On The Road to Lexington, KY, Gatinburg, TN, Atlanta, GA, and Las Vegas, NV
On the way back we stopped over for a few nights in Gatlinburg, TN, where my good client friends Ted and Vanessa had set us up with a complimentary use of a three bedroom mountain chalet, complete with kitchen, hot tub, pool table, and 3 bedrooms. Here’s a picture of us on the balcony of our mountain chalet home during our stay: Along the way home we stopped off in Atlanta to visit the resting place and National Monument of one of my biggest heroes, the Reverend Martin Luther King. Since I had been to the Visitor’s Center before, the best part for me was seeing how my kids are now old enough to appreciate the accomplishments and sacrifices this great man made during his short life. The most touching moment was reading the tributes that both Adam and Julia wrote in the visitor’s log. Here is a picture at the tomb of MLK: The time flew by and before I knew it the final session was done and I was back on a Delta flight to Ft. Lauderdale. It was great that this flight marked my achieving their next-highest frequent flyer status, so I also snagged a free upgrade to first class all the way home. After a long vacation and a long business trip, it was wonderful to end the month back in the office and back at home. As usual my timing was just perfect, as I was back just in time to attend Julia’s middle school band camp performance, where I was so proud to see my “little” girl playing both French horn and trumpet. Here’s a picture of her at band camp:
While I was in town I returned the favor by conducting two training workshops for Mountain Rentals of Gatlinburg, which made it easy by scheduling the training in the house right next to mine. Here’s a picture of me with the groups those days, followed by one of me with Vanessa Messer, Reservations Manager:
After 16 days – which was the longest road trip I have taken since I was my own kids’ ages – we arrived back home to our pets Maxie and Shadow, and the kids went home to see Mom whom they were missing badly at that point! After unpacking for the rest of the weekend and working three days in the office, it was time to head back to Las Vegas to conduct another round of training, this time for the 100+ staff of their front desk. As readers of this blog know, I have been very excited to be back working with this former client after so many years. This engagement was especially exciting as I was to conduct the customized front desk hospitality program which I’d been working on for over a month. I have to also add it was a bit challenging, because in order to accommodate their scheduling needs I found myself training from 7am until 10pm at night. But the participation was really great and I was very thankful to have such a wonderful group of participants. By the end of the week I had bonded with most everyone and truly felt like I was part of their team and it was really nice. Below are pictures of me with the 11 groups I trained over 5 days.
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