Nicole and I had a great time at Jazzfest. The first night I ended up on Frenchman at a small jazz bar called Blue Nile. New Orleans is a colorful and friendly town, at least in my experience. There was tons of beautiful art on Royal. The oysters and crawfish etouffe were off the chain good on Bourbon. I thought we had good oysters up here on the shore but I’m not quite so certain now. We saw a ton of bands over the 4 day event including Jimmy Buffet, Luke Combs, Billy Strings, Zac Brown, Shovels & Rope, and many more.

We did our first hike of the year this past weekend. Nicole, Tim, and Stavros, and I headed over to Manassas, VA Friday night and crashed at a hotel. In the morning, we had breakfast, and beat feet about 40 mins to the trailhead in north Shenandoah National Park. The weather was quite nice. We did the Mount Marshall overnight loop. It was Nicole’s first overnight backpack and she handled it all quite well. We are now buying her some new gear and I am excited to have finally met someone that shares many of the same interests.

It was cold on the mountain Sunday morning and we weren’t long having breakfast and breaking down camp. We filtered some water and headed towards the AT. It took us about 5 hours or so to make it back to the car. We when down the mountain and head straight for Pave Mint, a smokehouse/craft brew restaurant in Front Royal. After a late lunch we were back on the road heading home from another wonderful hiking weekend.

Day 6-9

We left Moon Palace Sunday morning with Veronica and Troy bound for Tulum. They dropped us off at our hotel and went on to their AirBNB. We really didn’t do much that night. Slipped out for dinner and drinks down the way and called it an early night. The next day we had breakfast and headed to the beach club for the day. Lucky me got sun poisoning . We met Veronica and Troy for dinner later. Tuesday, we got up and hit the Tulum ruins for somesighting and pictures. After our COVID tests we hit the road to Playa del Carmen for the afternoon. Fifth Avenue is just as I remembered it. Around 5pm we grabbed a taxi to Cirque du Soleil just north of PDC. We had an amazing 3 course dinner before the show and the show was like none other I’ve seen nor Tim has seen. Perfect way to wind up the trip.

Day 2 – 6

One Big Holiday 5 at Moon Palace in Cancun

I started to do a daily log here and that’s just not going to happen. There is just too much to describe and too little time. It was a rocking good time. I got to see my friends and make new friends. Every day after the first day our routine was basically sleep for 4-5 hours, get up and go to the pool for the day, then back to the room to get ready for the shows. Shows every night through to 2am. Lots of room service was ordered a 3am. OBH just never seems long enough.

We did a spa day on Friday. Perfect timing after the night 2 sets. A few good massages and we’re back in the game.

By the fourth night I had resolved that this was the best OBH I had ever attended. Ever since I was introduced to and started following MMJ my quality life has improved in nearly every way. I hope the fad continues frankly.

The adventure begins!

Day 1 – Tim and I arrived at the Westin by Dulles airport yesterday afternoon. The traffic was remarkably not bad for a Monday. The bar/restaurant was closed so we ordered Doordash from a local Italian place. The hoagies were pretty bangin’. We called a early night and arose this morning around 6am. Went down for a light breakfast, packed up, and called an Uber to the airport.

We breezed through security, found our gate, and found a bar next to it. Bar opened at 9 and we drank a few while we waited. They had Peroni which is an Italian beer that I like.

We boarded around 10am and got moving right away. Somebody brought a cat on the plane and that poor thing was meowing up a storm on takeoff. Three hours & 6-7 Bacardi and Cokes later we land in sunny Cancun. I organized a private transfer to the Westin Resort and Spa and they right there waiting for us. It was probably 20-30 mins to the hotel. We had an oceanfront studio room which was quite nice. After a couple brews we head down to the beach and run into a few folks that had just attended the Phish show at Moon Palace. Drank a few and talked for a while. Really nice folks. A while later we made our way to the spa for our scheduled massages then onwards to dinner after some quick showers. The food was phenomenal. We are calling it an early night as we are heading to Moon Palace tomorrow.