Egypt Travel Photos

We are in Egypt!  We've reach the half way point on our adventure and we are still going strong.  The rooftop pool and restaurant have been very helpful in this regard.

I've started posting pictures and will post more as we see more cool stuff.

You can find the photos in my Egypt 2022-09 Google Photos album.

Welcome To The 2022 Autumnal Equinox!

Happy Fall everyone.  Autumn has always been my favorite season (I'm sure I've mentioned this before).  The crispness of the air, the color of the changing leaves.  I love the crunch-crunch of walking on paths covered in fallen leaves.

Some Fall colors along the Appalachian Trail.

I hope the Wife and I will go leaf peeping in New England some year.  I got a glimpse of the beauty near the end of my 2019 Appalachian Trail hike.  I would like to get a complete view someday.

Some more colors of Autumn.

Turkey Travel Photos

We are over half way through our Turkey tour so I probably should post a link to the pictures I've uploaded so far.  As of this post we have been to Istanbul and the Cappadocia region.  We are currently in Izmir and I will add photos as our adventures continue.

Hot air balloons over Cappadocia from ... A hot air balloon. 

You can find the pictures in my Turkey 2022-09 Google Photos album. 

Israel Travel Photos

I really don't have the time or, at this time, the will to write a post so I will post a link to my photos from Israel.  I took a total of six hundred and four pictures with my two cameras (the Wife took a lot more with her phone).  I have posted a good sample of what we saw along the way in Israel.

You can find the pictures in my 2022-09 Israel Google Photos album.

A Note About Travel Posting

If things are working right, the Wife and I are winging it to Tel Aviv.  I know some of you may be hoping for posts while we are traveling the world.  In the past I have tried to draft posts while traveling and I have discovered that it is often stressful to have to write posts at the end of long days.  It makes me grumpy and I don't enjoy doing it at all.

There are several free days during our travels.  Mostly free days between countries. A day at the start in Tel Aviv.  Two days in Istanbul.  A day at the start and the end in Cairo.  Will I post during these free days?  I doubt it.  If the choice is sitting in my hotel room tapping out a post on my tablet or visiting some cool places within walking distance of our hotel, I would choose the 'visiting some cool places' every time.

I will document our travels in posts after we get home for sure.  And a quick "Yoo Hoo Hi There - we are here" post every few days is not out of the question but don't expect much.

I will also try to post some pictures along the way.  Again, this will be constrained by our free time, WIFI quality, and how tired I feel.

Weekly Ephemera #30

 Last week was a slow one for me. 

• Our garage door was fixed Wednesday morning.  Nothing exciting there.
• We received our final paperwork for our travels.   Hard to believe we are only five days away from leaving.  I don't think my mind is wrapped around that fact yet.



Someone left chalk under an overpass and people got Funky.

• I only walked once this week.  My second walk was rained out on Friday.  The one walk I did was 10.1 miles (16.3 km).  I'm not sure I will walk this week.

Our Next Travels Abroad ... It's A Long One

Next month, and half of the one after that, we will venture outside America for the first time since December 2019.  We will be hitting several things on our bucket list while visiting two continents.

Our travels will start in Israel, move on to Turkey and Egypt, before ending in Ethiopia.  This will be our longest trip - forty-five days - nearly two weeks longer than our previous record.  The travels begin with a fifteen hours worth of flights from Omaha to Tel Aviv, Israel via Chicago and Frankfurt.

• The first part of our travels will be seven days in Israel.  During our stay here we will be visiting: Tel Aviv, Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, Capernaum, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem, Mount Zion, The Tower of David, Bethlehem, the Dead Sea (our second visit here - the last time from the Jordan side of the sea), and Masada.
• The second part of our travels will be thirteen days in Turkey.  Our first couple days here will be free for us as we get here a couple days before the start of our tour.  After the second day we will be visiting: Istanbul, Topkapi Palace, Cappadocia (including a hot air balloon ride), Izmir, Ephesus, Bodrum, and a ride on a gulet on the Aegean Sea.
• The third part of our travels takes us from the Asian continent to Africa starting with nine days in Egypt.  In Egypt we will visit: Cairo, the pyramids and the sphinx, the Egyptian Museum, a four day Nile cruise with stops at the Karnak Temple, the Valley of the Kings, the Aswan Dam, and Abu Simbel.
• The fourth and final part of our travels will be thirteen days in Ethiopia.  In Ethiopia we will visit:  Addis Ababa, Harar, Lalibela, Arba Minch, a boat safari, visits with the Konso, Karo, Hamer, and several other tribes.

This trip is a combination of four tours given by our favorite tour company, Anderson & Roberts.  We have done fifteen of their tours, nineteen with this next trip.  They hit all the best spots and the groups are always small (often less than eight people).  It's nice to just sit back and not have to worry about how to get there and where to stay but it can be expensive.  This will very likely be our last tour-centric trip.   After this one we will do more of the legwork and cut out the middleman to reduce costs.

Weekly Ephemera #29

• This week started with me binging season three of "The Boys" on prime.  It was spitty-drizzly-misty-rainy most of the day so it was a nice way to spend the day.



A White-Lined Sphinx Moth caterpillar.

• Speaking of streaming, this week they announced that more people streamed content than watched it on traditional cable and broadcast TV.  My Mom helped push it over the tipping point on Tuesday when I took her down to the local cable office and we canceled her cable and telephone services.  She is now a streamer and a landline cutter.  This should save her over one hundred dollars a month.

  

  A Mourning Dove just sitting in the birdbath.

• On Thursday the Wife and I went over and weeded Mom's gardens.  When the Wife retired she took over all the garden work so, while she did fine, I rediscovered muscles that have been silent for a long time. *oof* 

  

  A camouflaged deer.

• On Saturday morning the garage door decided to stop opening.  Turns out the chain slipped off the gear.  Upon further inspection I noticed, where the cable is attached to the chain, there is only one strand of cable left.  Even if I got the chain back on the gear it would be just a matter of time - likely a short matter of time - before the cable would snap.  The garage door people are coming on Wednesday morning.
• I walked twice this week.  I tried to push longer but didn't make it.  I ended up walking 16.8 miles (27.1 km) this week.  I took only a few pictures on my walks but, as you can see, the few I took were animal related.

Book: Martha Wells' "Artificial Condition"

I have been reading a lot of non-fiction lately so I decided to squeeze in a piece of fiction to lighten things up.  Martha Wells' "Artificial Condition" is the second book of the Murderbot Diaries series.

In this novella, our hero, Murderbot, is investigating an incident in his past that led him to give himself the name of Murderbot.  What he discovers changes his whole outlook.

Like the first book, "All Systems Red", the reader is drawn into how the bot thinks as he attempts to discover what he is and how to fit in to the human world around him.

He seems to be developing friendships in this book and I am interested to see if they reappear in the other books of the series.

I gave this book four stars out of five on Goodreads.  I am still looking forward to seeing how the potential of this character is realized.

Weekly Ephemera #28

• This week I took Mom to lunch and went browsing at the Rush Market looking for new couch options.  We also worked on putting a Will together.  Mom has reached the state where she just wants things done and I one hundred percent understand and agree. 
• It felt like a busy week and I only walked two times this week.  I am slowly pushing up the miles walked each day.  I managed to walk over 8 miles (12.9 km) each time for a total of 17.3 miles (27.8 km).  The upcoming week is also turning out to be a bit busy too but the weather is getting cooler so I should be able to get a couple hikes in.  Aiming for 9 miles or more each.
• Speaking of the weather, it looks like the heat wave we've been having is finally breaking and temperatures will be trending back to average this week.  That is a good thing for walking and our electric bill.  Tomorrow we are going to have the first potentially significant rain in a long time and I'm looking forward to listening to the rain while I stream something (probably "The Boys" on Prime).