It’s Wednesday evening, September 22, approximately 6 days and 10 hours before our flight is scheduled to leave from the still warm south to the nippy north. I breathe a sigh of relief as the last of the lodging arrangements have been finalized.

Fall in New England is a very busy time for tourism, so we’re told, and lodging, especially in rural areas, should be made in advance. How does a person decide what to see an do in an area this large when she’s never been there before? Thankfully there is such a thing as the WWW and search engines. AAA’s Trip Tiks is also a very helpful tool for finding information on specific areas.

Still, 14 days is only enough time to scratch the surface, search engines or no search engines. We have 2 other ladies joining my sister and both are in ministry of sorts and are limited to the number of days they can be gone so we have 6 days with 4 ladies, 10 days with 3 of us, and the last 4 days just my sister and I.

We had thoughts of a quaint inn or B&B in some delightful setting but fall foliage season is peak tourist season so prices were at their highest. We usually avoid paying top prices for lodging so why do it now? We even resorted to using Priceline thrice and had good success, assuming the 3 star hotels we got aren’t bombs.

We have to be in Boston 4 times to keep flight schedules so that is where 2 of our Priceline deals came in. Downtown Boston prices seemed to be out of our budget, plus staying on the west side of Boston gives us a great chance to see other parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Our route looks like we have serious ADD but it works for us. I wouldn’t recommend such a trip itinerary but for our schedule it works great. We can’t see all of N. E. anyway!

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Tuesday, September 28:

Eighteen hours until flight time and I feel like something the cat dragged through the mud and then left out overnight. A cold has attacked me and I’m slightly frustrated. This is not how I imagined starting a 2-week trip-of-a-lifetime. Praying for better days ahead.

Because there is no one to fill in for me at the office I am doing the best I can to get things caught up for the next two weeks so my boss can at least make a deposit a job check and distribute checks for employees and subcontractors.

My head is screaming for my bed but it has to ignored.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Thank God that I woke up on Wednesday for our 7 am flight feeling much, much better!!!! Let the trip begin!!

The random number generator at random.org gave me the number

16

and the 16th comment happens to come from Elaine!

Congratulations, Elaine! Send me your mailing address and I will get your calendar out into the mail right away!

To the rest of you who participated, thanks so much for your input! Wish I could send each one of you a calendar! If I do get some printed this year, I will let you know how and where you can purchase them if you so desire.

Thanks, too, for all your kind and generous compliments. Seriously, I wasn’t digging for them!  I do appreciate your vote of confidence.