Pickleball The States

 September 30, 2021 Greece NY was the first stop on our New England four state tour. Yes, we know that NY is not in New England, but it's close. Greece is on the outskirts of Rochester NY. We arrived in the area early afternoon. The original plan was to play the next morning, but we heard that there might also be play around 5:00 that evening.  We chose to fill the afternoon with a bike ride on a portion of the Genesee Riverway Trail that runs from Lake Ontario through Rochester NY. We started our ride on the pier and rode to the lower falls. The trail took us along the harbor, past a light house, onto a lengthy scenic boardwalk, transitioning to an asphalt trail (some of which had a bad case of root varicose veins), past the Kodak plant and finally arriving at the lower falls of the Genesee River. It was a cool and overcast day, but despite that we thoroughly enjoyed the ride.  After checking into our hotel, we donned our pickleball outfits and headed to the courts hoping to find

September 9-14 2021 Pickleball was the driving factor for our trip to Alaska with other activities being secondary. We had identified the courts at Ben Boeke as our target for playing. Players were scheduled to be there Friday, Saturday and Monday. Car rental was outrageous, so I figured we could simply plan on doing activities in Anchorage and we would get around using public transportation. That proved to be a mistake. I found lodging within a 10 minute walk from the courts and it was significantly less than other hotels. When our taxi driver was informed of our destination, he asked “Why would you stay there?” My response was close proximity to our courts and Chester Creek Trail where we could hike. He warned us that the homeless would be camping along the trail. The dark clouds began to roll in on my plans and literally in the skies. We ventured out on Chester Creek Trail heading away from downtown to hopefully avoid the homeless encampments. We walked two miles before heading back