The First Post

Saturday July 11, 2009
Hello world, or the three or four people who find this page. If its true employers keep tabs on employees or perspective employers do background checks not to worry. All done on my own time and without all of the great things I have learned at work none of this converged technology would be possible :)...

Ok on with the idea. I had a chance to look at somebody from my works blog when they went on holidays and I thought it was pretty neat (thanks Justin). I liked the fact that I could seeing what their vacation was like and all the neat places they visited. I decided to copy it and do one for myself.

Hailey and I are going to go to Myrtle Beach in September and I am going to make some posts from the road.
Posted at 9:01pm

"The Plan"

Monday July 13, 2009
My wife and I had a chance to sit over the weekend and start planning our trip. We have firmed up plans for our daughter to have a nice visit with Grandma and Grandpa and my wifes brother is cool with house sitting. He is excited to get out of his apartment for a couple of days and hang out here.

Work is covered and holidays are booked. I have officially booked September 2nd until the 14th off. Now comes the fun part. When do we leave, which way are we going (south hopefully :) and where we going to stay...So much to think about...On to google maps to start planning the route.
Posted at 7:15pm

Route Plan

Tuesday July 14, 2009
Route is planned. We flip flopped on if we should drive or fly, but driving won out because of cost and also because we wanted to bring some stuff from home that is not easy to put on plane...The downfall is of course the long haul. We have made this trip in the past and always done it in one day, but this year we have decided to go easy on ourselves and do this in two days.

Day 1 will be a 12 hour drive, leaving from home and crossing the border at Lewiston bridge. We plan on leaving in the morning and figure we will stop for the night at 9 or 10pm. We hope to cover about 1100km day one.

Day 2 will be an easier drive about 6 hours and we hope to arrive in Myrtle beach in early afternoon. Just in time for checkin and a nice drink :)

I have put the route on the sidebar with some of our usual stops. We have made the trip for 5 years so we have a few spots we have stopped at in the past that worked out well.

What to Bring??

Posted Tuesday July 21, 2009
I have been putting thought into this trip and what I would like to do. In the last few years I have brought my trusty Canon XTI along and taken a lot of photos. Always very fun, and I always enjoy taking pictures. This year, I would like to do some video. I have seen some people who have done video logs and I enjoy seeing the details, the drive, the fun people are having. With that in mind I am going to add some video to go along with the photos this year. To do this, I have a few new tools at my disposal. For in car and day to day moving around im going to make use of a very cool HD video camera my cousin hooked me into. The Flip does 720p video and looks great, plus its tiny and can be carried in my pocket. For better quality full 1080p HD I can use my 5dMark II camera which takes amazing footage it will also be my work horse camera for photography this year. My old XTI is coming along as well because I have a great wide angle lens and love to take landscape photos on it.
Things are coming along. We still have 43 days until we go but I am having fun getting everything all together...

More Planning

Posted Thursday July 23, 2009
So we have the basics covered..We are going to Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We have been there 5 times in the past so this year we would like to expand our horizons a bit and see some of the other towns within day trip distance around there. In doing some research we came across a great travel website Road Trip USAThe site is pretty cool and has a tonne of road trip ideas as well some neat routes all over the US.

I stayed focused on the task at hand and looked at what the site had to say for South Carolina. We have already planned two day trips for when we are in Myrtle Beach. The first was to go to Charleston about 2 hours south down highway 17. Charleston is a city that has been around his the late 1600's and has a lot of history and southern charm, I cant wait to take some photo's here.

We also decided to go an hour north of Myrtle Beach and check out a private island called Bald Head Island. You have to catch a ferry over and then rent a golf cart as there are no cars allowed on the island.

The site also recommended a few spots to stop on the way to Charleston that might be fun to check out:

Georgetown, Fort Sumter...we will see how much time we have but having some options is cool.

17 Days to Go!!

Posted August 16, 2009
Our trip is fast approaching with a lot of things left to do. We were talking tonight and we have a lot to do and time is a ticking...Part of the pre-trip planning for us is the usual stuff; House sitter, cat baby sitter, banking, packing, car maintence and this year prep for our little sweet heart to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house for a little bit.

Most years when we have gone before we plan and then end up scrambling a few days before to get it all done, this year we want to be well prepared to take a bit of the stress out of leaving on time. Work always comes into the picture for me and its hard to wrap things up without spending a few nights before we leave banging out emails and getting work done. Not this year, going to get it done ahead so we can leave without the usual stress of that stuff.

Blog Improvements

Posted August 17, 2009
So in order to make full use of all the toys, I wanted to make sure the blog was ready for our trip. I have added a number of new features to it and am testing them out to see how they work. On the right hand side I added a tracker which I have tied into my blackberry and while we are moving the blackberry updates the map...So cool...I just need to understand how much data this actually uses. In Canada not a problem since my plan is unlimited but in the US its $8 per meg so I really want to know. I also added a counter to show all 4 of you logging in as well Twitter updates...I really do hate twitter..i dont think anyone cares if im eating dinner but for the sake of loading the blog up i added it...

14 Days to Go..Status update

Posted August 18, 2009
Been a busy couple of days. Our goal is to be ready in advance for a stress free departure. So far we have gotten most things taken care of:
1)Money exchanged
2)Health Insurance
3)Hotels Booked
4)Ipod loaded with Tunes and Audio books...Got Dexter the book ...

Things left to do:
1)Clean up house for Haileys brother..
2)Laundry for trip and packing
3)Car service
4)Clean car inside and out...I do this every year feels good to ride in a nice clean car..
5)Pickup roadmap...have a GPS but last year i found myself driving over a lake according to Tom Tom....guess it didnt realize their was a new road there. Plus its very nice to be able to look ahead..still like having a map..
6)Program Tom Tom for routes and stops. Always a pain in the arse, i think ill update the maps this year..had device for almost 3 years and never updated them...

Tom Tom, the epic battle

Posted August 19, 2009
I officially have a love hate relationship with my Tom Tom one GPS. I have always found the actual device quite easy and user friendly..a plus for Tom Tom, what i have always hated is their crappy software...Tonight I had two goals
1)Update map pack
2)Get routes with point of interest stops programmed in

The Map, was an $80 upgrade, can you believe it? What a rip..They sell new ones for $119 at future hole...I like my tom tom and it works fine so i downloaded the maps..took another hour to get them loaded in...all good maps in. Now I can program my routes right?

Nope, what a pain in the arse. I really like google maps because if you disagree with the route they choose you can actually drag their route to the one you would have picked and it will rework itself...With Tom Tom software you cant do anything like that...you have to beg it to work with you...In the end I downloaded an awesome program that saved the day. The prgram was called TYRE and it lets you program a route with points of interest in google maps and then it sends all the proper info into your tom tom so that the GPS understands where you want to go..Awesome!! Routes programmed!

7 days before we leave update!

Posted August 26, 2009

Only 7 more days until we leave for myrtle beach. Plan is going well so far, working more to try and acommodate for the time off and have been doing a bit of extra stuff around the house with Hailey to get it all done in time.

Whats left on the list?
-Finish Cleaning up house (Friday night)
-Clean Car (this weekend)
-Pack (this weekend)

I have all our tech ready for the ride and am excited to get rolling.

Almost set to go

Posted August 30, 2009

Two more days and we are rolling.

We had a very productive and busy weekend getting all set. House is clean for my wifes brother. Car is clean and waxed. I almost got rained on doing this but it worked out just right. Packing is started and things are looking good. I checked the weather tonight and it looks like we should have a nice drive there, I didnt see any rain in the forecast.

Tonight I spent a couple of hours loading up my ipod so we could cruise with some tunes...Big mix of stuff, lots of variety...put some old school early 90's stuff on there for a laugh too.

Few more small things to do before we go but we are pretty much ready. I do however have a lot of work work to finish up before i can leave guilt free...tomorrow and Tuesday will be busy!

Vacation!!

Posted September 1, 2009
After a long couple of months of watching others walk away guilt free from work and spend time with their families, it is now my turn :)!

Today was hectic with last minute preparations. I got to toss in a practice trip from Barrie to Toronto for an all day sales event..Got home tonight at 6:00pm made some dinner and then had to do some last minute packing, 2 hours of work stuff to get items cleaned up holiday greetings on etc, and then pack my camera stuff, and get gas...The plan was to be in bed for 10:00pm for a 6:00am departure...its 11:30...I think we are now leaving at 7:00am instead :)

Tomorrow morning we will pack up the car jump in and go! If you follow along during the day on the right hand side of the blog I have the Rick and Hailey Tracker you will be able to get a good idea from that where we are on the journey.

..ok off to bed...

On The Road

Posted September 2, 2009

Ok We are on the way, its 7:00 am and we are leaving here is a little clip i put together for the vids i want to shoot along the way, this would be the intro...

Road Trip To Myrtle Beach Intro from Rick van der Valk on Vimeo.

Day One of Driving

Posted Sept 2, 2009

12 hours of driving down and 6 more to go. Today went well we started a bit later than we wanted and left Barrie this morning at 7am. We had planned on 6am but who cares its holidays :)

The drive today was pleasent, no real delays, weather was nice and it wasnt too busy. The only thing that didnt we werent happy about was that we had our left rear turn signal die the last two hours of driving, so its going to be a quick trip to ford tomorrow morning to get another one so we can blink blink blink down the highway...


We got here to Wytheville about 8:00pm, and decided to go for a quick bite to eat we were both pretty hungry and after a day of snack foods and crap we wanted something good...We decided to hit applebees....good is probably not the way to describe the food but it was ok and we then headed over to our hotel for the night...I think its the hotel time may have forgotten but the room is sort of clean and the lights worked so a good sign...Tomorrow we are going to get up early head over to ford and then drive the last 6 hours to myrtle :)

Day 2 Myrtle Beach We Made It!

Posted September 3, 2009

So the day started off pretty early. We woke up at 6:00am at Days Inn in Wytheville and we both decided it was time to get out of the uncomfortable bed we sort of slept in and get going. The hotel was ok fairly dated but it was clean and did the job.

Before we left we hit a free breakfast, on the way up I droped my Flip Video player on the pavement and luckily I just scratched the top corner, butterfingers urgh!

First stop was over to Ford and they quickly replaced the rear left turn signal bulb. We then hit the road and travelled through Virginia, North Carolina and then finally got into South Carolina.

We arrived in Myrtle Beach about 3:00pm, hit walmart for some groceries and then got to the hotel about 5:00pm.

We have unpacked and are now relaxing, with a couple of cold ones...

Day 3 -Lets get the Labour day sales

Posted September 4, 2009

Today was our first full day here in Myrtle Beach. I got up early and took the car over to ford to get a servicing done so we could get it out of the way and enjoy the rest of our trip without thinking about the car.

Servicing took about an hour and then I came back to the hotel to pickup Hailey. We decided to spend the first day and hit the shopping since we knew from the last couple of years that the labour day sales were really good in the outlet malls. We left the hotel and headed to the Tanger Outlets to pickup xmas goods for our families and some stuff for ourselves.

We spent most of the day crusing the shops and got almost all of the shopping done for everyone :).

Tonight we got back and we enjoyed a nice dinner out on our balcony listening to the ocean. Tomorrow we are going to hit the beach for the day and relax!

Day 4 -Day at the Ocean

Posted September 5, 2009

This morning we slept in, took our time getting up and just enjoyed not having to rush around. We decided since it was going to be a great day weather wise we would go to the beach and relax for a few hours. Around 11:00am we walked downstairs with our lawnchairs and umbrella in hand and setup.

The weather today was about 30 degrees, sunny, and the beach was busy with all the people celebrating the labour day weekend. Hailey enjoyed her new book and i went swimming. The water felt a bit cooler this year than last year but was still warm enough to stay in for quite a while.

We stayed at the beach until about 3:00 and then decided to head back to the room and start getting ready for dinner. We decided to go to Broadway at the beach, a big boardwalk have dinner and then stay around to watch the fireworks.

Our plan was to go to margaritaville restaurant but it had a 3 hour wait and we said forget that and found a nice restaurant called uno which served a good variety of things. We decided to share a meal because they overfeed you very badly here in the states.

After dinner we walked for a couple of hours checking out a few shops and then got some coldstone creamy ice cream (awesome). At 10:00 the fireworks came on and we could see the difference between Canadian and US fireworks.....ummm Canada does not do fireworks well....They were awesome...

Day 5 Off to Charleston, SC for the day

Posted Sunday September 6, 2009

Today was a fun day, we started off by sleeping in. We woke up around 8:30 which was awesome...We had a quick breakfast changed and headed for the car. We decided to go to Charleston and look around this historic city.

The drive over was about 2 hours and not overly scenic. Driving into Charleston you have to go over the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge which was pretty cool. We found our way to the town parked the car and decided to walk around down town. The City itself is very old and has a lot of historic sites. The downtown was very nice, lots of old buildings to look at and they had lots of stores there pretty high end stuff.

The one thing we both noticed about the downtown was that it felt very safe. Didn't see any low life's at all. For the first time on the trip I brought out one of my real cameras..So far all i have done on this trip is used my flip video and done some captures. Today I lugged along one of my cameras and took some photos. If I had more time there i would have gone crazy with the photos...There are so many neat things to shoot, but unfortunately we were only there for a few hours and I didn't get to explore nearly as much as I would have wanted.

We had fun though, we stopped for lunch at a place called stickey fingers, they won an award for best restaurant in Charleston. Hailey had some chicken and I had one of the pulled pork sandwiches (very good). After lunch we decided to take a horse drawn carriage tour and we rode with Bill the horse and our guide gave us the lowdown on the city. The tour was about an hour long and quite interesting we were glad we spent the $18 each and did it.

After the tour was over it was about 7:00pm and it looked like it was about to start raining so we headed back to the car and went for the drive back to Myrtle Beach.

Day 6 - Rain Delay

Posted September 7, 2009

So our streak of perfect weather came to an end today. We woke up and the weather was overcast and they called for rain for most of the day so we decided to head back to the tanger outlet and find some more gear for our little one :)

We spent most of the day just cruising around looking for new stuff and enjoyed not standing around in the rain.

We went out for dinner to California Dreaming and Hailey and I shared a great meal. We had a really great salad, and a club sandwich. Food was good and then we came back to the hotel.

Going to go to bed early and get a good night sleep. Weather is supposed to be nicer tomorrow so we will see how things go.

Small bit of vid from today.

Day 7 -Man Bag

Posted September 8, 2009

Today we decided to make it a beach day, it was a bit overcast this morning but the weather channel was calling for sun to come out, so we took our white Canadian bodies and applied a half bottle of the spf 50 each, packed up a beach bag, grabbed our chairs, umbrella, books, snacks, water and headed for the beach...Took a few minutes to setup and proceeded to freeze our butts off as the wind was quite gusty and the sun decided it was not going to show....After the umbrella went flying and almost took out a family down the beach we decided maybe today was not a beach day after all.

We packed it up came back to the room and hit the showers to wash off the 6 pounds of spf 50....We then decided we would take a ride over to the mall to pickup a shirt for haileys mom. After we got all ready we looked outside and it was nice and sunny...just our luck...urgh...We decided since we were set to go out we would anyway.

The shirt we picked up was from Abercrombie...ummm ok..so I hate that store, so loud, dark and it reeks of their crappy perfumes...Plus the dopey staff (who all look pretty) standing around useless kills me... We found the shirt bought it and then they hand you the man bag..(shown above) and make you walk around the mall with that thing....im just mad because they never gave me credit when they used my body on their stupid bags......I made hailey carry it, I wasnt going to get caught dead with the man bag....It would almost be as bad as having to carry her purse...rules folks I have rules around the mall...

After we picked up the shirt we decided we would head to Olive Garden for dinner... Again we shared a meal (whats wrong with the portion sizes here..they are out of control)...Even sharing a meal we were both full....Food was good and we are going to need a full pack of gum tomorrow to try and mask the garlic stench that will be oozing out of us.

We are back at the hotel now relaxing and enjoying the ocean breeze...

Day 8 -Photography, Beach, Mini Putt

Posted September 9, 2009

Today was fun and busy. I woke up at 5:30am and decided since I havent been out much this week with my camera I would go out and take some shots of the pier and the sunrise. I packed up my gear and crept out of the room so I wouldnt wake hailey up. I walked along the beach until i found a nice spot that I thought would look cool since I had an idea where the sun would be coming up from. Got all set and waited. The beach which is 60 miles long was pretty empty except for a few people and of course I got that one moron who walked through the middle of my shot. His wife was smart enough to walk around but he said "Hey Pal im going this way hope it doesnt mess things up on you" Didnt give me a chance to answer and proceeded to screw up my photo...I did however get some shots I was happy with.

Today was an awesome weather day Hailey and I went to the beach and spent almost all day relaxing there. We both had a book and laid out under the umbrella reading, when i wasnt reading i was swimming and the water here is still very nice, i can spend hours playing around in the waves.

Tonight we decided to hit a mini putt. We went to Mt. Atlanticus and had a round, it was fun but we have been there before and this year it was a bit worn down. Looks like they havent put much time into keeping it nice. The greens were all beat up. We did have fun and for the record i beat hailey this time..She usually wins...

Day 9 -Barefoot Landing and Hooks Mini Golf

Posted September 10, 2009

This morning we got up and decided to take a day off from the beach and go to Barefoot Landing. Barefoot landing is a boardwalk on a pond/lake whatever that has some shops and restaurants on it. We spent a couple of hours there walking around and had lunch at my favourite pizza place there Ultimate California Pizza (love that place) and enjoyed the day. The weather was hot but there was a nice cool breeze today so you never felt like you were getting to hot.

After we finished at Barefoot landing we went off to do a couple of errands we needed to do and then hit Hooks Mini Golf. Hooks was much better than the Mt. Atlanticus course we played the night before and we had a good time...

We got back to the hotel around 9:00 and I wanted to go for a swim. The evenings cool off nicely here so Hailey wasnt game for a swim but came down to hang out and enjoy the sounds of the ocean nearby...

Day 10 -Sick Day....

Today was a complete bust, I woke up felt awful and slept through the whole day. Not sure what the problem was exactly but am hoping tomorrow ill feel back to normal...

Day 11 -Last day In Myrtle Beach

Posted September 12,2009

Got up this morning and am still feeling a bit rough but didnt want to waste another day here in the nice warm sun. Hailey and I made a day out of it. We got up and headed to South Carolinas largest Garage Sale it was held at the Myrtle Beach convention center and they had tonnes of people selling their crap...We actually had fun walking around looking at all the stuff there. We didnt pickup much but did find a nice metal rack that could be used for magazines or plants so we picked that up.

After we finished with the garage sale we had a few last minute pickups to do so we headed to Kohls not too far away and my little holiday junkie found a couple of new items :).

This afternoon we went to Jungle Lagoon Mini golf and Hailey kicked my butt. She started off a bit slow but ended up smoking me and she got to gloat and make fun of me, so no change from the previous years....

With this being our last day we tried to pack in as much stuff as we could se we decided to head to the beach about 3:00 and spend a couple of hours on the water relaxing...

Tonight we went out for dinner to Cracker Barrel and now unfortunetly we are busy packing up to leave tomorrow. The plan is to leave around 7am and drive into Grove city tomorrow night and spend the night there and then come home on Monday.

Day 12 - The Trip Home

Posted September 13, 2009

Today we are on the way home. Sad to leave but excited to see our little girl :)

We left Myrtle Beach around 7:30am this morning, got about 4 feet out of the parking lot before I discovered that Tom Tom had not taken the route I painstakingly programmed into it before we came to myrtle beach and reworked it to send us a completely different way that we didn't want it to go. No matter what I put into it, it refused to go the way i wanted...I got sick of hearing him to tell me to turn around because i was going the wrong way, I turned him off and swore at him for a few minutes.

I ended up hooking up my Hailey Hailey and she went old school and got us going with the map. About 3 hours in we turned Tom Tom back on and he still wouldn't use the route I had setup for him....I got annoyed again and ended up asking it to take us home instead of my planned route..and it chose the route i wanted it to in the first place..urgh!!!!!

The drive went well we stopped a couple of times along the way but pulled into Grove City Pennsylvania around 8:30 pm. We have a room at the Holiday Inn (which is pretty nice) and we will drive the rest of the way back to Barrie tomorrow.