Itstrainingtime

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the great PA Tornado outbreak - 19, yes 19 confirmed tornados on 5/31/1985. I remember my old NOAA weather radio going off over and over and over again during the evening hours as the event unfolded. Worst of it was across northern, and especially NW PA. https://www.weather.gov/ctp/TornadoOutbreak_May311985

First off, I'd like to thank each of you who sent well wishes to me for our trip. It was so much appreciated and I consider many of you my extended met family. Second, I'd like to thank all of you who put up with months of my drivel of excitement over going to Mammoth Lakes. Yes, I'm a giant kid in a 57 year old body. It has been a dream of mine to go there for at least 10 years, and my excitement got the best of me. I'm sorry for my thread cluttering over the past several months. The trip itself: Traveling by train was amazing. There are a few caveats to that - I am a train buff. I love trains. And I don't mind the "nuances" of train travel. (delays, cramped quarters, hit or miss food offerings, etc.) My wife and I are not picky, we don't typically get excited when something goes wrong, when traveling we roll with what is going on. That's important when considering Amtrak. If you want seamless, guaranteed on-time experiences, look elsewhere. We had a roomette booked for 95% of our trip. It suited us just fine. We had room to sit and sleep in our private "cabin" and not much more than that. We spent a lot of time during the day enjoying the lounge car where we were able to stretch out more and relax. The entire experience was amazing because we knew exactly what we were getting in to. And we loved it. @Jns2183 - if you have a dream of taking a similar experience, do it! So long as you do your homework and understand the quirks of long-distance train travel, you'll have an amazing experience! The United States of America - my dear wife took exactly 3,341 pictures and 143 videos during our odyssey. It will take us months to work through it all. I shared a few peeks into our trip, perhaps in a few months I'll be able to share a separate thread with a picture/video montage. So many incredible sites - if we had one regret (and it really isn't a regret, it was a "it is what it is" kind of thing) was we might have wanted to wait a few more weeks before traveling. We began booking 2 years ago, and at that time we could not foresee the avalanche of snow out west. Many of the places that we wanted to see we could not because of road closures due to snow. The thing is...I wanted to go early enough to SEE snow but was hoping it would be confined to the higher peaks so that travel was pretty much open. Obviously, that was not the case in the far west. Over the last couple of months leading into our trip it became pretty obvious what was happening so again...expectations were adjusted. We traveled through parts of the following states: PA, Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. Keep in mind that some of those states, we disembarked our train, rented a car to visit certain areas, then got a later train to continue our trip. Our favorite state as far as beauty? Utah. Breathtaking. Stunning. Diverse. Utah was amazing. Most of the other states were as well in their own ways. Mammoth Lakes, California: It is an incredible place to visit. Key word in that sentence is "visit". LOL. It is NOT this guy's retirement community. Single homes often are in the 2-4 million range. Condos can be snagged for as "little" as about $750,000. It is one of California's ultimate playgrounds. There is so much more than snow and skiing in Mammoth - miles hiking and biking trails, fishing, camping - it is an outdoors mecca. And to live in the midst of it will cost more than this guy's salary and savings can muster. It is a true tourist town - mostly empty during the week, packed uncomfortably full on weekends. My wife and I tend to be very casual in nature and there were times where we felt almost "second class" there...some of the people we were around had a lot of money and weren't afraid to let others know it. Not our vibe at all. Minus that, the town is gorgeous. The mountains are majestic. When we arrived, there was about 8' of snow on the ground at our resort. Obviously, that was the most snow I've ever seen. I was hoping to see snow outside of town on the mountain but obviously was treated with a little more coverage. Even today, there is still about 15' up higher on the ski area. They will easily make it through July- you can buy lift tickets online through 7/31 currently. Funny thing, the lifts now stop running at 1pm each day. It's warm enough that the snow now gets so sticky that they shut down during peak heating. Interesting. It was truly a trip of a lifetime. Would i do something like that again? No. We do have other dreams that we're chasing...geez, there are so many incredible things out there to see. We were in Alaska 10 years ago and we're starting to get an itch to go back. We also enjoy warm locales and St. John in the US Virgin Islands is calling us back as well. The past few days have felt odd - we literally were planning this trip for more than 5 years. We enjoyed every single moment of each day. And now that it's over? It feels...yeah, odd. Sort of empty. But also really glad to be home. We had the kids over on Monday and that was awesome. Now - can we please get some freaking rain around here? Oh yeah, one more thing...currently sitting at 14 mows in Maytown.

And a few miles NW of you, my low this morning was 52. (forecast low was 42)

CTP slowly inching highs upwards for Friday - 93 is the forecast currently. It was 91 yesterday at this time.

East wind for the win...74 at PHL, 77 at MU and low 80s further west including here.

MU recorded .29" of rainfall in May. This month becomes the driest month since February 2002. 21 years and 3 months since we've had a month drier. Also, the previous May record was .50".

Sunny and 81 at 3:10pm.

Full sun and 79 in Maytown.

@TimB doin' some trolling tonight in the Beantown thread.

That radar presentation is pretty crazy - the skies here are at least 75% cloudless. Looking around here it would be hard to imagine there was rain within at least 50-75 miles.

Thank you so much!

Party sunny and 83. It has also turned quite breezy...almost windy.

Correct- heading down this fall. My wife is ready to do some shell-finding.

Actually - my CTP forecast is bone dry all the way through next Sunday. Wow!

I don't know what to say- Once we get back in the groove here, I will write a full trip report as I have time. Hard to believe after 5 years of dreaming, planning, and saving that it's all over now. What a time it was! Our son mowed 4 times over the past 23 days. Current Maytown mow ticker stands at 14. It looks like mowing is down to once a week. Grass is definitely showing signs of stress. Hardly anything fell here the entire time we were gone. Remarkable. And it looks pretty dry for the week ahead. Sigh.

That is awesome! I was following your journey in the MA thread over the past few months and was wondering how you made out. Congratulations to you!

Partly sunny and 80 degrees here in Maytown, PA.

A muggy 73 here this morning. River Walk in town is super cool, marking that off the bucket list.

All aboard the San Diego Skyfari: I'll write up a trip review in the coming weeks after we're home. Before that, I'll try and respond to questions and comments that have been posted already or will be. I'm reading them but trying to not to get too invested on here for now. We've now been gone for 16 days and will be returning home on Sunday if all goes well.

Early morning here in San Diego- 59 with a marine layer off the Pacific. One more day here in Cali before heading east tomorrow. Heading to Balboa Park this morning.

Getting ready for Saturday night baseball here at the Big A - last time I was here the stadium was completely enclosed due to the Rams playing here...that was in the mid 1990s. My son reports zero rain back home and my weather station confirms. Not good, not unexpected.

Pleasant evening here in SoCal - partly cloudy and 65 here in Orange county.

Getting ready to go out for dinner - love the California mission architecture here in SLO: Tomorrow we continue south along the coast and will be spending the next 2 nights in Anaheim - going to Angels Stadium for some Saturday night baseball between the Halos and the Twins.

Cross one more thing off the 'ole bucket list:

Leaving this beautiful town later this morning. My wife captured this on our day out and about yesterday: Today we head northwest to San Francisco, due to arrive this evening. From there we'll head down the coast to Los Angeles over the next several days.