WLB Career in Hindsight

In March, I passed the two year anniversary of my retirement. This milestone seemed to be the right time to write down my thoughts – long enough to gain perspective and short enough to still have vivid memories. My professional life can be broken into 3 chapters:  a year and a half at Kaman Sciences in Colorado Springs, two years at General Railway Signal (GRS) in Rochester, and the remaining…

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Death Valley 2019

Death Valley National Park is just inside California about 150 west of Las Vegas and is the largest National Park in the lower 48 states.  It also boasts the lowest elevation in North America and makes claim to be the hottest place on Earth.  Our plan was to get there in late March to see it when it was comfortable.  Having said that, we still needed to hydrate frequently and…

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Sedona 2019

We loved this place so much last year that we came back again in 2019. The major upgrade was the addition of our long-time friends the Bakers and the Marschiloks. This was the first time that the six of us had been together in 25 years and it was a blast. One minor surprise was the weather – the night after we arrived it started snowing and didn’t stop until…

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Winter 2018-19

Our “winter” began with our arrival in Red Bay, Alabama at the end of November. It’s a small town not too for from Birmingham that is dominated by Tiffin, it’s largest employer and the manufacturer of our RV. The reason to got there was to get some work done that they could only do at the factory. We stayed in their campground/parking lot for several days while we waited our…

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Fall 2018

For the purpose of this discussion, Fall consists of mid-September through early December and covers a potpourri of activities.  We didn’t spend much time in the 1000 Islands this fall for a couple of reasons: (1) September is the best time of year to travel in the northern part of the country and (2) we had a number of commitments. It’s difficult to avoid writing a “how I spent my…

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Yellowstone 2018

Just before Labor Day weekend, we traveled to Bozeman, MT by plane with our travel buddies Sue and Dean Hereford and stayed in a townhouse in West Yellowstone.  This is a small town that is halfway between an Alaskan outpost and a tourist mecca.  It is located at the west park entrance and gets you to the key attractions relatively quickly. The park itself is enormous and it takes an…

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California Wine 2018

We’ve been to the Sonoma, Anderson, and Napa valleys several times in the past 25 years to taste and buy wine.  It is one of our very favorite things to do and some of our favorite places to visit.  This was our first visit since 2013 and took us to the southern part of the state as well as Sonoma/Napa. Over the course of 5 weeks in March and April…

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Napa/Sonoma 2018

For those of you who know us, you know how much we love visiting this area of California.  Despite California’s reputation for high cost of living, horrendous traffic, earthquakes, wildfires and other natural disasters, who could not be enchanted by this area of the “Golden State”. What fun we had here as were joined by Phee and Lyle Rosnick and later by family…Susie and Dean, Jack and Christina.  We also…

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Paso Robles 2018

We have long awaited a visit to Paso Robles for the great wines that the region produces but were not prepared for how much we loved this area.  There were so many wineries (nearly 400) in a relatively small area in gorgeous, rolling green hills (we are here in their springtime) and the quality of the wine was astonishing.  Our campground, appropriately called Wine Country RV Resort, was another of…

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Joshua Tree National Park 2018

After the city sight-seeing in San Diego, we moved on for several days to a place called Desert Hot Springs, a small town located in the desert close to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. It is also at the base of pretty spectacular snow-capped mountains directly to the west and a beautiful view from our campground with lots of sunshine and blue skies. We spent most of our…

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