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.

Adventures in Boston

And this was for yesterday....

This morning we woke up early, finished the laundry and packed an overnight bag. Since it was supposed to be rainy and yucky (and it was), we decided to drive up to Maine and get our magnets from there and New Hampshire and stay the night in Boston. On the way back to CT tomorrow, we plan to go to Plymouth, so Jim can see the pebble, and maybe have lunch in Newport on our way back.
Today was interesting. It started out fine. The rain came just as it was supposed to in the early afternoon. We were on the road , driving through Massachusetts, and of course, people drove like complete idiots. Drivers are jerks all over the country, I guess. We got to Kittery, ME, one of the southernmost parts of the state a little after one and had lobster rolls at a little restaurant on the water. We were on the hunt for a magnet too, and I found one in this little grocery store, but evidently it was a decoration and the lady wouldn’t sell it to me! So we ended up finding one in a candy store a bit down the road. Actually, there were more to choose from there than anywhere else we’d been! I didn’t get any candy, though. Jim wouldn’t even let me look!

The section of New Hampshire on the coast between Massachusetts and Maine is like ten miles long, which drastically limited our magnet searching options. On the way back from Maine, we stopped in Portsmouth, which is just across the state line. It had a really cute little downtown area and we parked the car and walked through the dreary drizzle until we found a “gift store” which ended up being code for “smoke shop.” Even Jim didn’t catch that one at first glance! The next store we walked into was small and mostly sold newspapers and candy bars, but in a case at the counter we found a small selection of magnets! The guy said “you guys must not be from around here,” and of course we weren’t! Who wants a magnet from their own state or city? Not me. Although we’ll have to get a California one if we want a complete collection.

"2vi" takes us to some weird places sometimes. This was part of her directions to the hotel we didn't stay at.

We made it into Boston after sitting in a bit of traffic coming into the city. This is where the day gets REAL interesting. I booked a room at a place called the College Club of Boston…it’s a club, but they have a bed and breakfast too, and you don’t have to be a member to stay there. Anyway, we get there to check in and the guy can’t find our reservation. Of. Freaking. Course. So he looks and looks and finds it…for YESTERDAY. I SWEAR I made it for the right date. I made two other reservations for the wrong dates already this trip. I’ve been TRIPLE checking that the dates are right.
So, of course, they have no vacancies and the guy pulls up expedia and finds us a couple of other options, gives us the phone number for expedia and sends us on our way. So we’re in Boston, it’s raining, we have our overnight bag and the laptop and the cameras and stuff, no place to stay for the night, the car was parked in a garage across the park (where their website told us to park) and no clue whatsoever what we were going to do.

The tulips are blooming in the Public Garden

We ended up finding a Starbucks on Boylston, two streets away on the other side of Newbury and used the internet there to book a room at the Omni Parker House. It was much more than we wanted to spend, but what else were we going to do? All of our options were about the same price and this one was close to where we parked the car. So we packed up the computer again and trekked across Boston Common again to the hotel.
Halfway there, Jim says “Well at least it’s not raining hard,” and guess what happened. Yea. It started raining hard! We made it to the hotel completely soaked. My arm was sore from carrying the heavy (pink) bag, and we were both starting to get a little cranky. Jim didn’t even want to leave the hotel again, but we got up to the room (which is MUCH smaller than the one we had here, Mom!) and put our stuff down and dried off a bit and decided to make the short walk to Faneuil Hall to have dinner at Cheers.
Cheers isn’t the best food in Boston, but they modeled it after the one in the show, so it was an “experience.” Jim had a burger and I had some pasta. Neither of us had beer, which I guess kind of defeats the purpose, but whatever. It was a neat trip though. We passed a lot of historically significant buildings on the way there, and the rain more or less stopped before we left the hotel, so it was worth the while. We also found our magnet and got some candy (Jim’s idea, imagine that) and walked through some of the stores and stuff. It was a nice evening.
When we got back to the hotel, we sat in the bar and had dessert. The Parker House is where Boston Cream Pie was created (although it’s NOTHING like what you get anywhere else…I actually like it better), as well as Parker House Rolls (we got some of them too), so we sat and talked and had a nice dessert.
We’ll be back in Connecticut tomorrow evening. We’re not sure what we’re doing Sunday. If the weather is nice we might go into New York, but more than likely we’ll do that on Monday. So we may take a drive up to Vermont, get some syrup and a magnet and head back to CT.

Making our way through New England

Again, I'm behind. We were in Boston last night and we didn't have wireless in our room, only in the lobby, so I wasn't able to post. Anyway, this is from two days ago now.

This morning we woke up in Connecticut. We’re staying with family friends of Jim’s for a few days while we trompse around New England. We were planning to go to New York tomorrow but it’s supposed be raining, so we’re working on a Plan B.


Yesterday we went to the County Pancake House in Ridgewood, NJ. It was featured on a couple of shows on the Travel Channel. I think Adam went there on Man vs. Food. The pancakes there are HUMONGOUS! We ordered the “4 Medium” option and they were as big as out plates! The other option (although not available on the varieties that we ordered) was the “2 large.” The girl at the table next to us ordered them and they sagged over the sides of her plate by about two inches on either side. They were insane!

The dinosaur tracks

Today we went to Dinosaur State Park and Gillette Castle, both in CT. Dinosaur Park was pretty interesting because this guy was excavating a site where a state building was going to be built and he happened to come across some fossilized dinosaur footprints. I guess there are close to 2,000 of them and the state built a museum over the site to display them for the public. Only like 500 of them are on display, the others are preserved elsewise in different parts of the building, I guess. But it was interesting to see evidence that such completely different creatures walked in the same spot so many millions of years ago.
Gillette Castle was built by William Gillette in 1919 as a retirement house. Evidently he played Sherlock Holmes (Mike said someone else played Sherlock Holmes, so I don’t know…). The whole castle is made of stone…or at least surrounded with stone. It’s really an amazing sight. I guess they run tours through it, but it was “closed for the season,” like so many other things we’ve wanted to see.

The view from the castle was amazing. I wouldn't mind retiring there!

We went back to the house and rested for a while. We’ve both been really tired lately for some reason. We’ve been sleeping ok, so I’m not sure what the deal is. We sat down before Mike and Linda got home from work and watched a show called “Deep Sea Salvagers” on Discovery Channel or something. It was about this team of guys who are hired to fix things like busted oil barges in the Mississippi River and beached tug boats and stuff like that. It was kind of intense! In the one episode the guys dove into the Mississippi to check out the status of the oil barge and each time they dove down (80 feet to where the problem was), there was a chance they could die and all sorts of stuff went wrong and…it certainly kept our attention. Anyway, we watched that…there were several episodes on…until they got home and then Mike made “Grandma’s Mac and Cheese” for dinner. It was delicious! It was like regular mac and cheese except he put mozzarella cheese and tomatoes in it. Mike can cook almost as good as Donnie! (ALMOST, Donnie. ALMOST)
We had to do laundry again and for some stupid reason we didn’t start it until after 9:00, so we were up until almost midnight and we still had to put the last load in the dryer in the morning. I was exhausted by the time I hit the air mattress and I was asleep almost instantly, despite Jim’s snoring next to me.

More Tidbits

1. My right knee is still bothering me. Walking up and down the steep stairs at the battleship today was starting to bug it quite a bit. I have no idea what I did to it.

2. I just learned that there's sucralose in Airborne and now I refuse to take it. Jim doesn't really want to either but he's been feeling like he's getting sick, so he's finishing the tube. I'm completely bummed about this. I swear by that stuff!

3. We've eaten pizza so many times this trip, I'm sick of it! It's just so much easier to have it delivered to the hotel than to actually go out and find something. Tonight, I actually had baked ziti and Jim had a Cheese Steak Pie (Pizza in NJ speak), and it came right to our room. :)

4. Today is the first day its rained since we've been gone. Word is the weather is awful at home. We've had nothing but warm and sunny. It was a nice change, but it was cold! And I packed my tennis shoes so I was walking around with wet feet in my flip flops.

5. "2vi" (the new Garmin for those of you who haven't been keeping up) is working out quite nicely. We think she's going to be a keeper.

6. We went to a liquor store in some little podunk town in Maryland (we were looking for a magnet) because we had to pee (We'd stopped at three other stores so far and all of them had bathrooms that were "out of order"...yea, right), and he actually let us use his (we think he may have had more than slurpee in his cup...). But we decided we wanted to get a bottle of wine while we were there, so we went to the local section...there were a lot of wineries in northern Virginia, so we figured we'd find one to try...and we ended up buying one from California! The selection of locals was awful...only about half an aisle, while the California section was FOUR AISLES! I guess you can't beat the best. :)

7.  We've managed to watch all but one performance episode of American Idol since we've been gone (Can anyone actually believe I convinced Jim to watch this show?! And he's SOOO into it!)

8. I've taken (and kept) 1608 photos so far this trip (and deleted probably a few hundred)

9. We're just a few miles short of the 6,000 mile mark.

10. PEOPLE NEED TO COMMENT MORE!!!

We Don't Like Delaware

Tonight we're staying in Edison, NJ, and we're not terribly happy about it. For starters, New Jersey is not enjoyable. From what we've seen it's largely run down and kind of ucky. But we're like sixty miles from Camden, which has had the highest crime rate in the country for like three years (I'm not sure of the exact statistic, so don't hold me to that). Also, we're very close to an Indian restaurant and it STINKS!

But we're in New Jersey for a couple of reasons: a) we're heading east and it's on the way. b) I have no idea where else to stay around here, and c) mostly because we went and saw the Battleship New Jersey today, and we needed a place to stay a little ways away from there.

The battleship was really neat, though. It's the most decorated and largest in the country. We got there about half an hour before they closed, so we were the last through (they closed at 3, though, so it was pretty early), and we were all by ourselves going through the ship. It was a little eerie. But it was also nice not to be rushed or have people moving slow in front of us (and there are no other people in our pictures!!!...well, except the ones with fake people who mostly scared the crap out of us, like these guys).

We got to go into one of the gun turrets, which was kind of cool, except evidently they had to have thirty people to shoot that thing and the space was so small I can't see how that many people could fit in there!

This is the room where the gun was actually loaded and shot. It had a 12-24 inch recoil, so the men in this park of the turret had to brace themselves against walls and beams and stuff.

This was the upper section where they aimed and did some other stuff I'm not really sure about

The guns from the outside

The ship from the outside (obviously, right?)

Also today, we went to the National Clock and Watch Museum in Columbia, PA. We were the first ones to this one and also the only ones walking through. It's nice to have the whole place to yourself. We enjoyed it at both places.

This was in the center of the main hall of the museum. It was kind of cool, went up four stories. I thought it was pretty.

There were thousands of different clocks and watches and other methods for telling time used throughout history. It was kind of neat to learn a little about the evolution of timetelling. And there were so many beautiful pieces. My mom would have loved it. She has quite an appreciation for this kind of thing.

This one was enormous and so intricately designed. Something like eight different artisans worked to create it

This one made me think of my dad

The detail on this one was amazing. It was one of the earlier clocks, sometime before 1800, I think

On the way from the clock museum to the Battleship New Jersey, we drove through Intercourse, PA, one of the largest Amish communities in the country (we think...). It was funny to see their horse and buggies driving down the road amid the modern day vehicles. Its neat that they can thrive in their ways of life when the world has progressed so far around them. I envy them in some ways. They live their lives so simply, so modestly. We depend so much on things and technology. I can't really imagine life without electricity and Starbucks, but I respect and admire their ability to live without such luxuries.

This one was closer to where we stayed the night than Intercourse

We've been collecting magnets from every state we've been in, and it's been quite the challenge. We've spent up to an hour before searching for magnets in non-tourist areas, but Delaware was impossible! We only had a small section of state that we could look in, and it was absolutely nasty! Dilapidated houses and buildings lined the streets and creepy looking people were miling about idly. One car even stopped in the middle of the road, a handful of grimy looking people got out and just sort of huddled around the car for a while. We got totally creeped out. We didn't even want to get out of the car, so we didn't. We drove up the freeway a little further and just before the stateline, we got off the freeway to check out a museum advertised on a sign, and the dang museum was closed! Although the sign said "Open Tuesday through Saturday." What day is today? TUESDAY!!! But then the sign on the door said they were opened WEDNESDAY through Saturday. We were totally pissed. Got back on the freeway and didn't stop again. We're going to order the dang thing online!

But Delaware wasn't the only one we had problems with. The states we just bite corners out of are hard! We found Kansas, by luck, at a gas station. Maryland was at a zoo (which we did not see...we didn't go further than the gift shop) and it didn't even say MARYLAND on it...we're going to write it in.

Virgia was tough too. We found it at a Ben Franklin (Mom! I knew it would be there because of the one in Grass Valley). Missouri was tough too. We got off the freeway several times and finally found one at a truck stop just before the stateline. In Mississippi we went to three casinos, three gift shops, two restaurants with gift shops and finally found it at a place called SOUVENIR WORLD on the beach at the recommendation of a guy at a gift shop who "didn't do that kind of thing." He was a little weird, but his advise was good. And it only took us about ten miles out of our way.

Anyway, back to the present. Tomorrow we're going to a place that was on Chowdown Countdown on the Travel Channel because they have humongous pancakes and you can get almost any topping you want on them, including ham and mustard and stuff. Kind of nasty, but I want one with strawberries and chocolate chips and whipped cream like I saw on the show. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!