|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Recent Travel
This is a list of our recent travels and pointers to any journals or photo albums we might have from those journeys...
Business Trips to Bulgaria and the Dominican Republic (DR)
I'm retired from MITRE now (Jan 2019), but before I retired I transferred to a new department within MITRE in 2016 and eventually ended up working engineering issues for the Air Force's Foreign Military Sales division. I worked on a number of country "cases," but two in particular involved trips in-country in an advisory role. I made four visits to Bulgaria, mostly in or around the capital of Sofia, and one trip to the DR
July 28 thru August 4 2015 - Montana
Gene & Lynn and most of Lynn's family convened in Livingston Montana for a family wedding on August 1st when Lynn's nephew Lincoln (oldest son of sister Marcia and her husband Tom) married his soulmate Stephanie.
Lynn and Gene and sister Gail flew out of Boston on Tuesday the 28th to Dallas/Fort Worth, then to Jackson Hole WY (frequent flyer miles paid for the 1st class flights, and Jackson Hole was the closest airport the airline flew to), where we picked up our rental car for the week and drove the 240 or so miles up the Idado side of Yellowstone National Park and into Montana on Wednesday.
We met up with third sister Jan and explored the environs around Livingston for a few days before attending the spectacular outdoor wedding at the Yellowstone House in Paradise Valley along the Yellowstone River at the foot of Black Mountain.
Gene Lynn and Gail hit the road south on Monday August 3rd, taking the entire day to mosey through the length of Yellowstone National Park on our way back to Jackson Hole for our flight back to Boston the next day.
The Montana Trip Journal in all its glorious (or excruciating) detail is immortalized on the Vogt Family Treehouse Blog, if you are interested in more. Links to a gazillion photos of the trip and the wedding can be found there too. Genealogy played a minor part in that we presented the happy couple with an initially-lopsided ancestry chart (I have a lot of information about Lynn's family ancestry), with the eventually-fulfilled promise to flesh out Stephanie's side ot the tree as well.
April-May 2013 - Scotland
Gene took Lynn to Scotland (her ancestral homeland) for her 60th birthday present (a few weeks early), and oldest daughter Megan came along too. Aside from the first day and the next-to-last day in-country, the weather was abysmal, but we had fun in spite of it.
We drove over 800 miles; from Glasgow through Stirling to Pitlochry, to Elgin and the Speyside Whisky Festival, through Inverness and down along Loch Ness to Fort William, past the Glenfinnan Viaduct and out to Mallaig, down to Oban, through Tarbert to the Kennacraig ferry, out to the Isle of Islay to Bowmore, to Lagavulin and Bruichladdich and port Charlotte, back to the Kennacraig Ferry terminal, Back to Tarbert, to Inveraray, past Loch Lomond to Edinburgh, and back to Glasgow. We took as many pictures as we could in the rain, toured three distilleries (Glenfiddich, Lagavulin, and Bruichladdich), did a formal whisky-tasting at Gordon and MacPhail, saw many castles, ate wonderful meals, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
On the down side, we saw only one piper, but we'll go back another year in August and catch THE Tattoo (massed pipers in unison) at the castle in Edinburgh for sure!
My Scotland Travel Journal is here, and our Scotland photo collection can be seen on Flickr here (click on the first small photo in the upper-left to page through the photos individually, or click on the box with an arrowhead in it in the black border on the top right to open the slodeshow view, which doesn't show my photo descriptions).
June 2010 - Northern Italy
A short (4 day) business trip return to Vicenza Italy for Gene to deliver my report. Not enough time for sight-seeing! Flew over Monday-Tuesday, worked Wednesday-Friday, flew back Saturday. Quick trip! Food photos in the ScrapBook!
May 2010 - Colorado
We had booked tickets and hotels long ago for a quick trip to attend a wedding in Cheyenne Wyoming in May. Our plan was to fly into Denver on Thursday an visit my sister in Colorado, drive up to Cheyenne on Friday for the wedding Sunday, then drive back to Denver airport early Monday morning for a flight home. We found out as we were packing Wednesday that the wedding was off, but the tickets were non-refundable so we flew out anyway, and stayed in Colorado for the entire short trip! It was quick, but a fun trip!
A two-week business trip to Vicenza Italy, just south of the Italian Alps (you could see them in the distance) for Gene. On the trip over (28-29 March) my first flight (Boston-Frankfurt) was late leaving and had a medical emergency when we landed so my 3-hour layover was completely taken up by delays. I missed my connection to Marco Polo Airport in Venice by five minutes, but not before blowing out both my knees and aggravating the achilles tendonitis in both ankles. Arrrggghh!
I spent the time observing and investigating the knowledge management practices of a certain branch of the military, with the intent of writing a report that points out problems and offers suggestions for improvement. My weekend stay-over was Easter weekend so on Holy Saturday I spent the day walking around the water-city of Venice! Not too shabby! Pictures in the ScrapBook...
February-April 2009 - Germany, England
Gene spent 45 days on a business trip to Stuttgart, with an overnight to England, 15 Feb - 1 April 2009. Forty-five days is a long time to live out of a suitcase! I worked at the company office in Stuttgart during the week, but the weekends were my own so I was able to travel around a bit. Here's a mini-journal of my weekend adventures...
28 Feb:
First 20 or so pictures are from the beginning of the trip, mostly of my hotel (a Marriott), taken when I first got here back on the 16th or so. The rest were taken today - the first sunny day since I got here!! I drove over Panzerstraße (the damp road through the swamps in the woods that goes between Patch Barracks and Panzer Kaserne, two of the US bases in Stuttgart) today and parked the car to walk around and take pictures. From there I drove into Sindelfingen to the Saturday farmer's market. Didn't buy anything, but I did take pictures. They've got a great fountain in the MarktPlatz. Too early in the season for any water in it, but it's still interesting.
Pictures: http://tinyurl.com/bhspvc
1 March:
I spent a good part of the afternoon today visiting Tübingen with our former German neighbors from when we lived here, Gerhard & Ursula. Tübingen, a traditional university town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 30 km (19 miles) southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCbingen
Pictures are here: http://tinyurl.com/bbanzp
6 March:
While on an overnight trip to England, I was able to catch up with cousin Tom (from Woburn) on the 5th of March 2009 outside Huntingdon England, and we had dinner at a pub in Huntingdon called "The George," but it wasn't the "George" you might expect to find in England! We had a great visit and a great meal. Gene was in the area on business and Tom lives about 20 miles away from the military base I was visiting. He's been over here for his company for about 4 years now.
Here's the picture: http://tinyurl.com/dlnet6
7 March:
I drove up to Lich Germany (map: http://tinyurl.com/dg8tlj), ancestral home of the VOGT family genealogy line Saturday, to visit with a genealogy researcher who has helped me with my research of the VOGT line in Lich and Gießen. We spent a few hours walking around the town while I took pictures, then we spent some time in the church in town looking through records. I acquired some books for Lich references and research.
Photos: http://tinyurl.com/d4au98
8 March:
I visited Schorndorf, northeast of Stuttgart (http://tinyurl.com/acltaw) with our former neighbors in Germany, to view a concentrated collection of "Fachwerkhäuser" or half-timbered houses. Schorndorf is along the touristy "Half-Timbered Houses Route," which came into existence in the 1990s, is about 2,800 kilometres long and extends from the river Elbe in the north down to Lake Constance in the south (http://tinyurl.com/cpjybe). It started raining soon after we arrived, but we still walked around to look at the old part of the city.
Pictures (color balance was set wrong on the camera; I corrected as best I could): http://tinyurl.com/blegqq
14 March:
Spent the day with my friend and former neighbor Gerhard at the new Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (Museum web site: http://tinyurl.com/33nwut). What an amazing building! Had a great time.
Here are my pictures (with one video at the end): http://tinyurl.com/ashsxn
15 March:
Had Sunday dinner with Gerhard and Ursula, then we all walked around Möhringen after the meal for a little exercise. Some things have changed, lots is still the same. A lot of the very old houses along Maierstraße (the cobblestone street opposite Balingerstr. that led down to the rathaus, the church and the farmer's market on Saturdays) have been restored and updated. They didn't tear them down, they restored them! There's a new town building across from the bahnhof that holds a big theater for concerts and such. Neoplan (world-renowned bus-building company, competed with Mercedes) is gone. They've torn the complex down and are building a big apartment complex. There's a new street off Balingerstr. that runs parallel to the tracks and leads in to the area behind the bahnhof, where they've built retirement housing and assisted living. After the walk we met up with son Frank at the house for coffee and cake.
My pictures from the walk: http://tinyurl.com/d7xzx4
21 March:
Gerhard and I visited the new Porsche Museum (opened 31 January of this year) in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen (map: http://tinyurl.com/d8wd4w) today. I liked it a lot, but I liked the Mercedes museum last weekend better. There were more floors in the Mercedes museum (8 vs 2) and each floor was smaller in the Mercedes museum, so you never saw hordes of people at any one time like we did in the Porsche museum. And the Porsche museum was just cars scattered around, in a very minimal organization. In the Mercedes museum, they arranged the cars very carefully, and told a coherent and interesting story along with the cars. Much more interesting. But for a sheer overwhelming quantity of sports and racing cars, Porsche Museum has it!
pictures: http://tinyurl.com/c2lt33
Museum web site: http://tinyurl.com/6g5jcd
28 March:
Gerhard and Ursula took me to a Besenwirtschaft (Weingut Haberkern-Betz) in Erlenbach where we had neu wein and Swabisch food, then we went to Besigheim and Bietigheim to wander around the towns.
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/genevogt/sets/72157615944671465/
map Besigheim & Bietigheim: http://tinyurl.com/dmaqx7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besigheim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bietigheim-Bissingen
Map Erlenbach: http://tinyurl.com/ceqky5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlenbach,_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg
June-July-August 2008 - Germany, DC, GA, TX, MD, HI, Korea
Gene's been doing some serious business traveling this summer, basically wiping out the summer as far as summer activities go.
Gene's been a part of a survey team that's been visiting certain Army installations, reviewing IT staffing and functions for each organization. The trips started in June, with most of them chewing up a full week. We'd fly out on Sunday and gather Sunday night at the hotel to strategize, then hit the ground running on Monday morning, working through Friday, flying home Saturday to do laundry and collect notes, then fly out again the next day (Sunday) to do it all over again someplace else! First up was Darmstadt Germany in June, with no time to do any genealogy work or visiting friends. Then there was a week in Washington DC at an internal conference, then we headed out to Augusta GA, then Gene had two weeks at home over the 4th of July. After the two-week reprieve, it was off to San Antonio TX (in July!!??), Baltimore MD, then a two-week jaunt, first to Honolulu HI, then from there to Seoul and Pyongtaek Korea!
I've been home for almost a week, now, and I'm still trying to catch my breath! The flight home from Korea was a chore - I left Korea at 1:30 pm on Friday, and with a cross of the international dateline in the westerly direction, after flying for eleven hours I landed in San Francisco at 8:30 am Friday, BEFORE I left Korea according to the calendar! A couple of hours in San Francisco to get through customs and find the new gate and I was on-board a six-hour flight to Boston, getting in around 8:30 pm Friday. Grueling!
No more trips scheduled at this point in time, but that could change!
March 2008 - Colorado and Wyoming
Lynn and I took a week and a day to attend our grand-niece's wedding recently in Wyoming.
We flew into Denver on Tuesday the 11th, then bopped down to Colorado Springs on the 12th to see the Garden of the Gods again (http://www.gardenofgods.com/), and visit with friends we met in Germany – a retired Air Forcer who’s now running a gift shop with his wife in a mall in the Springs. Thursday I spent working on my sister’s computer set-up. She got a new Dell laptop with a docking station as a get-well present last year, but she didn’t know how to set up the docking station, so I did that for her, pulled her old tower out and replaced it with the dock, and pulled the hard drives out of the old tower and put them in external cases so she could get at them as USB drives whenever she wanted.
Friday we drove up to Wyoming in time for the wedding rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner/party following. Saturday Lynn and another of my sisters walked from the hotel to a quilt shop in Cheyenne and the husbands picked them up later to drive around Cheyenne – not much to see! The afternoon/evening was the wedding and reception. There might have been more people packing concealed weapons at the reception than in all of MA combined! The music of choice was… HIP HOP (not C&W!), at about 140 dB!
Sunday was another party at the bride’s mom & dad’s house, then we hit the road back to Denver in a pea-soup fog with an incredible type of hoarfrost called white frost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_frost) that covered the few pine trees in a thick coating. That night I took everyone to a steakhouse for dinner – can’t visit the wild west without getting some beef! Monday I finished working on my sister’s computer setup, had a boiled dinner in honor of St. Patrick, attended a grand-nephew's hockey game, and started packing for the trip home.
Flight out of Denver was delayed an hour, but the real pain was in NY at La Guardia, we had to change airlines (DEN-NY was United, NY-BOS was US Air), and there was no way to get to the other terminal without walking outside and re-doing security! Yuck! So we missed our Boston flight by 5 minutes, but it was the US Air shuttle, which flies on the hour, so we rebooked quickly. Our niece from Boston was traveling with us, and I fly so much on US Air I’m silver preferred, so they upgraded all of us to first class (I usually get upgraded when I fly)!
A fun week, but now it’s back to the grind! I got home to a dead house network, too, so I’ve been working to debug that at night. Turns out it was the cable-router, so I bought a new one and spent last night reconfiguring it so it will work the way I want.
September 2007 - Searsport Maine
We were invited to the wedding of the youngest son of some dear friends of ours up in Searsport Maine the Sunday before Labor Day, so we booked a motel room down the street from the wedding location and spent one night up in Maine. The weather on Sunday and Monday was absolutely spectacular! We had a great time! Lots of photos in the Scrapbook!
August 2007 - Tanglewood
We drove out to the far western part of the state for the weekend of August 24-26. I was able to get Lawn Seating tickets to the James Taylor concert at Tanglewood on Friday night, and Shed Seating tickets for the Boston Pops and John Williams on Saturday night. It was dreadfully hot and humid both days and both nights, but we still had a great time listening to the great music.
August 2007 - Germany
I spent 16 days in Stuttgart 1-16 August this year. I went over to help on a project in the MITRE Stuttgart office (where I worked from 1991-1995), and got to enjoy the oh-so-familiar cuisine and culture of the area once again! A few of us went down to the wine fest in the center of Stuttgart, and I visited with our German neighbors Ursula and Gerhard a few times. I also got a chance to drive back up to Lich and re-connect with the VOGT researcher I met in February.
July 2007 - Pennsylvania Dutch Country - Lancaster County, PA
After spending what seemed like forever on business travel (five weeks straight), Lynn and I took a week's vacation and we traveled some more! We rented a Kia Optima and drove down to Lancaster County, PA, to Pennsylvania Dutch country. We booked a week at the Vogt Farm Bed & Breakfast, having found it on-line, and spent the week sight-seeing, sampling PA-Dutch food and attractions, and visiting quilt and fabric shops. Lots of photos and descriptions in the Scrapbook!
February 2007 - Germany & Belgium
This month saw Gene traveling to Germany and Belgium on business for 2 weeks. Most of my time was spent driving aroung Germany visiting the company sites in Ramstein, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and Darmstadt, and a 2-day train trip to the site in Brussels. I also took a day to spend on genealogical research, and made some great discoveries! Also took a bunch of photos.
November 2005 - Fort Walton Beach Florida
I spent a week on the Florida pan-handle this month with some colleagues from work, at a conference at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach. No pictures, I didn't take the camera. We flew into Pensacola and drove to Fort Walton Beach. We were initially going to take Route 399 along the outer bank and through the Gulf Islands national Seashore, but the Katrina devastation had closed that road and it still wasn't open two months later! While we were on 399 before we had to turn back, we saw a lot of destruction. It'll take years for those outer bank areas to recover.
September 2005 - Bar Harbor and Brownville Junction Maine
Lynn and I just got back from a week away in Maine. We decided to wait until after Labor Day to escape to avoid crowds and such. We spent 3 days in the Bar Harbor area, and then 4 days with friends by a lake near Brownville Junction. Here are some photos...
July 2005 - White Mountains NH
After our anniversary lobster-feed and esplanade fireworks , Lynn and I escaped to the Lincoln-Woodstock NH area for a short week (4 days) away. We did some poking, walked the Flume (one of our favorite things to do up there), and took a dinner train ride. I got up early most days and did some mountain stream trout fishing, and we both enjoyed watching the hummingbirds and other wildlife at the condo.
December 2004 - St. Petersburg Florida
Lynn and I had a weekend "escape" to Florida recently. I spent two weeks in Tampa on a business trip. During the weekend in between, Lynn flew down to meet me and we both headed out to the Marriott resort on Clearwater Beach on the Gulf Coast, a bit north of St. Petersburg. These pictures are from Saturday and Sunday of the weekend.
June-July 2004 - Ireland
In June and July of 2004, Lynn and I took a two-week trip to Ireland - mostly to County Kerry - for our 30th wedding anniversary (4 July 1974 - 7/4/74!). This link points to a combined trip journal and photo album for the journey.
Copyright © 1973-2021 by Eugene F. Vogt. All rights reserved. Last modified 02-Jan-2021 2:49 AM ET. Send questions or comments to the Family TreeHouse WebMeister. View our Privacy Policy.