Our Last Few Days

We've been home for a week, so this is a little bit late, but here are our last few days.

We stayed the night in Missoula, MT and decided that we wanted to be home to surprise our moms on Mother's Day. But we still had about four days left of travel and only three days before we needed to be home, so the last stretch was a little rushed.

The next night we stayed in Seattle. It was a Holiday Inn at the airport, and we didn't realize until we got there that there was a $12 fee for parking. I complained a little about how stupid it was and the guy waived it for me. We slept there till about 3:15 and then got up and hit the road.

The sunrise was beautiful over Southern Washington. We stopped by a little inlet from the Pacific and watched the sky change colors for a few minutes (mostly we were falling asleep and needed to just move so we could stay awake). Jim wanted to see Astoria, where the Goonies took place, so we drove down Hwy 101 and over the Astoria Bridge, which is amazingly long and sits just on the water. It's an interesting bridge. And we saw the rock Mikey used in the movie to find the restaurant where the treasure was buried.

From there we drove along the Oregon Coast the rest of the way to California, stopping twice: once at the Tilamook Cheese Factory and once at the KOA we had booked that wouldn't let us cancel. We slept for about three hours and hit the road again.

The next time we stopped was in McKinleyville, CA for groceries (and because we had to pee) before it got too late. We didn't get into Shelter Cove until after eleven and everything between McKinleyville and there (with the exception of maybe Eureka) was closed.

Shelter Cove Lighthouse

We woke up at Shelter Cove to pleasant temperatures and clear skies, a rarity up there sometimes. I spent the morning cleaning the house while Jim watched TV and in the afternoon we went down to the Cove for fish burgers and some tide pool watching. We saw lots of little crabs, only a few starfish and the cutest little puppy who found himself a crab in the rocks.

It was the perfect last day, really. We had cheese and crackers and the rest of our carrots and snap peas and our last bottle of wine for dinner. The sunset was beautiful until the fog rolled in. 

Our trip is over. It's a little sad, but it's nice to be home too. I don't know that I found any place that I'd like to live. I have a dilemma: I don't love it here, but everyone I love is here. I just don't know if the tradeoff is worth it. There was one place, though, that Jim and I both really liked, where we could see living: Sonoma County...Petaluma, Cotati, somewhere on the coast maybe. The weather is nice, it's close enough to family, exepnsive as hell, but I went to school there and I loved it, and I think I could be happy living there. I guess we'll see what the future holds.

Jim  has gone back to work. He's working at his old bosses auto shop (I guess he's not really Jim's OLD boss anymore...) as the shop manager, giving quotes, performing safety inspections and anything else that needs to be done.

I'm working too...on my novel. I'm determined to get that thing finished and sent to (and picked up by) and agent this year. I got my third draft back from my editor when I got home and I have some work to do on it, but hopefully I'm close. I'll keep ya posted. :)

We're Home

Ok, so I wanted to update everyone. We're home. I'll post something else soon, when everything is unpacked and put away.

Three Beautiful Days, Then....Southern Idaho

I have nothing against Idaho. Northern Idaho is beautiful, but there’s absolutely nothing to look at in southern Idaho except fields and cows and in some cases, nothing at all.

Exhibit A.

I’m actually sitting in the car in the middle of freaking nowhere while an accident is being cleared off the road. And I’m not happy about it. Except that I have time to sit here and write this.
Anyway, on to more interesting things. The three days before this one were amazing. We stayed in Loveland, CO and the next morning drove through Colorado and over the Rocky Mountains. At our highest elevation we were over 11,000 feet and it was snowing like crazy. In front of the car we could see everything through a transparent sheet of white snowflakes. It was beautiful, although the car wasn’t terribly fond of the driving in such high elevation.

At 11,000 feet

The entire drive was something I’ve never experienced before. As we began our ascent, it was hot and completely clear. As we climbed, we began to see snow on the tops of the mountains and the higher we got, the more snow we saw until we hit the summit and it was completely white out (nothing on the roads though, thank goodness). As we descended again, the snow began to disappear. But as soon as we’d gotten to a low point, we began climbing again. And the snow came back, although we didn’t hit anything higher than 10,000 feet again.

A frozen lake somewhere in the middle of the Rockies

We did this a few more times before we hit Glenwood Canyon. We got concerned when we saw signed that told wide trucks to exit because they were prohibited through the canyon. But as we came around the corner, the sight we saw was stunning. On both sides of us were craggy canyon walls, so close I could barely take a picture. As we got to the end of the canyon, five or so big horned sheep were grazing on the steep hill right next to the highway.

The Canyon

From there we got to flatter land. But the snowy mountains remained to our right and when we came out to where we were staying the night in Grand Junction, they began to look similar to the sides of the Grand Canyon. Shades of purple and blue and orange danced up the sides of the hills. Our hotel room faced the hillside, and we enjoyed the view for the few hours of daylight we had before we went to sleep.

The view from our hotel window

The next day we crossed the state line into Utah, and the landscape changed again. Gradually the stony hillsides became rolling hills, which Jim said were actually huge rocks rounded by the high winds. It was a long drive from the main highway to Arches National Park, and again, as we got closer to our destination, the landscape changed. The gray rocks gave way to sharp, red cliffs. If you blinked an eye on the drive through the park, you missed something. The road began with a steep ascent through huge red cliffs, some completely flat and smooth, others sharp and stony. The arches themselves were amazing too, carved out on the rock from wind and rain. We weren’t able to see the whole park because the weather was getting bad, but what we did see was amazing.

Arches National Park

From there we had a long drive to Cedar City, UT where we stayed the night in a Kabin at a KOA (yes, they spell it with a K).

On the way there we drove through the San Rafael Swell where, as the informational signs posted at the “scenic points” said, only bandits and criminals braved. It was like a larger version of the Grand Canyon….

San Rafael Swell

…Well we just passed the accident. It was a semi truck carrying logs that rolled over, it looked like a couple of times. The wind is really bad today and it’s a two lane (I call two lanes one in each directions…that’s what this is) and 65 MPH. We think maybe he was going too fast and the wind hit the side going around the corner and rolled it. The guy couldn’t have survived. The cab was completely crushed and the worst of it was on the driver’s side. I’ve never seen a semi truck so crinkled like that. The passenger’s side door was crushed into a Z shape and a firefighter was standing on it. The whole front was smushed and the logs were scattered everywhere. A helicopter came to life flight the guy out, but it was waiting too long on scene for the guy to have been in it on his way to the hospital when it left. It’s too sad to think about the man’s last moments of life. But those guys drive like crazy sometimes. And awful things happen when people aren’t careful.
…so, back to Utah and the San Rafael Swell. It was like a larger, wider version of the Grand Canyon and it’s steep cliffs and deep gorges, as if they were carved out of the ground…and they were. We stopped and took pictures at every “scenic point.”

Our Kute Kabin at KOA

We drove through another mountain range, hitting snow at the summit that lasted till we were almost back to the bottom. It was windy that day too. It scares me. I hate the wind and this little car flies all over the place in the wind. It’s too light.

Our Kabin was cool, though. It was a single room with a queen sized bed, a set of bunk beds, a little shelf between them and a desk by the door. In front there was a swing on the porch and a little fire pit and picnic table on the grass. We ordered pizza for dinner. $5.99 each for two two topping pizzas at Dominos. It was a little bizarre to have the delivery driver knock on our Kabin door, but it was fun. We had the rest of our Wisconsin table wine (I didn’t like it much. It was a little on the sweet side and stung the back of my throat more than I like) and ate our pizza and gave names to the picture files on the laptop.

In the morning we had cereal for breakfast and left early. It was about 80 miles from Cedar City to Bryce Canyon. We decided at the last minute to go to Bryce instead of Zion. Either would have been amazing, but with our time constrictions, we decided to only see one and Bryce was it.

The canyon was full of what they called hoodoos, big craggy rocky formations that seem to grow up out of the canyon floor. We took the 2.8 mile hike 800 feet to the bottom and back up. It was considered a moderate hike, but it kicked our butts. The very beginning of the descent and the very end of the ascent were incredibly steep. It was neat to stand next to these things though. They looked so much bigger from the bottom than the top. And they were so red! It made the sky look incredibly blue.

Bryce Canyon

The rest of the day was sluggish and sleepy. We stopped to get gas and I made a couple of sandwiches and we downed a Starbucks Double Shot each. We’ve been pretty much living on those things where there are no Starbucks stores. They gave us enough energy to get through the rest of the trip to Pocatello, ID.
We did make one more stop in Salt Lake City. No one I’ve talked to watches it, but there’s a show on TLC called The Little Chocolatiers. It’s about a couple of “little people” who own a chocolate shop a little outside of the city. In the show, they are contracted to build these amazing things out of chocolate and candy. In one episode we saw (we only saw the show one night in a hotel room when we were cruising channels for something to watch), they made an underwater seascape for a benefit event for the local aquarium, and in another one a couple in the community was moving…I don’t remember where, but they were going to live in a log cabin, so one of their friends came and had the shop make a log cabin out of chocolate. It was incredible! They’re so talented. Anyway, we went to the shop and got chocolate covered cinnamon bears (which we saw them make on the show…they’re delicious!) and chocolate peanut butter truffles and chocolate covered raspberries. The only other thing we ate were the raspberries cause they were fresh and completely delicious. It was well worth the stop.

So now we’re in southern Idaho and completely bored with the scenery. We were going to go to Thousand Springs, which we found in our “Off the Beaten Path” book, but then we read the section again and you can only see it from a resort on the other side of the river and they recommend binoculars and a telephoto lens for the camera. We decided it wasn’t worth it, so we’re going to Craters of the Moon National Monument and not the springs. We’re staying in Missoula, Montana tonight, which I’m excited about because my dad lived there for a little while when we was a kid. I’ve been there before, but I was young then, and I think it’s going to be cool to see it again as an adult.

Until then, I’m sitting and staring out the window at absolutely nothing.

The Last Night is Booked

Well, it's coming to an end. I just booked our last week or so's worth of reservations. We're in Loveland, CO tonight. We drove through Nebraska and the corner of Wyoming to get here. The wind was pretty awful again today and there were tornado warnings for the other side of Nebraska from where we were. Everytime it started hailing we started looking around for the swirling clouds. It started calming down after we got off I-80 and headed south toward Colorado.

The Rocky Mountains crept up in the distance as we crossed the stateline, capped in white and swathed in clouds. This picture doesn't even do it justice. It was beautiful. I couldn't stop looking out the window.

We ate dinner at On The Border and it felt like we were getting closer to home. I've racked up 28,000 points on my Priority Club card for Holiday Inn. I've got at least a free night, I think. It's nice that they're offering an extra 1,000 points for every stay during this time that we've been gone.

Crazy hail

Amazing freaking clouds

Oh, and we hit 10,000 miles yesterday..I think it was yesterday.

Mount Rushmore and More

Tonight we're staying in Keystone, SD, the nearest town to Mount Rushmore. Yes, we saw the monument. We saw it from the road where we drove by slowly (we did NOT park...as the signs told us not to do) and took pictures. There was no way in hell we were going to spend $10 to park just to take some pictures! It doesn't cost to SEE it, just to stop the car between two wite lines! And we got plenty of acceptable pictures, although I wanted to take one that looked like I was picking one of their noses, but life goes on, right?

Ta Da

As I said, we're staying in Keystone tonight. It's a tiny little town that's completely touristy. Evidently it gets really crowded in the summer time. We went to every single restaurant in town looking for something to eat. There's a place called the Ruby House that's set up like an old fashioned saloon...sort of. The tables reminded us of ones in a casino buffet and it REEKED of cigarettes. We sat down, ordered drinks and then left because we were both about to choke from the smoke smell.

After making the rounds in town, looking at menus, we ended up at the first restaurant we checked out, closest to our hotel. The food wasn't bad. Not fabulous either. The lady claimed the vegetables weren't frozen. I beg to differ. We got a bottle of wine...from California, of course. It seems people drink nothing else. It's been at every single restaurant we've been to that served it. Even when the area produces wine. I haven't seen a local wine in a restaurant yet. But I've also noticed that most other places have either fruit wines or generic table wines. No one has the variety of California.

We've been through a few other states since I posted last. Wisconsin was nice. We made one stop at a cheese shop where we got a bunch of cheese (small pieces), a magnet and a bottle of local wine and drove through the rest of it. It was a pretty state, not a lot of big cities and lots of grass. We also drove through Minnesota, which was mostly pretty too. We passed the Mall of America in Minneapolis and stayed the night in St. Cloud. The Holiday Inn (which we booked by mistake, we've been staying in Holiday Inn Expresses...there's a difference. Free breakfast for one) was HUGE! It had two indoor pools, one had a water slide, it had video games, volleyball and basketball courts, table tennis...all sorts of stuff. It was crazy! We got coffee at Barnes and Noble the next morning and Jim got a book at Petsmart about Bearded Dragons and we drove our second 8 hour day in a row.

Our first eight hour day of driving (on this stretch of the trip) was from Freeport, IL to St. Cloud. Freeport was a little sketchy. Our hotel was probably built in the 70s and PINK even though the outside looked a lot newer. There was NOWHERE to eat that wasn't creepy looking except this Italian place near the hotel. I ordered a fish dish, hoping to be a little healthy. It was awful! I ate my salad, baked potato and some of the appetizer we ordered.

From St. Cloud, we drove another almost eight hours to Mitchell, SD. It was an awful trip. It was so windy Jim was barely able to keep the car on the road and there were high wind warnings in the area until late in the evening. Nothing went wrong, thank goodness, but it was what my dad would call "Sporty" driving. I read my book (Susan Wiggs' Summer Hideaway. It's so good!) to keep my mind off the wind because it freaks me out! We ate at a place called Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill, and it was pretty good. We had seen Culvers all over the place, and decided to try their frozen custard since it was within walking distance of the hotel. It wasn't bad. Really creamy, but I've had my taste and I don't need any more.

Today we drove from Mitchell to Keystone, which was about a five, amost six hour drive. It was raining like crazy when we left, but it subsided pretty quickly and left us with cloudy, but dry weather (no wind). We made a few stops along the way. There were about a million billboards for about 300 miles before a place called Wall Drug. For the longest time we had no idea what it was until I looked it up. It ended up being a drug store turned tourst attraction. They had EVERYTHING in there. Souvenirs, a cafe, ice cream, a donut factory, books, clothes, candy, photos of about a million people, places and things. A giant T-Rex that tried to eat Jim and lots of photo opportunities. We spent probably 45 minutes just walkin through looking at stuff.

Two of the probably 20 signs just before the exit for Wall Drug

Me and my Jackelope

Jim driving the covered wagon

In the wagon

Jim and the T-Rex

Next we stopped at Reptile Gardens, which was sort of like Reptiland in Pennsylvania, only bigger and with many more animals. They had birds and turtles and a 15 foot alligator and a bunch of smaller ones. There were snakes of all kinds and all sorts f lizards. My favorite was the prairie dogs. The picture below looks stretched, but it's not. He's just that fat!!

There was also a cool chicken, but I felt sorry for her because she was in this little box and was expected to answer questions when people put in a quarter. She'd even laid an egg in there.

Ok, I think that pretty much gets you up to speed. The weather predicts snow here tonight, so hopefully it's not too much. There are tornado warnings for Nebraska. We're going there tomorrow but not where the warnings are...on the other side of the state from that.

A Cold Day in Hell

...Michigan, that is. Today we drove from Maumee, OH (yes, we HAD to stay in Ohio again!) to Hell, MI and then to Elkhart, IN.

Hell is three buildings and 200 people big. There's a post office/deli and an ice cream shop/halloween store and an inn. We went to the first two and had tasty ice cream and sent some mail. I'd like to say it was more interesting than it was. I mean it was fun for a while to use so many references to "Hell," but after a while the novelty wore off and it was just old. We took some pictures though. Enjoy.

Me and my ice cream from Hell

Jim, Bigfoot from Hell

In all seriousness, though, it was really a pretty part of Michigan. Everything was really green and there were trees and grass everywhere we looked. I guess they've been having a lot of rain in the area and there are a lot of small lakes, one of which flooded, closing one of the main bridges, so you had to go all the way around the lake. We decided to take another road we saw on the GPS. This was it...

And here's the official welcome sign.

Oh, and this amused us. Some of the states where we had no interest in visiting anything in particular, we just sort of drove through a corner. Well, Kentucky made us laugh. Here's our trip into and out of Kentucky (on our way out).

"2vi" and her directions to Kentucky

We drove in on one side of the bridge, made a left turn, and then another and drove out on the other side of the same bridge. It was interesting, though, cause one side of the bridge was blue and the other side was green....weird, huh?

Yesterday was uneventful. We drove for most of the day and landed in Maumee, OH in a Staybridge Suites right next to a mall. It wasn't a great one. There weren't a whole lot of stores, and no Macy's so I couldn't get a new compact (mine is getting low). But it did have a Red Robin and we had a gift card, so dinner was almost free.

The Staybridge had a laudry room that was free to guests. We just had to provide our own detergent. We got some of those cool sheets that have the detergent, fabric softener and anticling stuff all in one. You put it in the washer and then the dryer and you're done. It's good for our purposes, but we decided it was too expensive to use on a regular basis. We like them because they don't spill like powder or liquid soap would.

I've been having problems with my stomach the past...almost week now. Everything I eat seems to upset it. I've stopped eating fried food and made an attempt to eat more fruits and veggies. I also don't think I've been getting enough protein, so I'm working on that. Hopefully something works soon!

Tomorrow we're going to check out an Amish "downtown" area. Jim says they have some pretty cool stuff sometimes, so we're going to check it out. This is supposed to be the third largest Amish community in the country, so hopefully it'll be cool.

Anyway, time to go bully Jim into committing to a dang television show and stop surfing because he's driving me INSANE!!!

We Hate Ohio!

If we thought we didn't like Delaware, we hated Ohio! The drivers seemed worse than normal, the roads were awful, EVERYTHING seemed to be closed, people seemed stupid...even a lady who moved in from New York (upstate) said people were mentally slower in Ohio than anywhere else she'd been.

So we went, saw a few covered bridges and then got the heck out of Ohio!

I love covered bridges...for some reason

Last night we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Geneva-On-The-Lake, OH. It's on Lake Erie, and it's completely a summer town. We barely found something for dinner because NOTHING was open. My stomach had been hurting all day, so Mexican wasn't my first choice, but it didn't seem to help, nor worsen my pains, although I wasn't able to finish my enchiladas, which weren't all that good anyway, and I left my leftovers in the fridge at the b&b. Oops. We actually got back from dinner and went right to bed...at 6:30. We were EXHAUSTED! And we only woke up for about an hour for a snack and something to drink. We didn't get up again until 8:30 this morning.

Today we went to the zoo in Akron, OH (on the way out of dodge). It was a small zoo, but it was neat for $6. My favorite was the trumpeter swan. Anyone read The Trumpet of the Swan when you were younger? I LOVED that book, and I've never seen one in real life. It was pretty neat.

They also had penguins and lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), and flamingos and all sorts of stuff. It was a neat hour and a half.

From there, we headed south toward West Virginia, stopping only three times: one to use the bathroom, once to eat dinner and once in an attempt to find dinner which landed us at a "Cafe" that looked more like a dive bar without windows and which we had to drive through the most redneck white trash neighborhood I've ever seen to get to! Stupid "2vi" !!!! Although we did see a guy stuck on the side of the residential road with only three tires...he was kind of half in a ditch and his tire knocked a mailbox over and ripped a gutter off a garage in its wake. Yea, we got the heck out of there!

We ended up eating in Marietta, OH, just before the state line with West Virginia. And it was a good thing we did because there was almost nothing between there and Charleston and we were going to starve. But the restaurant "2vi" found us was no longer in business (surprise, surprise), so we ended up walking through this downtown area that was more or less dead (and it turned out to be a college town!) until we found, at the end of the block we'd determined to turn back after, a little place called "The Galley," where I got a salad, which I hoped wouldn't further upset my stomach and Jim got a rueben sandwich. Add a soda and an appetizer and we got out of there under $25. And it was nice and clean and tasted good. The artichoke spinach dip was some of the best I've ever had.

Now we're sitting in our Holiday Inn Express. Jim's playing his PSP and I'm writing and trying to organize all my photos. We ate early, so we don't have to worry about that. When we got here, they had sausage gumbo in the breakfast area, so Jim had some of that. We've got America's Funniest Videos on in the background (it's not very effective. You kind of have to watch to get the humor) and we're probably going to bed soon.

Tomorrow we're heading through Kentucky and up toward Indianapolis. I'm not 100% sure what our path of travel is...We should probably work on that....

Just Going Across the Border for some Fries and Gravy, Sir

We finally landed on heading to Niagara Falls this morning and were able to check into our hotel early. We'd been advised not to drive across the border with our car full of stuff becaues they will often just search cars randomly, which would have been not so great. We ended up just walking over the bridge to Canada instead.

The falls were amazing. We decided to take the "Maid of the Mist" boat tour, which takes you right into the center of the bigger fall. When they said mist, we expected to get a little damp. What we found was more like rain. At that point we understood the ponchos.

This is the before picture

This is the after picture. You can see the wet around my hood and my mascara is all messed up

It was a lot of fun, though. And it was really neat to be so close to the falls, even though we couldn't really see much past the water in our eyes. It was cold too. Seriously cold! The guy said 4 of the 5 great lakes run into it.

It was truly beautiful though. So much water moving so fast and from such heights.

When we'd taken all the pictures we wanted to, we made our way back toward the bridge and hoped to find something to eat along the way. What we found was a street completely designed to reel in the Niagara Falls tourist crowd. It was full of restaurants, hotels, arcades, museums, food stands, etc all along this one road that curves up a hill. It was interesting. We just wanted french fries with gravy, so we found a place that served that and got some as well as some deep fried cheddar cheese (we really need to get off this fried food kick!). On the way back down the hill we got "CrunchyCream"...or something like that. It was basically soft serve ice cream mixed with whatever kind of topping you want..kind of like a blizzard from Dairy Queen only in a waffle cone and better tasting. We both got oreo.

When we got back across the bridge and were going through the US Border Crossing, there were three people sitting in the side area and two girls in front of us. We were the only people there who were actually US citizens. The girls were from Germany. The two guys sitting down were Asian. We didn't know what their issue was, but the other person, a lady from Iran, was being searched and questioned like crazy! We made it through without incident. No surprise there. But it was interesting to see Border Control at work. I'd all but lost faith in their abilities. At least they're taking precautions here.

Now we're sitting in our hotel room. Jim is watching MMA stuff and I'm about to fall asleep writing this. Hopefully I can get a little more sleep tonight and better sleep. We're back at a Holiday Inn Express and Jim's seriously excited about having biscuits and gravy tomorrow morning. Let's just hope they have them!

Behind, Again

It’s been a while, I know. Sorry. We got busy. So, let me catch you up.
I think I left off on our last rainy day in Boston. The next day was a lot nicer and we made a trip into Newport, Rhode Island. We had lunch on the wharf and browsed around some of the shops. Then we drove over and toured the Breakers. It was Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s summer home and it’s over 138,000 square feet. Holy Moly! And talk about a display of wealth. This house had painted platinum panels covering the walls of one room and gold leaf pressed between the patterns of the wood of another. There were rooms entirely made of marble and even bathtubs made out of one big carved out slab of the stuff. I can’t imagine what life must have been like in that house. Cornelius himself only spent one summer there before he had a stroke and died. But his daughters and granddaughters and other family members spent a lot of time there. I guess they just lived in a different era…

The Breakers: Summer Home

We got back to the house around 6 and dinner was ready. I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it was staying with Mike and Linda. They treated us more like family than houseguests. Dinner was always ready when we got back from whatever adventure we were having, and our conversations felt like we’d all known each other for years. It was a really pleasant part of the trip. I’m almost sad that we had to leave, but we’re on to different things now.

Ok, getting back on track. The next day we took the train with Linda into New York City. She got off in Stamford, where she works and we took it the rest of the way into Grand Central. I’ve always wanted to do that. Take the train into Grand Central. I’ve never been in the direction that trains come from though. I’ve always come into Penn Station. It was exciting. Jim thought I was an idiot, though. But that train station is my favorite place in the whole world. I can’t really explain why except that it just feels…I guess peaceful. You walk into the main concourse and the way the building is designed, it all of a sudden gets so quiet even though there are hundreds of people milling about. And the whole place is made of marble with elegant chandeliers…and the mural on the top! It’s just amazing. And not a wonder Cornelius Vanderbilt II was the one who designed it!

At the USS Intrepid

We walked to the first Starbucks, which was still in the station and found a line that wrapped out the door, so we moved on. There’s a Starbucks practically ever half block, so we found another one before we even crossed a street. Then we walked W 46th till it hit the Hudson, where the USS Intrepid is docked. She’s an aircraft carrier that was used in WW11 and the Cold War before she was decommissioned in like 1979, I think. As part of the museum, they also have an old cold war submarine that had the tiniest doorways!

Jim had quite a bit of trouble getting through all the tiny doorways

I had an easier time...

Also at the end of W 46th is H&H Bagels, best bagels I’ve ever had! They’re delicious! Mike says it’s because of the New York water. If you drink a glass, he says, there’s about an inch of minerals and sludge at the top but it tastes great! I don’t know about all that, but they’re dang good bagels!

Next we walked uptown to Serendipity 3 for Frozen Hot Chocolate. Jim said it was an oxymoron (ok, he didn’t actually say “oxymoron,” he said it didn’t make sense), so I had to have him see for himself. He was starved, though, so he got a sandwich and I got a fruit plate (TRYING to be a LITTLE healthy…), and then we shared the Frozen Hot Chocolate and an order of sand tarts (basically, pecan sandies, only amazingly delicious). When we walked in, the host said the wait was only about five minutes, which is insane for that place. Usually it’s at least an hour. I guess Monday around 1 p.m. isn’t their busiest time, although the place was still packed. The owner was there because they were short staffed, so he was answering phones and….signing books. He wrote the cookbooks associated with the store, so I bought one for me and one for my mom and had them signed. We might actually already have the book, but oh well. This one is better.

Jim's first Frozen Hot Chocolate

From there we took the subway into Brooklyn. Yes, I said Brooklyn. I NEVER leave Manhattan! Ok, I have twice. Once to go to a Yankees game at the old stadium before they replaced it and once when I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. But at the Yankees game, I knew the subway station was close by and after the bridge, I could see Manhattan anytime I looked in that direction. This was a new experience for me and it was a little scary! We got off the subway and up to the street and it felt like ours were the only white faces. But we walked a few blocks and turned off that particular street and all of a sudden, there were nothing but white faces. From what Mike said, we walked into a Jewish part of town. I started to feel a little better, but I’ve heard such varied things about the outer boroughs, and I know Manhattan pretty well, so I feel a certain amount of comfort with where I’m going there. Brooklyn, I knew nothing. But “Duvi” (The name we gave for Jim’s phone. It’s an LG Dare and it has Navigation enabled. If you recall “2vi” is the name of the GPS…she’s a Garmin Nuvi, but she’s our second, thus the 2. The phone is a Dare, starts with a D, therefore, “Duvi”) led the way to the Chip Shop, which was featured on Chowdown Countdown on the Travel Channel. They fry EVERYTHING there. It’s basically a British Restaurant, named because their main fare is fish and chips. But we ordered deep fried pizza, deep fried snickers bar and twice fried cherry pie. The pie was okay, the pizza and snickers were delicious! And neither of our stomachs agreed, but that’s okay. We enjoyed it at the time.

Our fried stuff. Pizza on the left, pie at the top and snickers bottom right

We got back to Grand Central too late for the train that would pick up Linda on her way home from work, so we took one that ended up being an hour later. She came back to the station to pick us up, though. It’s only about two miles from the house, she said. And of course, dinner was ready when we got there. Mike’s a great cook too. Everything was delicious.

In the morning we got up and packed the car and hit the road. We made a quick stop in Vermont to get a magnet and some syrup and another just across the state line in New York for a sandwich because we were starved. We got into Geneva, NY at about 7 and met up with Phil, a guy who used to work for Ebara and has stayed in contact with my brother and dad since he’s moved back to upstate New York. He took us to a bar that his friend owns and we had a few drinks and some more fried appetizers. Jim tried fried pickles for the first time and wants to go back for more. They also had these fried cheese sticks…I think they called them buffalo cheese sticks cause they dipped them in the buffalo sauce before frying them…they may have been jack cheese too, but they were yummy. And we had fried cauliflower and clam strips. Greasy, but yummy.
Phil’s house is right on the edge of Seneca Lake, the biggest of the Finger Lakes. It’s really pretty. The house is old and smells like an old house on the water. I called it rustic, Jim called it mold. I think he was right because we’re both sniffly this morning. The plan was to head to Niagara Falls today, but we may drive around the lake and do Niagara tomorrow. Phil said there’s a lot of wineries along the lake and a cool town at the bottom, so we may do that. I don’t know yet though. It’s shower time, and then decision time.

The Adventure Continues

We woke up this morning and it was still raining, so we made plans to do one of the Duck Tours at 11:30. Since it was Jim's first time in Boston, we wanted him to see as much as he could considering the weather. We walked to the Granary Burial Ground which is just across the street from the Omni Parker House. Some pretty significant people in American history are burried there: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Ben Franklin's family. It was dreary and drippy and perfect weather for a walk through the cemetary, I guess.

Our tour was at 11:30 and we had to be at the pickup spot at 11, so we got our stuff together, checked out of the hotel and walked to the parking garage to drop off our stuff. It was barely drizzling, more of a thick mist than anything else, but it was obnoxious to walk through. It gathered like mad on our glasses. I wasn't even looking through mine after a while, just above them.

The Duck Tour was a lot of fun though. I've seen them all over the place and I've never been on one, never been on a tour of any city actually, but this was neat since it was so wet out and our driver was HILARIOUS! He's from Boston, so of course, he's a big Red Sox fan. He told us the story of how he got married: he told his girlfriend, in 2004, that he'd marry her if the Red Sox won the world series...well they won the world series! So they got married on one of the ducks in the Charles River on the 4th of July and it was a surprise. I guess he told her they were giving him some kind of award to get her out there so she didn't even know what was happened. Then, since the Duck Tours are big supporters of the Red Sox, they had their company picnic that night at Fenway Park and had their wedding photo taken with the trophy. It was a pretty cool story....he told it in a much more entertaining way than I did, though.

The reflection of our duck in a building

For those of your who are not familiar with the Duck Tours, the vehicles were made for use in WWII because they can be used on land and in water, so the tour goes from the streets of Boston into the Charles River and back.

Another duck we passed on the way back under the bridge

When the tour was over, we walked back to the car. It was raining more and we were starting to get cranky and soggy. It was past lunch time and all we'd had to eat was a pastry and coffee from Starbucks on our walk to catch our duck. And then Jim annouced as we get back to the garage, that he has to use the bathroom...and the sign on the door of the garage says "No Public Restrooms," so we trompse through the park to find another one, in the sopping rain (not only is it raining but it's FREEZING...ok, well it was 41 degrees, but that's cold!). We forgot our jackets at home (because we're geniuses!) and all we had were sweatshirts. I wanted to kill him. We passed by so many businesses where we could have stopped...including the Starbucks and a grocery store we stopped in on the way...and he waits till there's NOTHING around to say something. Fortunately there was one on the other side of the park, but all I wanted to do was get in the warm car!

From there we went to the USS Constitution on the other side of the river. Jim has a model of it in his room, so he wanted to see the real thing. The tour was short and he enjoyed seeing it, although I think he was expecting more. It's the oldest ship in the country still floating after 200 years I think she said, so that in itself is pretty impressive!

Jim and one of the guns. He kind of looks funny in this picture...

We got back to Connecticut just in time for dinner: MORE PIZZA! But it was yummy pizza and we have a blueberry pie from a local orchard for dessert. I'm sleepy, so it'll probably be an early night. We missed Plymouth Pebble today because we ran out of time and we certainly weren't able to stop in Newport, so we're going to do that tomorrow...Newport, not the pebble. We're taking that as a loss...it's not even worth it.