Epic Southern Post

It’s getting better by the day! We actually visited a national park today! I missed it – walking in the southern sun, enjoying the beautiful nature around us. The camera worked overtime today, like the good’ol days. What a beautiful day.

A Bad Start

Saturday, February 12th. 2011 – Did I already tell you that I hate the cell phone companies? So today I hate them more! Actually it started last night, when I received an email from Verizon about my balance. I logged in to my account but could not see the bill. I could see the balance, and had an option to pay, but what is it for? no idea!

Tried to call but they don’t have 24 hours service, so this morning I called them. Turns out that they had a “Glitch” and they over charged me $75 for no reason. That’s OK for them to make mistakes and over charge but if I will make a mistake and underpay – I will be penalized. That is called fair business. It’s fair because they are big and I am small and there is nothing I can do about it. But this was not even the main issue. It turns our that when I was in Israel, the applications on the phone used data even though the phone was on Airplane mode the whole time. $150 worth of Roaming data! No warning, no approval – they simply charged. The phone was on because it has a camera and contacts and other information, but was never used for any call or internet access. So I have additional $225 on my bill for services I didn’t ask for, didn’t agree to pay and did not use the service. I wan’t even warned. Fair business. Uggggh I hate them!

Moving On

I will not let these bunch of greedy people ruin my day! Finished some errands and Patti and I were more than ready to go and explore outside.Perfect day with temperature in the mid 60’s. blue sky – perfect day!

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is about 20 miles south of here, and that was our destination for the day. We renewd our annual pass to the National Parks, stamped our NP passports and took the elevator down, 754 feet down. We took the Big Hall route tour and from this point and on the pictures will tell the story

Blog Maintenance

Turns out that there is a size limit to the data in a single Google map. If you exceed 3MB the map simply stops working, and my map exceeded that mark. After searching for map alternative that will still give me the flexibility of plotting routes along roads, icons, information and links – I could not find anything similar. So – I just had to split my Google map. Now I have two! The first map is from 10/2009 to 10/2010 which is one complete circle from PA to PA around the US. The second map, starts on 10/2010 and is still going.

So if you will go to the trip map page (From the link in the top of the left menu, just below the picture of Patti and I) you will see two maps on the page.

What’s next

I think tomorrow we will start heading west, towards Silver City. We will stay there for a short while and continue west. I want to meet some friends around Memphis area, and visit with my kids in CA before our AK trip.

You are coming with, right? I mean with the blog…

Don’t forget – Valentine is coming!! Thanks for stopping by..