Julie Smith Travels

Day trip  November 18, 2021 One of my 50 before 50 Bucket list items was to fly somewhere for dinner (deep dish pizza). So, Mike’s 49 th Birthday was a great excuse to knock something off my list. It also helped that we had Southwest Rapid Rewards points so our flight was free. I booked us on the first flight out of New Orleans, which left at 5:30 AM. It was a close call with it being that early of a flight and our GPS accidently took us to the old MSY airport. Luckily, we didn’t have any luggage to check and made it through security quickly and got to the gate just as the flight was boarding. We arrived at Midway Chicago airport at 7:50 AM and quickly found the orange line station to take the “L” into the city. After my experience in NYC subways, I was a bit scared, but this was very simple system to get to the city. We bought tickets for a couple bucks and hopped on the train. When we left New Orleans, it was 75 degrees and Chicago was 35 degrees! A nice change… We got off th...

September 2020 I was originally supposed to be in Banff for my sister’s trip, but since the borders were closed due to COVID, I decided to take Mike with me to Lake Tahoe since it would be easy to social distance with all of the outdoor activities.  Since we decided to go the week of Labor Day, we planned to stay just north of Lake Tahoe the first couple nights since the beach would probably be more crowded with Labor Day beach goers. This was our first time flying since COVID and we weren’t sure what to expect. The New Orleans airport was empty, only a select few vendors were open. We had to wear a mask and no drinks were offered on the flight. We landed in Reno and picked up our rental car. The first stop was In-and-Out Burger. Neither of us have been so it was a “must-do.” The place had a drive thru line wrapped around the building. We went into order. They were busy, but luckily this place ran like a well-oiled machine. We enjoyed the food, then took the hour drive to Truckee a...