Travel 2025 – Fall/Winter

Continued from:  Travel 2025 – Spring/Summer Time

With the beginning of fall, my travel schedule got particularly busy with three almost back-to-back trips.  On the second weekend in October, I met my two sons in Milwaukee, WI.  This was a trip my eldest son had suggested over a year ago, but we could not get it worked out.  He had wanted the three of us to go to a major city that none of us had been to before.  We had a great time there with a side trip to Taliesin.  You can click here for the post I wrote last year.

Four days after returning home, I was flying off again, this time to Asheville, NC to meet my siblings for a SibSab (Sibling Sabbatical) in our favorite place on Earth, Montreat.  There, we did many of the things we love to do and even celebrated my eldest’s sister’s birthday early…

… with my favorite cake, a tweed cake.  Over breakfast one morning, we got our best ever bear experience when a mama bear and her two cubs strolled through our yard.

I also wrote a post about that trip last year so you can click here for more about our SibSab.

Two days later after returning home, my wife and I drove over to Dickson, TN to spend the weekend with her knitting friends.  Our destination was the farmhouse we had stayed at on several previous occasions.  With this being our fourth time to rent the farmhouse, we were invited by the owner/host to her barn where she kept goats, horses and chickens.  Everyone had a good time feeding the animals and talking with the owner.

As I have written before, I do not knit and so as before, I took along a puzzle to work on while the others knitted, one that my eldest sister had given me.  After the farm outing, I spent a good part of the afternoon working on the puzzle.  That night, two additional knitting friends drove over from Nashville for a nice dinner together, friends that my wife and I had not seen in over a year.  After dinner, we had a lovely conversation while five of the eight of us knitted various projects they were working on.

On Saturday morning, with help from others, we finished the puzzle.

We had noticed while working on the puzzle that the backside of each piece had a repeating letter of the alphabet.  I had never seen a puzzle like that before and wondered why the pieces had that additional printing.  With the puzzle finished, we decided to flip the puzzle over to see the letter pattern on the backside.

One of the knitters then had one of those aha moments.  He said had we known what the pattern was beforehand, we could have sorted the puzzle pieces with the letter side showing and would have had all the pieces organized into six sections for an easier time of assembly.  This way we would not have had to search through all 1,000 pieces to find the right ones.

Having had a great time with this puzzle, one of the knitters got out another puzzle that he had brought—a gnome themed one.  He and I worked on it for a little while but then it being my wife’s birthday, she asked that I drive her into Nashville to visit some thrift stores where she had a great time.  By the time we returned to the farmhouse, he had almost worked the entire puzzle, leaving what was probably the hardest part—the Christmas trees.

Before dinner, with some more help, we finished that second puzzle.

After a delicious dinner, we had a wonderful conversation while knitting activities continued.  And then on Sunday morning, we all packed up and made our adieus.  But not without discussing coming back to the farmhouse again in the near future.

Our next trip was not until the week of Thanksgiving.  Our youngest son mentioned he was interested in taking a trip with his kids starting on Thanksgiving Day and wanted us to go along.  He first thought of Chattanooga but then thought his kids would better enjoy getting to see their cousins in northwest Arkansas.

We drove part of the way on Thanksgiving Day and then arrived in Rogers, AR on Friday around lunchtime.

We all got together with our relatives for dinner that evening at a local kid-friendly craft brewery where we had hours of nice conversations accompanied by good food and beer.

On Saturday, after an early morning swim, we spent the afternoon at my niece’s house where we played games and had nice discussions before enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving meal that my eldest sister brought over.

On Sunday, we first went to that award winning art Museum Crystal Bridges where our grandkids enjoyed a scavenger hunt searching out certain paintings in the exhibit halls.  They also enjoyed the interactive kids’ areas that I had never been to before.  After lunch with their cousins, we all went to the awesome children’s museum Amazeum which is right next to Crystal Bridges.  There they had hours of fun play time together.

On Monday, we drove back home for the mad dash to the Christmas holidays.

Our last trip of the year was for my wife and I to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  This is the third year in a row we have taken a nice fall trip together having gone to Montreal in 2023 and Italy in 2024.  This time we stayed in the US and since the trip deserves its own post, I will refrain from disclosing where we went until next week.

So, in 2025, I took a total of 14 trips, eight by plane and six by car.  Overall, it was a fun travel year with my wife accompanying me on nine of those trips.  And I look forward to another fun travel year in 2026!