Another Year Older

As usual, my husband spoiled me for my birthday.  When he asked me what I wanted,  I asked if we could stay somewhere with a hot tub. He came through -  We left New York, spent a quick overnight in  a Walmart in Shrewsbury, PA, and waited for the morning traffic to clear before driving toward Washington DC.  My birthday wish tipped the scales towards Cherry Hill Park  (we'll have to do the more affordable Greenbelt Park a different time).  So on my birthday, I got to experience my first RV park with a hot tub, ample wifi, and public transportation to the city.  The cool weather put a chill on traveling into the city, and made me  double appreciate that we were parked almost directly across from the hot tub.   

The wifi wasn't too shabby either and I went on a download frenzy, updating all my devices, and adding a few open source programs to my Windows machine. I also got to play with a couple GEEK gifts.  A bright red skin for my Macbook Air and the starter kit set of HUE (wireless) lights.  I've already thought of lots of ways to use this in our travels ranging from mood lighting controlled with my phone  for outside the bus, to improving the lighting when I video conference, to fun effects with green screen movie making. 

I even got to have a birthday dinner with friends - one of my favorite things to do on my birthday.  It had been 5 years since I had last seen Kurt, and got to meet his wife Anne while enjoying a super healthy meal  at the Silver Diner - a unique diner that features healthy local foods    My only regret is that we wimped out and did not tackle the hour drive to go see my son, Adam,  and Dan Mills play music only an hour away.  We chose to turn in early over super traffic in an unfamiliar city  on dark night.  Sorry Adam and Dan ;-( 

Today we moved the bus towards Myrtle Beach, but didn't make it all the way. Craig drove the bus 370 miles while I corrected projects from my online grad students. We did stop to add fuel up.  I learned that you  can only put in $100 worth of gas at a time on a credit card and cannot resuse the same credit card subsequent times.  Thankfully the tank topped off after $300 worth of diesel.  We drove a few more hours but stopped an hour shy of the ocean in a Walmart parking lot  and are nestled in for the night between an 18 wheeler and an RV.   The ocean awaits us tomorrow!