Showing posts with label RoadTrip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RoadTrip. Show all posts

Our Favorite Audiobooks For Road Trips in 2018

  This year, I finally got Dan hooked on audiobooks for our road trips.  They really make two hour car rides go by SO much faster!   We don't always love them.  I think we tried 3 or 4 just in the past week that we couldn't get through the sample without yawning.  There are a couple where I thought I would enjoy reading the book, but the audiobook was just too dry to listen to.  

These are audiobooks we truly loved:


The Martian

This was truly fantastic.  I chose it because it was on the Great American Read list, and I thought Dan might enjoy it.  I really didn't expect to love it myself.  I was wrong.  I loved it.

Dan later rented the movie and watched it while I was out one night.  He said it was good, but not nearly as good as the book.  He's learning...  LOL!


"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. 
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. 
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. 
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plainold "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. 
But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills - and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit - he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?"

Narrated By Will Wheaton
So it's pretty awesome when there's a line in the book about Will Wheaton, and you realize that Will Wheaton is reading that line. :-)


From this list so far, you might assume we are science fiction or fantasty readers.  Nope.  Not at all.  I very very rarely read anything that could be classified sci fi or fantasty.  That's part of why I chose this audiobook - I wanted to cross it off on the Great American Read list, but I didn't really expect to like it.  I thought as an audiobook on a road trip, it might pass the time and get it off my list.  And then, it ended up being one of my absolute favorite books of 2018.  

"At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut - part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of 10,000 planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune - and remarkable power - to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved - that of the late 20th century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt - among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life - and love - in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.
A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?"



Educated by Tara Westover


I don't know what I thought this book was about - I think I was expecting more about our American education system?  But it's a memoir of an interesting life.   This one I did not expect Dan to like nearly as much - but our previous book had ended mid road trip, and this was all I had available on my phone at the time. Again, I was wrong.  Dan was as thoroughly drawn into this story as I was.

Born A Crime By Trevor Noah

Another memoir.  I really enjoyed hearing this soon after reading Hillbilly Elegy.  Comparing and contrasting the two was especially interesting.  Both of them are memoirs similar to Educated - although I think Educated was the most gripping of the three.  If I had closely read the description of this book I probably would not have chosen it - but it came up at the top of the list of available audiobooks from the library, and I clicked on it.  Although the description is all about "social commentary" and sounds political, the book is just his story - and it's a fascinating story.

Trevor Noah, one of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars and host of The Daily Show, tells his wild coming-of-age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. In this Audible Studios production, Noah provides something deeper than traditional memoirists: powerfully funny observations about how farcical political and social systems play out in our lives.


Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children 

 mysterious island. 

An abandoned orphanage. 

A strange collection of very curious photographs. 

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that makes for a thrilling listening experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets 16-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive. 


A spine-tingling fantasy, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Some Favorites From Past Years:




Holmes On The Range by Steve Hockensmith

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Steve_Hockensmith_Holmes_on_the_Range

This is is a series of books, and they are all fun reads. But I think I like the audiobook versions even better!  They have a fantastic, perfect, narrator (William Dufris) and are a cross between humor, mystery, a little history , and a western.  Yeah, I know, it sounds like too much.  Just trust me and try them - they are FUN books!  



1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on as ranch hands at the secretive Bar-VR cattle spread, they're not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which they can enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harper's Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes. When another ranch hand turns up in an outhouse with a bullet in his brain, Old Red sees the perfect opportunity to put his Holmes-inspired detective talents to work and solve the case. Big Red, like it or not (and mostly he does not), is along for the wild ride in this clever, compelling, and completely one-of-a-kind mystery.


A Long Way Home by Saroo Bierly

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Saroo_Brierley_A_Long_Way_Home
An amazing memoir of a boys journey to find his parents.
Narrated by Vikas Adam
"At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home and pore over satellite images for landmarks he might recognize or mathematical equations that might further narrow down the labyrinthine map of India. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family. A Long Way Home is a moving, poignant, and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit: hope."


Seven Years In Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
I have found that I often enjoy memoirs as audiobooks.  This one was mesmerizing!  
Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

In 1943, Heinrich Harrer, a youthful Austrian adventurer, mountaineer, and skier, escaped from a British internment camp in India and traveled through the rugged Himalayas seeking refuge from the war. He ended up in the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet, with no money or permission to be in the country. However, his curious appearance and the traditional hospitality of Tibetan society soon worked in Harrer's favor, allowing him unprecedented acceptance among the upper class. His intelligence and his European ways also intrigued the curious young Dalai Lama, and Harrer became his tutor and trusted confidant. When the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950, Harrer and the Dalai Lama fled the country together.


The Lost City Of The Monkey God
Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumors have circulated about an ancient White City of immense wealth hidden in the Honduran interior. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who had fled there to escape the Spanish, warning that anyone who disturbs this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the jungle with hundreds of artifacts and tantalizing stories of having seen the crumbling walls of the Lost City of the Monkey God for himself. Soon after, he committed suicide without revealing its mysterious location.

Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying expensive laser technology that could map the terrain under the dense rainforest canopy. That flight revealed for the first time an unmistakeable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing proof of not just the mythical city but an entire lost civilization.

Suspenseful, surprising, and unputdownable, The Lost City of the Monkey God is narrative nonfiction at its most compelling: a story of adventure, danger, ancient curses, modern technology, a stunning medical mystery, and a riveting eye-witness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.




Brave Companions By David McCullough

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6568682-brave-companions
This is a great book of short stories, mostly about nature lovers. (I love everything David McCullough has written - he's an incredible historian! )  I read the book, but knew I would be unlikely to convince Dan to read it, even though I knew he would enjoy it!  This was one of the first audio books I got him interested in, we would listen to it in segments on many of our jaunts into the woods for hikes and geocaching trips. 

Look for other audio books by him as well!







Listen to Audiobooks for FREE with the Libby App & Your Library Card!
If you buy your audiobooks from google, you can download them & keep them. 
(If you buy them through Amazon, you are really only renting them.)

Tools & Tips For Planning A Road Trip


Dan and I are at that age where he has worked the same job long enough to have built up a decent amount of vacation time...  but not enough to be a millionaire and buy me a private jet to fly to see our grandchildren every time he has time off.  Welcome to the empty nest years. 

 Now it sounds like I'm whining a bit, but we are ridiculously blessed (just not financially wealthy), and we DID manage a trip earlier this year to the grand canyon, and to visit our grandchildren, and Dan even managed to get some time off when the kids were all home to visit this summer.  So this last week of vacation...  I'm unsure why exactly he scheduled it.  I think he thought some of the children would be home, and then their plans all changed..  but I'm unsure.  No matter his reasoning, he had a full week off, 5 days in a row  (although he HAS a good bit of vacation time, when he can actually take it is limited) with two week-ends - for a total of 9 days.  Nine days, but with our vacation budget already spent on his February vacation, and a farm that we really don't like to leave for too long, too often.  

Mini trips it is.  Mostly day trips to hike to waterfalls we haven't yet explored, a geocaching event in Letchworth Falls NY, knocking out some geocaches in the state gamelands...  and a two day trip to Erie and back.  Two days for Erie sounds like a lot of time.  It's a 4 - 4 1/2 hour drive.  But I managed to make it take 14 hours, one way.  Because I like to see EVERYTHING along the way.  :-) Below is how I plan these trips, with all the websites and tools that help me find all this really cool stuff.  In case you are as insane as us, and want to try to pack 2 gazillion things into one road trip.  :-)



The first thing I do is go to https://www.google.com/maps/
This is not the same as the google maps you pull up for directions.  But it's similar.  My Maps by google allows you to create your own maps.  In my opinion, it's one of the best services google offers, and I am a big fan of google products.  On this map you can create layers (think of them as categories) of places.  I typically add the following layers:

  • places to eat
  • things to see
  • geocaches
  • Route
Mapping A Basic Route
Route is the only different one here.  For the others, I simply add places and add them into the categories I want them in, and I color code them.  All geocaches are green, things to see blue, etc.

To add a route layer, just click on the direction arrows second from the right, under the toolbar.

That will add a box like this to the bottom of the layers panel on the right.

To start, I use our hometown as A, and our destination as B.    Once I can see our basic route, then I can figure out what is nearby that I want to see.  As I find things that are a bit off of our immediate route, I add them to our route  list.  I don't bother adding every single stop to our route, just the ones that will change the "basic" route.  For instance, on this trip, I added these items:
There were a LOT of other stops on this trip, but these are the ones that got us to the right areas.  

Adding "Things To See" & Places To Eat
Next I open about 20 different websites.  No joke.  It's somewhat ridiculous.  But this is how I find all of the fun things!  

The most important, for me, is Evernote.  You can use any note taking app, I just happen to like evernote, and it's easy to share with Dan.  This ends up being, essentially, the map in list form, with extra notes.

On the map, it simply shows that we went from Watsontown to Benezette.  Evernote is where I list when things are open, where we want to park, how long it will take to get to the next stop, places we could choose to eat, etc.  I could print the note when done, and I have for some of our trips - but usually it's enough that Dan and I can both see it from our phones.  



I do have a "My Map" Of "Pennsylvania Road Trips".  This is my personal map where I pin every fun thing I see on instagram or facebook , etc, that I want to see someday.  Although I call it PA road trips, I do add things in neighboring states as well. I throw everything on this map.  If a friend stays in a really nice (or uinque) hotel, I add it.  Someone posts a weird diner or restaurant, I add it.  Every waterfall I know the location of is on this map.

So when I plan a road trip, I open this map, and see if any of the things I have saved are along, or nearby, our planned route.

Then I go to these sites, and see what else might be "along the way":


Adding Geocaches

Once you add a geocache, or thing to see, on your map, you can type whatever you named that item into your route, and it will be added without you needing to add an address.

The really nice thing about adding geocaches to the map is that you can just copy the cache coords from the geocaching page, and paste them into the search bar in my maps.  Add to map, then click on the pencil to edit, and rename the gps cords to the name of the cache, if you want.  Often I will add a description - like 166F for 166 favorite points, so I know WHY I specifically listed that cache.  I usually do not list every cache we want to find on the map - just the ones we really don't want to miss.  Once in the area, we can decide how many other caches we want to find there.   But before we leave, I go over that route and look for towns - then I type a few of the towns along the way into geocaching.com and sort by favorite points.  

For this trip to Erie, I knew we wanted to stop in Benezette to see the elk, and that the best time to do that is sunrise (or sunset).  That meant getting up at 4:30am, and driving straight to Benezette.  So no caching along the way - I didn't want to get up any earlier.  :-)   So looking at my map, I searched geocaches by favorite points for Alaska, and Corsica, etc - working my way out the route.  Default search radius is 10 miles, that usually is enough for me, but you can change it if you want a broader search.



For the corsica area, I end up finding two really neat things to see (that happen to be geocaches) and one really unique geocache (Snipers Nest).  Normally all 3 would be added to my list...  but we've already been to Scripture Rocks and the Helen Furnace, so for this trip, just Snipers Nest was added.  

I repeat this for each area along the map.

Lastly, Pack An "Emergency Picnic"
One of the key ingredients to all of our road trips is ring bologna, smoked cheese, apples,drinks, nuts or cookies, napkins, and paper plates.  I pack a small cooler and keep it in the back of the car.  

When we arrive at an out of the way, unique, restaurant, only to find that it is closed and there is nothing else nearby..  

Or when we find unexpected things, or things take longer than we planned and we don't want to leave an area "in time" to eat where we had planned..

Or when we spent more than we planned and eating out just feels like it's taking up too much of our budget...

Or when we just don't want to take the time for a sit down meal.

An emergency picnic, the way we travel, is often pretty great.  We are almost always near great views for a picnic - but even in the parking lot of a gas station, it's a lot better than spending money we didn't want to spend on a meal (like McDonalds) that we really didn't want, without me being really irritable because I'm hungry.  



Who, What, Where, When & How - 9/29/17

Who I am listening to; What I am reading, Using, Making ; Where I am traveling; and When New books are releasing or events are happening, How to's I discovered or used,  this week.

Who
I've been listening to John Grisham this week.  He did a 13 week book tour in podcasts.  It is fabulous.  Each week he is in a different bookstore, with different authors from the area of the bookstore, and they talk about the writing process, books, and all sorts of things.  Stop 13, with Lisa Scottoline, was one of my favorites - she's very funny, I definitely want to look for her weekly column.

What
My favorites were Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda, and The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell.  (A lot of Bronte readers were disappointed by the book - but I am not familiar enough with the facts about Brontes to pick up on any discrepancies that would irritate me, and I thoroughly enjoyed this as a light read)  

Little Fires Everywhere started slow for me, and I almost didn't finish it.  I head John Grisham say, in one of his podcasts, that he gives a book 50 pages, and if he doesn't like it, he puts it down and reads something else.  I immediately thought I should move on from this book, then I looked and saw I was only 30 pages in.  I decided to give it 50 - and by then I was hooked and had trouble putting it back down until I had finished reading it.

Genuine Fraud was another one that I really liked a lot.  The book is told in reverse.  Week 9, then week 8...  and it was fun to see how things we thought we understood had different meaning when we heard what had happened earlier.  It kept me off balance, making it take longer for me to "figure out" the mystery.  I kind of loved it.  Some have said it's a pretty direct rip off of another book - The Talented Mr Riply by Patricia Highsmith.  I haven't read that, but I have added it to my to read list.

I have never read a Harlan Coben book I wouldn't recommend.  I love his books.  He was on one of Grisham's podcasts too - so I got to hear him talk about the book, and about his writing process, the same week I read his latest book.  I enjoyed that a lot.


From my goodreads list - what I have read in September:


Where
"Today's adventure was supposed to be a train ride to bike 25 miles on the Lehigh gorge. But they sold out before we got our tickets.  I try to push my knee a bit harder on our Sunday trips... so today we decided to tackle the red trail at Bushkill falls. 1267 steps. Not walking steps - 1267 stairs. It's not a bad hike at all - I'm just still really struggling with this knee. But it's progress - I could at least do this today!" - fb post from 9/24

We certainly have traveled a lot this month!  We have this HUGE shed project, and a zillion farm projects in progress.  But on Sundays, we do not do farm work.  To get away from all the work, and stress of the half done projects, we often take trips on Sundays.  These double as therapy for my knee (still recovering from MCL surgery - apparently recovery is not nearly as fast as I thought it would be).  So we take hikes and try things that I know will stretch me and my knee out of it's comfort zone.  This past week-end, we traveled to Bushkill Falls.  It was 90 degrees, but not so bad on the wooded trail.  That was a LOT of steps for my knee, but I did well.  

Afterwards we went to a geocaching event in NJ - but we were the only ones who showed up, besides the organizers.

I'm working on posts on all of our trips - this month alone we have taken road trips to Bushkill Falls, Wellsboro & The PA Grand Canyon, Worlds End & The Forksville General Store.


When
Coming Up - 
Fort Freeland Heritage Days in Watsontown Pa
Our sons wedding!

September Events In The Valley - 
http://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2017/09/events-in-valley-september-2017.html

How:

I made a vinyl decal for our mailbox, using Cricut.  Step by step how to here:
http://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2017/09/truck-mailbox-decal.html