Jauntaroo- Best job ever

So, I'm writing a quick little blog, on trying to get a job traveling and writing blogs!!! What could be more wonderful!!!??? I don't know, for me it would be a dream come true, that is why, in this blog I implore you to follow the link, watch my video, and click like on my profile. Why me above the others??? Maybe you should read some of my other blogs and decided you want more? Maybe I'm a lot of fun and a little adventurous? Maybe you have nothing else going on today and you'd like to help me out by clicking like on my profile and sharing??? Either way you do it, help me out!! It's a $100,000 job and traveling to 30-50 vacation spots in 52 weeks, and volunteering for organizations along the way!!!! So, support my candidacy for this job!

I'm not going to say please again, I'm just going to give you the link to the video!!! You can vote every 24 hours, so more than once if you'd like, also, feel free to share this blog, it's not monetized, so I'm not making any money off of it, I promise!!!! 

XOXO Thank you so much for even viewing this!!! Have a great day!!!

http://www.bestjobaroundtheworld.com/submissions/view/14294#.UjDE1m65bTE.facebook

Remodeling a Summer Cottage: Part One

Before the remodel 

A major part of my summer was the remodeling of my parent's cabin. When I was a child my father bought a small cabin from his sister. The cabin has been in our family since it was built in 1949. My father's Uncle built it by himself. He did not install electricity or plumbing at the time of building it.  Electricity was added later, but it has still never had plumbing. It has an outhouse.  It's foundation is cement that was poured into stove pipes than the house was built around them because the land he purchased is on a hill.

As a child my father would take us to the cabin for days at a time. We had a giant lake to swim in, a patio, and lots of places to walk and explore. We would pick berries, in the spring we had cherries, in June we had black berries, in July we had Dew Berries (That's what we called them, but I think they have a different name), and in August the Gooseberries were ripe. It was fun, it was a cycle. When I was fourteen we installed a raft. The raft was a lot of fun. We would take the boat into the swamp and look at all the bull frogs, lilly pads, and flowers. It's a place that means a lot to me.


Then there are the sounds. There is loons. They make the most soothing sounds.  They are an endangered bird and there aren't a lot of them this far south in Michigan, but our lake has two of them that return every year.

The first place we started on our remodel was on the roof, we started from the top down and the roof needed to be replaced. This was not a DYI project, so we hired Sam. He is a friend of my family. After talking to him about some of our plans, it became clear we needed to hire him. He saw our vision. We discussed the importance of starting on the roof and working around the rest of the house. This is only a summer cabin, but we wanted to make it as welcoming and protected from the elements as possible.

When the day came to do the roof Randy and I decided to work on the patio. Randy and I worked on the landscaping as much as we could. We built two retention walls on the patios. One near an old pump that my Great Uncle put in when he built the place. There were still railroad ties in the side of the hill. We had to dig them out because of all the erosion, so building brick retaining walls seemed like a great idea.  We had to do the job in two parts. The first part was the top patio, which took my husband about an hour to dig it out. As he was digging I had to the move the 22.5 lb.  blocks over the small hills and valleys from the truck to the patio. I could only handle four at a time in the wheel barrow and there were 100 of them. Needless to say, my arms were angry the next day and after all the digging Randy's body wasn't real happy either. I'm sure it was good for us.

The first retaining wall took us an entire day and used about 80 bricks. We liked it so well, and we had already decided to do something with the second patio, so it was only natural that the following week we built the second retaining wall down by the pump.  I planted some plants by the patio. I wanted perennials and they had to shade plants because of all the trees. The entire area is covered in moss, the grass is patchy at best, but there are a lot of plants, it being so close to the lake. I chose Hostas, Philox, and some lilies. There are a lot of Tiger lilies all over the hill near the second retaining wall.

This was just the first part of the remodeling project. After this we decided to work on the siding and making the inside look like a log cabin. Those projects took us about a month and I will write about them in a separate blog. It's a very special place to me and has been since I was a child. It's renewal is very important to me and all the time we took to do this project was well spent and will hopefully benefit us for years to come.

Biloxi, Mississippi: Casinos, Food, and History

Mississippi. The name alone conjures up images in my mind of bayous, giant river deltas, alligators, palm trees, and the feeling of walking into a wall of heat. I had never been to Mississippi before and I was really pretty unsure of what I would see, it didn't disappoint me.

First we went to the casino, and we won some money. I figured we were off to a great start that night at the Hard Rock Cafe hotel and casino. Sure it was only a $100 bucks, but still, it was pretty cool. We listened to a musician- Eugene Eash, and just enjoyed the friendly, laid back atmosphere of the casino and bar. I was told the casinos used to be on the ocean on boats, until Katrina. Now they put them on the land. Some of them seemed to still be under construction.

We ate at the Phoenician. I guess they are famous for their  Mediterranean food.  Our waiter recited the entire menu from memory.  It seemed a little excessive, but when I heard what I wanted, I just blocked the rest of it out.  This is a BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer)  establishment, but it is really fancy. I had never eaten at a place where you can bring your own beer, wine, or spirits with you. If you eat here bring a bottle of wine. It's amazing how doing that can cut down on the cost of your meal.

We played laser tag, I had never done that before. Sadly I am really terrible at it, I had 8 hits. Total. I also had a striped shirt on which was highly visible in the black light, so I made for a pretty easy target. Also, once you were shot all of your equipment shuts off for 10 seconds. We went bowling and played in the arcade after that. Most of this stuff could be done just about anywhere, but it was the company we kept made it a great day!

We also went to a ceramics museum, this was the Orh-O'keefe Museum. Although the foundation that supports it is Georgia O'keefe, so it would appear there would be some of her paintings. There was not. The person at the desk did not tell us this until after our tickets were purchased.  The museum was dedicated to her and it contained ceramics from George Orh. Other than that the place was really interesting. There is a whole building dedicated to African American art and there is a house that was built by a free black man named Pleasant Reed. It was the first house in Mississippi built by a free black man, although there were probably others, Mr. Reed married an educated woman and she got all the papers together so they weren't considered squatters. The house was wiped out when Katrina hit and it was re-built. It was really a pretty cool little building with a really old chest freezer and artifacts. There was also a short film about Pleasant Reed's life.

We ate a place called Mary Mahoney's. It was delicious. There were interesting pictures on the walls, and the building had been around a long time. I think my favorite was of the founder's faces on paintings of Napoleon and Josephine. The back porch was converted to a large glass wall, while eating you can look outside but you don't have to suffer the oppressive Mississippi heat. The building was obviously historical, with old posts for horses outside and with it's size it looked like a plantation house. The owners have run the place for sometime and they are usually around.

Finally, last but certainly not least, the reason we came, "The Shed". This BBQ joint boasts the best sauce in Mississippi, I think possibly the world. Their actually ranking from the NBBQA (National BBQ Association) was number one in Mild tomato BBQ sauce. They got a lot of other awards from NBBQA as well.  I was thoroughly impressed with the service they had. When I sat near the door and waited for my order to be called I watched the front door, every person that entered was greeted with the same friendly hello. The customers that were local loved telling me stories about the old smoker that started the place and how big the restaurant has grown in past years.  I really don't eat meat very often, but I couldn't pass up a chance to try the BBQ, so I indulged a little and tried the Brisket. It was really good, they pull it apart, so it isn't exactly like a full brisket, but it's still really, really delicious. It's their own modification on the beef.





It was really cool to watch the filming of the TV show. The show is going to be on the Food Network and I look forward to seeing it.  The people that work at The Shed are super nice and interesting as well! Southern Hospitality is not lost on them. The energy is great, there is signs posted everywhere about having a good attitude, not tolerating cussing, and just plain being nice to one another, good advice for everybody anywhere!

This is where we went and stayed: 

http://theshedbbq.com/ocean-springs/

http://www.phoeniciagourmet.com/

http://www.beaurivage.com/?gclid=CNXVheyEl7gCFYo-MgodHikAyg

http://www.hardrockbiloxi.com/

http://www.nbbqa.org/CMS/Resources/aoe_winners2013.pdf

http://www.marymahoneys.com/

http://deals.fourpoints.com/Four-Points-Biloxi-Beach-Hotel-3402/special-offers?PS=PS_aa_SelectService_Google_four_points_sheraton_biloxi_Exact_112310__NAD_FM

http://youtu.be/vAY32PRjv60

New Orleans: The Big Easy

Well, my wonderful husband decided to take me on a fantastic trip on my days off this last week. We went to Biloxi, Mississippi to visit some friends. Before going to Biloxi we landed in New Orleans, Louisiana, and we decided to spend the day there.  Our plane arrived three hours late, so we didn't have a lot time to spend there.  It wasn't really necessary to spend a lot of time, we had a very small agenda,  I wanted to get my fortune told, have a drink, and buy a voodoo doll. We did all those things.

It is a fascinating place, historically speaking. There are lots of really old things to look at, but it's not as cultural as I thought it would be. Most of the streets are full of the same vendors, selling the same goods.  There is a lot of masks, voodoo dolls, and drinks with crazy plastic take home souvenirs.

The cemetery was interesting, but it closed at 3pm and we missed it. So we headed downtown to Bourbon Street.  It's amazing that anyone gets in there at all. The streets are very narrow and they hard to navigate down because there is so many one way streets.  The cemeteries are above ground because of all the flooding and from the highway it looked like a little walled off city with tiny little brick houses. I suppose that's what it is, houses for the dead.

I got my fortune told by a fortune teller at Marie Laveau's voodoo parlor. It was pretty insightful. The fortune teller seemed to know a lot about me, and made fairly accurate assumptions about my health and gave me advice on my job. Looked at my palm and said I have ankle problems. Which is true. Overall, it was pretty uneventful. He said I would never be divorced, I shouldn't swim in water unless it's clear and I can see the bottom, my brother has a girl friend which he will marry and my sister was married a long time. It was all pretty strange, but I'm glad I did it.

We ate lunch at a place called "Spirits" which was on a TV show called "Bar Rescue". The history of the building was interesting. As it turns out it used to be a barber shops in olden days and it was pretty successful, until the owner, Edward, had a tragic accident at the age of 33. There is a barber chair that you can sit in and take a shot of alcohol. It's a pretty cool place. You can get a drink in a light up skull as well. It's called "The Resurrections". It used to be in a very large glass, but it was ridiculously expensive and it cost the bar a lot of money to serve it.

There is a drink that is specific to New Orleans as well, it's called "Hand Grenade". The Hand Grenade tastes like melon and some sort of bourbon, or whiskey. I thought it was pretty gross and I did not like it at all, but a lot of people do like it. It comes with a little plastic Hand Grenade as a souvenir.

Overall it was an interesting place. There were a lot of street performers, porno places, alcohol, and jazz. The Jazz permeated the air and it was everywhere. It makes you want to dance, coupled with the alcohol you may find yourself doing just that while you explore.

The Downtown Farmer's Market

There is nothing as wonderful as being able to peruse fruits and vegetables in an open air farmer's market. It's one of the things I love about spring and summer, being able to buy seasonal produce and plants from stands. It seems so much friendlier to talk to the vendors and purchase things directly from them.  Randy and I decided to go May 4th, as it was the first day of opening of the new market.

Celery Root

The market was bright and full of people. The booths all had similar stuff, honey, bread, vegetables, and even one rare beef jerky booth, which Randy wanted most of all. My favorite part of the farmer's market is the vegetables that I don't understand, like this celery root. I have no idea what a person would do with this thing. We ended up slicing it, steaming it, and mashing it with potatoes. It was delicious.

We bought potatoes (of course, they are my favorite starch and a staple in our house), the celery root, onions, potato bread, maple syrup, and Randy sampled a little be of the beef jerky. My favorite thing that we bought was the honey comb. I've never had honey comb before. It was a sweet treat.

Daffodils for sale 

Break dancers under the bridge 

There were also people break dancing and there was some other dances with hula hoops and music. It was a really busy place. I'm grateful to my husband for taking me out in the sunshine. It's nice to see such wonderful weather in Michigan, and we never take advantage of it as it's usually too hot, too cold, or there is some sort of precipitation.

This was where we went:

http://downtownmarketgr.com/

Lake Titicaca, Uros Islands, and Taquile

Lake Titicaca 

When we arrived in Puno and saw Lake Titicaca is was almost as if the water was over the land, bubbling over, that same way that water does when there is too much in a glass. It kind of arches over it and suspends there but doesn't drip. I was a little bit tired from all of the riding, the bus trip was nine hours from Cuzco and it was very exhausting. When we reached lake Titicaca we were at an altitude of about 12,000 feet which is about 3100 m. It was tiring to be walking around and breathing I had never been up that high and it turns out I'm a little sensitive to altitude sickness.

We drove through the streets in the tour bus and all we could see around us were stray dogs and animals. No beggars, but people that were very poor. Crumbling buildings (possibly from neglect and earthquakes) and street vendors filled all our views from the windows. We even saw live sheep attached to the tops of vehicles for transportation. It was surreal and I will never forget how I felt knowing this was a way of life and there was not much anyone could do to help or change it. We were driving this tour bus and we probably had more money and prosperity then any of those people would ever see. It was disheartening to see the tattered clothing. The children looked happy though, playing on the streets with bicycles they had repaired or homemade toys. I just wished they had the opportunities that I had grown up with, so I was filled with a mixed of gratitude and sadness.

View from Uros 

Reeds in Lake Titicaca 

Arriving at our bus stop we had to find our tour guide for a trip to our hotel. In the car she explain that Puno was a dangerous place for travelers.  She instructed us not to leave our hotel for any reason.   So we stayed into our rooms that night. We had dinner there and there was a large glass window with Alpacas ready for view. My dinner companion thought it was similar to a lobster tank, "I'll have some of the white one" he joked. The menu did contain alpaca, which we tried and it was delicious. We had our favorite Peruvian beer, Cusquena and then I took a walk around the hotel gardens and looked out on the over filled lake.

House made of reeds 

The next day we boarded a boat. Lake Titicaca  is a large lake and it would take three hours to get to our destination- the Isle of Taquile. About 30 other people were on with us the boat.  Our first stop was on the floating Uros Islands. These islands are the only place in the world that are man made islands that people live on and build themselves. They are built from a mixture of a reed that grows locally and mud.  They are made of this mixture and are about 14-15 meters deep. The reed is bulbous on the bottom and it tastes like an onion. I was handed one to eat and I ate it. I got a little too adventurous with their food as they shared with me their bean and fish snacks, later I found out they soak and sun dry everything, not cooking it, and my western stomach wasn't totally up to the challenge.  Walking on the reeds was really cool because it was marshy and spongy, with the straw reeds snapping as I walked on it.  They use these reeds for everything, their boats, the island, their houses, their fishing poles. All of it.

Uros Island, Apuinti 

The story behind the reed islands is the people living on them protected themselves by being able to float away from invading tribes. This way they could just move and take their houses with them. People living here were very accommodating. They left us into their homes and there are packages to purchase where you can stay with them overnight. They live communally and each island has it's own president with about 10-15 people living on it. They mainly subside by fishing. There is a couple of islands that are used strictly for restrooms and one that is an elementary school. When children are old enough they go into Puno for school all year. It was a fascinating place to be because not many people to go there, it's a very very isolated place in the world.

Uros boat built from reeds, native women in colorful
 outfits stand and watch 

When we left we started on to Taquile. It was another hour and a half. Taquile is not man made, it is a solid island in the middle of the lake. When we arrived I noticed we had to walk up another 300 feet. The view was amazing. I was exhausted.

We climbed all the way to the top and there's a souvenir shop from other handmade goods. I bought some souvenirs, I got some hats (Peru has lots of hats).  When then went to lunch. Each family on the island takes a turn making lunch for the tourists to limit competition. There was a choice of fish, eggs, or a potato dish. I had the eggs and they were fantastic. Typical Peruvian food, it was amazingly tasty. They also had coca tea for lunch which is said to ease the altitude sickness. I did not have any because my job does drug testing and coca tea is made from coca leaves, which can show up as cocaine on a drug test if you drink too much of it. When we were done with lunch we walked down a lot of steps to the boat. I think the tour guide said 550. Then it was a three hour, uneventful tour back to Puno and our hotel. I would never take those three hours back, because I got to go to these two amazing places.




Some tips on visiting this place:  it is nice to bring the children gifts. The best gifts to bring are notebooks, pencils, pens, and books. They have rules against giving candy and money, check with your guide for more details if visiting.  They are very grateful for these things. Also, buying things from them is nice, this is how they sustain themselves. 

Houses on the Isle of Taquile

They make amazing handcrafted gifts that you will not find anywhere else in the world. They have beautiful textiles.



Some youtube videos of my trip to Peru: http://youtu.be/QUjgVm7ZPKM

Disney in One Day

On the plane and ready to go! 

My husband. God bless him. He loves Disney. Really, really loves Disney. Our vacations haven't been lining up right and he wanted to go to Disney with some of our friends. We talked about it. I said, "ok, have a good time." He booked the flight, on our one year anniversary. Yes, our one year anniversary. Needless to say, I was angry, I had approved the trip, not him leaving me for Disney, on our anniversary.  Finally, we came to the conclusion that I would have to come with him for a day to celebrate our anniversary.

I've never really liked Disney. Since I was a kid. It seemed fake and cheap.  I was five years old when I went to the magic kingdom the first time. I was disappointed, at the age of five, when Cinderella's Castle seemed small. I expected a real castle, like the ones in England.  I guess my perception of Disney was pretty well cemented at that point. The second time I went was just with my mom. She's great and all but when you are 10 or 12, you don't really want to hang out with your mom but she gets props for  trying. The last time I went I was in High School. It was not the trip of a lifetime. I was with my choir class and I was miserable. Probably for no reason but none the less, it was not a good experience.

Magic Kingdom streets, empty after rain 

Going to Disney was not something I wanted to do, but  Randy was ridiculously excited. I reworked my work schedule to have two days off in a row and we went. We left Grand Rapids on a Sunday morning and I returned on Monday night. Randy continued to stay for 5 more days.

I rode a lot of rides in the short time that we were there. It rained, a lot of people left and the park was pretty slow soon after we arrived. We took refuge in the hall of presidents during one of the storms. This was a place I remembered and liked.  We didn't stay for the show, although now they have Barack Obama and it's way more updated than the last time I was here.  When the rain came down it was like a ghost town. Luckily it stopped pretty quickly, but the crowds didn't come back. I think people didn't trust the weather so they all went to dinner.

Some of the rides we went on were, The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain (my favorite), It's a Small World (still has creepy puppets), Aerial's Grotto, Pooh's Honey pot, Thunder Mountain, we walked around the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house, Pirate's of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, the TomorrowLand Speedway (I was terrible at driving), Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, and finally I was fascinated by the mosaic in the Magic Castle.  I did not remember that at all.

Our anniversary menu 

Amazingly manicured topiaries 

We stayed at the Disney Resort, Saratoga Springs. It's amazingly easy to find transportation to and from the resort. It has buses to and from the monorail, and the monorail goes to some of the parks Magic Kingdom, Epcot and through some hotels. There is lots of transportation all around Disney. Buses go to all the parks, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood studios.

 We took a boat to get to our restaurant for dinner. We went to Narcoossee's and it was delicious.  Outside on the water around the restaurant there was a light parade.  It was pretty awesome. Then we went back to the park to ride some more rides because we stayed at a resort the park didn't close for us until 2am.

When we returned after dinner we saw another light parade on land. It was amazing to see their costumes. We also caught the end of the fireworks. Every night they have extraordinary fireworks, a tinker-bell that zip-lines down the magic castle (who wouldn't want that job?), and the light parades on the water and around the kingdom. It is an amazing place. The people that work there are amazing too. We got our picture taken with Aerial from the little mermaid and I was so amazed by how the cast members stay in character. It's really and truly amazing how everyone that works there seems to love their job.

The best time to go seems to be in the middle or end of April and probably after spring break and before summer break. The lines seemed to be pretty short. Overall, it was a great trip and I wished I had more than a day to stay (shocker).  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and the topiaries were amazing. I can see why Randy loves it so much and it's part of why I love him so much.  I want to go back and see the Animal Kingdom and Epcot for sure and spend more than a few hours.