I think all of us that missed this year’s Post Party and Recognition Event missed a pretty nice evening. Check out the event details towards the end of this Skiddoo. I think your board has our work cut out for us to live up to the standards set by this year’s Party Committee. So, thank you Lois and Brenda for pulling this event together and making it the nice evening that it was. In addition, this was Lois’ last year on the board so I think we all need to say a huge thank you for all you have done these last two years. While at the same time, I want to welcome our newest board member Todd Eadie.
So, what does everyone think of my new sunglasses? Janet and I splurged and spent a whole $4 to get each of us a pair of the solar eclipse glasses so we could enjoy some of the sun’s warmth while watching the partial solar eclipse. Whether you watched the eclipse or not, I hope everyone has at least gotten outside enjoy some of those exceptionally warm April days.
Now with Post Party behind us, and most of the coming summer and fall activities and trips already planned, your board is now back to work on planning our events, activities, and trips for the coming 2024/2025 club year. I don’t want to imply that we are done adding to this year’s activities list as our newest board member Todd Eadie is already coming up with new ideas, but I do want to talk a little about our trips for next year.
Thanks to Steve, we do have one really nice winter ski and fun trip planned. Check out the Whitefish, Montana trip in this Skiddoo for the first week in February 2025. I wish I could say where we are going for next year’s non-ski adventure trips but that has turned out to be a lot more difficult to figure out. I will continue to take the lead in planning our non-ski trips but it takes all your board and all of you to help plan where we go. Our motor coach trips have all been fun and good value trips, so a coach trip is on our list for at least one of our trips. A couple places we are looking at is a southern plantation New Orleans trip and a modified itinerary west trip from what we proposed last year that would be a little less bus time with a focus on Yellowstone and the Grand Teton’s. From all our surveys from both this year and last year, we had a lot of interest in something different too for a second trip. A Canadian Rockies by Rail trip was on many interest lists, but that kind of trip has really gone up in costs. We would be looking at $6,000 to $7,000 for an 11or 12-day trip and the same for a New England States and Nova Scotia trip. I think that is just getting too high to get enough of our members to go. I did run across a totally different trip idea and that would be on a large sailing ship through parts of the Caribbean. That would be about half the cost in the $3,500 range. If that peaks anyone’s interest, check out windstarcruises.com. These are much larger sailing ships than the Angelique some of us did a few years back off the coast of Maine. So, to all my rambling, I hope you can tell we still need your input as to where your club goes.
Before I wrap up my message for this month, I want to mention that the trip costs you will see on all major trips going forward will be a little different. Since most everyone pays by check, all trip costs shown will be the cash only cost. We will certainly still accept credit cards. The 3% credit card fee will just be added to your next payment.
Article by Marty Stimson, EISC President