A Summary of My 2016 Travel Adventures

At the beginning of every new year I like to look back at the previous year and review my favorite outfits, and remember all the home, garden, and crafting projects I took on, and also all our travel adventures.  Our travel adventures is always my favorite to review because I remember such happy times.  I also think one tends to forget vacations so quickly, so it's nice to go back and look at pictures and re-live them through memories.

Here is where I traveled this year!

This year was the first time in probably over thirty years where I traveled by plane alone.  I must admit, I had a lot of anxiety about it.  So did my husband.  He said over and over again "Just come back to me!"  He was so afraid I would die in a plane crash.  I don't know why.  But, I made it to Florida safely and back, and it was a really good experience for me to do that all by myself.  I went to Florida for two weeks to see my son and daughter.  We had so much fun and crammed so much into that two week period is was ridiculous!  Here are some of the highlights of that trip:

                                       Florida Adventures

Cape Canaveral National Seashore

Cape Canaveral was one of my favorite Florida beaches.  I love the natural setting and the absence of the typical tourist stuff you see on most beaches.

The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter

Seeing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was one of the highlights of this vacation.  I've never been much of a Harry Potter fan until I went here...now I'm a Harry Potter fan fanatic!

Disney Springs

Disney Springs is such a beautiful place to spend an evening.  

The 16th Annual Orlando Wetlands Festival

Hands down our favorite activity of this trip was the Orlando Wetlands Festival.  It was one of the happiest days of my life.  My son loved it so much he wants to " ...go back and take Dad!"  I don't know if that will ever be possible as it is only one day during the year, but who knows?  Maybe when he retires someday?

Cocoa Beach

Even though Cocoa Beach is probably my least favorite beach in Florida, it was still fun to see all the "I Dream of Jeannie" memorabilia and the cruise ships.

Mead Botanical Gardens

Mead Gardens was a bit rustic, but we sure enjoyed the pre-historic size palms!  Plus, I captured this great photo of my son.

The Albin Polasek Museume and Sculpture Gardens

This was such a beautiful and tranquil garden!

Harry P. Leu Gardens

We loved the giant bamboo in the Harry P. Leu Gardens.

Kraft Azalea Park

The magic of Kraft Azalea Park was beautiful

My children have since moved back to Illinois and even though everyone says it's nice to have them closer to home again, I am going to miss going to Florida.  I absolutely love that beautiful state!

In 2016 I only took two "big" vacations...my solo trip to Florida and our road trip out west, but we had a lot of fun weekend adventures.

In February we went to Minneapolis to see the Broadway Tour of "Newsies".  We rented a hotel room and had a wonderful romantic night.  You can read about that adventure HERE.


Easter arrived early this year, and we did our usual trek to Milwaukee to see our home church's Easter Musical.  We also visited with our lifelong friends Kirk and Shannon and enjoyed a movie in a historic theatre!  You can read all about that fun weekend HERE.

We also went to Stillwater, Minnesota in the spring to hunt for treasures for my new beauty room!

The month of May brought our biggest road trip ever:  3500 miles to Las Vegas, Nevada!  We spent three days in Vegas, but had a lot of fun on the way there and back too!

Our first stop was in Glenwood Springs, Colorado where we enjoyed hot springs for the first time in our lives.  You can read about that experience HERE.

After checking into our hotel in Fruita, Colorado for the night, we took a stroll on top of Dinosaur Hill.


But perhaps our favorite part of this trip was just the jaw-dropping scenery to get there!  Read all about our adventures of driving Scenic 1-70 West HERE.

In Vegas we enjoyed our stay at the Flamingo Hotel, shopped till we dropped, saw Celine Dion in concert, admired all the flowers and gardens,  and walked around the strip admiring all the lights.

We took a fun bus trip from Vegas to see the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West.



On the way home from Las Vegas we stopped at Arches National Park where we hiked one of the most difficult trails of our lives, yet found this park one of the most beautiful places on earth!

And our final day of this amazing road trip was spent in Vail, Colorado;  one of the prettiest mountain towns I ever did see!  I felt I was in Europe, not America!





In July we went tent camping with the kids for five whole days!  We saw lots of waterfalls at Copper Falls State Park, Amnicon Falls State Park and Pattison State Park, The Black River National Scenic Byway,  and we visited the cities of Ashland,  Bayfield, and Hayward.



I also attending my very first Blogger Meet-Up with Karen from "She Thought She Could So She Did" in Minnehaha Park, Minnesota




In late summer my husband and I had a blast at the Minnesota State Fair and Wildwoods Wildlife Zoo!



This year we had an unusually long and warm fall, so we took advantage of it and went hiking somewhere every weekend.

We went to Hoffman Hills State Recreation Area

Wildcat Mountain

We combined a convention in St. Paul, Minnesota with a visit to Vermilion Falls Park on the way home.

On our second attempt, we successfully hiked Barn Bluff in Red Wing, Minnesota

And we visited the sweet historic town of Galena, Illinois (post coming next week!)

We don't travel as much during the winter because of winter road conditions and we also can't leave our house longer than one day or it freezes up (we heat with wood).  But we were able to visit the kids for a couple of days during Thanksgiving Week (Jackson's First Car Trip) and we made our annual trip to the Mall of America where I got lots of new goodies including my first pair of OTK boots!

As always, as I complete this post I feel extremely grateful.  Many of you know we had planned to take more vacations this year but had to cancel them due to an unplanned medical bill (thanks ObamaCare!  Looking forward to the GOP "Repealing and Replacing" it).  So instead of taking long vacations in far away places we did a lot more locally and a lot of weekend trips.  It's been not only fun, but I've discovered things in my own neck of the woods I didn't even know existed.

I'm really looking forward to 2017 and a lot more opportunities to travel.  We already planned our spring vacation and we got a ocean front room on Myrtle Beach for five days and we will also be swinging through Charleston on the way home.  We still hope to take that vacation out west to see Mt. Rushmore and maybe we will make it back to Branson and elsewhere too.... we'll see!  Here's to good health and no more medical bills!

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

A Day In Vail In The Spring

 This is a the final post of a travel series of a road trip I took to Las Vegas in May with my husband.  To start at the beginning read THIS POST.    Here are the rest of this travel series posts in chronological order:

Dinosaur Hill, Fruita Colorado

Scenic 1-70 West Drive

The Flamingo Hotel and The Vegas Strip

Day Two in Las Vegas

The Bellagio Gardens

A Bus Tour to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West Rim

What To Do When Bad Things Happen When Your On Vacation  

Arches National Park - Park Avenue Trail

Arches National Park - Ancient Sand Dunes and Balanced Rock Trail

Arches National Park - Windows Trail and Double Arch

Arches National Park - Delicate Arch Trail

Well, it's September 7th and I finally reached the end of my travel posts for my May 2016 road trip to Las Vegas.  Today is the last post of this series, for after this day we headed home.

On this final day of vacation, we went to Vail, Colorado.  I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive about going to Vail.  I'm not one who feels comfortable in affluent environments and I was nervous other people would be snobbish and unfriendly.  Boy, was I wrong!  Vail was not only a gorgeous town, but one of the friendliest I had ever been to.  I ended up having one of the happiest days of my life in this sweet mountain town.

Vail offers free parking during the non-ski season.  There was plenty of parking at the Visitor's Center.  We stopped in the Visitor Center briefly to get a map and get the tips from the Visitor's Center Guide.  When we stepped out of the Visitor Center, this was our view:

Even though it was the last week of May, we enjoyed a second spring because all the crab apple trees and spring flowers were in bloom!  All of our spring trees and spring bulbs in Wisconsin were done blooming when we left for vacation, so it was fun to see them all in bloom again in Vail!

This is the view of the Visitor's Center looking up from the street.

A lovely river meanders throughout Vail and there are so many cute bridges like this covered bridge, in town.

This tranquil spot was located just outside a store entrance.

Of course Vail is known for it's skiing, but during the off season it's still a fun place to go to and enjoy the shops and restaurants.  Now your probably wondering about the prices.  I was actually pleasantly surprised at how many affordable shops and restaurants there were in Vail.  We even found a lot of great deals because the stores had great clearance sales of their winter merchandise.

But don't get me wrong, there were expensive shops too where you could buy a real fur coat and pricey designer ski clothes.

Almost every restaurant we passed offered outdoor dining.

Vail was filled with fountains but a lot of them still were not operating because the weather was still below freezing at night.

In the picture below I am looking at a map trying to figure out where I am.  The streets are very winding, just like in Europe.

The entire town of Vail is designed to look like a town in the Swiss Alps.  Did you know the town wasn't even established until 1966 when the Vail Ski Resort opened?

I was so nervous we wouldn't be able to even afford to eat a meal in Vail, but I couldn't have been more wrong.  When a wonderful aroma greeted us as we walked up these steps, we decided to check out the menu.  We were pleasantly surprised at the prices, and enjoyed a delicious Italian lunch on this patio.

 The name of the restaurant was Vendetta's.  We each ordered the lunch special of Fettuccine Alfredo and then shared a slice of pizza.  It was as delicious as it smelled, and I don't think we spent more than $25.00 for lunch...definitely affordable!

After our bellies were full, we hit the pavement again and found the ski lift area.

Here is another pretty bridge in town.

I'm not sure, but I believe this might be an ice rink during the winter months.  When we were there, it had artificial turf on it.  It's a nice spot for the kids to play and work out some excess energy.

One of my favorite parts about Vail was that no cars are allowed in the town's shopping district.  I feel I can enjoy strolling streets so much better when I'm not listening to or dealing with traffic.  Plus taking great pictures is so much easier because you don't have cars blocking the view.

To help people get about Vail, the town offers the largest free shuttle service in the United States (I told you it was a friendly place!).  The buses transport you between Golden Peak,  Vail Village, the business district, and Lionshead.

Lionshead is another beautiful shopping district modeled after European ski towns.  In the picture below I am walking under a beautiful archway of the Annabelle hotel.  Just look at those chandeliers!

I literally thought I was back in Italy again walking these gorgeous brick streets!

Just look at the color of these buildings...you can definitely see the European influence.

After we finished touring the shopping districts of Vail Village and Lionshead, we headed toward the Alpine Gardens.  It was a lovely river walk all the way there.

I've already posted some pictures of these beautiful gardens in a fashion post HERE, plus I will be posting more in a future Sunday garden post.    But for now, here is one picture of a water feature in these lovely gardens.

We really were pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed our time in Vail.  We found all the service people to be very friendly and helpful and the other tourists were also very nice.  Yes, I saw a few extremely wealthy people walking their pet pedigree toy dogs and wearing furs, but most people were dressed in athlete leisurewear (but I'm sure it was the designer high end type) or casual clothes.  My husband and I visit a lot of towns when we travel and we have fought issues that made us not want to go back to those towns because they were not "tourist friendly".  Vail is the most tourist friendly town I have ever been to.  They provide maps, rest rooms, parking, a shuttle service, and they have shops and restaurants that are suitable for all budgets.  I couldn't recommend stopping and visiting this sweet mountain town enough.  It should be noted however that I was there during the off-season so I have no idea what the place is like when the snow comes.

And that concludes my travel series of our road trip to Las Vegas.  Next week I will begin a new series about our family camping trip we took in July to see a lot of cool waterfalls in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE and Travel Tuesday!