Your Summer Vacations

What fun vacations have you done this summer, or are planning to do? Please share

With Labor Day around the corner, I still need to take a lot more vacation time

While I have not gone on any vacations, I've been able to take time off, take care of a lot of stuff on the personal to-do list, and get engaged

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I moved to AL and bought a farm in July 2016. No vacations for me. 100 chickens need food and water every day.

Went to Ocean City, MD in June for a week. Early in the season hotels are still reasonable. Was perfect, quiet but still nice weather. In October, planning a trip out to Montuak on Long Island. I don't really travel much in the hot hot summer. I try to get away in the winter and escape to someplace warm!

DG, you picked the best times of year for both of those places!

Owning a farm sounds like it would be fun.

Yesterday, I was watching a video that had a case study about something very specific. Inheritance tax in a few states and how it could affect a generational farm passed in a family. Most likely not, though, as most family members are exempt beneficiaries.

Iowa is doing away with the tax. But it affected this one specific person in Kentucky. Where there is no exemption level, and the person was a nonexempt beneficiary.

@OP: Congratulations on your engagement!

August breeze-- perched on the flame tree, a red-vented Bulbul. (Meeta Ahluwalia)

Last month I took my wife, kids and grandkids to Florida. The eight of us stayed in a big airbnb and had a blast.

Later this month my wife and I will go to Santa Fe and Taos.

Planning an end of summer, after the kids are back in school, trip to Maine.

@Datagirl wrote:

Went to Ocean City, MD in June for a week. Early in the season hotels are still reasonable. Was perfect, quiet but still nice weather. In October, planning a trip out to Montuak on Long Island. I don't really travel much in the hot hot summer. I try to get away in the winter and escape to someplace warm!

Ocean City, MD has a mixed fondness in Maverick's heart. Maverick was engaged in a hot, young summer romance at the time with a person who was later discovered to be a habitual liar and borderline personality disorder. Luckily, Maverick wasn't the person the "borderline" individual married, had 2 kids, and divorced within 11 years. Maverick considers this analogous to dodging a bullet.

Ocean City is a large beach resort town closest to the Washington DC population.

I'm happy that I'm engaged to the right person

I save the habitual lying and personality disorder for my mystery shops

Congratulations @paniconmon!

We went skiing a few times.
We are enjoying golfing near home. I'm enjoying hiking. We are doing lots of work in the garden. I enjoy it, except it takes up a lot of time and there's no such thing as caught up.
Having various visitors.
In September we're going to Banff and taking the Gondola up to Sunshine Meadows. A place I've only seen in ski season. So a little bucket list item for me.

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.
Alexander Den Heijer

West Palm Beach, Fla., long weekend in Pa. next week ( furry baby loves get to go, yay :-), West Coast in Sept. to visit family. Planning a side trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona on our own.

Prince ~ Have you noticed a reduction in pollinators this year over last? The bees started disappearing drastically over the past 10 years, but the bumblebees were picking up the slack until this year. Now there’s hardly any. I’m noticing the annual flowers are late blooming and producing less blooms. Some are stagnant and are not thriving at all. I’ve kept up with watering so I’m a bit scared that this will be the new normal,
I’ve stopped growing veggies because I like the views of flowers, decorative trees and shrubs from a distance where my vegetable garden was. Now I’m beginning to think that I should set up bee houses and become versed in growing stuff I can eat, which would require an expansion. Just don’t want to bite off more than I can chew. (No pun intended) (Well, maybe just a little)

I can't say. A couple of years ago a beekeeper put bee boxes on the farm next door. Really close to our yard. So our yard is really full of honey bees. The raspberries bushes were just buzzing while blooming. We have a bumper crop. They pollinated everything else I'm sure. Just wasn't as noticeable.

Before the bees were here we had a lot of wasps. We live on an acreage, so tend to leave the wasp nests. Wasps seem less plentiful. Maybe they don't like the bees?

I'm still concerned though. A bee keeper who lived in the area gave up. He partly blamed all the chemicals on the field crops for the decline in his bees

If you can learn how to keep a few bees, that would be a wonderful project!

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.
Alexander Den Heijer

Wow, you’re lucky to have the bee houses so close, but not on your property. I’m going to pick up a house or 2. I see them a lot at Homegoods, but they’ve already cleared out their summer stuff for Halloween garbage. Maybe stick one by my raspberries, which did surprisingly well this year.
I have a 12’ x12’ spot cleared for something next year. One of the corners is cut short by a gate, and with a path from it to the opposite corner, there isn’t a ton of space. I was thinking about a rose garden and a section where I can have some space for burial and statuary when my cats pass. It gets zero shade and I’m not lugging the hose often so it’s going to be hit or miss I guess.
I noticed the wasps and yellow jackets are gone too. Every year they would produce a work of art under my porch or somewhere by the house. I’m more afraid of them so I’m not too broken up about it. We now have carpenter bees in our area that bore big holes in my ‘she shed’ trim, even though it’s stained. I’ve allowed it to happen and patch the holes. I think it’s so at least I’ll have something!

prince, That sounds like an action-packed summer to me

I feel busy.
Hiking today, so behind in house and yard.

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.
Alexander Den Heijer

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2025 01:18AM by prince.

I've thought about keeping bees. I'm not overly sensitive to them, but I hate bugs flying in my face, and I hate the idea of getting stung, even though it doesn't really hurt much, last time I got stung was in Yellowstone when I was 11. My son on the other hand is VERY allergic, at least to yellow jackets (rushed to the hospital when he was almost dead at 3 years old), He's been stung by other bugs, and a wasp or two since we've been here. He went to the ER and got steroid shots one time, but every time since then he's controlled it successfully with benadryl softgels (usually 2 - 4 of them does the trick) and bug bite cream.

I think, maybe keeping bees and my son getting allergy shots to decrease the reaction, might be something to do. We do use a LOT of honey here. We would use a LOT more if it was a feature of living here. And then maybe I could grow some vegetables reliably?

I was gifted a bottle of honey when I was doing a retirement community shop. They kept bees there and it was from a fresh batch. I never knew how much better newly harvested honey was.

Minime, back in CA I bought my honey from a beekeeper friend of mine that sold his stuff at the farmer's market in Temecula. They also had a booth at the Kaiser Hospital farmers market in Riverside (probably the other local Kaiser hospitals too). moving here was a real disappointment, there are lots of "farmer's markets" but there is very little fresh local raw honey.

@Minime wrote:

I was gifted a bottle of honey when I was doing a retirement community shop. They kept bees there and it was from a fresh batch. I never knew how much better newly harvested honey was.

We get honey from a local producer which sells a variety of honey infused types which I find great for drizzling over croissants in the morning; Blueberry, Orange Blossom, Pumpkin spice, and Chocolate.

How they get the bees to eat chocolate bars while making honey is beyond me...

There was a small beekeeping operation near my sister's home in the country (think woods and creek).
They constructed a selling shed and put it out by the road - kept it stocked continuously, using the honor system (I loved to see my urban friends' faces whenever I took them by it). I sometimes used the honey medicinally as well.
Their honey became so popular, they expanded the operation, started giving tours and selling wholesale...they kept the original place, but now have another even bigger operation located on the bigger road lol...something of a highway.

I always smiled at the sign someone made and tacked up on the selling shed :

"We be buzzing".

@maverick1 wrote:

@Minime wrote:

I was gifted a bottle of honey when I was doing a retirement community shop. They kept bees there and it was from a fresh batch. I never knew how much better newly harvested honey was.

We get honey from a local producer which sells a variety of honey infused types which I find great for drizzling over croissants in the morning; Blueberry, Orange Blossom, Pumpkin spice, and Chocolate.

How they get the bees to eat chocolate bars while making honey is beyond me...

Good one Mavi! ???? sounds delicious!

@Morledzep wrote:

Minime, back in CA I bought my honey from a beekeeper friend of mine that sold his stuff at the farmer's market in Temecula. They also had a booth at the Kaiser Hospital farmers market in Riverside (probably the other local Kaiser hospitals too). moving here was a real disappointment, there are lots of "farmer's markets" but there is very little fresh local raw honey.

@Minime wrote:

@Morledzep wrote:

Minime, back in CA I bought my honey from a beekeeper friend of mine that sold his stuff at the farmer's market in Temecula. They also had a booth at the Kaiser Hospital farmers market in Riverside (probably the other local Kaiser hospitals too). moving here was a real disappointment, there are lots of "farmer's markets" but there is very little fresh local raw honey.

It must be a hard business to make a living with. I’m in the early stages of starting a shave ice business. It’s only going to get hotter over the years and we are lacking one where I live. We do have fresh honey though! I’m going to be experimenting a little with natural sweeteners and Mavi’s reference to infused flavorings put a seed in my head. It’s a departure from the squeeze on, artificially colored fruit flavors, but it might appeal to the more discriminating taste. I’ll have to see how ice and honey pair up. : >

I never liked honey because it was hard and messy, but the kind I was given was thinner and had a really good light flavor. It sucks that you can’t find it where you are. Whole Foods and the like probably want $20 for a jar.

I like hot honey. It's the craze with the kids these days

I never would have guessed - but I really enjoy the hot honey as well.

Along the US GULF OF MEXICO, there are many places that sell shave ice and I've noticed that some use a fruit based sugar syrup that tastes much better than synthetic flavor syrups....they sell the flavored ice as a bed for a scoop of vanilla ice cream and call it a snowball....apparently it's part of Louisiana based food culture.
No matter the name for it, I love it and think we deserve some farther north too

BF, I think the pure sugar flavors are falling out of favor, but they’re still being used in HI where shave ice is a staple. There are other options as well like native, natural fruit flavors. They put the disc of vanilla ice cream on the bottom. Lots of condensed milk on top of the ice though. By the time you reach the ice cream is watery but it mixes well for some odd reason. Drinking the last of it on a hot day hits the spot and is more cooling than ice cream alone. I could have used one today.

The first time I had a snow cone with vanilla ice cream in the center was at the LA County Fair. I never knew it came from the deep South, or the gulf states. Shave Ice is from Hawaii, I'm not a fan of Hawaiian Shave Ice (not shaved ice).

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