Day 1641 – Monterosso Wedding Online Now – Havre de Grace Maryland Photographer – La Banque de Fleuve

Posted on January 7, 2014 by 365 days of marriage

I’m happy to report that Daisy and Vinny’s wedding is completed and online now! Check it out!

What a great wedding AND couple to finish out 2013 AND to be my 50th wedding. 🙂

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Day 1638 – Adventures On Our Drive To California

Posted on January 4, 2014 by 365 days of marriage

We left a little later than I originally planned, but it worked out since we missed most of the traffic in Maryland and Virginia. We also caught a great sunset as we left!

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I had a silly idea of wearing my Raven’s jersey until we checked into our hotel…which was about 2 days later…it apparently didn’t work for the Patriots game. 😦

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Here’s Bret enjoying the bed in the backseat. Note, this was taken at a stop and he adjusted his seat belt after. 🙂

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I started reading a pretty neat book…didn’t get too far through it because I spent most of my non-driving time sleeping…or playing Candy Crush, tee hee.

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This guy kept me company in the backseat.

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One of the states that’s harder for me to drive through is Oklahoma. If I remember right, it is just fields and a lot of the same scenery for miles and miles. Texas is somewhat the same. This year was a totally different experience. There was an ice storm and everything was coated with ice. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. It was like driving through a winter wonderland. I kept looking around saying, “WOW, WOW…..WOW!” Bret had been sleeping and I had to wake him up because it was just so amazing. I never would’ve expected to see something like that in Oklahoma! The photo only does it about 10% justice.

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Then, we got to Texas and that’s when the fun started! Bret started to drive about an hour or so outside of Amarillo, Texas. I woke up when he pulled over in Amarillo to grab some gas. There was SO much ice on the road and he’d been driving about 30 miles an hour. I asked if he thought we should stop or not and he’s like, well, there are still a number of people on the road…I think we’re ok for now. Well, about 50 miles outside of Amarillo, we hit a little traffic….then the traffic was bumper to bumper…..then it stopped. Dead stop. After about an hour of being stopped, Bret said, well, shoot, I’m going to get in the back seat and go to sleep! We tried to lie down and sleep, but I kept thinking, what if the traffic starts up again? So I couldn’t sleep. I moved to the front seat, wrapped up in a blanket and watched for a while. After about an hour or so, I fell asleep. Another hour or so, sleep. We were stopped there for about 5 hours. Finally started again and I drove for about 30 minutes and we were stopped again. We stopped for about an hour at that point. Drove a little more and then were stopped another hour or so. All told, I think we were stuck for about 10 hours. It took us 10 hours to go about 30-50 miles. What’s crazy about the situation is that we were going to stop at our favorite rest stop that was only about 30 miles from where we were stopped. We were even going to stop and sleep in the car for a bit. Craziness! At least it was pretty in the morning.

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I found this sign in a gas station….great advice!

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We finally stopped in Flagstaff, AZ at a hotel. After we showered we headed across the street to the Galaxy Dinner. It was SOOO cool! There was a ton of 50’s memorabilia on the walls, oldie’s playing on the radio and nice greasy foods AND beers to relax with. It was a GREAT night!

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Day 1637 – The Cheap Way (Under $500) To Drive Across The Country (Maryland To California)

Posted on January 3, 2014 by 365 days of marriage

A few days before Christmas, we drove out to California to visit Bret’s family. We’ve done this a few times and I think this year was the cheapest so far.

Here are a few tips we learned this year.

Get a rewards credit card to use while you travel AND to build up points before you leave. We use the Capital One Venture card, the lower point one that gives you 1.25 points per dollar spent. We accumulated points to get a $100 ExxonMobile gift card.
Take a fuel efficient car. We drove a Honda Civic. It gets about 30-35 miles per gallon.
Take refillable coffee mugs, at least 2. You can get cheap coffee refills and you can also get hot water for free. You can use the hot water for tea and cup of noodles.
Purchase food and drinks in a grocery store. It’s good to know what you normally get on the road. We purchased energy drinks, sodas and bottled water. For food we got bread and stuff for sandwiches, cup of noodles, sunflower seeds and crackers. We put the drinks and lunch meat in a cooler on the front seat. Then you have easy access to everything when you’re driving.
In the back seat, set up a bed. It’s good to put some bags in the foot room spaces to make the seat a little wider. Backpacks are best in our car. One person sleeps while the other drives.
We only stopped at a hotel once.

Here’s the numbers breakdown:
Gas – $267.68
Mileage – 2,896
Food – $145.76 (note: Some of the food we bought at the grocery store will last us through the return trip home. So I’d say one way would be about $110.00. We also splurged on a sit down dinner when we checked in to the hotel and that was about $40.)
Hotel – $57.98
Total cost to drive from Northern Central Maryland to Central California – $471.42
If we didn’t stop at a hotel and took out a few food splurges our total would have been – $322.78

What have you found that helps to make the trip more inexpensive?

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