A Cool Aircraft Sighting

About 3 miles up the road from our place, in Kill Devil Hills, there is a rather small airstrip. This airstrip has no lights but it does have a place to park quite a few planes.
Several days ago Veronica and I were returning home from doing some errands in town and we saw this unusual helicopter flying low in the sky.
We had never seen this type of helicopter before and we found it to be really interesting to watch it.
As we drove by the small airstrip, we saw this helicopter again and this time it was either landing or just taking off.
The helicopter had 2 big propellers...one on each wing and the propeller blades were rather large.
We lost sight of this helicopter as we drove home.
The next thing we knew, this helicopter had the propellers turned in a way that it turned the helicopter into an airplane.
Upon doing some research, I found out that this aircraft is an MV-22 Osprey. Here are some photos of the aircraft:







Unfortunately I did not have my camera handy so that I could take a video of this aircraft but that won't happen again. Because of this missed photo opportunity, I took Veronica's old camera and got a new camera case for it and placed it in our vehicle. Now I will always have a camera handy if I should find something photo worthy while driving around.
Below is a movie of the aircraft changing the propeller angle so that the aircraft changes from a helicopter to and turbo prop plane. Please be patient...the aircraft will eventually take off and change the propellers angle.

A General Update Not To Be Confused With A Major Update

It has been a few days since I made a blog entry. Things have been a little slow around here.
Veronica and I decided to make reservations at the Crowne Plaza at Fort Magruder in Williamsburg, VA.
The hotel was kind enough to offer us 2 free nights after what had occurred on our last visit there. If you missed that news, please refer to earlier blog posts.
We decided to take them up on their offer and we will be hooking the 2 nights stay at the hotel to the beginning of our upcoming Las Vegas trip in February.
This will work out great for us because the airport is just up the road, an approximately 30 minute drive from this hotel.
This will be a nice way to start of our 1 week vacation.
I will be taking photographs of our room and let everyone know how everything turned out.
Today we had to go to our local Walmart to get a bunch of things.
Little did I know, Veronica had other reasons for us going to Walmart.
She was searching for some type of free weights or dumbbells for me to use as part of my workout regiment.
We found a Golds Gym set that was selling for a good price. For $20, I got 2 14" bars with 4 safety grips to keep the weights on the bar, 4 7.5 pound weights and 4 2.5 pound weights. Not a lot of weight but I am not really looking to "bulk up", mainly trying to tone things up a bit.
And that's not all...while looking at the weight set, Veronica saw a Golds Gym workout bench that was selling for $49. She told me to go ahead and get the bench too and it would be an early Christmas gift. A small workout center for around $70...a great deal.
Being of sound mind and somewhat sound body, I knew that it wouldn't be wise to turn down Santa and tick her off for the rest of the Holiday season, I very happily and very merrily put the boxed workout gym in my cart.  Upon getting home, I put the bench together and checked out the weights.
Now I can vary my workouts between cardio and some light lifting.
Thank You Santa!

Crowne Plaza At Fort Magruder In Williamsburg, VA followup

Veronica and I had taken a long weekend break and went to Williamsburg, VA to visit Colonial Williamsburg and the surrounding area.
We stayed at the Crowne Plaza at Ft. Magruder in the Williamsburg, VA area.
Here is a link to that blog post about our hotel stay at the Crowne Plaza at Fort Magruder 
After leaving honest reviews at several web sites and also making contact with personnel at the hotel itself and corporate headquarters, we received a reply back.
Veronica had sent an email to someone at the hotel itself and told them that based on the sub par quality of our room, she felt that Crowne Plaza owed us a 2 night stay at the hotel in a much higher quality room.
Veronica received a telephone call from someone at the hotel. After discussing the issues that we encountered during our last stay, we were offered a 2 night stay for free. Veronica is supposed to contact this young lady, when we are interested in staying there again and that she would make sure that we received a high quality room for that stay.
I will make a blog entry  about our stay at the Crowne Plaza along with posting photos of our upgraded room there.
We haven't decided when we will return there. We are thinking that we might stay for a couple of nights before we head out to Las Vegas.
Veronica and I have decided to return to Las Vegas in February and we are flying out of Newport News.
Williamsburg is just up the road from Newport News, so we could take advantage of the 2 free nights that lead up to the date of our early morning flight.
I have signed up for many different fare and hotel alerts that I receive as email.
In one of those alerts, MGM had a special for the Monte Carlo, which is right on the strip.
I was able to get a 350 square foot Deluxe room in the Monte Carlo for around $36 a night plus they give us a discount coupon booklet for various things.
We will be staying for 5 nights.
It will be nice to return to Las Vegas and see some of the sites that we missed last time.
This time around, I won't be slowed down by any foot problems like I had last time.