Guest Patrol

Blog #2 : The Pre Launch Party

(Yes, I know… I know, this should have been the first blog I wrote for BoomerTravelPatrol.com; but hey… nobody said I was the writer in the family)

Anyway, here we go!

Held at the beautiful “Grand Ballroom” at the Canoga Park Elks Lodge # 2190 in Canoga Park Ca, this preview party was just way too much fun. A very homey and friendly small-town feel meet and great, the party was the perfect kick-off for the “Blackberry Pie Murder”- the #17 in the Hannah Swensen Mystery Series- for Hannah Swensen, (Joanne Fluke’s cookie-baking, coffee-shop-owning, murder-solving title character) and all of her “Hannah-Maniacs” and “Fans O’ Hannah” from all over the country.

There are certainly not many times in life, if ever, that you are looking forward to taking yourself to jail.  But in this case, that is exactly what a happy group of 5 did on a beautiful Sunday in August.  After many, many, many, weekends of rain, Rod, Kathy, Chuck, Chris, and Jeff gathered for a long and beautiful motorcycle ride to a small Brandenburg, KY, jailhouse.

Yeeeeehaw!

Austin, Texas-    What can you say about a town that has a Nightclub sign stating: “3 Floors, 2 Patios, Fireplace, COME DRINK”, and another on a deserted parking lot wall proclaiming, “Music saved my Black-Hearted Soul”? The latter was adorned with a graphic of Joan Jett – she of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts fame (the maiden faire who starred in oh-so-many of my adolescent, late-night fantasies).

At any rate, the official Launch of “Blackberry Pie Murder” was at Powell’s Cedar Creek Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon. This is a really cool bookstore and… can you say a really big bookstore? It is almost 3,500 square feet of pure delight: filled with half-a-MILLION books and Book accessories, and if that weren’t enough, many other strange and wonderful things that you never KNEW that you needed, but for which you have been desperately searching for YEARS.

Hello, I’m Lynn Cahoon, author of The Tourist Trap Mysteries and a frequent solo traveler.  My husband, you’ll hear me call him the cowboy on my posts, doesn’t love traveling as much as I do, so he minds the fort while I wander. 

Susie and Beau have new friends in South Florida - Miss Roxie, a blond tea cup Yorkie and her long time companion Miss April Kirkwood. They are bringing new insights to the Pet Patrol.

As people head to the airports and beaches for summer vacation, they’ll be online and connected like never before. For good or ill, the explosion in smartphones and other devices means that the summer vacation isn’t as disconnected as it once was.

What exactly is a heurigen? It’s Austria’s answer to a beer garden - only with wine. A heurigen is one of the best places to sample regional wines and delicious simple home-made cuisine and true “Gemütlichkeit ” - warmth and coziness. Heuriger means “this year” and heurigens began when Emperor Joseph II allowed vintners to sell their new wine directly to customers without any taxes. Families set up tables in their vineyards, gardens and cellars, and hung a wreath made of straw or evergreens as a signal that they were open and ready to serve their family wines.

As a member of a generation commonly referred to as a “Baby Boomer,” I have grown up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time. Things might have been tough at different stages in my life but I had faith. With a bit of hard work and determination, payday would eventually come in the form of being able to travel and see the world for myself. It seems I am not the only one with these dreams because according to industry sources, Baby Boomers spend $157 billion each year on travel. With children educated, mortgages nearly paid off and retirement looming on the horizon, we are cashed up and have travel dreams – “our bucket list”- to fulfill.