GPS frustrations

We have owned 2 Garmin GPS and it seems that we are unhappier with the second one, more than we were with the first one. Why? Well the most recent one a Garmin Nuvi 760, seems to take up to 5 minutes to find a satellite connection, even when you are outside with no tall buildings or trees around you and then sometimes takes you places you don't want to go...What do I mean?
Well despite having recently updated the maps (like a month ago - and that's another story - the update successfully brought my computer to its knees, and I had to do a full restore!) I was still lead through the parking lot of a shopping mall to a hotel (despite the shopping mall having been there for at least 10 years.) Then last week in Florida we are on the turnpike with supposedly about 50 miles before our exit, when suddenly I am told to "take ramp on right" and so being a good follower, do as I am told, once on the new expressway I am told to go 3 miles and then "take ramp on right" and in effect do a U turn and go back to the turnpike I was on before .its moments like this that almost cause us to throw the device out the window.
So today we decided to go to Fry's and look at a new GPS, we decided to change brands and selected a Tom Tom with USA and Europe Maps included (handy for future travels) After purchasing it we went out to the car, unpacked it and decided to set it for the nearest Starbucks, before heading home. Well for some mysterious reason it was set on Polish as the base language and no matter what we did it remained with Polish on all the buttons and labels, we were able to change the spoken commands to English, but not the icons. Now the problem with Polish is that it was not even easy to guess what the labels said...so after about 15 minutes of pushing and entering all variations we could think of, we took it back into the store and asked for "expert help" - the bad news was that 1/2 hour later nobody could change it to English, so we asked for and got a full refund. So we will apparently keep on trying to get from A to B, with a minimum of errors with our Nuvi.

More Road Signs

Seen on someone's travels (but not mine) I got a laugh out of them and so thought I would share...


And I guess the folks in Vancouver BC are a bit confused about what a deer looks like!

Florida

Having spent 2 days at the dog shows in Portland we flew to Tampa on Saturday as we were both judging on the final day of the 10 day Florida circuit. An early start, through Denver and then on to Tampa and collected the rental car and drove north to Brooksville, where the cluster is held. This group of clubs have purchased their own grounds (and actually had a mortgage burning ceremony the previous day!) The grounds are huge and filled with motor homes and have all sorts of amenities including an ATM. The judges were spoilt with excellent meals, cooked to order breakfasts and lovely tasty lunches, all provided in a tent with artificial grass underfoot and heaters, should they be needed. Fortunately the fact I had taken my raincoat, meant that the weather was lovely and got up to about 65 - there were a couple of sprinkles of rain, but they quickly passed. The quality of the dogs was good and there were not many absentees, either.
On Sunday night we drove to Orlando, as we were planning to spend the day at Disney World, but when we got up on Monday it was rainy and overcast, so we decided to have a lazy day and cruise the outlet malls.Then in the late afternoon we decided to go to Celebration - which is a planned community (built by none other than the Disney corporation in the 1990's) and have a look and have dinner there. It was a very nice area with lots of amenities around a central lake.
On Tuesday we drove around the area and then it was back to Tampa, so we were close to the airport for an early flight out Wednesday morning. We decided to go for a drive to a restaurant, west of Tampa on the Intracoastal waterway - and we chose the Salt Rock Grill and had a great meal of Stone Crab Claws
I followed mine with Grouper and David had Tuna - delicious - we love our seafood! Today was a long day, with lots of airline food...

Last weekend was good!

We left home on Friday and it was pouring rain, but by the time we had driven to Puyallup Fairgrounds the rain had eased and there was a hint of blue in the sky. We checked into the really bad motel close to the show site (its the last time we will stay here) then went over to the grounds to exercise and feed the dogs. We had 3 dogs were were showing - Thomas, his son Erik (at his first shows) and Susan (Thomas' sister)
On Friday night, our friends from Canada - Jenn and Jan joined us for Dinner at Olive Garden and we had a great time catching up on all the news.
Saturday we were spoilt with afternoon judging, which was really nice. Jenn showed Erik for me and he performed well and won his class.

Erik moving

Susan was WB, but as she needed a major (and the major was in boys) today was not her day to finish. That night we went to a local Italian restaurant and we had a party of 8 - Janet and Jo joined us (they are photographers supreme and took wonderful pictures of the show and the dogs)

Susan's win picture

Sunday we had early judging and this was Susan's day - she is now a Champion -Yeah...she can return to Denmark in glory, later this year.
We had a Monday show - Thomas won the breed and Erik was Reserve Winners dog. So overall a great weekend with superb company.
We have a few shows in Portland this weekend, just Thomas is entered. Then we are off to Florida - Disney, here we come....

Weekend in Palm Springs

We left Portland under cloudy skies and arrived in Palm Springs to sunny skies and it was the start of a weekend of perfect weather. This is a shot of our hotel - The Embassy Suites in Palm Desert, from our room at dusk on Thursday night. The Hotel has a wonderful Happy Hour (or 2, actually) each night, which is great for socializing and enjoying the company of friends. We found a new Italian restaurant, just near the hotel had a great meal before turning in early, as we had 8am judging.
Friday we had a hound show and we just showed a puppy and despite some challenging behavior from him he won the points - it was a humbling experience - not all Beagles are well behaved, but I have seldom had one who has been quite as out of control as he was - he was happy though! That night we met up with some local friends Jim & Betty, who have one of our beagles and we were taken to their local Mexican restaurant. Very good Margarita's. Saturday was another early start, but the puppy did not win this day or Sunday - oh well - one of 3 was good.
We decided to go on a tour of the San Andreas fault and the Joshua Tree National Park on Saturday afternoon - the tour was in a Hummer - a new experience - and perhaps in retrospect not a wise decision - as it was open air and very windy and by the end of the afternoon, very chilly. The driver was very knowledgeable and told us a lot about the area we were going to. Some of the things we saw were interesting and some were a bit exaggerated! The literature indicated we were going to the San Andreas fault and would walk across a bridge over the fault.- Well the bridge was some wooden planks over some water oozing up from the Oasis and as the fault was a mile wide at that point, it was a bridge to nowhere.... just from one dry spot to another (not quite what I had envisioned)

Then the Hummer took us (7 on the tour) up an old Gold Mining trail into the Joshua Tree National park - it did give you an appreciation for the difficult terrain that a Hummer can navigate - but did we need to do it for 2 hours...with only minimally changing scenery - and zero padding on most of the seats - probably not! However I did get some good photos - see below

We flew home on Monday and its back to the rain! But Thursday and Friday should be dry, before what promises to be a wet weekend of dog shows.