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Anniversary

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Mark and I celebrated our first anniversary in Tennessee. Our first day was spent in Gatlinburg, where we once again enjoyed visiting The Village. We picked up a Welsh tee for Mark and some Dragon tea (which replaces the Dragon tea that was inadvertently tossed out when we returned home last time). We grabbed a quick lunch at The Hofbrauhaus Restaurant and Cheese Cupboard, and snagged some Cotswold cheese to bring home. There are about four cheeses in the world that I like and Cotswold is at the top of the list. Unfortunately, we can’t buy it in our neck of the woods, so it’s always great to find it on one of our adventures. We spent the rest of the day shopping for whiskey and car decals. And whiskey again. Oh, and then we had pastries. Awesome!

The rest of our vacation included dinner at Smokey Mountain Brewery, dinner at The Roaming Gnome Pub, great days and eats at Dollywood, and some quality time with my family at The Island.

Our actual anniversary dinner, on July 4th, was at Margaritaville Pigeon Forge. With the intense heat wave that hit TN, it really felt like we were in Florida. The food was great (especially the grouper) and the company was the best.

Being married for one year makes me look forward to all the anniversaries to come and all the adventures along the way!

19,210 thoughts on “Anniversary”

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  17. How to survive a bear attack – or better yet, avoid one altogether
    Uniswap

    You’re out for a hike, reveling in glorious nature. Suddenly, you spot a bear. And the bear has spotted you, too. Would you know what to do next?

    Beth Pratt sure would.

    She was once on the Old Gardiner Road Trail in Yellowstone National Park, enjoying her run in wild nature. Her reverie came to an end when she came upon a grizzly bear eating flowers.

    “I stopped. It stood on its hind legs and looked at me. I knew that wasn’t a threatening gesture,” she told CNN Travel. “I’m not kidding, it waved its paw at me as if to say, ‘just go on your way,’ and went back to eating.”

    “And I walked slowly away and put some distance between us, and the encounter ended fine.”

    When it comes to dealing with bears, Pratt does have a thing or two on almost all the rest of us, though.

    She is the California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, a job she’s had for more than 10 years. She worked in Yellowstone for several years – and once saw nine grizzlies in one day there.
    Finally, she lives on the border of Yosemite National Park, and bears will pass through her yard, including this one seen in the footage above in late September 2021.

    You can hear the enthusiasm in Pratt’s voice as she shares her bear bona fides and advice to make sure bear/human encounters are delightful, not dangerous.

    “A wild bear is a beautiful sight to see. It’s incredible to see them in the wild. I never had a bad experience with bears. What I try to get people to feel is respect, not fear, for bears. The animal usually wants to avoid the encounters.”

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  20. They fell in love three decades ago. Now they pilot planes together
    Aave

    On their first flight together, Joel Atkinson and Shelley Atkinson couldn’t contain their excitement. They enthused to the flight attendants. They posed for photos. They told passengers via a pre-flight announcement.

    “We made a big deal about it,” Joel tells CNN Travel.

    Then, right before take off, Joel and Shelley sat side by side in the flight deck, just the two of them. They’d come full circle, and were about to embark on an exciting new chapter.

    “It felt amazing,” Shelley tells CNN Travel.

    “As we prepared to take off, I was giddy, euphoric,” says Joel.

    Joel and Shelley met as twentysomethings flying jets in the US Air Force. They became fast friends, then, over time, fell in love.

    Today, they’ve been married for 27 years and counting. They’ve brought up two kids together. And now they’re both pilots for Southwest Airlines. They regularly fly together, with Joel as captain and Shelley as first officer.

    The couple say working together is “amazing.” They treat layovers as “date nights.” They learn from one another’s respective “wisdom and judgment.”

    And no, they don’t argue mid-flight.

    “People ask us, how does it work, flying together?” says Joel. “We know a few pilot couples and some of them fly together, some of them don’t. I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh I could never fly with my wife or my husband.’”

    For Joel and Shelley, working together is seamless – a joy that comes easily to them both.

    “We’re best friends,” says Shelley.

    “There’s just that unspoken bond,” says Joel.

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  39. Bug-bitten oolong? The secret behind Taiwan’s rare honey-flavored tea — and where to enjoy it
    Ethena

    As the leaves rustle atop the hills in Nantou, Taiwan’s largest tea-producing area, the farm suddenly comes alive, millions of tiny green bugs hopping into the air.

    While many farmers might frown at the sight of these pests munching on their crops, Lee Ming-cheng, a third-generation tea farmer and maker, can’t hide the broad smile on his sun-kissed face.

    This “green insect fog,” as locals call it, is a sign they’ll have a good harvest of Gui Fei Oolong (also known as Honey Flavor Dong Ding Oolong or Concubine Oolong), a special tea that’s prized for offering a hint of honey flavor.

    And it’s these endemic insects, called Jacobiasca formosana, or tea jassids, that are to thank for it.

    When the jassids feed, the leaves go into defensive mode and produce a sweetened hormone that tastes and smells like honey, creating one of the world’s most intriguing teas: mixiang cha, or honey-fragrance tea.

    The bug-bitten leaves are oxidized and roasted to create a variety of beverages. There’s mixiang black tea (made with fully oxidized leaves) and oolong teas like Oriental Beauty (partially oxidized and not roasted) and the previously mentioned Concubine Tea (partially oxidized and roasted), to name a few.

    Unlike Taiwan’s ubiquitous bubble tea, mixiang tea is still highly limited and largely off-the-radar. But what was once a hidden gem among serious tea lovers is now starting to gain international attention.

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  42. He thought the guy he met on vacation was just a fling. He turned out to be the love of his life
    Pancakeswap
    Guillermo Barrantes relationship with Larry Mock was supposed to begin and end in Palm Springs.

    It was a “casual, brief encounter.” A vacation dalliance that only lasted half a day.

    “It was just so casual, so easily nothing could have happened from it,” Guillermo tells CNN Travel. “We could have walked away and just had our lives separate. But of course that didn’t happen, because it wasn’t meant to be that way. It was meant to be the way that it was. That it is.”

    It all started in summer 2013. Guillermo – then in his early 40s – was on vacation in the California resort city of Palm Springs. He was in a phase of life where, he says, he was prioritizing himself, and wasn’t interested in long term romance.

    “I thrived in being by myself, in traveling by myself, in having dinner by myself – I loved all of that so much,” says Guillermo, who lived in Boston, Massachusetts at the time.

    “I wanted no commitment, I wanted no emotional entanglement of any kind. I wanted to have fun, get to know myself. And it was in that mode that I met Larry, when I wasn’t really looking.”

    During the vacation in Palm Springs, Guillermo was staying at a friend’s apartment, and while the friend worked during the day, Guillermo passed his time at a “run-down, no-frills” resort a couple of blocks away.

    “You could just pay for a day pass, they’d give you a towel, and you could be in the pool and use their bar,” he recalls.

    One day, as he was walking the palm tree-lined streets to the resort, Guillermo swiped right on a guy on a dating app – Larry Mock, mid-40s, friendly smile. The two men exchanged a few messages back and forth. Larry said he was also on vacation in Palm Springs, staying in the resort Guillermo kept frequenting.

    They arranged to meet there for a drink by the pool. Guillermo was looking forward to meeting Larry, expecting “some casual fun.”

    Then, when Guillermo and Larry met, there was “chemistry” right away. Guillermo calls their connection “magnetic.”

    “My impression of Larry: sexy, handsome and warm,” he recalls.

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  43. ‘A short and significant relationship’: How a piano in a pickup builds connections
    Metamask

    Dozens of internationally renowned recording artists give concerts in Vegas every year, but the musician who connects best with people might be a local troubadour who improvises on a piano in the back of his pickup.

    The maestro, Danny Kean, calls his setup The Traveling Piano, and he has traversed North America sharing music for nearly 20 years.

    Kean’s home base is Las Vegas now, and every time he plays, he invites passersby to climb aboard the truck and tickle the ivory for themselves. Even if people are shy or say they can’t do it, Kean usually convinces them to give it a try, inspiring total strangers to express themselves through the common language of music.

    He estimates more than 100,000 people have played his piano since 2006.

    For most of these impromptu virtuosos, the experience is cathartic — many of them step down from the truck in tears. For Kean, 69, the encounters nourish his soul.

    “I enjoy sharing my music with others, but I enjoy having others share theirs with me just as much,” he said. “My goal is to connect with others by creating a short and significant relationship. Music is a great facilitator for that in every way and on every level.”

    Kean does not accept fees or tips for these musical awakenings, giving away time and energy for nothing in return. He practices philanthropy in other ways, too, providing food and other necessities for the burgeoning population of unhoused individuals in downtown Las Vegas and around the Las Vegas Valley.

    “I love the idea of strangers becoming less afraid of each other,” he said. “This love for humanity drives me to keep doing good.”

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