So my wife and I* and our son are going to take a bit of a road trip. We're loading up the neglected travel trailer** and heading out tomorrow a few hours north to visit our daughter's in-laws in Indiana. This will be our first real meeting other than a brief visit a few months back. From there we will head to northeast Kansas to visit my mother whom I moved there after my father passed away and the military had stationed me there. She has since firmly taken root and refuses to move or travel so I feel obligated to visit her once per year. I think this will be the last time I consider myself so obligated.

From there I would like to visit some friends in Oklahoma but I have yet to get a response (which I find odd). Although everyone is busy so who knows. Regardless, then we'll head to the Houston area to visit family. I had planned to finish up in Mobile, Alabama to visit the USS Alabama Memorial Park but looking at the map I noticed we'd basically be going through New Orleans, a place my wife has wanted to visit for a long time. So we will be there 3-5 July and from there may visit Alabama or just start heading home in time to head back to school on 8 July.

Any plans?

* Does anyone else ever hear men say, "me and the wife?" I hate that.

** Looks like the travel trailer has some water and/or bug damage. I've been doing some maintenance repairs and had been thinking about selling it after this trip, we haven't used it much really since the early 00s, but I can't imagine getting much for it now that there looks to be some serious problems to address. I think I'm going to gut it and remodel the inside.

I'll be paying a visit to Chiyo's summer home.

We had a trip planned to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, but we cancelled it. It wasn't so much the deaths as all the other stuff coming out -- like how at Hard Rock and neighboring hotels there was (probably) a food poisoning issue which made like 70 people violently ill.

Instead, we're going to Park City, UT.

We made it to Kansas today via our stay in Indiana. I guess our friend in Oklahoma has a family illness in Puerto Rico and it looks like it won't be a problem to extend our stay here.

The wife and I are doing a live aboard dive trip in St. Martin. We were going to do one last year around this time, but I had to have surgery for Crohn's disease instead.

I'm super jealous, Obi. I haven't been diving in years. Have fun!

(Also, on the off chance that you're taking pics while diving and are cool with doing so, post a couple when you're back!)

Will do! The wife has really taken to it, and we don't have kids, so it's a good hobby that we can develop together. We took a cavern class recently to tighten up our skills, but we are hooked. We'd both like to get into cave diving, but I don't really want to do cave without first doing tech, and tech is very expensive to kit up for.


These are some shots I took last October on a Bahamas live aboard. The reef kind sucks there because they've trashed it and because of pressures from climate change, but there are still some reasonably healthy spots. I'm shooting on a Cannon G7X II. I'd love to use a camera with a bigger sensor, but the housings for anything with interchangeable lenses are an order of magnitude more expensive, so that's not going to happen.


EDIT: Ok, here's a link to the Imgur album. I thought the forum would resize embedded images, and the attachment dialog was half broken.

https://imgur.com/a/3syeLWQ

That last one is a long exposure of the cavern we took the class in. I'm planning on trying to do some reef long exposures on one of the night dives on this up coming trip.

Oh yeahhhh, that's the good stuff.

I'm trying to save a deposit for a house and my social life is at an all time low so I'm working and attempting to find another job.

This sort of thing was a regular sight on the Bolivar Peninsula beaches.



My girl is slightly more subtle.

Is there anything cooler than a small vehicle that deploys from a larger vehicle? I say no.

The coolest thing of all is if it deploys while the larger vehicle is in motion, but still,

It isn't going to happen in the summer, but I'm going to be in Goblin Valley, UT on Halloween. I might have some smaller camp-outs in August, but nothing guaranteed.

Unless you have two small gas cans in the bed. I'll elaborate on that one later!

Comfortably outside of my comfort zone in The French Quarter right now. Oh, my bad, I thought this was Facebook.