The Roads...

Debi

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WHERE HAVE YOU TRAVELED? WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN? BEST PLACES YOU BEEN? SHARE YOUR ADVENTURES!
 
I have not been many places. One trip to Oklahoma by car. I saw a few states. I loved the mountains in Pennsylvania and MO. Been to Florida once to Disney land. I’ve traveled around Michigan a lot and we do have a beautiful state. I don’t have any good stories so I’ll be reading yours.
 
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Some international travel because I was a military dependent and lots, lots, lots of USA travel in my career as a technical trainer. I’ve been in every state in the union at least once and visited most of them three of more times. For example, I traveled to Indianapolis five weeks in a row for work with five different clients.

Beauty and adventure in one, I’ll try to restrict how much I share about this adventure because three or four interesting tangents which each go on for paragraphs. Explored an abandoned small castle or large shrine (uncertain which it was) in a seriously overgrown part of a Japanese city.

I was with one friend who was a couple years older than me. We were climbing on stuff and running through courtyards. Very much like Indiana Jones style but this was few years before those movies were released.

I have crippling level of arachnophobia. I was running down one of the longest straight halls that was partially open on the top. My friend was probably 100’ behind me and called to me for some reason. I made an abrupt stop in my tracks, turned back to him, and addressed his need. Once our exchange ended, I pivoted on my heals to start off on another sprint and stood face to...er...fangs...with the hugest a** spider I had ever seen, It had a hard, shiny yellow and black shell like body and with its legs it spread out probably 8” to 10”. It was at directly head level. All I could think of was one step further before stopping to respond to my friend and that thing would have been hugging on my face. Getting willies just typing this. And the huge a** web it was on - that was like twine - spanned about 12,. So I’d have been twirling around winding myself up in that web while I screamed like a little girl.

I barely prevented myself from wetting my very short shorts right then. I was a mound of putty for probably 30 minutes.

To save typing, I’ll leave off the crashed plane we discovered, the abandoned zoo we found, and the crocodile I saved my friend from. That was all in the same one day!
 
Some international travel because I was a military dependent and lots, lots, lots of USA travel in my career as a technical trainer. I’ve been in every state in the union at least once and visited most of them three of more times. For example, I traveled to Indianapolis five weeks in a row for work with five different clients.

Beauty and adventure in one, I’ll try to restrict how much I share about this adventure because three or four interesting tangents which each go on for paragraphs. Explored an abandoned small castle or large shrine (uncertain which it was) in a seriously overgrown part of a Japanese city.

I was with one friend who was a couple years older than me. We were climbing on stuff and running through courtyards. Very much like Indiana Jones style but this was few years before those movies were released.

I have crippling level of arachnophobia. I was running down one of the longest straight halls that was partially open on the top. My friend was probably 100’ behind me and called to me for some reason. I made an abrupt stop in my tracks, turned back to him, and addressed his need. Once our exchange ended, I pivoted on my heals to start off on another sprint and stood face to...er...fangs...with the hugest a** spider I had ever seen, It had a hard, shiny yellow and black shell like body and with its legs it spread out probably 8” to 10”. It was at directly head level. All I could think of was one step further before stopping to respond to my friend and that thing would have been hugging on my face. Getting willies just typing this. And the huge a** web it was on - that was like twine - spanned about 12,. So I’d have been twirling around winding myself up in that web while I screamed like a little girl.

I barely prevented myself from wetting my very short shorts right then. I was a mound of putty for probably 30 minutes.

To save typing, I’ll leave off the crashed plane we discovered, the abandoned zoo we found, and the crocodile I saved my friend from. That was all in the same one day!
Ohh, very Indiana Jonesy! And yeah...spiders. :eek: I'm actually worse with snakes. Creepy, slithering snakes are a level above spiders for me.

I have been all over the US, as I lived in an RV traveling around as a test for that lifestyle for a few months. Thank Goddess I didn't sell the house! NOT for me. Hubs was all for it, but then he was the one having fun while I tried to maintain meals in a tiny kitchen, walk dogs daily instead of throwing them out in the yard, dealing with "neighbors" in tiny camping spots....let's just say I hated it. And hubs driving a Class A rig was a terror of it's own. Once took the back end of it off at a gas station.

My worst trip involved going across the border to Mexico. We crossed on foot in Nogales and let me tell you...I could not cross back over into the good old USA fast enough! Nope, nope...not ever doing that again. I became so overwhelmed we were back in less than 2 hours.

Homebody here. Just let me connect with my land and the occasional outing into peoples.
 
Some international travel because I was a military dependent and lots, lots, lots of USA travel in my career as a technical trainer. I’ve been in every state in the union at least once and visited most of them three of more times. For example, I traveled to Indianapolis five weeks in a row for work with five different clients.

Beauty and adventure in one, I’ll try to restrict how much I share about this adventure because three or four interesting tangents which each go on for paragraphs. Explored an abandoned small castle or large shrine (uncertain which it was) in a seriously overgrown part of a Japanese city.

I was with one friend who was a couple years older than me. We were climbing on stuff and running through courtyards. Very much like Indiana Jones style but this was few years before those movies were released.

I have crippling level of arachnophobia. I was running down one of the longest straight halls that was partially open on the top. My friend was probably 100’ behind me and called to me for some reason. I made an abrupt stop in my tracks, turned back to him, and addressed his need. Once our exchange ended, I pivoted on my heals to start off on another sprint and stood face to...er...fangs...with the hugest a** spider I had ever seen, It had a hard, shiny yellow and black shell like body and with its legs it spread out probably 8” to 10”. It was at directly head level. All I could think of was one step further before stopping to respond to my friend and that thing would have been hugging on my face. Getting willies just typing this. And the huge a** web it was on - that was like twine - spanned about 12,. So I’d have been twirling around winding myself up in that web while I screamed like a little girl.

I barely prevented myself from wetting my very short shorts right then. I was a mound of putty for probably 30 minutes.

To save typing, I’ll leave off the crashed plane we discovered, the abandoned zoo we found, and the crocodile I saved my friend from. That was all in the same one day!
OMG Wands! I would have been the same way! I HATE spiders. This does not work well when you like to travel to warm climates either. :eek:
 
My worst trip involved going across the border to Mexico. We crossed on foot in Nogales and let me tell you...I could not cross back over into the good old USA fast enough! Nope, nope...not ever doing that again. I became so overwhelmed we were back in less than 2 hours.
This is what gets me about people that are always bashing the US that live here. Most of the time they have never spent any time outside of the US, so they don't know how good they've got it here. Traveling abroad definitely makes you appreciate our country! How clean it is, how well-maintained, despite what people think!
 
Wow Wands that’s a big spider. Was that over seas or here in the US?

Ok I want the rest of the story now!!
 
Wow Wands that’s a big spider. Was that over seas or here in the US?

Ok I want the rest of the story now!!

Yes Lynne, this was when I live on the island of Okinawa, Japan.

So let me share the part about the crashed plane. On that same day as the spider incident, my friend and I found on the same property a water pipe that ran verticallly up the side of a rather sheer cliff about 50’. We tried to climb the pipe but we could not do it alone.

So we went home and brought back two more friends and tried again. We eventually monkeyed up the pipe one at a time helping each other with a leg up from the bottom and a hand out at the top.

When we got to the top we found we were on a pretty flat plateau about 50’ wide and less than 300’ long. There was a small private plane sitting on the plateau just about 15’ from one of the drop offs. It wasn’t too badly damaged - one of the struts was bent and a door was missing. It was typical small plane with single front prop and wings on top. It looked to be probably no more than 10 years old but no idea how long it had been where it was. There wasn’t a lot of plant growth on the plane at that point. There certainly was no way that thing was going to take off on the plateau; so I suspect the pilot and/or owner just chose to abandon it where it was.
 
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This is what gets me about people that are always bashing the US that live here. Most of the time they have never spent any time outside of the US, so they don't know how good they've got it here. Traveling abroad definitely makes you appreciate our country! How clean it is, how well-maintained, despite what people think!

True Sea. I was surprised when I lived in Japan that the streets had open sewer systems just very roughly covered with concrete pavers and with human waste flowing in them.

Even more surprising to me than seeing that on the small and somewhat neglected island of Okinawa was what I saw on the mainland of Japan.

I was in Kyoto (I believe) and walking down a fairly large and busy main road. Just a few feet away from the street corner was a wall about 12’-15’ long and about 7’ tall running along the side walk essentially cutting the side walk in half. There was water trickling down from the top almost uniformly across the entire concrete surface.

Ignorantly I thought it was a sculpture. Hung around just long enough to discover it was a public urinal - in the open - with one side supposedly assigned for males and the other for females. I can’t image why the supposed allocated sides were necessary since no ones’ genitalia nor their privacy were being kept “private” right there in front of everyone. I am not anxious to see another Japanese national in a business suit whip out their man parts and pee on a concrete wall in the middle of the walkway.
 
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True Sea. I was surprised when I lived in Japan that the streets had open sewer systems just very roughly covered with concrete pavers and with human waste flowing in them.

Even more surprising to me than seeing that on the small and somewhat neglected island of Okinawa was what I saw on the mainland of Japan.

I was in Kyoto (I believe) and walking down a fairly large and busy main road. Just a few feet away from the street corner was a wall about 12’-15’ long and about 7’ tall running along the side walk essentially cutting the side walk in half. There was water trickling down from the top almost uniformly across the entire concrete surface.

Ignorantly I thought it was a sculpture. Hung around just long enough to discover it was a public urinal - in the open - with one side supposedly assigned for males and the other for females. I can’t image why the supposed allocated sides were necessary since no ones’ genitalia nor their privacy were being kept “private” right there in front of everyone. I am not anxious to see another Japanese national in a business suit whip out their man parts and pee on a concrete wall in the middle of the walkway.
You are freaking kidding me!!! OMG....yup. Home. In my PJ's with the blankies pulled up over me head now.