Happy New Year! Below is the list of cities that I visited in 2013 with at least one night spent in each place.

• Cincinnati, Ohio *
• Columbus, Ohio
• French Lick, Indiana
• Williamstown, Kentucky *
• Englewood, Colorado
• Lee’s Summit, Missouri
• Noblesville, Indiana
• Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
• Loveland, Ohio *
• Troy, Ohio
• Louisville, Kentucky
• West Portsmouth, Ohio
• El Dorado Hills, California *
• Stateline, Nevada
• Indianapolis, Indiana

Those cities marked with an asterisk were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

See also: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006

We spent all of last week on vacation, first visiting with our friends Doni and Phil at their new home of El Dorado Hills, California. We spent a night with them on either end of a our four night stay at the Heavenly Mountain Resort at Lake Tahoe.

First Lift

It was our first time visiting Lake Tahoe, but I certainly hope it is not the last. It is one of the prettiest places I have been, especially for a winter sports location. I’m told the scenery as equally as stunning in the summer months.

Heavenly Views

Our first day on the slopes was a great bluebird sky day. It was and is still very early in the season, so only a handful of lifts and runs were open. I spent a quick morning on the slopes the first day and conquered all of the trails before heading in for lunch and to play with the kids while Kim made turns with her brother Chip.

Before Powder Day

We only spent two days on the mountain since so little was open, but our second day out was a powder day! Kim and I got out early to get in some runs on some fresh snow. We had a blast and wore out our legs after just a few hours.

After Powder Day

I went back out with Chip after lunch and we tore through all the open terrain once again. When the day was complete I had put in roughly 12,600 vertical feet on 20 runs. It was a very solid day on the mountain.

21,600 Vertical Feet

Heavenly treated us very well and I hope to return in the future and will make sure to go later in the season to see one of the largest resort in America at its prime.

Heavenly Valley on Dwellable

If you could not already tell from my silence last week I was out on vacation. We stayed in a large seven bedroom house on the beach of Hilton Head, SC. There were three separate living areas in the house along with it’s own pool, hot tub, and tiki bar outside. Joining us for the trip were my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, my grandparents, three aunts, three uncles, and a couple of cousins.

The weather wasn’t ideal, but it definitely could have been worse. Most days were limited to just 30 minutes or so of rain. We did have a couple of beautiful days that left my skin a little red. Most of our days were spent lounging in the pool, riding the waves in the ocean, biking on the beach and many roadside paths, drinking local beer and frozen cocktails, preparing meals for dinner, and sharing stories with our extended family.

More posts will follow in the coming days with specific restaurant reviews, but here are some random photos from my phone that won’t fit in any of those entries.

Hilton Head on Dwellable

I spent a good chunk of last week on the road traveling to and from Denver for work. While in the mile high city I had many long evenings in the office and a couple of late nights catching up with old friends. This all led to a decrease in blog entries, however I’m not going to let that happen again this week. As I attempt to get caught up with emails and such, I’ll leave you with a few highlights from my trip.

May Snow Showers

The first morning I woke up in Denver I was treated to a nice three to four inches of snow! I guess I was due after all my complaining about missing the snow earlier this winter. It really didn’t stick on the roadways and even melted quite a bit on the grass, but it was pretty nonetheless.

Strange Brewing Samples

I met some old friends at the new to me Strange Brewing Company for a taste of what they had on tap. As much as the brewing scene has expanded in Cincinnati, it seems to have really taken off in Denver and elsewhere in Colorado where the craft scene has always had a strong presence. Strange opened in 2010, and even though I was living in Denver at the time, I never found the time to visit. I’m glad I found the time on this trip.

SoundRabbit @ Quixote’s

After visiting Strange for some beers, I headed to Quixote’s to see some other old friends, the guys from SoundRabbit. After seeing roughly 16 of their shows while living in Denver, it was nice to finally catch another show years after my last. They’ve since added a new bass player to the band and just got back from a tour through the middle and eastern states last month. I hear they are planning another tour for later this year, so I’m hoping to see them again soon. It’s always a great time.

With our lack of recent travel and very soon to be arriving baby girl, my wife and I had a bit of a travel bug. When we heard that her parents were going to be spending a weekend in French Lick, Indiana we jumped at the opportunity to join them. We planned the three-hour drive during our son’s afternoon nap, so we didn’t arrive at the French Lick Springs Hotel until around 4 P.M. this past Saturday. Her parents had already checked us into our room, so we dropped the car at the complimentary valet stand, and went upstairs to unload our luggage.

Our Room

The French Lick Springs Hotel was established in 1845 and was rebuilt in 1901 after the original building caught fire. The hotel is a massive structure with 443 guest rooms and suites, a 109,000 square foot conference and events center, and a 24-hour casino just to name a few amenities.

Lobby Ceiling

After walking through some of these features, we found our way over to their daily KidsFest. Here we found a few bounce houses, a large movie screen, Wii gaming consoles, and all the popcorn we could eat. KidsFest is a complimentary activity for kids ages 6-12, though smaller children are permitted as long as a parent stays with them.

KidsFest

After an hour or so at KidsFest, we rented a bicycle surrey cart to take our own tour around the outside of the resort. The highlight of the exploration was finding the French Lick Scenic Railway Museum where we could climb inside an old steam engine. Train rides are also offered daily.

Steam Engine

The rest of our evening was spent back inside the resort. We had worked up quite an appetite so we had pizza at Pluto’s Pizzeria, which is adjacent to the arcade and bowling alley. The bowling was a little too expensive and crowded for us, but we did take a few turns on the arcade games. From there we enjoyed the indoor and outdoor pools and outdoor hot tub, before finally making it to the casino for a little adult entertainment.

West Baden Springs Hotel’s Domed Atrium

The following morning we took a complimentary shuttle to the West Baden Springs Hotel, also owned by the French Lick Resort, to see it’s famous domed atrium. When it was built in 1902, the 200-foot dome was the largest in the world and held that title until 1913. Even to this day, it is a very impressive structure. The French Lick Springs Hotel seemed to have more activities to offer, but the West Baden Springs Hotel was much quieter. Either make for a fine place to escape, depending on what you are looking for.

French Lick on Dwellable

Last month I posted about a new vacation rental website called Dwellable. My blog quickly rose to the top of their leaderboard and I was featured in an interview on their website. Though I have yet to use their service to plan any vacations, my blog posts are linked all over their website. My travel plans are taking a back seat until after our second child is born in less than a month. Once our trip planning picks back up I’m sure I will start using Dwellable even more, especially now that they have a beautiful iPhone and iPad app.

Where Are You Going

When the app is first launched the prompt is simply, “Where are you going?” When this is clicked a list of popular travel destinations immediately displays or you can simply type your desired location, whether that be a particular city or an entire state. The background of the launch page is a soothing ocean scene with a looping wave splash. One thing I did notice is that launching the app does stop my background music from playing. That is something that should be fixed as I find it nice to listen to music when making plans.

Colorado Ski Areas

Say you are planning a ski trip to Colorado. Well you can easily view the number of rentals in each of the locations along with a featured image of one of the vacation rentals. You can then select each ski area and see a list of available vacation rental properties. A filter page is available to select certain criteria for your search and a date planner is also available. It doesn’t appear that all the properties have their available dates posted, but I’m sure that will only get better with increased use.

Property Listings

Dwellable reminds me most of vacation rental website VRBO but the two are very different. I’ve always found VRBO to be lacking search filters and overall it is very ugly and cumbersome to use. Dwellable’s app and website are much more visually appealing and the filters are well designed. Last October my mother planned a large family trip to Hilton Head for later this summer. I helped with the property search using VRBO and we struggled to find the right size rental, on the beach, with a pool and hot tub. Look how easy it would be with Dwellable’s filters!

Search Filters

We are taking a last-minute trip to French Lick, Indiana this weekend. I used the app to try to find a vacation rental but there was only one result and it didn’t fit our needs. Again, I think the amount of properties available will only increase over time, but it is limiting currently. It would also be nice to see the blog posts that are featured on their website somehow integrated into the app as well. Overall I’m very impressed with Dwellable’s search capabilities and can’t wait to use it more for vacation planning.

Late last year I was contacted by Jane at Dwellable about adding a blog post of mine to their site. After adding the first link to my site she helped me to find even more links that were applicable to their vacation rental website. That process continued until my site eventually appeared on their blog leaderboard.

On February 4 I was alerted that Dwellable was expanding their listings from just a few featured areas to a cross-country engine. With the update they also were holding a contest to get as many blog posts linked to their site as possible. In the two days after the contest was announced, almost 300 blog posts were linked to their site, 31 of which were mine.

The contest ended this past Sunday and on Tuesday I was announced as the winner! During the week-long contest 49 links had added to my site, taking my total count to 79 links (though it is currently up to 83). As the winner I was treated to an interview about me, edpaffjr.com, and my favorite places to travel. The interview was published on their site yesterday. I didn’t choose the photos that they have used but find it funny that the spam image is what they choose to feature.

I haven’t used Dwellable for any travel planning yet, but I’m sure I will in the near future. Check them out.

Another family fun activity we did while in Columbus over the weekend was to visit COSI, the Center of Science and Industry. We arrived just after their 10 A.M. opening to find that we weren’t the only ones with the idea of getting there early. Fortunately the ticket line for non-members wasn’t bad and we were on our way in minutes.

We were split into two groups for the majority of our visit. My wife took our two-year-old through the Little Kidspace, where he could have easily spent the entire day, while I took my twelve-year-old brother-in-law through the rest of the exhibits. He really seemed to enjoy the Progess exhibit, where we traveled through time and interacted with technology from 1898 and 1962. He was especially amazed at how big the TV’s were. We also spent a good amount of time in the Life exhibit as well as the latest traveling exhibit, Mindbender Mansion & Amazing Mazes, where we had to solve puzzles and got lost in a giant maze.

We stayed through lunch at the Atomic Café, which was better than I expected it to be, before we all moved on to see the Ocean exhibit together. At this point our little one was getting crabby and was ready for his afternoon nap. We could have easily stayed until the 5 P.M. closing but I thought that we saw most of the exhibits during our roughly four-hour stay.

My family and I hadn’t traveled together for an overnight stay since our trip to San Francisco in September and we needed a quick getaway. So we made plans to spend a full day this past weekend in Columbus with an overnight stay at the Westin downtown (booked on Priceline.com). Among the stops on our trip was the Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark. Sure they have a onsite hotel that we could have stayed in, but after reading some nasty reviews of their accommodations, we decided to stay elsewhere. Besides, even after paying the $21.95 per person for waterpark entry after 4pm and just under $80 for the Westin, we were still saving money compared to the cheapest package I could find on the Fort Rapids website.

Due to our busy day, we didn’t actually get to Fort Rapids until around 7pm and with a 9pm closing time we didn’t have a ton of time. However, I felt that our two hours there was enough for our group. My wife took our two-year-old to the kiddie korral children’s activity area and the rascal roundup 40-foot interactive play structure. I took my twelve-year-old brother-in-law through the cowboy creek lazy river and onto all four of their water slides two times each. It seemed that most of the crowd really thinned out during the duration of our visit.

This was my first visit to one of these large scale indoor waterparks, so I don’t have much to compare it to in that regard. The water was definitely highly chlorinated and therefore seemed extremely clean. We did encounter one of the water slides in the rascal roundup was closed, but other than that all the attractions seemed to be well maintained. The air temperature is warm and the water is a nice cool temperature. We had a good time and wouldn’t hesitate to go back again when in the area on a cold winter day.

Happy New Year! Below is the list of cities that I visited in 2012 with at least one night spent in each place.

• Cincinnati, Ohio *
• Dayton, Ohio
• Denver, Colorado
• Steamboat, Colorado
• Frenchburg, Kentucky
• Miamisburg, Ohio
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Negril, Jamaica
• Jonesboro, Georgia
• Loveland, Ohio *
• Coraopolis, Pennsylvania
• Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
• Asheville, North Carolina
• Williamstown, Kentucky *
• Palo Alto, California
• San Francisco, California
• Louisville, Kentucky

Those cities marked with an asterisk were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

See also: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006