Travel Tip for Using Phone's GPS in a Rental Car

 

Last time I was in North Carolina, I noticed that my son had this clever cell phone holder that mounted to his car's air vent. That seemed like a great idea, so when I was in the 99 cent store here in Tucson I found this one for just a dollar. 

It works really well and is small enough to be portable so I can take it on trips when I have car rentals that are not equipped with GPS. It's hard to go wrong with a dollar investment that, at just four inches long, takes up next to no space in my suitcase!

 

Flying into the Heart of a Pandemic

 

ORD Airport in Chicago has restrooms that encourage social distancing. Each sink faucet is flanked on the left by a soap dispenser and on the right by your own private hand dryer!

* (See update at end of article.) Being a human cork at the end of a bungee cord holds no appeal for me. I'd sky-dive only if someone blindfolded me and shoved me out the airplane door. Even being on a stepladder produces a frisson of fear these days. The only courage I ever exhibit is when I "forget" to balance my checkbook each month and simply hope for the best. So, it was with trepidation that I decided to fly on one of the busiest weekends of the year, July Fourth, during a pandemic when doctors reported skyrocketing cases of Covid every day.

Alaska or Mexico?

 Since the only traveling I'm doing during the pandemic of 2020 is virtually, I'm rereading some early blog pieces and publishing ones I think are worthy of a second look.This was my first visit to Alaska when I could not help but compare it to my newly adopted home in Mexico.

A rare sunny day in Alaska.

I leaned from the bed and stretched a hand towards the window to pull back the “darkening” shade, then plucked apart the slats of the blind with two fingers. Would I find rain or sunshine? My cousins and I planned a trip to Glacier Gardens, but it wouldn’t be much fun in a cold rain.

“You might get one day of sunshine a week,” a wizened sourdough told us when we first arrived in Alaska, “if you’re lucky.” I guess the Weather Channel web site hadn’t made a typo when the ten-day forecast for Southeastern Alaska predicted rain every single day.

I knew this part of Alaska was a rain forest, but I was hoping the rain always fell at night the way it does in Ajijic. Mexico. Actually it always did fall at night. And in the morning and in the afternoon and in the evening.

Death on a Sunday Afternoon

Since the only traveling I'm doing during the pandemic of 2020 is virtually, I'm rereading some early blog pieces and publishing ones I think are worthy of a second look.

The bull that will die this afternoon must have thought he’d survived the worst that could happen. He’d lived on a ranch for three years with no human contact. Yesterday, when he was forced into a truck, the men using metal prods remained hidden. Being shoved into a truck after a life on the open range is frightening. Bulls resist. One died yesterday as a result of the manipulation and another lost one of his horns.