Friday Five: Travel

1. What's the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country? Technically speaking, that would be last month when I went over to Calhoun County, Illinois for a ride. You can make a nice trip of it — take the bridge over to Alton, Ill from St. Charles, Mo, then drive down the Great River Road. From there you can take the (free) Brussles Fairy over the Illinois River to Calhoun County, home of the world's best peaches. Calhoun County is a very pretty area and a nice place to spend an afternoon.

From there, you can take the Golden Eagle Fairy across the Mississippi River to return to St. Charles County. Two fairy rides in one day is very nice! Better yet, on my last trip I found out a new fairy opened — now you can take a fairy over to the Great River Road too. This fairy was especially nice in that it crosses over the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

At any rate, if the question was asking the last time I actually stayed overnight, or longer, out-of-state, that would be Indiana last August. I went up there for my grandfather's wedding.

2. What's the most bizarre/unusual thing that's ever happened to you while traveling? Hmm… I dunno. The thing that comes to mind occurred on one of my family's semi-annual trips to the Ozarks when I was little. My grandpa (not the one mentioned above) decided to bring a metal detector to look for coins and other stuff on our trip. We didn't have room for it in the car, so it was tied up on the roof. We stopped for lunch at the very nice rest area right outside of Springfield, Mo, and then took back off. As we were pulling out of the rest area, we heard a loud “TTTHHHHHUUUUMP!” It was the metal detector flying off the roof. My mother pulled off Interstate 44 and chased the metal detector up the highway (it was in a cardboard box and drifted away from the car). Fortunately neither my mother nor the detector were hurt.

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go? Hmm… depends when you ask me. On Monday I would have said San Fransisco for LinuxWorld. Seriously, that's tough, but since it is probably more expensive to get there than other places I might want to go, I'd probably make Australia the destination for this trip. For some reason, Down Under fascinates me. Although, probably I'd rather go to Europe — I'd like to tour through England, France, Germany, etc. I have some friends over there I'd like to meet, so that'd be an added bonus.

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car? Car, definitely. My legs are long enough that a coach seat on a plane is very uncomfortable for more than a short while (and first class costs too much!). For that matter, I also get an ear ache when on planes, which isn't too pleasant either. Cars are good — you see more, you can go where ever you want, and your stuff can't accidentally go to the wrong destination or get damaged.

5. What's the next place on your list to visit? A new place to visit or just the next place? The next place is probably the Ozarks again — hopefully in mid-fall, otherwise, hopefully at Christmas (schedule permitting). I don't have any plans to go any place new, although who knows…