Here’s a bit my travels during that trip.

With that, here is 21 September 2020’s “More Mountain Musings“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Washington, D.C. Trip Part III: Mount Vernon

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

After the debacle of children sliding down the Lincoln Memorial came much-needed rest.  The long day of traveling was, in many ways, the easiest of our days in D.C.  Thursday promised to be full of walking, but all those steps would be worth it.

Following our food service hotel breakfast—I’m a sucker for those hyper-yellow egg product scrambled “eggs” they serve at hotel continental breakfasts—we loaded the bus and headed for Mount Vernon, the home of our first President, George Washington.

The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association maintains and preserves Mount Vernon.  The Association is the nation’s first national historic preservation organization, and the oldest active patriotic society.  Founded in 1853 after the founder’s mother witnessed the poor state of the home, the Association had raised $200,000 by 1858, with which it purchased the home and two hundred acres surrounding it.  Following the ructions of the American Civil War, restoration work began, and continues to this day.

It is a gift to the American people to walk the grounds where George and Martha Washington resided.  There’s something appealing, too, about the home and grounds being under the auspices of a private non-profit organization, rather than the National Park Service.  It’s proof that private individuals sharing a common goal can often achieve more, and do it better and more efficiently, than the government can.

It was a crisp, sunny morning when we visited Mount Vernon, and it was easily the highlight of the trip, at least for me.

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Phone it in Friday XXXV: My Second Book is Live on Kindle!

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In case the daily reminders at the top of every post this week weren’t reminder enough, I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.  The Kindle version went live today, so if you pre-ordered, you can now read the book!

I’ve been eager to release a second book ever since I published The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot back in March 2021, but various time constraints always seemed to interfere.  Ironically, maintaining the blog—even with help from good friends—is one such hinderance, while also serving as the source material for this book!

Blogging daily (today marks the 1545th consecutive day of blogging) is great fun, but it takes time.  Longtime readers will probably have noticed the increase in guest posts (especially from Audre Myers and Ponty), as well as lighter posts from yours portly.  Those lighter posts are partially out of necessity—in order to maintain my busy work and private music lessons schedule, I have to write some fluffier posts here from time to time.

No worries—I have not given up on political writing entirely, nor have I abandoned writing seriously about music, faith, art, etc.  Sometimes, I just need to upload some pictures of a LEGO set I built and call it a day.

That said, blogging daily is also the source of Arizonan Sojourn, as blogging daily will likely be the source of my next book (topic to be determined).  Pulled from four years of travel essays, with a particular focus on the six-part trip my older brother and I took to Arizona in December 2022, the book regales readers with tales of my not-so-outrageous exploits.

So, I found myself last week with a modicum of extra time because Middle School students were taking some horrendous standardized test, after which they were dismissed for the day.  That removed my duty to teach Middle Music Ensemble for a few days, and that extra fifty-six minutes each day, along with the lack of private music lessons with Middle Schoolers, enabled me to complete the compiling, organizing, and edition of Arizonan Sojourn.

Unlike Inspector Gerard, I also made sure to proofread and revise Arizonan Sojourn much more carefully this time.  I cannot guarantee it is free of grammatical errors—I found one as soon as I published the book (it is now fixed)—but it should be substantially less embarrassing in this regard than Gerard was.

That’s all to say that you should buy it.  I’ll also be uploading a PDF manuscript of the entire work to my Subscribe Star page for $5 and up subscribers tomorrow.

Of course, it’s much better to have a physical copy, no?

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Happy Reading!

—TPP