I’ve seen all of Alton Brown’s previous live shows. So, when he announced he’d be doing a Christmas version of Beyond the Eats in 2022 and one of the stops was Bethlehem, PA, I had to go. Besides, we usually go there for the annual Christkindlmarkt anyway. So, we got a see a really cool show and shopped the market on a slightly rainy day avoiding the crowds. It was a win-win! Check out the photos here.
The Grand Canyon has been a bucket list vacation for a long time. In April 2019, we finally made it there. We explored every inch of the south rim and took a helicopter flight over and into the canyon. Of course, while in Arizona, we also visited a number of other places as well. We drove a portion of Historic Route 66 and checked some roadside attractions and the cool little towns that remain along the “mother road.” We also headed into the desert to check out some more little towns, drove into the mountains for a boat ride on a mountain lake and even visited an olive mill. Yes, they grow and press olives into olive oil in the Arizona desert. Before heading home, we spent some time in the Phoenix area visiting the botanical gardens, Scottsdale, Tempe and more. Because our vacations are never dull, we spent the last evening of the trip dealing with a crazy person at the hotel. Now you have incentive click and read on!
I’m not usually one to go on any kind of vacation with no planning, but one Thursday night in February 2019 I found myself booking a hotel reservation (thank goodness for Hilton points!) and packing at midnight to leave for Lancaster County PA on Friday. It would turn out to be one of the most eclectic weekends we’ve had in a long time! We drove directly to a small supermarket to buy a button that would admit us to a chili cook-off (more about that later) and then headed to downtown Lititz for their Fire and Ice Festival. The ice part consisted of 75 ice sculptures lining the streets and 20 or so ice carvers creating more sculptures as we walked around. The fire part of the evening was a fire show set to music over the duck pond in Lititz Springs Park.
On Saturday morning, we went to the local high school for the second fire phase of the festival, the chili cook-off. We tasted 14 chilies made by a variety of local chefs, each supporting a different charity. Some were better than others were. Ironically, the one Lancaster County restaurant entrant that I’m familiar with, Isaac’s, got our votes. I swear I wasn’t biased! After the cook-off, we drove around Lancaster County before enjoying a relaxing dinner at Miller’s Smorgasbord Restaurant. We’d never been there and since we were playing tourist, why not? Besides, the little spoonfuls of chili didn’t exactly fill us up at lunch. Then we headed back to the hotel, relaxed with a cup of coffee and met a scary clown in the lobby. Yes, you read that right! Zeebo, the scary clown. There’s never a dull moment on a Gatti vacation!
On Sunday, we checked out of the hotel and went back to Lititz to a wolf sanctuary. It was a fascinating place. Most of the animals there are actually wolf dogs but have too high a percentage of wolf DNA to be legally kept as pets. There are also some full-blooded wolves. They’re beautiful animals and all very well cared for. Unfortunately, thanks to the ridiculously warm weather we’ve been having, much of the snow melted and we were up to our ankles in mud the entire time. We got cleaned up and did another Lancaster tourist thing we’d never tried before, an Amish buggy tour. That was fun too. Our driver was ex-Amish, so I found it particularly interesting. He didn’t whitewash the story of the Amish. He told it like it is. It was hard to take any photos out of the buggy windows, but we learned a few things. Then we headed out of Lancaster County; stopped at Valley Forge Casino for a little gambling and dinner and then headed home.
Everyone knows I like a good zoo. Animals are just fun to photograph. I’d never been to the Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington, Delaware even though it’s only a few minutes from home, so in July 2018 we decided to finally check it out. It’s a very small zoo, but it’s a lot of fun. You can get up close with the animals and it it’s easy to see all of it in a few hours. Of course, we chose the hottest day ever to visit, but we survived even if a few of the animals looked very tired due to the oppressive heat too.
In March and April of 2018, we took a spring vacation to Kentucky since we’d never been to the state before. We, of course, did all of the stereotypical tourist things like going to a bunch of bourbon distilleries, the Louisville Slugger factory, sites related to Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken empire, Churchill Downs and other horse racing related places and some Abraham Lincoln historic sites. When we weren’t busy with all things bourbon, horse or chicken, we took a short drive north into Indiana for a two-day visit with a bunch of Gatti cousins. We haven’t seen most of them for quite a few years and we’d never some of the younger generation before. If you look at my 2004 California trip photos, you’ll notice these are my “California Cousins” who are now the “Indiana Cousins.”
For about 2 years before I updated my site, I was unable to post new photos because the software that I used to do so was outdated. It was 32-bit software living in a 64-bit world. However, when I created the whole new site, I posted all of the photos that were in the queue for the past few years. It seems like a good time to do it since I’m not exactly taking many photos in 2020. So, over the next few weeks you’ll be seeing blog posts referencing albums that are debuting for the first time. Feel free to live vicariously through my past vacations and outings as we all stay home and wait out COVID-19. That’s what I’m certainly doing. Looking at the photos is about as close to going on a vacation as I’ll get this year!
For several years now, I’ve been saying I was going to re-create my website (michaelgatti.com) from the ground up. Apparently all it took to make it finally happen was a global pandemic. After many, many hours of finding the right WordPress template and plugins, learning how to use WordPress for more than just a simple blog and creating a few hundred pages, the new site is now live.
You’ll recognize much of the content from the old site, but it’s now all mobile-responsive which is important since there’s a fair chance you’re reading this on a phone. Also, it’s been a few years since I could post new photos thanks to shifts in technology and a lack to time to keep up. So, you’ll find a lot of new photos that you likely haven’t seen before. There will be more about that in future posts.
As you browse the site, please feel free to contact me (michaelgatti.com/contact) with any suggestions you may have. It’s a work in progress and always will be. Lastly, feel free to sign up to receive updates via e-mail via the boxes on the homepage or blog.
Enjoy!
I’ve received some comments from people saying that I haven’t posted any photos lately. Well, it’s not because I haven’t taken any. It’s just because I haven’t taken had time to post them. That’s about to change. I have 6 sets of photos that I’ve been working on. They’re all just about ready to put up on the site. So, watch this space for announcements as I post each of them.
What are the photos of? Glad you asked! They’re from October’s trip to the 1000 Islands/Alexandria Bay, Upper Canada Village and Watertown, some fall foliage, the Bethlehem Steel plant and a Christmas light display on a farm in Bucks County.
In preparation for posting the photos from my vacation in New Mexico (soon, I promise!), I’ve completed a major upgrade to all of the existing photo albums on my site. Both the thumbnails and large images have been replaced with larger versions and I’ve removed the 1990s-esque frames that were around the images. Those cute little white frames may have been appropriate in their day, but they are no more.
Now that Apple is sadly replacing Aperture and iPhoto with their new Photos app, there may be more changes coming in the future. Of course, as always, I will hang on to the old programs as long as I can!