Vacation Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Block Island on the Cheap

September 4, 2020 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

As you know, in 2020, vacations are rare birds. In Rhode Island we live in the smallest state, it can be a little cramped here. For a long time, we haven’t been able to go to another state without having to quarantine for two weeks. On the positive side, the system has been working for the most part.

As lucky we are to have a vacation, it’s hard to balance that it’s simply going to be a different type of vacation.

We had plans to go to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, but when that wasn’t in the cards, we went to Plan B – Block Island. It’s still in Rhode Island, so we don’t have to quarantine, and but it is far enough from everyday life and chores.

My wife has spent the summer on a Facebook group about the hundreds of glass orbs that are hidden on the island. Of course just a few days before we go, The New Times has to publish an article about the orb hunting. At least I scooped them by writing about the glass orb hunting in early July

We’ve been to Block Island many times. While we don’t always look for glass orbs, we usually do. We haven’t found any, but we were hopeful that with the focus on it this time, we’d come away with an orb.

Did we find one? Before I get to that answer, let’s get to the personal finance aspect of the trip.

My wife has renewed frugality these days. Work hasn’t been the greatest this summer and early retirement in a couple of years looks good to her. Part of the retirement plan is saving up a nest egg. It had been going really well with COVID because our spending has been a lot less. I think that’s encouraged her to see what’s possible.

With that in mind, we wanted to go as cheaply as we could. That’s a bit of a problem because Block Island hotels in the prime time of summer are extremely expensive. Many of them were built in the 1600s. The rooms are typically very small, so we need a suite to fit two adults and kids. Our favorite place is usually $250 a night while school is still in session in early June. We’re able to get a discount because we have stayed there multiple times and book a few days at a time. We never book over the weekend when the price jumps up a lot.

This time, we couldn’t manage all the cost savings. Our trip is shorter and it’s prime summer, not the shoulder season. Prices were above $500 a night, so we went with a cheaper place. We didn’t think it would matter much because we would be out hunting orbs for a day and a half. We were wrong.

The Old Bakery Inn Review

We got a big place that was dog-friendly. For just under $390, that sounds like a lot, but it’s about the cheapest place of its kind available. We wanted the dog-friendly place because that’s an additional savings of around $40 a night of dog sitting. Also, the dog loves the nature and the kids thought they might be able to train him to sniff out the glass orbs.

That was the good part of the Old Bakery Inn. Unfortunately, the bad was kind of tough. The building itself was built in the 1600s, so I am grading on a curve. I don’t mind that the stairs are all twisted with centuries of a moving foundation.

However, the bathroom was a converted kitchen. Thus the place was both for us. This is important because we had a plan to cook our meals. Eating out at Block Island is very expensive. All the food has to be brought in by ferry. There’s no fast food or a value menu to be found. There are a couple of places that may have a slice of pizza that is cheap. I have to look into that next time, but we are rarely in the mood for pizza after a hot summer day at the beach.

Getting back to the cooking plan, my wife was itching to use her Instant Pot skills (read her Instant Pot Review). She’s been following a Facebook Group all summer where people seem to make only two things – cheesecake and Mississippi meatloaf. I think they probably make more in this group, but those are the only two things my selective hearing has registered. (Do I score points for honest?) The Old Bakery Inn’s bathroom/kitchen had only a small fridge. There were bowls, plates, silverware, or even a small microwave to reheat leftovers. There were 3 of the plastic disposable cups, not enough for the 4 of us. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to add a few of these cheap things. The other place we stay has all this and a big fridge and a stove – and the bathroom is separated from the kitchen.

Additionally, The Old Bakery Inn had no wifi. I don’t think I’ve been to a hotel that hasn’t had wifi in more than a decade. I had my mobile hot spot, but my data plan was quickly at the end of the 8GB before it gets sent to a crawl until the end of the month. I have to type this review up in Notepad and edit it with links later.

There was also no coffee maker. What kind of hotel/inn doesn’t have a coffee source? I’m not a coffee person, but my wife is. Fortunately, she brought a cold press cup of some sort and was able to make her own. I had suggested that we bring iced coffee with us, but my wife wanted to try this. (This is an old Aruba travel trick we’ve used in the past. There was no Dunkin’ Donuts in California where we lived, but then went on vacation to Aruba there was one. It was a long walk, so we’d get enough iced coffee to last for a few days.)

There are actually two televisions, so the kids could watch a Phineas and Ferb marathon, while the adults can watch something else. That was a very good feature. We weren’t out hunting orbs as much as I thought we’d be, so it became necessary. Ironically, the kids had been watching all the Phineas and Ferb episodes anyway since there aren’t too many Disney+ cartoon shows.

We ended up doing fairly well in saving money on food. We brought our own beer and drinks (Diet Coke, flavored squishes like Mio). We brought our own milk for cereal. We brought a couple of reusable “Dixie-Cup” material bowls, which was perfect for the dog to eat and drink (and the kids’ cereal). As we were running out the door, I switched out the cooler to an old Brookstone picnic one I had gotten in college. It comes with its own plates, cups, and flatware. It served us well.

My wife packed a bunch of dry goods like chips, pretzels, nuts, etc. She also packed some cheese, butter, some pasta, 1.5 pounds of ground beef, and Kraft Mac and Cheese. This was enough to make dinner for the kids with the InstantPot. We had simple peanut butter and deli meats for sandwiches on the trail. We didn’t need to eat a single meal out, but we ended up eating a couple of them out anyway.

The first meal was when we first arrived. We didn’t have access to our room yet and we didn’t have a place to settle down for lunch. We went to a Mexican place, Calavaras, which has been a highlight in the past. Unfortunately, this time they mixed up my wife’s and my burritos. They wrote shrimp on the one that was pork. So she started to eat that one and I started to eat the other. It’s a very good thing I didn’t have a shellfish allergy. However, between the ferry ride and the shrimp, my stomach wouldn’t be good for hours.

I felt like complaining about spending $50 for the burritos (and the nachos for the kids) only to get a mixed-up order, but everyone is having a tough 2020 and it wasn’t going to make the situation any better.

The next restaurant visit was for drinks and a brownie sundae. The kids simply needed a break from orb hunting. My wife and I had one adult drink and the kids had juice. That ended up costing us $45. I’m tempted to go spend $45 at Burger King and take a picture of what it would look like. For kids would have preferred all that Burger King (spread over a week), but that’s simply not in the cards at Block Island.

We could go to the single grocery store on the island, but that’s expensive too. Maybe I’ll do a cost comparison sometime. For now, if we can bring most of our food, it’s better to avoid it completely.

Glass Float Hunting

It may sound fun to take a 6 and 7-year-old on a treasure hunt. It is fun. However, their legs got tired in the hot sun. Sometimes I got tired myself. Other times our 11-year old dog got tired. Because my wife is super-human, she never got tired.

I think we were out hunting for orbs for around 16 hours over the 3 days and 2 nights. What did we find?

Nothing. We found a lot of places where hundreds of orbs out there could be hidden, but no orbs themselves.

This was incredibly frustrating for the kids because they had just assumed that we’d find an orb. Although we tried, we couldn’t limit their expectations. At one point we walked about a half-mile to a lighthouse (you couldn’t drive there) that we received a tip on. It was a tough walk on squishy beach sand or slippery rocks if you went to the ocean. Doing all that work for “nothing” was the last straw for my 7-year-old. That’s really when everything started to unravel… and understandably so.

That’s when we settled on the before-mentioned brownie sundae. Sometimes life doesn’t work out how you want, but you pick yourself up and continue on. Next year, they’ll be a year older and more prepared to search longer and better.

I don’t like to an article on a negative note. We ended up recharging our batteries well. We came back home energized to get back to our day-to-day lives.

What it’s Like to go on Vacation During Coronavirus

July 2, 2020 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

kids smores — Our annual s’mores dessert.

Today’s article is brief… expect a couple of longer ones next week and in the future as the kids go to camp (if camps still happen as planned)

So like everything in 2020, this is going to be a weird article to write. It’s especially odd because coronavirus cases are spiking across the country… except for two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island which are declining. We’re lucky enough to live in Rhode Island. We never got a big spike in our area and now things are on the decline.

I still don’t see nearly enough people wearing masks, but what’s in place is working as well as… what’s working in many European countries when you see the charts.

It’s so strange here, that we did something that few Americans can think about – go on vacation. Last week, we went on our annual trip to Block Island – a small island ~15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. It’s only accessible by ferry and has a tiny population of ~1000 people. It’s where (allegedly) Billy Joel and Christopher Walken sneak off to if they want to get away from the celebrity life for a bit.

Block Island hasn’t a coronavirus case yet. (Now that I think about it, their “hospital” isn’t really much and I can’t imagine they do testing.)

In a role reversal, the bed and breakfast that we stay called us up and asked if we wanted to come this year. Their usual clients from out of state, couldn’t come as a practical matter, because of the state’s 14-day self-quarantine mandate.

So we did what the 30-year old song said to do:

“Sail away on the Block Island Ferry, leave all your troubles behind… take a trip back to carefree times.”

For the most part, it lived up to its promise.

Our Own Block Island Gotchas

This section is likely to go over like a lead balloon. After all, we’re already in the win column by having any kind of vacation at all.

It seems we weren’t the only people looking to take this trip. While we were able to book the hotel easily enough, the ferry itself wasn’t taking reservations for awhile. When they finally started, car reservations were filled up for the first day except for the last one at 7 PM. That would be a loss of a whole day of vacation. That’s significant when you are only staying 3 nights/4 days.

We decided to park the car and go across ourselves in the morning. I took the ferry back at 2 PM to pick up the car and bring that across to the island. I was originally disappointed by this run-around, but it’s the first 6 hours I had without the wife and kids in about 4 months. I was only disappointed that when I got back, everyone (especially my wife) was ready for sleep. I can’t blame her with two kids and the dog.

Before our trip, we got the news that my wife’s friend’s father had died. The funeral was the morning of the last day of our trip. We had planned to stay the full day, but we were able to change our ferry time and leave in the morning. (Few people leave the Block Island first thing in the morning – the ferry was almost empty.)

A four-day vacation turned into about a two day one. That’s still 2 more days than most people have during these times, but it was disappointing nonetheless.

The Block Island Vacation Itself

There isn’t a lot to do on Block Island. That’s kind of the point. There are outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, and beaching. There are some nice tiny boutique shops. Finally, there are the restaurants. The outdoor activities are exactly the same during coronavirus – except that you bring your mask with you just in case. There aren’t many people around, so there’s not a big need to use it.

We usually go hiking and hunting for glass orbs. There’s a deal with the tourism industry on the island and a local glassmaker to hide around 500 of these on the island every year. They are extremely hard to find, and we haven’t found one in 4 years now. This year they weren’t hiding them until late July. Instead of hiking, we brought an inflatable kayak and took that out for a little while.

We didn’t get to do any boutique shopping. I’m not a big fan, but sometimes there’s something in the 75% bin that’s a good deal. The biggest reason why we didn’t get to do any is that our 6 and 7-year-old kids wouldn’t allow it without ruining the whole vacation. There’s simply nothing fun for kids in boutiques. If we had a longer vacation, we could have split up, but it didn’t work out that way.

The restaurants are very different during coronavirus of course. They were just starting to open up distanced indoor dining when our trip started. It didn’t seem like any restaurant operated the same way. A few took temperatures. Some took our name and phone number. Some had menus. Some asked us to take a picture of a menu with our phone and use that to order from. However, once again, many people don’t have an option to eat at a restaurant.

At the end of the day, the best thing about Block Island is simply unplugging from day-to-day life. It’s nice to not have to worry about a to-do list that never gets done or laundry, dishes, cooking, etc.

If we wanted to be more frugal about the planning perhaps we would have come back the evening before and saved the last night at the hotel. That would have saved us a couple of hundred dollars. However, we would had spent a lot of the last evening cleaning and packing for our trip, which would have cut down on our vacation further.

Our Frugal New York City Vacation

February 25, 2019 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

The words frugal and New York City are seldom seen together. It’s probably one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Nonetheless, we wanted to take the kids to see the big apple. Driving from Rhode Island, it was a little more than 3 hours away.

(Note: I originally had “staycation” in the title. I’m not sure if driving 3 hours and staying overnight at a hotel qualifies though? Are their “staycation” guidelines?)

The drive was a bit of a long drive for the kids, but with tablets, it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t do the best job of loading up the two tablets with movies. I might have to consider buying another Amazon Fire 10 to replace my old Nexus 7. It’s much easier to get movies on it.

As with most vacations, the biggest expenses are travel and hotel. That was no different for us. It’s very hard to limit these, but we did save a few dollars over some other options:

Travel – If it was just one of us traveling a train may have made sense. With the four of us, train tickets get expensive. We opted to drive and park at the hotel. It was $60 for the night, which comes to about $20 per person when you add in gas. Back in college people would take the Fung Wah bus from Boston to New York for around $10, but I think it had about a 70% crash rate. I don’t think it’s still around, but it isn’t worth it anyway.
Hotel – This is going to be cheating a bit, but hear me out. My wife was able to get a government rate or deal by being a Marriott ranking member. However, the deal wasn’t a big savings. There were other hotel options for a similar price that maybe had a little less luxury or a slightly worse location. The biggest factor in getting a cheap price was that it was the middle of February. We lucked out and got great weather most of the time.
Unfortunately, in our search for a dog friendly hotel, we didn’t realize that Marriott charges a $100 per stay pet fee. My wife said that when she was booking this was a hidden fee a few clicks away from the information that the hotel was pet-friendly. We were only staying one night, so this was a tremendous surcharge. Next time we’ll go with a Hilton that I think charges only $50. We might even be able to do better than that.

The big draw for us to go to New York City was the Pokemon store. My kids are completely obsessed with everything Pokemon. I’d tell you how many episodes they’ve watched, but it’s embarrassing. Did you know there are almost twice as many Pokemon episodes than Simpson’s episodes? There’s a reason why it is the the highest grossing media franchise. It’s just a little shy of being as big as Star Wars and Harry Potter combined.

There’s one lie in the previous paragraph… there’s no such thing as Pokemon store in New York City. It’s a Nintendo store with a section devoted to Pokemon. However, I believe it is the only Pokemon Center outside of Japan. The trip to Japan from Rhode Island isn’t something we are entertaining any time soon.

I wouldn’t have known there was a “Pokemon store” in NYC if my wife hadn’t stumbled upon it a last fall on one of her Broadway tours. She came back and reported that it was nearly a whole floor of Pokemon stuff.

Sadly, on our trip the Pokemon stuff had been reduced to around 20′ x 20′ area. They didn’t have any of the popular Pokemon… not even a stuffed Pikachu. It took awhile, but eventually the kids warmed up to a couple of the options that they had. I’ll have to get my Magikarp some other time. Overall they were happy at a cost of around $30 or so.

Next we went to FAO Schwarz. (Yes, it’s back in business.) The kids had a ton of fun in exploring all the stuff there. We spent hours there and they ended up only wanting to buy a couple of Kinder eggs for a few dollars. Compare that to Trolls’ Experience which was $30 a person for an hour show. We avoided that one.

Another frugal win was Dylan’s Candy Bar. Three floors of candy is fun for any kid. While it might not strike people as frugal, it worked out relatively well for us. It was a slow evening so they took us in the cafe without reservations. Fortunately they were still having happy hour, which meant cheap appetizers and drinks. I hear it’s not uncommon to pay $15-$20 for a glass of wine in NYC.

Our sour patch drinks (drinks with candy!) were $6 each. The kids mostly eat appetizers like mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders so it worked out. It was also helpful that we found that there were a lot of dollar a slice pizza places. The slices are quite big and four slices were enough for a late lunch for our family. Filling up on all that was key to avoiding the big ticket items at Dylan’s. The price of food and drinks at Dylan’s was $50. Factoring the pizza and lunch and dinner was under $60.

We also stopped at the Lego store, but it was a disappointment as well. Some of the things that their artists built were amazing, but it was small and not really that much to do other than look at the few big things and buy Lego sets.

The next morning my wife went to get some bagels to bring back to the hotel for breakfast. When in New York, you have to get some bagels. Unfortunately, they were surprisingly expensive. I think my wife said it came to around $20 for bagels and cream cheese. She said that next time it would have been cheaper to just get the cream cheese at the grocery store on the corner. One the bright side, the kids loved them and they were big enough for two meals.

Throughout the stay, we filled in some of the other time with Pokemon Go. I’ve become quite attached to the game (I’m 2-3 years behind everyone else), especially since it’s something the kids share in. Pokemon Go is, of course, free and all the famous places in NYC means that there’s tons of stuff to do in the game no matter where you are.

Next time we go to New York City, we’ll try to stay longer. I regret not having the time to coordinate a visit with a college friend. We’ll also bring the kids to museums, botanical gardens, and things like that. If there are any New Yorkers reading this who has tips for kids age 6, please drop me a comment.

Despite the efforts to save money, we probably still spent close to $500 (especially with the dog hotel charge) for the day. I understand it’s hard to call that frugal, but it could have doubled if we decided to splurge at one of my wife’s favorite restaurants (Mastro’s) and did the Troll’s Experience. Frugal in New York City is definitely a relative concept.

Do you have any tips for frugal activities in New York City? Let me know below. (You’ll earn 3,278 bonus points if they are friendly for kids in the 5-8 age range).

Travel for Free by Hacking Your Taxes?

September 18, 2018 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

Many personal finance bloggers love to write about travel hacking with credit cards. As you can tell by that link, I’m one of those bloggers who have written about it in the past.

Last year, we had a lot of expenses in renovating some investment condos. It required us to put up a significant amount of money into the projects. It’s money we had in our various emergency funds. My wife and I applied for quite a few credit cards that had bonuses for spending a minimum amount. Most of them earned us the equivalent of $500 in travel if we spent $3000. That’s the equivalent of getting more than 16% back as long as you use the points.

Back then, I would keep track of what all our points/miles and worth. It was around $6,000 which is pretty exciting! It wasn’t all from the credit cards. Some of it was from saving up Marriott points for years at our timeshare. Some of it was from my wife’s work travel.

We used some of them late last year and will use some more this year. We’re saving up a large portion for a potential return to Australia. Hopefully our trip won’t collapse the United States’ Financial system like it did 10 years ago.

You’ll notice that this article has been about my travel hacking last year. Why? We haven’t been able to do it much this year. Many of our expenses aren’t ones that we can pay with a credit card. Our mortgage can’t be paid with one. The kids’ school can’t be paid with one. We don’t pay for electricity due to our solar panels. I like to reduce our expenses on all the other stuff, so there’s often no guarantee that we’ll get to the minimum spending necessary to earn the rewards.

Then I read an article from Joe of Retire by 40. He’s hustling for free travel using credit cards. I’ve been following Joe’s blog for a long time and we have a lot of financial similarities. One of the differences is that he’s paying estimated taxes on his blog earnings. We don’t pay estimated taxes. I’m an employee of my blogs S-Corp (and have taxes taken out as part of payroll). My wife also chooses to withhold a little more money on her day job.

It turns out that you can pay taxes with a credit card. The processing fees vary, but it looks like it can be as low as 1.87%. (Why would anyone choose the other options to pay more?) If you had to pay $10,000 in taxes that’s $187 in fees. At first it sounds like a raw deal.

However, if you are putting it on three credit cards that have $3000 minimum spending, it could earn $1500 back in travel points depending on the credit cards. Would you pay $187 for $1500 in travel rewards? Of course, right? If you are going to travel anyway, that’s $1300 in free money.

I have to admit that I really haven’t looked at changing our withholdings. It’s been nearly a couple of decades since I even thought about how it works. I usually like, “Set it and forget it.” It fits with my whole Lazy Man brand. However, I’m willing to change my ways if it means an extra thousand or two a year in free travel.

I have to admit that I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. (That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been written about before as it is pretty close to Retire By 40’s plan.) Maybe there’s a gotcha that I’m not seeing?

So to recap, here’s the plan to hack free travel with credit cards and taxes:

Increase ~~withholding~~ allowances so less tax is taken out of your paycheck. (Needed a correction there.)
Get a credit card that offers a $500 reward for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. (That’s an example. I’ve seen a lot of these around.)
Use the credit card to send a tax payment to reach the minimum.
Pay off your credit card from the money that wasn’t taken out of your paycheck in step 1.
Repeat steps 1-4 quarterly or as often as you can depending on how much tax you need to pay.
Enjoy your reward bonuses (minus a little in fees for using a credit card) of travel.

What do you think? Does it work?

We Disappeared on an Tiny Island (Summer Hole 2018)

June 19, 2018 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

I hope all the fathers out there reading this had a good Father’s Day this weekend. It’s hard not look at the news headlines and realize that not all fathers had a good day.

We just finished up the two week period between the end of school and the start of summer camp. I call this the “summer hole” because my wife and I are kid care for two full weeks. (Summer hole is a particularly bad name since it isn’t summer and hole sounds bad. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything better.)

Last year was our first year at our school and it caught us by surprise. The school didn’t really announce, “We end everything two weeks before the other schools, good luck with summer camp that doesn’t begin until then.” My wife didn’t plan to take vacation until late and we weren’t prepared. This year things went smoothly, but we saw parents of children in my youngest’s class (their first time) get surprised too.

The first week started with graduation and school-organized play-dates for the kids. You can laugh about the accomplishment of graduating pre-school, but it is certainly cute and entertaining for parents. We did some local things for a day or two and then it was time for my 20th college reunion followed by our annual trip to Block Island.

College Reunion 2018

There’s a reason why everyone says that time flies and 20th reunions are one of them. I wasn’t a huge fan of my college, but it is hard to argue with free tuition at one of the best liberal arts educations in the country. I did make a great group of friends and it was a good opportunity to catch up with them as our lives have moved in different directions.

The big theme of the party, at least for men was, less hair and bigger bellies. I wasn’t an exception to that. We were all reminded of what we looked like 20 years ago so that others could recognize us.

My wife felt like the school really went all out, which I agreed with. My kids, age 4 and 5, were somewhat excited about the new place, but bored easily.

As my wife says, reunions are odd. If you wanted to keep in touch with people, you probably would. Most of the people I’d want to get back in touch with live across the country and didn’t show up. Even if they did, it’s hard to re-kindle a friendship over such a distance with families moving in different directions.

I wish I had a more personal finance angle to share about this. We stayed only 24 hours because my wife was hosting some out of town coworkers in Rhode Island. That was minor pit stop before…

Block Island 2018

If you’ve never heard of Block Island, you are a normal person. There’s a better chance that you’ve heard of Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. Those islands are known for being popular vacation escapes off the coast of Massachusetts. You aren’t allowed onto those island unless you have a belt that has at least two of the following nautical symbols: anchor, whale, sailboat, ship wheel (helm?), lighthouse, sea star (starfish), or crab. Also, it seems like white pants and pastels are part of the dress code.

Block Island is a lot like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, but much smaller. I described it a bit in last year’s Block Island review, but here’s a short explanation: Block Island consists mostly of the city with the fewest people (~1000) in the smallest state (Rhode Island). The island has one grocery store, one bank, and one gas station… and at least 15 beaches and hiking trails.

For us, it has a few advantages:

It’s close to us. We can get to ferry in about 30 minutes.
It’s a relatively frugal vacation. Plane tickets for our family of four almost always come in around $1000-$1500. Instead, we can bring our car and all of us on the ferry for under $100.
We are away form the “dishes.” We can be fully on vacation with no chores and away email messages that say, “We’re on an island with very slow Internet connection. We’ll get back to you in a few weeks.” That’s one reason why we leave one island vacation land to go to another island vacation land.
It’s more mindful travel… I think.
We can bring the dog. It’s become quite clear to me that dogs and planes don’t mix due to airline policies. Having someone sit the dog can be about $200 for 5 days in my area. (I know, I do a lot of dog sitting myself.)

This year we stayed at Darius Inn. That means we avoided the unsuitable, historical hotel with tiny rooms and little electricity from last year. We went from my worst hotel experience to my best. Darius Inn is like a bed and breakfast. The inn keeper made an awesome (if a little bit hippy on the quinoa and nuts) breakfast every morning. There were daily wine and cheese happy hours.

I’ve never been treated so well staying away from home, which actually made me feel guilty. I’m not use to receiving such generous service.

In addition to saving money with the breakfast that was provided, we brought a lot of our own food. With the kitchenette available and the ability to pack a whole car, there was no reason not it. It’s a good savings, because buying from the grocery is extremely expensive (everything is shipped on ferry, so there’s extra cost to that.) The restaurant costs go up from there.

Here’s a little bit of what we did:

Took the kids and dog to the Block Island Labyrinth:

This is a favorite spot of ours. You are supposed to walk around a circular maze/path while you meditate. The kids wanted to run through it. It’s a different type of experience. Even our dog, Jake loved it. He’s like a giant dog on Easter Island:

We also searched for glass float globes. An artist comes to the island to hide 550 glass float globes every year. Find one and you get to keep. Seems like it would be easy, but he makes a few trips over the summer releasing about 75 at a time. There are quite a few people who are obsessed with the treasure hunt.

We thought our kids would love it, but it turned out to be too much walking. I thought for sure there would be a glass float in here:

The weather was rainy for half of our stay, so we spent a little time at the local library. It was literally next door to us at the Darius Inn.

Libraries are doing lots of innovative things nowadays. One day they had a walking book tour. The kids loved walking around reading the book through the various signs.

Unfortunately, my wife got news that she didn’t get the promotion she was hoping for while we were at the library. I didn’t have a magic wand to wave and make things better, but I did find this:

I took an “I’m proud of you!” for my wife and a “Be the change” for the oldest. My youngest got one similar to the “You are loved.”

They library also had a cool honor system program to clean up the island:

There’s some recognizable books in there, right? We booked it forward with a couple of children’s books that caught the kids’ eyes. And yes we picked up some trash, though we had already cleared out quite a bit on our nature walks.

Finally, we got ourselves one really nice beach day:

Then it was time for home.

Father’s Day (or The $11 Milk Shake)

I was going to write a little bit more about Father’s Day, but my dog is getting impatient for a walk and I have a dentist appointment soon.

Quickly, I can tell you that I am now equipped to properly go to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. My wife found the perfect belt on Poshmark.*

After a Father’s Day lunch (me and my wife’s father were the guests of honor), we went on a walk to get some ice cream. I found a BOGO Father’s Day deal at Ben and Jerry’s which I shared with the kids. My wife wanted to try the fancy new milkshake place in town. The drinks look more like Edible Arrangements than a milkshake.

Unfortunately, I had to leave as my meter expired, but I heard later that it was an $11 milkshake. Looks like a lot has changed in the 20 years since I graduated college. Remember when a $5 milkshake was expensive? (Caution, adult language language:)

Question, it’s still okay to reference Harvey Weinstein movies, right?

This brings you up to date on everything over the last two weeks… with the exception of the two days it took to write and publish this.

* This conversation involved my wife trying to explain Poshmark to her sister with an instant classic, “It’s like Tinder for clothes…” Ummm, honey, is there something you aren’t telling me?