This is one of my shots from our trip to Yakima. There is an old trolley that is still running as a tourist attraction, but it has a lot of history behind it. And it was a lot of fun.

Labels: photos, washington, yakima

Google has come out with a seriously cool new tool called Google City Tours.

You enter a starting address (or even just a city) and it finds points of interest and maps out a three day walking tour. You can add and subtract sites, but can't seem to change from walking to driving directions. Still I think this has great potential.

Now if they could combine this with the custom maps feature in Google Maps we'd really have something here.

Labels: google, travel planning, travel tools

We are freshly back from our wonderful weekend in the Yakima Valley. We spent three days there and went to 13 different wineries and that was but scratching the surface. We will definitely be returning before too much time has passed.

And when we do we might just stay again at the Birchfield Manor. It was a little pricier than the places we normally stay, but we had a large jacuzzi tube in our room and the outstanding breakfast was included.

We also ate dinner there on Saturday night, and if you are in the area, I highly recommend the experience. The food was outstanding.

We took a short ride on the Yakima Valley Trolley as well, which was a lot of fun.

Our favorites of the wineries we visited were: Sagelands, Gilbert Cellars, and Windy Point. Although we bought some good wine at a few others as well (particularly the Grenache at the Alexandria Nicole Cellars.

I'll be posting pictures from our trip soon, so check back often.

Labels: washington, wine, yakima

I'm constantly on the look out for new tools to help me organize our travels both before and during a trip. And I've posted about my love of the iPhone and the many apps that make it useful on trips (here and here). Not to long ago I came across the site TripIt.com and instantly knew I would be adding it to my arsenal.

It's great for organizing all the different pieces of information that go into the make-up of a successful trip. And the best part is how much of it is automated. For example: after booking a flight, I forward the email confirmation from the airline to tripit.com and it formats it and adds it to my itinerary. The same with hotels if you are staying at a somewhat major chain (which we rarely do), otherwise you can add reservation information using a template. You can add notes, web site links, articles, events, car rentals maps, directions and more.

They also have a free app for the iPhone so you can access your itinerary on the go. And if you don't have an iPhone, you can print out your itinerary at home.

So if you are planning a trip, I recommend checking it out.

Update: I meant to say that as much as I love the web site, for viewing your itinerary, the iPhone app is actually better. It's easier to see where one day stops and the next starts. The web site could do with a little more definition between days.

Labels: iPhone, travel planning

I added pages for Portland and San Francisco.

Labels: site_maintenance

I've slowly been working on the resource pages and will bring them online as they are complete.

So far I have the General, France, and Yakima pages done.

Also I have opened an Amazon store with books and products that I have read or used for our trips.

Labels: site_maintenance, store