Tag Archives: travel

Baggage fees

So I’m checking out flight prices for a trip, baggage fees are always interesting. The flights that I’m looking at allow me to take two 70 pound bags down for free, but only allow me to bring on 50 pounds back for free.

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That’s a different carrier on the way back, but it’s all booked through the same airline. Even if I pay $40 for the second bag, I can still only bring back 100 pounds in my two bags.

I would never need more than 100 pounds, I’m just saying. Maxing out a pound bag on the way down is pretty easy for me, so I might need two on the way back since I only get 50 pounds for the first bag. But booking it that way looks like it’ll save me just over $100 so paying for the second bag certainly works out.

The airlines I was looking at weren’t too bad for luggage costs, but when you look at some airlines (Spirit) they give you no bags, how can you possibly go to another country for two weeks and not take any bags?!?

International flights used to always give me two bags (at least on the airlines I flew) so if I happened to go over the weight of the first bag I’d take a second smaller bag that actually fit in the first bag. I’d separate them to fly, but then combine them at the destination and I’d only roll around one bag. These days I’m taking a lot less books on a trip since I just take my Kindle with me although I still take one paperback to read during takeoff since they don’t like you to have electronics on; I know that rule is changing, but if I don’t know in advance for sure, I still have to be prepared…

Later: The more I think about it, 70 pounds seems to be a lot. Maybe 50 pounds is what used to be normal and I’m actually getting just getting extra in both bags on the way down?

More later: It turns out the two 70 pound bags on the way down were due to those seats being first/business class. I was shopping with points and didn’t really notice that it was that much of point difference.

Galileo is a great FREE mapping app to have on your iPhone or iPad.

I love this program and it just did a major update so thought it was due for an update on the review I did before, but when I looked I realized I never reviewed this amazing app before, so here we go…

galileo-app.pngFirst of all this program should be thought of as a digital map, the GPS in your iPhone/iPad will find your location and keep the map centered but it doesn’t have directions (just like a paper map doesn’t have directions). What’s really nice about this program you can download maps and they stay on the device so if you’re somewhere with without data (say somewhere on a hike in Costa Rica) you still have your maps with you. Or if you’re traveling internationally and don’t have a data plan you’ve got the maps already, the same goes if you have a plan with a small amount of data, you don’t need to use up all the data.

galileo-maps-IMG_9096.PNGGalileo also has several ways to get maps onto your iPad or iPhone, but the newest way is the fastest and easiest. You just go in to the program, click download maps and pick your states, countries or providences and it downloads them and they are on your device. These downloads are relatively small, Michigan is about 30MB while Costa Rica was about 9MB, but have remarkable zoom levels and are very fast. I wasn’t sure how often they were going to be updating these maps, but when I went to get the screen shot, I see they’ve already updated several of the maps I’ve downloaded (that’s why the screen is downloading that map, it’s an update).

This program is free and the vector downloadable maps are free but the program has many other in app purchases (which I’ll talk about).

I use this a lot when I’m out hiking and biking and traveling. I know where I’m traveling, a question I used to ask all the time is “Where am I?” and people wanted to know where I was going but I’m just walking around taking in the sights and I want to know where I am (I quite often got confusing looks). I want to know where I am and zoom around quickly and not worry about how fast my data is or if I’m roaming somewhere. I get a pretty good signal in Michigan but if I’m in some state/national parks there isn’t always coverage.

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Maps show how fast you’re going, the scale of the map and (optionally) your longitude and latitude.

I like to sightsee / wander around and see what I can find, when I travel I try not to be in a hurry. I went up north to visit my Uncle Jim and Aunt Karen once and when I arrived around 5PM they said “What time did you leave?” and I said “Noon”, which got the reply “You made pretty good time” and then I had to clarify with “Noon, yesterday“! I like to stop and do things, I’d been to different places and going biking and rollerblading and taking pictures and been all over before I got there. It was fun and I saw things that I’d not have seen if I’d had a specific plan.

In Costa Rica, most roads don’t have names and it’s confusing to get around, looking at the map and seeing the icon where you are is incredibly helpful (you need an iPhone or an iPad with the GPS for this to show you where you are).

So my suggestion is download Galileo and grab a few maps of places you frequent so that you’ve always got a nice map in your pocket.

The rest of these features starts to get a little confusing, if the above doesn’t interest you and you don’t care about maps, you should stop reading. If you’d like to be able to download other types of maps and know more, then read on!

This is one of those apps with many 5-star reviews and many 1-star reviews. Although, if you read the 1-star reviews most of them complain about things that if they had read the description they’d know that’s not what the program is supposed to do.

The other thing you can do is choose other map sources: biking, hiking, tourist and it’ll download them, but it remembers the maps until you delete them, so if you want some specific maps you just need to download them and zoom in at different levels and they’ll save and be there for you later (you can set the time limit). Other maps cache this data but purges it when it feels it doesn’t need it any more, you don’t have control over how long the data stays around. That said, I still like pre-downloading them myself (see last item of this review) and installing on the device is my favorite way to go. This next map is a sample of a map that isn’t so much like the “normal” Apple or Google maps.

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Example of a different type of map with altitude/terrain markings.
Good to know if you follow that path you’re going up/down paths over 200 feet in height.

Other (paid features):
Bookmarks – You can leave bookmarks/pins at locations for easy finding later, incredibly useful for marking places that have no other frame of reference. If hiking, you can mark and interesting spot. If someone lives in the middle of nowhere and you want to find it again, leave a pin at that spot.

Breadcrumbs – It will record a trail of where you’ve been. You can look at this later or export the data for other uses later.

Generate off-line maps – Downloading other off-line maps (this is great and it why I got the app in the first place) you can get maps from different sources and build them (on your desktop computer with Mobile Atlas Creator) and put them on the device for later. I downloaded great maps with heights of the hills/mountains for where I hike in Costa Rica, I don’t need to use international data roaming for this since I built them once and they stay on the device.

FYI, the screenshots and map captures are clickable to much larger versions.

Edward J. Kuhn 1923-2013

A few days ago, I was wondering some things about the Alaska trip: how long Mr. Kuhn had done it for or if anyone else had ever posted pictures at some point in time, so I went to internet to see what I could find out.

Unfortunately, the first thing I found was Mr. Kuhn’s obituary. It seemed an odd thing is that it was just a few weeks ago, right before I started posting every thing about this trip. He passed on June 20th, a week before we left thirty-two years ago.

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I wasn’t even sure how old he was at the time, we were just fifteen, so even thirty years old would be ancient to us. But he was celebrating his 25th year of leading this trip when were on it, so that would make him a bit older, now that I have the dates, he’d have been fifty-seven on our trip. Did I mention that he originally went on this trip with someone else as leader? He retired from the eight years after our trip and it says he did the Alaska trips for over thirty years, so I guess at least five more after us, maybe a few more than that.

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That’s Mr. Kuhn in the back in the blue jacket/shirt.
That’s the fish bake (I think by some mines) in Alaska we went to.

He was this crazy old guy who took us on the adventure of a lifetime. I think about this trip often, I feel that it has a bit to do with the traveler in me. Obviously, I had something of it in me before I left or I’d never have taken this three week trek away from home. Until recently, it was one of the longest trips I’ve ever been on.

Thank you and take care Mr. Kuhn I hope you’re still out there traveling…

In case you know Mr. Kuhn and are wondering why I’m posting his obituary, I went on a trip to Alaska with Mr. Kuhn when I was a kid. I recently found my journal from that trip and scanned my slides and I just spent the last three weeks writing about the whole trip to Alaska. I wrote it up each day and posted information and photos on the same day but exactly thirty-two years later.

Back to Michigan from Canada, Alaska, Chicago and everywhere in-between.

So we got up this morning and boarded a chartered bus from Chicago and back to the Detroit area. It was a long bus ride and we arrived tired and I recall it being really really hot when we arrived (a bank parking lot in Pleasant Ridge, the same spot we left from). I’m thinking it was kind of hot on the bus, so maybe something was broken(?).

Nothing else exciting, we stopped somewhere for lunch but no photos from today (sorry). I’ll scan those other pictures eventually (the two nice group shots and some black and white photos), hopefully more sooner than later (I did start making room for the scanner). I never found the photos that I took with the 110 camera, I looked all over for them but sadly never found them. I even looked for the pewter bear that I bought as a souvenir in Alaska, but no luck there either…

Since I don’t have any photos from today, here’s a few panoramic photos that I don’t think I posted here (a few might have been posted to Facebook already). I just tried to pick random ones but they’re mostly from Banff National Park and some glaciers in Alaska.

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Mendenhall Glacier.

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Near (in?) Banff National Park.

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In Banff National Park near the Chateau Lake Louise.

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Near Banff National Park.

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Glacier Bay.

It was a great trip and I really enjoyed reliving it while sharing it with you all here.

If you’re reading this post out of context, this is me re-journaling a trip to Alaska from when I was a kid. You might want to click the “trip to Alaska” link and go to the bottom and read them in order. I’m posting each entry on the same day that it happened years ago.

Playing in Chicago (and a mini adventure in the middle of nowhere)

So we were pretty bored on the train, it was 40 hours so far and I was pretty stir crazy. We’d stopped at some towns but nothing for more than a few minutes (We stopped in St. Payl / Minneapolis, MN for a short time, but I slept through that). We (the guys) wanted some snacks and something different than what was on the train. The problem was that most of the towns were just a quick stop and there was nothing nearby. So we watched the next few stops and the next stop in the middle of nowhere we saw a little shop (a little farther than across the street) and we ran like cRaZy. We made sure the guy from the train knew where we were going, and we knew they weren’t going to leave a few kids behind, but we didn’t really know for sure(!), so we ran and ran like our lives depended on it (my Mom would have killed me!) and got some drinks/snacks and got back on the train.

Thinking of the train station in Dearborn, there’s nothing there if you were just traveling by, the station is a small building and it’s behind the police station and library, nowhere that you could really get anything. Plus, if the train stops for more than a few minutes, it’s only because it’s early, I don’t think I’ve generally seen it sit there for more than 5 minutes, if that. People get off, people get on and it’s gone (very efficient).

So it was the last day on the train and we were ready to get off the train and glad to arrive in Chicago.

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From my journal:

6 pm – Got into Chicago and took cabs from the train station to the hotel. Mr. Kuhn gave us money and we got food from Burger King. Then we went up the Sears Tower.

We stayed at the Ascot House in Chicago. It was a weird shaped really large room that we ended up with. I’m not sure how many of us were in there, but after running around Chicago we were pretty tired and it probably didn’t matter. This was at 1100 S Michigan Ave, it’s a Best Western across from Grant Park, I really don’t remember the nice park across the street, maybe it wasn’t as nice back then? Maybe we just walked out the wrong way out the side door?

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We ran around all over the area in Chicago, we were pretty unstructured and unsupervised this evening. A few of us hung out and went up to the top of the Sears Tower and checked out the elevated train. I can’t remember if we got on it just for the heck of it or if we took it to get to the Sears Tower, which was kind of far away.

If you’re reading this post out of context, this is me re-journaling a trip to Alaska from when I was a kid. You might want to click the “trip to Alaska” link and go to the bottom and read them in order. I’m posting each entry on the same day that it happened years ago.

From Seattle to Chicago on Amtrak

The first thing we realize is that the tracks in Canada are much much smoother than in the United States. This train is so bumpy it’s not even funny.

We have a small cabin area, kind of like you see in the movies when they can open the door and go in and the beds fold down. It’s kind of nicer than the VIA trains, but it’s so small (smaller than movies) we really don’t stay in there, so it doesn’t make much of a difference.

From my journal:

7am – Slept okay. French toast was pretty dull. Found out the menu is the same every day.


8 am – Stopped in Whitefish (Montana?) for 17 minutes, nice little town, had a lot of shops but most were closed.


Rest of day – Stopped in a few more small towns. Read a bit in an empty cabin I found.

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Some more photos from the train ride home. We were pretty bored…

If you’re reading this post out of context, this is me re-journaling a trip to Alaska from when I was a kid. You might want to click the “trip to Alaska” link and go to the bottom and read them in order. I’m posting each entry on the same day that it happened years ago.

Washington outdoors.

I got a postcard from Mom! She sent it to the hotel from when she was up north with my Aunt Nola last week! It’s of the Mackinaw Bridge which is huge and connects the upper and lower peninsula’s of Michigan together.

Postcard from Mom

Postcard from Mom

Today we are to explore the nearby trails and “leave to see Steven’s Canyon, Cayuse Pass, Cowlitz River, Box Canyon, Chinook Pass, White River and the missive 5.5 mile long Emmons Glacier”.

From my journal –

9 am – Feel a lot better after all that sleep. We leave here at Noon. Young and Spencer leave today for the rest of the trip.

I was feeling better which is good, like I said yesterday, I thought we’d stayed here for days and days (I thought that mostly because I really remember being sick). I’d mentioned Young and/or Spencer in my journal before (but not here on the web) so I must have spent some time with them and helping out and playing cards. I’m guessing they were a few of the senior women that I have posted a few photos of here and there. I’m sure with feeling sick and homesick I was very jealous of their heading home.

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I think those last from photos are from the Washinton area, anyone who thinks they’re from farther east, let me know and I’ll move them around. Some of yesterday’s photos might actually be from some of the other locations around here, I’m doing my best with these in trying to remember (and space them out for you!).

So later today we’ll board Amtrak train #8 , the Empire Builder on the Superliner for Chicago and start our two day trek back on the trail.

From my journal:

4 pm – Called home from train station. Train is is okay but room is a little small for 3 people. Train has 2 floors, we’re on 2nd. We got one of the bigger rooms, you should see the guys that got one of the smaller rooms.


8pm – Dinner was good, had turkey and more.

If you’re reading this post out of context, this is me re-journaling a trip to Alaska from when I was a kid. You might want to click the “trip to Alaska” link and go to the bottom and read them in order. I’m posting each entry on the same day that it happened years ago.

Mt. Rainer National Park

According to the itinerary “Mount Rainer is 14,400 feet and capped with 26 glaciers. Mt. Rainer is the greatest single scenic attrition in the entire Pacific Northwest.”

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From my journal:

8 am – Feeling a little better than yesterday.


9 am – Got on the bed to ride to Mt. Rainier.


1:30 pm – By the time we got back to the hotel I was so sick I thought I was going to die.


8 pm – Slept for a while. Woke up, felt better, ran around outside some more. Went back feeling sick.

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Paradise Inn hotel (built in 1916).

From my memory: This was the year after Mount Saint Helens erupted. I recall going on the bus ride and the guide telling us that if we saw ash-like material along the sides of the road (or other places) that there was a good chance it was from the eruption from last year. I think I skipped dinner and a few of the guys stayed behind and then I was sick more for the rest of the day. I just remember staying back for being sick and then running around for a while. When we ran around outside we had a blast and I don’t know where the energy came from, it was beautiful out, but then I went back to bed and you’d never know I’d been feeling better. I thought I was in the room for days feeling sick, but I think we only spent one night here.

Keep in mind, while I was feeling sick, I’m also feeling homesick (and being sick is making it worse!), it’s been seventeen days since I’ve been gone, this is a record by far (not sure if I’d ever been gone more than a week). So at this point I just want to be home and be sick and have my mom take care of me!

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I think these last few are form near the hotel when we were running around outside. I think it was just Jeff and I (maybe one other kid too).

If you’re reading this post out of context, this is me re-journaling a trip to Alaska from when I was a kid. You might want to click the “trip to Alaska” link and go to the bottom and read them in order. I’m posting each entry on the same day that it happened years ago.