Going to Japan was a trip of a lifetime.  There are some things I would do different now, like not going in July.  Man, was it hot and humid.  The big problem with that is you walk a lot in Tokyo and the heat really took it out of you.  More than a few minutes in the direct sunlight and it was pretty brutal.  We drank a ton of water and were always sweaty.  The Japanese don't sweat very much and in fact, you can't even buy deodorant in the country as they don't need it.  They complain about smelly foreigners all the time, so it was a battle to not offend anyone, which I know we did.  Overall, there is so much to see and do and the country is rich in a long history, that 10 days might not be enough.  I had a fear about the language barrier, but with a few small awkward moments, everything went well.  You really need to familiarize yourself with the 50 most common phrases and you'll be fine.

On my recent visit to Kansas City, I made my third trip to the National WWI Museum.  I can't go to KC and not stop by, it's just one of those things you'll have to accept.  If you're like most people, the only things you probably remember learning about The Great War was some guy was assassinated and it was a trench war and they used poison gas.  When I ask people, these are usually all I get in response.  As time passes and the fact we have no living veterans any longer to learn from, means our history gets lost.  One of the reasons I became so fascinated with WWI was that the war was anything, but just a trench war and its reaches can still be felt today.  As the first global war, the sheer amount of change brought about by this conflict is staggering and, in my opinion, its significance outweighs that of WWII, if not only because the catastrophic failure of an unjust peace led directly to the next world war.  The brutal toll it took on the allies, in particular, led to an exhaustion that left them impotent and unprepared for the coming storm just a generation later.  The horrifying advancements in methods of  human slaughter also caught armies off guard.  Their tactics had not yet caught up with the incredible rates of fire of machine guns, the long range carnage, on both mind and body of artillery, gas warfare, the terror of tanks on the battlefield, aeroplanes in the sky and unrestricted submarine warfare on the seas.  In 1921, when the Liberty Memorial site in Kansas City was dedicated over 100,000 people came out for it.  It was the only time, please read the plaque in the pictures above, that five generals from the war, including Foch and Pershing were together in one place.  In 1926, when the memorial was dedicated, more than 150,000 people were on hand.  There is no way that would happen today as we are not one America like we were 100 years ago.  I have an English friend who emigrated here and he is struck by how little we know about the war and how differently the English treat the anniversaries of WWI.  There will be virtually no acknowledgement of anything from the Great War here, but across the pond there will be many as the Battle of the Somme and the significance of the poppy have not faded from memory.  We even neutered Armistice Day down to just Veterans Day, as if the importance of November 11th means nothing anymore and maybe it doesn't.   One day in 2016, after I had visited the museum for the first time, I was wearing a tshirt that I had bought there.  I was at the 9/11 Memorial site in Shanksville, PA and one of the National Parks rangers noticed my shirt that said the 100-year anniversary of the Great Wat 1914- to 1918.  She read my shirt and thanked me for reminding her that we were in the midst of the 100-year anniversary of the war.  It was a ray of hope, but just one tiny ray as she was in her 30's.  Now, if a teenager said that, I'd have fallen over and been impressed, but it was a start, nonetheless.

If you find yourself in Tucson, AZ, I highly recommend going to the Pima Air & Space Museum.  The museum has been around for since 1976 and is pretty well known, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground here, but I had a great experience there this week.  If you're a patriot and a history lover, then you should not wait any longer to go here or you might miss out of an American treasure.

I realize that actual travel specific sites will do a better job of giving you the low-down on a city than me.  I have my own agenda and it usually involves history.  If you like history then you'll love Savannah.  The city was pivotal in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and literally everywhere downtown you go you'll run right into it.  With all the southern charm you'd expect and frankly some beautiful parks and landmarks, I was sort of taken aback by all the things I had forgotten about that happened here that I sort of fell in love with the city.  

This post is more of a "did you know" than anything else.  Mostly because I went other routes several times before I wised up.  I highly recommend taking the Togwotee Pass if you are going to Jackson Hole, WY.  Since I live east of Wyoming, I'm always coming from that way.  I have always gone through Worland because I love going through the Big Horns and hitting the brewery at Ten Sleep.  In all honesty, I had gone out here several times in the days before cell phones and GPS guided maps.  Believe it or not, there used to be these things called paper maps that came in a binder or were folded in frustrating ways that always posed a problem to return them to their original design.  Back then, we fell into the traps of going the shortest way and even though we actually had conversations with real people back then, no one told us of a better, more picturesque way.  So, we went the northern route which takes you through Cody and into Yellowstone.  Any other road was far too long and out of the way.

This is my first official post just to get some content going, but it won't be a normal travel post of mine because I hadn't created my blog yet when I went to Destin for work recently and did not really get to explore the area like I would normally do.

Going to Japan was a trip of a lifetime.  There are some things I would do different now, like not going in July.  Man, was it hot and humid.  The big problem with that is you walk a lot in Tokyo and the heat really took it out of you.  More than a few minutes in the direct sunlight and it was pretty brutal.  We drank a ton of water and were always sweaty.  The Japanese don't sweat very much and in fact, you can't even buy deodorant in the country as they don't need it.  They complain about smelly foreigners all the time, so it was a battle to not offend anyone, which I know we did.  Overall, there is so much to see and do and the country is rich in a long history, that 10 days might not be enough.  I had a fear about the language barrier, but with a few small awkward moments, everything went well.  You really need to familiarize yourself with the 50 most common phrases and you'll be fine.

On my recent visit to Kansas City, I made my third trip to the National WWI Museum.  I can't go to KC and not stop by, it's just one of those things you'll have to accept.  If you're like most people, the only things you probably remember learning about The Great War was some guy was assassinated and it was a trench war and they used poison gas.  When I ask people, these are usually all I get in response.  As time passes and the fact we have no living veterans any longer to learn from, means our history gets lost.  One of the reasons I became so fascinated with WWI was that the war was anything, but just a trench war and its reaches can still be felt today.  As the first global war, the sheer amount of change brought about by this conflict is staggering and, in my opinion, its significance outweighs that of WWII, if not only because the catastrophic failure of an unjust peace led directly to the next world war.  The brutal toll it took on the allies, in particular, led to an exhaustion that left them impotent and unprepared for the coming storm just a generation later.  The horrifying advancements in methods of  human slaughter also caught armies off guard.  Their tactics had not yet caught up with the incredible rates of fire of machine guns, the long range carnage, on both mind and body of artillery, gas warfare, the terror of tanks on the battlefield, aeroplanes in the sky and unrestricted submarine warfare on the seas.  In 1921, when the Liberty Memorial site in Kansas City was dedicated over 100,000 people came out for it.  It was the only time, please read the plaque in the pictures above, that five generals from the war, including Foch and Pershing were together in one place.  In 1926, when the memorial was dedicated, more than 150,000 people were on hand.  There is no way that would happen today as we are not one America like we were 100 years ago.  I have an English friend who emigrated here and he is struck by how little we know about the war and how differently the English treat the anniversaries of WWI.  There will be virtually no acknowledgement of anything from the Great War here, but across the pond there will be many as the Battle of the Somme and the significance of the poppy have not faded from memory.  We even neutered Armistice Day down to just Veterans Day, as if the importance of November 11th means nothing anymore and maybe it doesn't.   One day in 2016, after I had visited the museum for the first time, I was wearing a tshirt that I had bought there.  I was at the 9/11 Memorial site in Shanksville, PA and one of the National Parks rangers noticed my shirt that said the 100-year anniversary of the Great Wat 1914- to 1918.  She read my shirt and thanked me for reminding her that we were in the midst of the 100-year anniversary of the war.  It was a ray of hope, but just one tiny ray as she was in her 30's.  Now, if a teenager said that, I'd have fallen over and been impressed, but it was a start, nonetheless.

If you find yourself in Tucson, AZ, I highly recommend going to the Pima Air & Space Museum.  The museum has been around for since 1976 and is pretty well known, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground here, but I had a great experience there this week.  If you're a patriot and a history lover, then you should not wait any longer to go here or you might miss out of an American treasure.

I realize that actual travel specific sites will do a better job of giving you the low-down on a city than me.  I have my own agenda and it usually involves history.  If you like history then you'll love Savannah.  The city was pivotal in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and literally everywhere downtown you go you'll run right into it.  With all the southern charm you'd expect and frankly some beautiful parks and landmarks, I was sort of taken aback by all the things I had forgotten about that happened here that I sort of fell in love with the city.  

This post is more of a "did you know" than anything else.  Mostly because I went other routes several times before I wised up.  I highly recommend taking the Togwotee Pass if you are going to Jackson Hole, WY.  Since I live east of Wyoming, I'm always coming from that way.  I have always gone through Worland because I love going through the Big Horns and hitting the brewery at Ten Sleep.  In all honesty, I had gone out here several times in the days before cell phones and GPS guided maps.  Believe it or not, there used to be these things called paper maps that came in a binder or were folded in frustrating ways that always posed a problem to return them to their original design.  Back then, we fell into the traps of going the shortest way and even though we actually had conversations with real people back then, no one told us of a better, more picturesque way.  So, we went the northern route which takes you through Cody and into Yellowstone.  Any other road was far too long and out of the way.

This is my first official post just to get some content going, but it won't be a normal travel post of mine because I hadn't created my blog yet when I went to Destin for work recently and did not really get to explore the area like I would normally do.

Going to Japan was a trip of a lifetime.  There are some things I would do different now, like not going in July.  Man, was it hot and humid.  The big problem with that is you walk a lot in Tokyo and the heat really took it out of you.  More than a few minutes in the direct sunlight and it was pretty brutal.  We drank a ton of water and were always sweaty.  The Japanese don't sweat very much and in fact, you can't even buy deodorant in the country as they don't need it.  They complain about smelly foreigners all the time, so it was a battle to not offend anyone, which I know we did.  Overall, there is so much to see and do and the country is rich in a long history, that 10 days might not be enough.  I had a fear about the language barrier, but with a few small awkward moments, everything went well.  You really need to familiarize yourself with the 50 most common phrases and you'll be fine.

On my recent visit to Kansas City, I made my third trip to the National WWI Museum.  I can't go to KC and not stop by, it's just one of those things you'll have to accept.  If you're like most people, the only things you probably remember learning about The Great War was some guy was assassinated and it was a trench war and they used poison gas.  When I ask people, these are usually all I get in response.  As time passes and the fact we have no living veterans any longer to learn from, means our history gets lost.  One of the reasons I became so fascinated with WWI was that the war was anything, but just a trench war and its reaches can still be felt today.  As the first global war, the sheer amount of change brought about by this conflict is staggering and, in my opinion, its significance outweighs that of WWII, if not only because the catastrophic failure of an unjust peace led directly to the next world war.  The brutal toll it took on the allies, in particular, led to an exhaustion that left them impotent and unprepared for the coming storm just a generation later.  The horrifying advancements in methods of  human slaughter also caught armies off guard.  Their tactics had not yet caught up with the incredible rates of fire of machine guns, the long range carnage, on both mind and body of artillery, gas warfare, the terror of tanks on the battlefield, aeroplanes in the sky and unrestricted submarine warfare on the seas.  In 1921, when the Liberty Memorial site in Kansas City was dedicated over 100,000 people came out for it.  It was the only time, please read the plaque in the pictures above, that five generals from the war, including Foch and Pershing were together in one place.  In 1926, when the memorial was dedicated, more than 150,000 people were on hand.  There is no way that would happen today as we are not one America like we were 100 years ago.  I have an English friend who emigrated here and he is struck by how little we know about the war and how differently the English treat the anniversaries of WWI.  There will be virtually no acknowledgement of anything from the Great War here, but across the pond there will be many as the Battle of the Somme and the significance of the poppy have not faded from memory.  We even neutered Armistice Day down to just Veterans Day, as if the importance of November 11th means nothing anymore and maybe it doesn't.   One day in 2016, after I had visited the museum for the first time, I was wearing a tshirt that I had bought there.  I was at the 9/11 Memorial site in Shanksville, PA and one of the National Parks rangers noticed my shirt that said the 100-year anniversary of the Great Wat 1914- to 1918.  She read my shirt and thanked me for reminding her that we were in the midst of the 100-year anniversary of the war.  It was a ray of hope, but just one tiny ray as she was in her 30's.  Now, if a teenager said that, I'd have fallen over and been impressed, but it was a start, nonetheless.

If you find yourself in Tucson, AZ, I highly recommend going to the Pima Air & Space Museum.  The museum has been around for since 1976 and is pretty well known, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground here, but I had a great experience there this week.  If you're a patriot and a history lover, then you should not wait any longer to go here or you might miss out of an American treasure.

I realize that actual travel specific sites will do a better job of giving you the low-down on a city than me.  I have my own agenda and it usually involves history.  If you like history then you'll love Savannah.  The city was pivotal in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and literally everywhere downtown you go you'll run right into it.  With all the southern charm you'd expect and frankly some beautiful parks and landmarks, I was sort of taken aback by all the things I had forgotten about that happened here that I sort of fell in love with the city.  

This post is more of a "did you know" than anything else.  Mostly because I went other routes several times before I wised up.  I highly recommend taking the Togwotee Pass if you are going to Jackson Hole, WY.  Since I live east of Wyoming, I'm always coming from that way.  I have always gone through Worland because I love going through the Big Horns and hitting the brewery at Ten Sleep.  In all honesty, I had gone out here several times in the days before cell phones and GPS guided maps.  Believe it or not, there used to be these things called paper maps that came in a binder or were folded in frustrating ways that always posed a problem to return them to their original design.  Back then, we fell into the traps of going the shortest way and even though we actually had conversations with real people back then, no one told us of a better, more picturesque way.  So, we went the northern route which takes you through Cody and into Yellowstone.  Any other road was far too long and out of the way.

This is my first official post just to get some content going, but it won't be a normal travel post of mine because I hadn't created my blog yet when I went to Destin for work recently and did not really get to explore the area like I would normally do.

Going to Japan was a trip of a lifetime.  There are some things I would do different now, like not going in July.  Man, was it hot and humid.  The big problem with that is you walk a lot in Tokyo and the heat really took it out of you.  More than a few minutes in the direct sunlight and it was pretty brutal.  We drank a ton of water and were always sweaty.  The Japanese don't sweat very much and in fact, you can't even buy deodorant in the country as they don't need it.  They complain about smelly foreigners all the time, so it was a battle to not offend anyone, which I know we did.  Overall, there is so much to see and do and the country is rich in a long history, that 10 days might not be enough.  I had a fear about the language barrier, but with a few small awkward moments, everything went well.  You really need to familiarize yourself with the 50 most common phrases and you'll be fine.

On my recent visit to Kansas City, I made my third trip to the National WWI Museum.  I can't go to KC and not stop by, it's just one of those things you'll have to accept.  If you're like most people, the only things you probably remember learning about The Great War was some guy was assassinated and it was a trench war and they used poison gas.  When I ask people, these are usually all I get in response.  As time passes and the fact we have no living veterans any longer to learn from, means our history gets lost.  One of the reasons I became so fascinated with WWI was that the war was anything, but just a trench war and its reaches can still be felt today.  As the first global war, the sheer amount of change brought about by this conflict is staggering and, in my opinion, its significance outweighs that of WWII, if not only because the catastrophic failure of an unjust peace led directly to the next world war.  The brutal toll it took on the allies, in particular, led to an exhaustion that left them impotent and unprepared for the coming storm just a generation later.  The horrifying advancements in methods of  human slaughter also caught armies off guard.  Their tactics had not yet caught up with the incredible rates of fire of machine guns, the long range carnage, on both mind and body of artillery, gas warfare, the terror of tanks on the battlefield, aeroplanes in the sky and unrestricted submarine warfare on the seas.  In 1921, when the Liberty Memorial site in Kansas City was dedicated over 100,000 people came out for it.  It was the only time, please read the plaque in the pictures above, that five generals from the war, including Foch and Pershing were together in one place.  In 1926, when the memorial was dedicated, more than 150,000 people were on hand.  There is no way that would happen today as we are not one America like we were 100 years ago.  I have an English friend who emigrated here and he is struck by how little we know about the war and how differently the English treat the anniversaries of WWI.  There will be virtually no acknowledgement of anything from the Great War here, but across the pond there will be many as the Battle of the Somme and the significance of the poppy have not faded from memory.  We even neutered Armistice Day down to just Veterans Day, as if the importance of November 11th means nothing anymore and maybe it doesn't.   One day in 2016, after I had visited the museum for the first time, I was wearing a tshirt that I had bought there.  I was at the 9/11 Memorial site in Shanksville, PA and one of the National Parks rangers noticed my shirt that said the 100-year anniversary of the Great Wat 1914- to 1918.  She read my shirt and thanked me for reminding her that we were in the midst of the 100-year anniversary of the war.  It was a ray of hope, but just one tiny ray as she was in her 30's.  Now, if a teenager said that, I'd have fallen over and been impressed, but it was a start, nonetheless.

If you find yourself in Tucson, AZ, I highly recommend going to the Pima Air & Space Museum.  The museum has been around for since 1976 and is pretty well known, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground here, but I had a great experience there this week.  If you're a patriot and a history lover, then you should not wait any longer to go here or you might miss out of an American treasure.

I realize that actual travel specific sites will do a better job of giving you the low-down on a city than me.  I have my own agenda and it usually involves history.  If you like history then you'll love Savannah.  The city was pivotal in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and literally everywhere downtown you go you'll run right into it.  With all the southern charm you'd expect and frankly some beautiful parks and landmarks, I was sort of taken aback by all the things I had forgotten about that happened here that I sort of fell in love with the city.  

This post is more of a "did you know" than anything else.  Mostly because I went other routes several times before I wised up.  I highly recommend taking the Togwotee Pass if you are going to Jackson Hole, WY.  Since I live east of Wyoming, I'm always coming from that way.  I have always gone through Worland because I love going through the Big Horns and hitting the brewery at Ten Sleep.  In all honesty, I had gone out here several times in the days before cell phones and GPS guided maps.  Believe it or not, there used to be these things called paper maps that came in a binder or were folded in frustrating ways that always posed a problem to return them to their original design.  Back then, we fell into the traps of going the shortest way and even though we actually had conversations with real people back then, no one told us of a better, more picturesque way.  So, we went the northern route which takes you through Cody and into Yellowstone.  Any other road was far too long and out of the way.

This is my first official post just to get some content going, but it won't be a normal travel post of mine because I hadn't created my blog yet when I went to Destin for work recently and did not really get to explore the area like I would normally do.