How I Spent my Spring Vacation

 Hey everyone, so at work we had some major slow time and I had 3 weeks of vacation time, so I decided to take a week off from May 3rd to May 7th. I didn't have much planned, but I had some chores and fun activities to do, so here's what I ended up doing.

Monday was the "chore day." First thing was we went to our storage locker to get some shoes and bags for our upcoming trip to Arizona. The bins were a little berried behind my yellow store shelf, so that was a bit of an ordeal. We got her bag our, but unfortunately all the sandals she wanted were not in that bin. Oh well. Before we went mskate said she wanted a diet coke slurpee, and it had to be diet. I know I've seen them before, but 7-eleven rotates their flavors and they didn't have them at the 7-eleven that was on the way home from the storage locker. After the locker we went out to lunch to a local restaurant. Back when we were dating we used to go to all sorts of restaurants, but since covid we haven't done that. Well with things opening up we went out to a local restaurant. We wanted lunch but the place only had brunch available when we got there, so I had a brunch burger croissant sandwich and mskate had a salmon croissant sandwich with the croissant on the side (she can't have gluten, so if a gluten free bread isn't available I eat it off the side). We ate in an outdoor room thing, and I asked to turn the heaters on (and they let me). It was pretty good, I would go there again. After that we went up to our parents area so I could get my allergy shot and pick-up and drop off some stuff at the parents. I got my shot and then we went to a 7-eleven by the allergist. Unfortunately they didn't have diet coke either, so we went to my parents house. On the way to my parents, we went to the 7-eleven by their house and unfortunately no diet coke. We went to my parents house and picked up some muffins and said hi to my dad (mom was out, probably at grandma's). After my parents we went to a 7-eleven by her parents house, and again, no diet coke. She dropped off some snacks and other things for her parents to take on their road trip to Arizona (because it's a memorial trip for mskate's grandma, and we're flying). The rest of the day was kind of relaxed, but I did dishes and some other small chores. Oh, and because it was Star Wars Day May 4th, I made this little thing I posted to hugelol.

Tuesday was our fun day. Generally speaking things were pretty calm in the morning. After some breakfast we went to mini golf. There is a mini golf course some cities over and we wanted to try it out. It was a pretty fun course with a sea monster and ship theme. Here are some pictures I took.

Nothing super exciting, except I got some hole in 1s. I also found some golf balls that people hit into the water. Since it was still pretty early in the season only the little lake with the sea monster had water in it, and it was pretty shallow. I saw a blue ball in it and I fished it out. Mskate wasn't exactly thrilled, but I made the case that the place will appreciate it since I'm doing their work for them, and she said "OK, you can try twice." I only needed 1 try. Then in another where the water was completely drained I saw a pink and purple ball, so I jumped into the river bed and grabbed them. Below is my bounty.

At the final hole I did my yellow ball as a serious one for points, and I think it took me 3 strokes. Then while mskate was totaling the points I did this.

I won by 4 strokes. After minigolf we went to a 7-eleven, and alas, no diet coke. We did go to A&W where I had chili cheese fries and mskate got a diet root beer. We went home after that and just relaxed until it was time for the movie. We went to see Raya and the Last Dragon, and it was good. Want my review, here you go.

OK, that was Tuesday. Wednesday was a medical day. Mskate went to the dentist and I went to get my 2nd covid vaccine dose. I was actually supposed to get my dose on Friday, but the place had to cancel and reschedule. Lucky for me and them I took off all week so I could easily reschedule. I was a little late to the appointment, but because it wasn't very busy it wasn't a problem. I exercised my arm so it would hopefully not be very sore the next day, and one of the other people waiting in observation asked if that would help. I said "I don't know, but I always heard to exercise after an injection." I got home and ate some lunch. Mskate went to her dentist and I recorded this catholiccontriversy video (because I like to record in an empty house).

I also reorganized the shipping boxes and material in the storage room. I had to do this while mskate was out because if I didn't she would be saying "throw this out, throw this out." But now instead of basically filling half the room it doesn't take up much of anything. I also relisted some items on ebay and reorganized the games I have listed so I don't have to go far. I drank a lot of water and took some advil, and was good.

Thursday was the moment of truth, would I be knocked out by the vaccine side effects or be good. My dad and brother and mskate had reactions, but my mom and grandma didn't. I was lucky and all I can really say is I have a sore arm. Because of this mskate and I decided to take an impromptu get away to Columbus to go to the American Girl store for the 35th birthday promotion. We were only going to do this if I was feeling OK, and I was. I checked the FCC low power analog map to see if there were any low power TV stations, and since there supposedly are, I packed up the analog TV from the 80s. I'll let the vlog speak for itself, but I'll go through the details because I didn't capture everything.

[vlog coming soon]

First we went to the American Girl Doll store. We were going to check in first, but the hotel was 20 minutes away and the store would close in an hour by the time we got to the store. We parked and walked over to the store. This was the 2nd time I went there, and while I'm not into dolls I do appreciate the creativity of all the characters and accessories. Oh, and I REALLY like Courtney, the 80s doll, because I love 80s stuff. Back in highschool one of my classmates said "you were born 20 years too late, weren't you?" She has a working pacman arcade cabinet. Unfortunately they didn't have any of the floor models powered up, and the pinball machine for the 60s girl had the ball taken out of it, but it was still fun seeing these accessories. Oh, and now there's an xbox gaming set, and we're going to get that at some point because we both will appreciate that (I like the gamer aspect of it, and mskate likes the cute doll accessory aspect). We also got some mystery bags, and felt them to figure out what they are. (We also went to the candy store, I got sour ribbons, chocolate rocks, and candy bricks).

After shopping we went to the hotel. I drove there and checked us in, and just barely made it for dinner and drinks. Drury Inn is awesome, they have continental breakfast, continental dinner, and each adult guest gets 3 alcoholic drinks. I had a tequila sunrise, gin and tonic, and glass of white zinfandel. Tequila sunrise is a house cocktail, and and I always like to try house cocktails, and since it was free I decided to try a gin and tonic. We unpacked the car and got in the room. There was a problem with the original, 1-room room, so they upgraded us to a 2-room suit. I set-up the analog TV and tried tuning into the low power tv stations, but didn't get anything. I also tried installing crypto mining software on my travel laptop (because mining at a hotel is free to me electricity), but I couldn't figure out how to get the mining software working, so that was also a bust. It was a pretty quiet night after that.

The next day was an impromptu event. I realized we were outside Columbus, and low power stations are "low power, and therefore don't have far range," so if I was to get anything we would have to go back into Columbus, so mskate got to have another trip to the American Girl Doll store while I played around with the TV at the top of the parking structure (because the best place to get a signal would be high up). I had some trouble with the power inverter in the car, so I decided to try mooching electricity from the outdoor mall. I tried plugging into the outlets in the stairwell, and then tried plugging into an outlet on the side of a store, but those outlets were all turned off. I'm carrying this 30 pound TV up and down the stairs, plugging into all outlets I can find and not getting anything. Serves me right for trying to mooch I guess. I went back to the car and read the manual. Turns out the engine had to be on, go figure. I tried the channels but nothing. This is when I had the great idea to go to the GPS coordinates of the towers, so I plugged them in and we went to one of the tower locations. It was of course way out of the way, but it's my vacation I'll do what I want. It just so happened that the tower was right next to a cemetery, so we went into the cemetery and got right up to the tower. It didn't work. Apparently it was the Columbus NBC affiliate, and they were all converted to digital. Mskate wasn't going to put up with going to the other tower, so we just went home. I did a little research and while the tower was just 1 mile away, if it was broadcasting analog I would have been able to pick it up from where we were. It was still cool seeing a broadcast tower up close and personal though, and I think there was something the TV was picking up because there was a pattern to the static. We got Sonic for lunch because it was right there, and then drove home. I did a little bit of grocery shopping that night but it was pretty low key after we got home and unpacked.

Saturday was pretty low key. We listed some items on ebay, specifically an American Girl Doll mskate got but ended up not being one she wanted; she thought she got a historical doll but it was a truly me doll. I had a major craving for take-out pizza from this place that's on the other side of town, so I put in the order and got it. As I drove there I realized that garage sale season has started, so after lunch mskate and I went out garage sailing. She was looking primarily for American Girl Doll stuff, and I was looking for my nerd stuff or things I could sell easily. Unfortunately neither of us found stuff we were interested in, but mskate found someone selling new clothes her mom really likes for a great price so we picked up Christmas presents. I did come across a guy selling license plates, and while they do sell, I've found they're generally more trouble than their worth since ebay has a habit of taking them down and they don't sell for a lot. Oh well, it was mainly for an outing. While out garage sailing we went to a 7-eleven and while mskate didn't get a diet coke slurpee, she was able to get a sugar free vitamin water slurpee, so that a success. After garage sailing we went to the grocery and picked up some maraschino cherries and a grandma card for mothers day, and some snacks for our upcoming trip. I ended up getting "hard cherries," so my grandma will have to pace herself when she eats them. After dinner we watched Hunchback of Notre Dame on Disney Plus, so that was fun.

Sunday was Mother's Day. We went to church like we normally do, and then we got ready to go to my parents house. We got all gifts ready, mskate wrapped the presents and after a little waiting we went to my parents house. We arrived a little early and that gave us some time to just visit with my parents. Then everyone showed up. Here's everyone that came; my grandma, pepperbc and her family, and my grandma's friends J&P. We primarily talked about things, like their upcoming trip to Evansville. While talking about things, I brought up how I'm looking for low power analog TV channels, and how PepperBC has some up by her house on the other side of the state, and that they will pass by one on their trip. My mom and aunt may humor me on their trip and try to get a channel, but time will tell. Dinner was pretty good, my dad made roast beef and J brought rolls and pies. It was REALLY good. After dinner we did our sing along with J playing the accordion. We ended up doing a video call with the Evansville relatives so they could enjoy the sing along too. After that we gave the gifts. Everyone enjoyed what they got, and we made a big point to say "the cherries are alcoholic, don't eat too many at once."

All in all, it was a great week. I'm really glad I took it off and was able to be so filled. Yeah, it would have been good to be a little more "productive," but that's OK, vacation is meant to be fun. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

My Summer Up North Vacation 2015

Well, my summer internship has come to an end. My last day of work was fun. I wore my red Hawaiian shirt and fedora, said my goodbyes to everyone, and left on a good note with everyone saying they'll miss me. Here's a picture of what I wore that day.

So last year I had a little break before we moved my brother into college. Not this time. No this time I pulled into the driveway, grabbed my trip bag, and we left on our adventure. For my DVD entertainment this year, I brought a Warner Brothers Oscar Shorts collection, season 1 and 2 of Dinosaurs, and the Pokemon Orange Islands set. This year I made sure I brought my camera so I could get pictures and video in addition to what my dad took. Also, there are way to many pictures to put in the post. Only select pictures were added. For all the pictures, click here to go to the myspace collection.

Day 1 was pretty low key. Basically our goal was to get to the northern half of the state. A big attraction was this knife store that we stopped at along the way. My brother is into black smithing and knives, so he was in his element. I don't have any pictures of that because it's a bit frowned upon to take pictures of the art for sale unless you were buying something, but let me just say it was art, and it had art prices. The main attraction we did was go to this mine pump museum. It had this giant pump that was used to pump water out of the mine. Here's some pictures of it.

It was really cool. They also had a little mine museum behind it. It had all sorts of old tools and equipment. Really awesome.

For more pictures of all the equipment, check out the myspace collection.

Then connected to the mine museum was a world war 2 museum. Again, here are some pictures.

These are not all the pictures. Click here to see them all on my myspace.

The next day we did some more traveling. We drove through one of the small towns that has a shipping port just to see some freighters. I think we saw one. But my main thing was the videogame store they had. Oh it was cool. The first thing when you walk in is this table with PS2 and OG XBOX, with a couple gamecube games sprinkled in as well. I spent some time digging through that and found some games. Then they had modern as well; PS3, XBOX360, PS4, XBOX ONE, Wii, and Wii U. They also had a small selection of retro, but you could tell that that wasn't the focus. They also had table top games and sports memorabilia. My dad and brother went into the store with me and they had fun "watching Sheldon in the comic book store."

Once we got to the area we were going to stay, we did some "lets see if there's anything to do around here." We found a city park with a small deer enclosure. They marketed having an albino deer, and the normal deer were not really afraid to come up to the fence. This made for some great pictures and video.

For even more, click here.

Later that night we tried to see some bats that took over an abandoned mine shaft. There's this mine shaft at the top of a hill that went dry, and bats took habitat of it. The city put a fence and barricade around it to protect the bats and people wanting to see them. On a good day the bats fly out at dusk and it looks really cool, according to the welcome center lady. Well it was windy that night and bats don't like wind apparently, so it was a bit of a bust. We did see some wild turkeys on the road. The place was cool anyway, and here's a picture and video.
 

That was most of what we did on day 2. Day 3 was when we had fun and when we arrived at college. But before arriving, we went to a saw mill museum some miles before the college. The guy who ran the place is a carpenter and mad these really beautiful wood pieces. Again, no pictures because art, but take my word, they were gorgeous. Really nice dining room tables and rocking chairs, and some other things as well. Then there's the mill tour. It showed you the life of a log, one which I traced in this video.
After that, we hit the road again and got to college. We checked into our hotel and rested a little bit, them moved my brothers stuff in at his dorm. We went to Walmart to pick up the stuff he forgot. There wasn't much, but whatever. This was the same Walmart that forgot they had PS2 games for sale last year. Some of the games were still there, like the Grand Theft Auto collection, but nothing I was interested in.

It was a rainy day so we couldn't do all the cool outdoor stuff they have around his college, but we did a bit of a "historical points of interest" vehicle tour lead by my brother who fulfilled his history requirement with a history of the area class. That was pretty cool. The only picture we got from that was a picture of this cool church.

After the mini tour, we went to this mining museum. That had a lot of cool things and showed what kind of shops and jobs one would find in a mining town. One of the things was what a school room would be like, and a hilarious list of "rules for teachers" was showcased. Like this is what a teacher is expected to do back in the 1800s. They had the list for sale in the gift shop, and since my mom is a teacher, we had to get her one. Check out some of the pictures from that.

Even more over on myspace.

After the mining tour, we went to a rock and mineral museum. I'm not a geologist, but I can appreciate cool rocks and minerals, and since the main characters from Steven Universe are named after minerals, I made sure to look out for them.

Amethyst

Rose Quartz

Opal

Ruby

Sapphire

 

Pearl

Garnet

These are just the Steven Universe characters I could remember. There are even more awesome minerals on myspace.

There was also this really cool "florescence" display where you go into a dark room and it shines a black light on different minerals to show off the pretty colors in addition to a 15 minute video that explains why they are like that. This exhibit was next to the "elements in your everyday items" and what rocks we get them from. Having worked in an engine plant, and since many of the examples were from cars, it was pretty cool to see where the stuff comes from.

One thing I really liked was a big fossilized dinosaur bone, a meteorite, and moon dust. Like, all the gems and minerals they showed were "common." By that I mean the rock and mineral are relatively easy to come by, just not with the size of the crystals they showed. Fossils, while not the most common thing on earth, are just animal remains with the organic material replaced with minerals. I've seen and held small trilobite fossils before, and while cool, nothing super spectacular. This specimen however was like the femur of a T-Rex or some other big Dinosaur. Like, when you think dinosaur bones, this is what you think of (unless you're an archaeologist). Then there was the meteorite. Since like only 1 in a billion actually hit Earth, they are exceptionally rare, so that was really cool. I've seen a small piece of meteorite at a space museum, but it was like half the size of a postage stamp. This thing had to have been the size of a baseball. Then there was the moon dust. There wasn't much, but not much was ever brought home, so this is something I've never seen in person. That was really cool. Here are the pictures.

More fossils on myspace

After the rock and mineral museum, I went to the local videogame store at his college and bought a couple of PS2 games. I bought this racing game that Saint, Sudden and I will lets play and some jampack demo discs. I noticed a boxed PS2 modem for sale for $20 but decided to pass on in for now, do a little research and what not since accessories are not my strong point. Turns out a new in box PS2 modem goes for about $45. There was some box damage, but it was still a great price. I also picked up a controller extension cable for practical use, and it was a great end to day 3.

Day 4 was pretty low key. We said our goodbyes to my brother and left for home. We got gas at a Native American Reservation and it was quite cheap.

We didn't do any sight seeing because we already saw the sites, so we were able to get farther south than we did when heading north. The motel was a nice little place. Nothing like last year though when they said "key's in the door." Dad and I went to a restaurant and they had a candle in a mineral. Since we went to a rock and mineral museum yesterday, we were wondering what kind it was. Since it was restaurant table decoration, it couldn't be one of the thousands of dollar minerals. We eventually figured out it was a rock salt mineral. My dad suspected that and to be sure he licked the tip of his finger, put it on the candle rock, and tasted his finger. It tasted salty, so it's rock salt. On day 5 we packed up early from the motel and drove strait home. No points of interest this time.

It was a good way to end the summer. I had fun, saw some cool things, did some cool things, and watched some DVDs I can never find the time to watch. This will probably be the last time I will be able to help my brother move in. It was fun while it lasted. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

A Week Long Moving Trip

Hey everyone, well it's time for a story about one of my adventures. This time, I went on an adventure with my brother and dad to move my brother back into college. He goes to college on the farthest side of the state, 12 hours 1-way. For this reason, when he is moved in or moved out, whoever goes takes a bit of a vacation and see the sites on the way there. Last year all of us went to move him in, and then it was just my parents that went to move him out. This year, it was the guys that went.

First we started with leaving at 8AM Saturday morning. We packed the rental car the night before and all that was left was a couple of last minute things, like my travel bag.

We drove for 4 and a half hours and took about an hour lunch break. We had Burger King. After eating, we went to a local outdoor and sporting goods store that was right there, because Dad needed more of a break than the 20 minutes it took for us to eat and we just wanted to check it out. It was a pretty nice outdoor and sporting goods store. They had a lot of camping and hunting stuff. I'm not a big fan of camping and outdoor sports, but I appreciate a nice boom stick and accessories. We enjoyed looking around and just gazing at the fire arms.

One point of mention is the convenience store/gas station we stopped at out in nowhere. We just had to use the bathroom, get gas, and maybe some snacks. My brother and I both got a party bag of chips for snacking on the way there. Well the place was selling live bait, and not some little tubs of worms that are stored in a refrigerator, I mean minnows. They had this big tank in the back with nets to scoop out your minnows. As a city boy, this was a little different for me. Here's a picture.

After 3 more hours of driving, we got to our motel. As a small motel out in the middle of nowhere, it had a lot of character. Check out the pictures.

The room was quite small, like 12 foot by 12 foot. The bathroom was also really small.

Like there was only 3 inches of clearance between the ceiling and my head. Check it out

For dinner, we went out to this restaurant called "The Dog Patch." Apparently it's based off an old comic strip that I've never heard of. It was recommend to us by my uncle. Unlike the motel, this place had theme. Everything was hillbilly themed, because that's what it was like in the comic apparently. The menu was quite hard to read. I had to go over it like 4 times just to figure out what the hell it was trying to say. It was quite confusing. I eventually decided to get a burger I think. It was called something really crazy, like "Ma Strader's famous budiddle." I get that it's theme and what not, but when your customer has to read the menu 4 times to figure out what is being said and you have to send the waitress away not "because you need more time to figure out what you want," but "because you are still trying to figure out what the menu is saying," that's a little much. It was still pretty good.

The place we were staying was once an iron mining town, with a lot of water falls. We went to a small iron mining museum that is run by the DNR. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures. Since my family has a little back yard forge and do some occasional blacksmithing stuff, I enjoyed it. After the museum, we went to some water falls and a cove. After seeing Niagara Falls, all other falls are a little lack luster, but it was still cool to see them. The cove as also really cool. The look out point was like 200 feet above the water. We looked at the water and saw a little cave at the base. We made jokes about going caving. It was low tide, and if it was high tide you couldn't see it because it would be under water. If you went caving without scuba gear, you'd likely die. Here are some pictures.

I threw a rock off the look out point, I lost track of it because it was such a drop.

After doing some exploring, we went to a small grocery store and bought bread, pop tarts, mountain dew, beer, and wine. We called it "the breakfast of champions." When we got back to the motel, we just hung out and watched 60s Batman with Adam West, and then some every Simpsons ever on FXX. That was fun to find.

After that night, we packed up and left around 8 again. We traveled for about 2 hours before we met up with my aunt, uncle, and PepperBC while they were moving PepperBC in at her college. My brother and PepperBC don't go to the same college, but they are about 20 minutes apart from each other. We helped get my aunt and uncle out of their motel room. Their motel had some good character as well. They had a nice lake view and a deck that over looked the lake. After helping them check out, we went out to late breakfast (lunch basically) with them. It was a nice little diner restaurant. I had pancakes. After late breakfast, we said our goodbyes and continued our journey up to my brother's college.

After a couple more hours of driving, we got to the hotel and began to check in. After taking a breather at the hotel (watching Simpsons and surfing the web), we went out to some sites that my dad used to go to as a kid and an old copper mine. The copper mine was really cool. We go into the gift shop and ticket purchase and what I notice first is that the lady running the register is holding a skunk and petting it like a cat. She had another one running around behind the register. My brother said "that's a cool ferret," and she said "oh he's not a ferret, he's a skunk. They're like cats but more social." According to her they make good pets. We had to watch a safety video and a video about a dive exploration that looked into the tunnels of the mine that are under water.

This mine was really cool. We had to walk down 100 steps into the mine and looked at all the cool things. We had to wear hard hats because parts of the mine ceiling would erode and fall onto the people. Nothing big, just the small rocks you would find on the path. At least that's my assumption, because if there was anything significant like a cave in, you'd be dead. They had signs that pointed out some things that were used in the mine. One thing they pointed out was a vein of copper. At one point in the mine, they had it lit with the same amount of light that the miners had. It wasn't easy to see a lot of things with the low light, but a cool experience. Then my brother had his flash light so we would use that to see things better if we wanted to. Really cool place. I didn't get a ton of pictures because it was bad picture conditions and all we had was a point and shoot, but I did get some



After the mine, we saw some ruins of the old mining establishment. It's quite amazing to see all that nature took back. It's only like 100 years old. I got some really good pictures of that.

That was the end of the mine trip.

After the mine, we went to check out the places my dad went as a kid. We went to the top of a mountain, or like the highest place in that part of the state. It was so windy. They had a big hanging sign that I'm guessing weighed like 100 or more pounds, and it was blowing in the wind. Dad and I made sure we took off our hats because they would surely blow off. My vest almost blew off. I was ready to fly off with my cape like in Super Mario World. After the mountain, we went to the end of a major high way that goes from one end of the United States to the other. That was pretty cool. We got a picture with it. After that, we drove around some more to see nature and stuff.

After seeing nature, we hit up a gas station. We were almost out of gas. Dad saw the tank before we left and thought it would be enough for us to get up the mountain and back down. Well it was barely enough. I have a feeling he was just riding gravity at some points of the way down. I bet he was also expecting to hit a gas station while we were heading back, but we just hit a whole lot of nothing. We were like 1/16th full when we found a gas station. Crazy. After getting some gas we went to dinner at Applebees's. When the waitress asked if we wanted anything to drink, Dad said "oh yeah, get me a beer." Not much else happened that night. We just hung out and watched more Simpsons.

Well it's day 3. This day is when we moved my brother into his dorm. We woke up at 8AM and had free hotel breakfast. We went over to his dorm and started moving his things in. Well, actually we pull into the parking lot and all his friends come out to help him move in. They start saying "hey [VikingPollock], how have you been, give us stuff to steal..I mean help move in." Yeah fun stuff. It took us like 2 hours to move in. Everything got up in 2 trips, and then unloading was really easy without "mom help."

After moving in, we made a trip to Wal-Mart because my brother forgot some things. One of his friends decided to tag along. I looked for my cargo jeans, but they didn't have them. I did find a couple of PS2 games, and you can read the full story at Bitlanders, because if I went into detail on that, this blog would be significantly longer. After Wal-Mart, we went to lunch with all my brother's friends. His friends have many similar traits to my friends. I know people just like his friends.

After lunch we kind of went our separate ways, brother with his friends and Dad and I out to explore. We looked around some places to see if we could find a place for my brother and his friends to go camping, because they like to do that. We found a lot of private property no trespassing. We also found a whole lot of nothing. We went down this one road and there were literally no buildings off the road for 16 miles. And I mean real "literally," not teen white girl "literally." We saw a couple of unmarked streets which we assume to be drive ways to some far back house, but nothing. We eventually found this city called "Gay." That's right, the city was called "Gay." There was a bar called "Gay Bar in Gay." We have a picture of it.

That bar was kind of the only thing there. They didn't even have a general store from what we saw.

After leaving Gay, we decided to see if we could get some lake views, but we just kept getting trees. We went down this one road to see if we could reach a lake view. Dad said "this is either going to dead end or we're gonna get some lake." Well we stumbled upon a coast guard station. There was a big fence with razor wire and a sign that said "Coast Guard. Keep Out. Trespassers will be federally prosecuted." OK we're turning around. We then found some garage/antique sales. I was hoping to maybe find some inventory for ebay or maybe just something for me. Unfortunately not. It was all basement antiques, really old but really common and not worth much. After that we headed back to the hotel.

Close to the hotel, there's this videogame store. They have everything from NES to modern. I looked at the PS2 selection, but everything was retail price. The PS2 is still relatively new enough that people don't consider it retro and I can get them really cheap. Also I'm not at the point where I'm looking at select games, just a bunch of games. It'll be a little while till I have to buy separately. I got 3 N64 games; Army Men Sarge's Heroes, South Park, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. If it wasn't for the buy 2 get 1 free promotion, I would have overpaid according to price charting, but price charting doesn't consider shipping so it's about accurate. We went out to dinner with my brother. We had pizza and garlic toast. After dinner we dropped my brother off and said our good buys. We were going to see him the day after, but we knew he was going to be up all night with his friends and we wouldn't see him the next day. It was a nice goodbye. We then went back to the hotel and just hung out.

Well it's day 4, and we found a bag of my brother's dirty clothes in the van before we left, even though we ask him if this was everything before we said our goodbyes. We packed up everything in our hotel room and checked out. We went over to his dorm and I ran the bag up to him and just left it on his door, because it's 8AM and he's not up. After that we left and went on our way back home. We passed a lot of things we saw on our way there. We were going to see some museums that my uncle suggested we see since they were so close to the motel we would be staying in that night.

After many hours of driving, we get to the motel. Like the one from before, this one also had a lot of character. It had 2 rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchennet. What I really enjoyed was that the owners of the hotel had to go out and just left our room open and said "went out, you're in room 1." I have a picture.

Dad took the room that was closest to the bathroom and I took the one that had the TV.

After unloading, we went to the museums. We went to a boat museum. It was pretty cool. Lots of old boats and other nautical things. Just check out the pictures.

The other museum was basically the city historical museum, which is fancy talk for "here's some cool old things from back when the city was founded till now." It was cool to see all the old stuff, but nothing super impressive.

After the museums, we explored the town. They didn't have much of anything. We did find an endangered species. I got my picture with it.

Yeah I found a pay phone and phone booth. That was cool. We found a little general store close to the phone booth. We picked up more pop tarts. Other than this phone booth, there wasn't anything to really write a blog about, so that's when we went back to the motel.

Once we were back at the motel, we officially checked in. The people that ran the motel lived above the main office and were in the back in their garage. The dog ran over and greeted us. We just hung out for a couple hours, watching storage wars for a couple hours (they didn't have FXX so no Simpsons) and me checking the internet. Unfortunately for me, there was only 1 outlet that was 3 prong. There were plenty of other outlets, but they were all 2 prong and my laptop charger is 3 prong. Surprisingly the air conditioner used a 2 prong, and all the air conditioners I know use 3 prong.

We went to dinner after a couple hours of storage wars. We went to this little family owned restaurant. Apparently it was a "please seat yourself" place, but we didn't see any sign that said "please seat yourself," so we assumed it was a "please wait to be seated" place. We're standing by the front door and waiting to be seated. Then one of the local customers tells us that it's a "please seat yourself" place. We sat ourselves and ordered our food. We both had the french dip, roast beef and mozzarella cheese on a sub bun with au jus dipping sauce. We shared a side of french fries just for some more food. After eating we headed back to the motel.

But before we went to the motel, we went to a gas station so dad could get a caffeinated coke for the morning. We went in and they had coffee, so we didn't need the coke. I looked around a little bit, because as with every gas station I go to in the middle of nowhere, there's always more to the gas station than just gas and a slightly smaller 7-Eleven convenience store. This one was a pretty big convenience store, gift shop, and video and game rental. I checked to see if there were some sales on videogames or movies. Unfortunately not, but they had VHS tapes for sale, which I thought was funny.

After the gas station, we headed back to the motel. We watched some Big Bang Theory and Storage Wars. We wanted to get back home at a reasonable hour so we decided to leave as soon as we woke up. Dad went to sleep around 9PM, and I was thinking about going to bed around that time as well, but then I decided to stay up a little later and watch some youtube videos. I fell asleep watching youtube videos around 10. When I saw all the lights were still on, I thought it was morning. Then I looked at the clock and saw it was 1AM. I passed out on my bed.

I woke up around 7AM and we left soon after that. I told Dad about passing out watching youtube. We drove home and made great time. That pretty much sums up the trip. 5 days, 1500 miles. If you'd like to see the pictures I wasn't able to include in this blog, check out the myspace album. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.