Final reading on the trip odometer is 9,844.4
Thank you all for following us! We had a great time! Stay posted for more updates on pictures when we get organized and upload them to photo bucket!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
95, heading homeward
After an amazing two and a half days in Destin, Florida, we are now on our way up 95, and we just hit 9,000 miles!
Thanks to Aunt Jen, we had two great seafood dinners in Destin, and I had an amazing massage at the Hilton Spa!! The weather wasn't stellar, so we didn't spend much time on the beach, but we still enjoyed seeing the turquoise water and white sand. Overall, a great time and quite a treat after our long road trip!
Staying with Amy tonight at ECU (planning to watch out for crazy "gunmen" with umbrellas). Still a 7 hr drive to get there. This will be our longest day of driving, as it's something like 800 miles between Destin and Greenville.
Can't wait to get home and see everyone for the holidays!!
Thanks to Aunt Jen, we had two great seafood dinners in Destin, and I had an amazing massage at the Hilton Spa!! The weather wasn't stellar, so we didn't spend much time on the beach, but we still enjoyed seeing the turquoise water and white sand. Overall, a great time and quite a treat after our long road trip!
Staying with Amy tonight at ECU (planning to watch out for crazy "gunmen" with umbrellas). Still a 7 hr drive to get there. This will be our longest day of driving, as it's something like 800 miles between Destin and Greenville.
Can't wait to get home and see everyone for the holidays!!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
We are in Florida!
It's 11:38 and we've been in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and now we're in Florida! All in a day's work. Here are some of our first pics.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
We are in Texas!
We've travelled 7,294.6 miles, spent a total of about 2 hours apart during the last 4.5 weeks, and what do you know? We still like each other!
The only thing that I was really worried about before the trip was how we'd cope with our different tastes in music. But even though Sean black-listed Pussycat Dolls and Avril Lavigne, I know he secretly enjoys some of my selections, as is evident in the fact that he spent a few day straight singing Bad Romance, and yesterday morning he was whistling A Whole New World while he took the tent down. My first request today was some Fastball from his iPod, so I'd say music-related crisis averted.
We've also thoroughly enjoyed listening to The Grapes of Wrath over the past few weeks. We've been comparing our woes to those of the characters in Steinbeck's work, and we've realized time and again that our troubles aren't so bad after all. No shower for five days just doesn't compare to never having showered under a faucet at all.
Last night we were able to link up with my cousin Justin who is going to school in Albuquerque, NM. We had dinner and pleasant conversation at a yummy deli. It's lots of fun to see family while on the road! We are meeting up with my Aunt Jen in Destin, Florida in a couple days to relax before booking it up the east coast! Can't wait to see everyone else over the holiday season.
Today we drove a lot, but we also explored Carlsbad Caverns National Park. 750 ft underground, we marveled at the incredible stalactites, stalagmites, and other decorative cave formations. Sean had fun playing around with exposure and light and other stuff on his fancy pants camera. I just snapped a few with my iPhone! Here they are, for your viewing pleasure!
The only thing that I was really worried about before the trip was how we'd cope with our different tastes in music. But even though Sean black-listed Pussycat Dolls and Avril Lavigne, I know he secretly enjoys some of my selections, as is evident in the fact that he spent a few day straight singing Bad Romance, and yesterday morning he was whistling A Whole New World while he took the tent down. My first request today was some Fastball from his iPod, so I'd say music-related crisis averted.
We've also thoroughly enjoyed listening to The Grapes of Wrath over the past few weeks. We've been comparing our woes to those of the characters in Steinbeck's work, and we've realized time and again that our troubles aren't so bad after all. No shower for five days just doesn't compare to never having showered under a faucet at all.
Last night we were able to link up with my cousin Justin who is going to school in Albuquerque, NM. We had dinner and pleasant conversation at a yummy deli. It's lots of fun to see family while on the road! We are meeting up with my Aunt Jen in Destin, Florida in a couple days to relax before booking it up the east coast! Can't wait to see everyone else over the holiday season.
Today we drove a lot, but we also explored Carlsbad Caverns National Park. 750 ft underground, we marveled at the incredible stalactites, stalagmites, and other decorative cave formations. Sean had fun playing around with exposure and light and other stuff on his fancy pants camera. I just snapped a few with my iPhone! Here they are, for your viewing pleasure!
Petrified Forest National Park
(This post failed to publish yesterday, so here it is...)
We were only planning to drive through this park, but we ended up spending a fair amount of time exploring because of locking the keys in the car and because it was just plain nifty!!
The petrified trees were awesome, although I don't have any pictures of them on my phone to show here. For those who don't know anything about this park (like me before today), it used to be flood plains. When fallen trees from nearby forests washed into the flood plains, they settled to the bottom and were covered with layers of silt, sediment, and volcanic ash. This process sealed the trees and slowed decay. Over time, different minerals replaced the tree cell by cell, leaving multi-colored rocks in the exact shape, size, and texture of the original trees. Many of the rocks have broken apart, but in some places entire "trunks" are preserved.
Along with the amazing colors of these crystals, the park also has gorgeous blue, green, and purple buttes, as well as bright red, orange, pink, and yellow painted deserts. The colors are absolutely spectacular. I don't think even professional photography could capture the different shades and hues, but here are my few iPhone pics from the day to give you an idea.
We were only planning to drive through this park, but we ended up spending a fair amount of time exploring because of locking the keys in the car and because it was just plain nifty!!
The petrified trees were awesome, although I don't have any pictures of them on my phone to show here. For those who don't know anything about this park (like me before today), it used to be flood plains. When fallen trees from nearby forests washed into the flood plains, they settled to the bottom and were covered with layers of silt, sediment, and volcanic ash. This process sealed the trees and slowed decay. Over time, different minerals replaced the tree cell by cell, leaving multi-colored rocks in the exact shape, size, and texture of the original trees. Many of the rocks have broken apart, but in some places entire "trunks" are preserved.
Along with the amazing colors of these crystals, the park also has gorgeous blue, green, and purple buttes, as well as bright red, orange, pink, and yellow painted deserts. The colors are absolutely spectacular. I don't think even professional photography could capture the different shades and hues, but here are my few iPhone pics from the day to give you an idea.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
It worked!
We are back in business! Should have taken dad's advice and gotten a hide-a-key box for under the car!
Katherine locked all 3 sets of keys in the car :(
Currently trying to have a cop break into our car. We are stranded at the visitor center in Petrified Forest National Park. Let's hope this works....
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Yosemite, Death Valley, and Las Vegas
Hello everyone,
We have received some complaints that we have not been blogging regularly enough. Since we aim to please, here we are blogging again!
We had a stellar time in Yosemite National Park, well at least we did after we finally figured the d*** place out! It is probably the most backward government-run organization of them all. It took us about two hours to find the visitor's center, which we think should always be in a pretty obvious location. Instead of starting our day after getting some basic information about the park, we spent a few hours staring at 4 different maps and road signs, all seeming to point us in different directions. We finally found out that you can't actually drive to the visitor's center because it is in the very middle of a village that can only be accessed by foot or bike. Silly us. (Sean says, to be fair they were trying to encourage visitors to make use of their shuttle system, which we discovered has a stop right in the center of the village).
We were probably overly frustrated because the evening before we had been sent on a wild goose chase to reserve a campsite. When we first arrived in Yellowstone Valley, a ranger waved us past the gate without asking to actually see our entrance pass. This upset us quite a bit because we paid $80 for this piece of plastic, and nobody seems to care about it! After asking, the ranger did provide us with a map and directions to a campsite 12 miles into the valley. Upon arriving at the campsite (after dodging some road construction and taking an alternate loop), we learned that we could not pay for a site at the campground but instead needed to go to a different area (Curry Village) to register. This was especially frustrating because we were given this information by a man in the campsite's entrance booth, and it seemed like this man should be the one gladly taking our money rather than sending us away. Upon arriving in Curry Village, we learned that the rangers in the registration area, although still present, had already begun shutting down the computers for the day. (Side note: it is only about 4:15 at this point.) Long story short, we had to go back to Curry Village the next morning to pay for our campsite, although both of us considered keeping the $20 since nobody else seemed to want it very badly. It was my guilty conscience speaking to me in my mother's voice that forced us back to Curry Village to pay our bill.
Apart from all of the confusion, Yosemite was gorgeous and very fun. We explored some waterfalls, including Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America. Then we drove to the top of Glacier Point and looked out over the huge granite cliffs that surround the valley. We saw some crazy rock climbers and their tents hanging precariously from the 3,000 ft sheer face of El Capitan. On our last day we took a hike to a Giant Sequoia grove and drove the 32-mile Tioga Pass (which was closed the very next day due to heavy snow fall) through the incredible granite mountains and pine forests of the Sierra Nevadas.
Our drive through the Tioga Pass was both a wonderful scenic drive and and a means to an end en route to our next destination: Death Valley. The drive into the valley was awesome. On the way in we had to cross two mountain ranges, providing amazing scenery and some of the steepest elevation changes we have experienced. Conveniently placed signs on the side of the road indicted our exact altitude above sea level. At one point, it seemed we had risen 2000ft in as little as 6 or so miles. Our weary, fully laden Hyundai struggled mightily to propel us up the steep mountain passes.
The valley itself was nothing short of incredible. We had a wonderful (and warm!) night of camping, despite a group of loud, drunk RVers next to us and one particularly obnoxious man who couldn't seem to stop talking about himself. This lovely group treated the entire campsite to some late-night political discussion and original songs by their band, Red, White, and Bluegrass. I'll sum it up by saying I was not interesting in purchasing a CD.
We hiked through canyons and mountains all day in the valley, until a dust storm rolled through and forced us to continue on to Vegas. Having gone 5 days without showers and knowing there was a snowstorm brewing, it was not a hard decision to splurge on a hotel room.
We spent our morning in Vegas doing laundry and taking the car to the shop (once again!) to get the alignment fixed. Of course nothing is easy with this car, so $400 and 3 hours later we left Pep Boys with new front tires and a diagnosis that our left rear lower control arm needs to be replaced soon. But, as my dad says, we don't want to make the car perfect, so we'll deal with that later....
We did wander through some casinos and see all of the notable spots on the strip, but neither of us felt inclined to even play the penny slots. I think I can safely say Vegas and Rapid City are the only places we've been that I never need to see again.
We've spent the last two days entertaining ourselves in Sedona and surrounding towns while waiting for the snow at the Grand Canyon to clear. Now, after a brief 2-hour shopping stop for my benefit, we are on our way to the canyon!!! From there we are planning to continue heading east through New Mexico and Texas, possibly making a few stops but probably not staying in any one place for too long. We should be home around the 19 or 20, just in time for our birthday!!!!!
We have received some complaints that we have not been blogging regularly enough. Since we aim to please, here we are blogging again!
We had a stellar time in Yosemite National Park, well at least we did after we finally figured the d*** place out! It is probably the most backward government-run organization of them all. It took us about two hours to find the visitor's center, which we think should always be in a pretty obvious location. Instead of starting our day after getting some basic information about the park, we spent a few hours staring at 4 different maps and road signs, all seeming to point us in different directions. We finally found out that you can't actually drive to the visitor's center because it is in the very middle of a village that can only be accessed by foot or bike. Silly us. (Sean says, to be fair they were trying to encourage visitors to make use of their shuttle system, which we discovered has a stop right in the center of the village).
We were probably overly frustrated because the evening before we had been sent on a wild goose chase to reserve a campsite. When we first arrived in Yellowstone Valley, a ranger waved us past the gate without asking to actually see our entrance pass. This upset us quite a bit because we paid $80 for this piece of plastic, and nobody seems to care about it! After asking, the ranger did provide us with a map and directions to a campsite 12 miles into the valley. Upon arriving at the campsite (after dodging some road construction and taking an alternate loop), we learned that we could not pay for a site at the campground but instead needed to go to a different area (Curry Village) to register. This was especially frustrating because we were given this information by a man in the campsite's entrance booth, and it seemed like this man should be the one gladly taking our money rather than sending us away. Upon arriving in Curry Village, we learned that the rangers in the registration area, although still present, had already begun shutting down the computers for the day. (Side note: it is only about 4:15 at this point.) Long story short, we had to go back to Curry Village the next morning to pay for our campsite, although both of us considered keeping the $20 since nobody else seemed to want it very badly. It was my guilty conscience speaking to me in my mother's voice that forced us back to Curry Village to pay our bill.
Apart from all of the confusion, Yosemite was gorgeous and very fun. We explored some waterfalls, including Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America. Then we drove to the top of Glacier Point and looked out over the huge granite cliffs that surround the valley. We saw some crazy rock climbers and their tents hanging precariously from the 3,000 ft sheer face of El Capitan. On our last day we took a hike to a Giant Sequoia grove and drove the 32-mile Tioga Pass (which was closed the very next day due to heavy snow fall) through the incredible granite mountains and pine forests of the Sierra Nevadas.
Our drive through the Tioga Pass was both a wonderful scenic drive and and a means to an end en route to our next destination: Death Valley. The drive into the valley was awesome. On the way in we had to cross two mountain ranges, providing amazing scenery and some of the steepest elevation changes we have experienced. Conveniently placed signs on the side of the road indicted our exact altitude above sea level. At one point, it seemed we had risen 2000ft in as little as 6 or so miles. Our weary, fully laden Hyundai struggled mightily to propel us up the steep mountain passes.
The valley itself was nothing short of incredible. We had a wonderful (and warm!) night of camping, despite a group of loud, drunk RVers next to us and one particularly obnoxious man who couldn't seem to stop talking about himself. This lovely group treated the entire campsite to some late-night political discussion and original songs by their band, Red, White, and Bluegrass. I'll sum it up by saying I was not interesting in purchasing a CD.
We hiked through canyons and mountains all day in the valley, until a dust storm rolled through and forced us to continue on to Vegas. Having gone 5 days without showers and knowing there was a snowstorm brewing, it was not a hard decision to splurge on a hotel room.
We spent our morning in Vegas doing laundry and taking the car to the shop (once again!) to get the alignment fixed. Of course nothing is easy with this car, so $400 and 3 hours later we left Pep Boys with new front tires and a diagnosis that our left rear lower control arm needs to be replaced soon. But, as my dad says, we don't want to make the car perfect, so we'll deal with that later....
We did wander through some casinos and see all of the notable spots on the strip, but neither of us felt inclined to even play the penny slots. I think I can safely say Vegas and Rapid City are the only places we've been that I never need to see again.
We've spent the last two days entertaining ourselves in Sedona and surrounding towns while waiting for the snow at the Grand Canyon to clear. Now, after a brief 2-hour shopping stop for my benefit, we are on our way to the canyon!!! From there we are planning to continue heading east through New Mexico and Texas, possibly making a few stops but probably not staying in any one place for too long. We should be home around the 19 or 20, just in time for our birthday!!!!!
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