Vancouver

We left Seattle and headed up to Vancouver. We had some trouble figuring out how to get a reservation at a campground because it would have been 50 cents/minute to call there on our cell phones, and 70 cents/minute to call in Canada. We finally wised up and used Skype, which is really cool, and only costs 2 cents/minute to call non-Skype numbers in Canada and the US. We got to our campground nice and early, so we were able to spend most of the day in Vancouver. The only affordable campsites were well outside the city, so it was about an hour and 15 minutes by bus and train to get there, but we had a great time.

We went to Queen Elizabeth Park, which is a huge public park/garden that is beautifully and meticulously maintained. Here are a few pictures of the many many tulips.



Located at the park is Bloedel Conservatory, which is basically a greenhouse/biodome that houses many kinds of plants as well as some exotic birds. We happened to get in for free since we were asking (just out of curiousity, we wouldn't actually go there) about weddings in the park. The front desk woman said if we were thinking about getting married at the park or conservatory, we could just have a look around. So we saved $5 each! I got some shots of some of the birds, but I'm not completely sure what they were. First one is obviously a parrot of some kind. The second is, I think, a green canary, and the third is a yellow pheasant. I'm least sure of the canary... It could be something else entirely.




I have no idea what this plant was, but the picture came out really cool.



We went to Chinatown for dinner, but we actually had a really hard time finding any open restaurants! We walked around for about 20 minutes, getting hungrier, and decided on a place that had some really appetizing bbq pork in the window. The meal was decent, but nothing too exciting. We stopped at a Chinese bakery and got a bunch of little pastries for just four bucks, and they were way better than the dinner.

The next day was super rainy, and even though we wanted to go to a big park with Bebe and bike around, we figured we'd just have a lazy day and go the next day. The weather was forecast to be rainy for the next couple of days, and everything we wanted to do involved being outside, so we reluctantly decided to just leave Vancouver and get on with our trip. We had an interesting experience crossing the border back to the US. They had to search our camper because we had food, and they had to dump out all of our plants! We got to keep some of our herbs and arugula, but we had to completely forfeit the roots. They also took some potatoes and pears, but that wasn't a big deal. After about 15 minutes and losing some agricultural products, we got on the road and finally started our trip back to the east coast! Our next stop would be Yellowstone, which we will write about asap.

-Lily

Seattle

After our week-long stay in Portland, we drove up north a few hours and spent the next week with our friends Keith and Sara. We hadn't seen them in a couple of years, and we're really glad we got to spend some time with them. They have a pretty sweet apartment on Capitol Hill, which is very close to downtown. They also have a guest room, so we were able to escape from the confines of our camper for a week! To cap it off, Keith and Sara have a nice big TV, an XBox 360, and plenty of games, which we fully took advantage of when we were there.

The one thing we were uncertain of before landing at Keith and Sara's pad was how well our little dog Bebe would get along with their big cat Spike. Our fears were all for naught, as the two got along great pretty much right off the bat! They played with each other all week, with only minor hissing and barking, no clawing, and no blood drawn. We were pretty wiped our first day there, and we wanted Bebe to adjust to her surroundings before leaving her alone, so we just watched TV and played video games all day.

Our second day in Seattle, Lily and I biked down to the Space Needle area and went to the Experience Music Project (EMP) and Science Fiction museum, which are both inside a crazy Frank Gehry-designed building. Keith lent us his Prime card, which got us in to both museums for $5/each (normally $15/each). EMP was fun - especially the Seattle area music history exhibit, and the interactive rock band instruments area. I enjoyed the Science Fiction museum even more. It aroused the inner nerd inside me with all its cool Star Trek, Star Wars, and other geeky memorobilia, and it sparked both of our lost interests in reading sci fi books.

The next day, Lily and I walked around the neighborhood and went to a couple of used bookstores in Capitol Hill. We bought a few cheap sci fi books that should keep us occupied for the rest of the trip. We have way too many books in our camper at this point! At night, Keith and Sara took us out to dinner at Dahlia Lounge, which is one of Tom Douglas's restaurants. It was a lot of fun to go out with them, but I was not impressed with dinner - it was good, but not great (more in the food blog when I get around to actually writing about food one of these days).

Pike's Place Market was our destination on Thursday, and we took a nice walk down Capitol Hill and through downtown to waterfront where it is located. The walk wasn't nearly as nice on our way back from the market, up the hill, with big shopping bags full of our bounty from the market. Really - every city should have a market like Pike's Place in Seattle. It's main draw is tourists, who come to see people at one stall throw a fish back and fourth over the counter (how stupid is that?). We came for the spring produce and some fish. We also grabbed a lunch of fried shrimp and fries and a cheap day-old loaf of apple cinnamon bread from a great little bakery. After the haul back to Keith and Sara's place, I took advantage of the nice day and their balcony and cooked a nice dinner of grilled trout, grilled asparagus, grilled spring onions, and couscous (not grilled, obviously).

On Friday, Keith took us on a great driving tour of Seattle. The first stop was a tiny little park on Queen Anne Hill, which had this view of Seattle with Mt. Saint Helens in the background:



From there, he drove us over to Gasworks Park, which is an old oil refinery right on the bay that was converted into a beautiful park. We had a nice picnic lunch there of pastrami, cheese, crackers, and mangos that we bought at the market the day before.

Next, Keith schauffered us to the Fremont Troll, a very cool public art project/cement sculpture of a giant troll under a bridge in the neighborhood.



Lily got a nice one of me trying to pick a winner.



Lastly, we had the pleasure of visiting Theo chocolate factory where we weren't able to take a tour, but we were still allowed to eat as much high quality chocolate as we wanted for free (our favorite was coconut curry - we were skeptical, but it is actually quite awesome).

-Ben

Visiting Oregon: Eugene and Portland

We finally left California on the 15th of April, after spending a total of four and a half months in the state. We headed up towards Portland, and decided to spend a night in Eugene. It's a cool place, but almost completely a college town. We arrived in the afternoon on the 16th and Ben walked around with Bebe for about an hour while I napped. The two of us walked around some more to a few used record stores and hobby shops. We still didn't want to pay for any lodging, so we found a Walmart fairly well outside the center of town and parked for the night.

Ben had seen a bar on the way to the Walmart that he was sure was just a half mile down the road. It had pool and karaoke, and while neither of us ever gets drunk enough to sing in public, we do enjoy Ben beating my sorry butt at pool. Plus, there were $1.50 PBR pints! And the rum and ginger ale (a fake Dark and Stormy) was only $2.50! Of course, before we could enjoy ourselves, we had to get there, and walking was pretty much our best option (we didn't really know where the busses went). It turned out to be a 25-30 minute walk, which wasn't too bad, but we kept wondering if maybe it was 2 or 3 miles down the road... We decided to take a bus back, after the bartender let us borrow a bus map and schedule booklet.

The next day we knew there was a farmer's market happening, so we drove downtown and walked around with Bebe. Dogs are generally not allowed at open food markets, so we had to put Bebe in my backpack. She wasn't crazy about it, but put up with it for a good 25 minutes, before I finally took her out and carried her; and let me tell you 10 pounds gets pretty heavy after a pretty short amount of time in your arms. Kudos to all the moms who have carried or do carry around their babies regularly! We picked up some nice produce at the market, and then found this sublime El Salvadorian tamale that had a huge list of ingredients: prunes, chicken, peppers, tomatoes, raisins, and more that we can't remember, topped with sour cream and really spicy salsa. It was expensive ($8!) but it fed both of us for a small lunch and was so delicious.

We left that afternoon (17th) to get on our way to Portland. We didn't get the whole way, because we got a late start, but we arrived the next day to stay with Ben's brother Aaron's friend from college, Aimee, and her boyfriend, Kyle. And their dog, Poopay (I know I spelled that wrong, but that's at least the phonetic spelling...). Bebe was pretty freaked out of Poopay at first, but after a day they were running around the yard playing a ton.

We stayed a whole week in Portland, and we absolutely LOVED IT! There's a great food scene there, with a lot of restaurants and a great appreciation for them. It's a somewhat spread out city with a bunch of different neighborhoods, all with their own vibe. The public transportation is awesome (probably our first experience with very user-friendly transit on the whole trip), and they even have a "fareless square" which is a several block radius in which all transit trips are free! As reputed, Portland was a bike-friendly city, and we took full advantage of it. Aimee and Kyle were about a mile or so from downtown, so we biked back and forth a few times. Of course we went to Powell's Bookstore, but we were disappointed in the organization of the store in general, and the selection of used food literature books in particular. All the books are thrown together, used, new and discount, so it can be difficult if you only want to buy cheap books (like us). I found two books I wanted that were about $5 each, but Ben ended up buying a new book. We have too many books with us. There is a really nice waterfront park on the Willamette River that was great for people-watching. We spent part of a day there and enjoyed a couple of donuts from Voodoo Donuts (an awesomely delicious and creative donut shop that has a line all day long) before playing catch.

Ben staged at Le Pigeon for three days, and we got a completely comped meal, including wine pairings! It was quite good, and awesomely free, but none of it really blew us away until the dessert. I got a creme brulee which was just a regular creme brulee, but it also came with a bonus pot de creme (yes, the dessert menu actually said "bonus pot de creme") that was incredible. It was nice to end the meal like that. Our final culinary experience in Portland was at Pokpok, a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant that had a short menu of exotic sounding entrees and salads. Ben will write more about it, but I will say we really loved it, and again the dessert was incredible.

On the 26th we got up early, took Bebe to the vet (she somehow got pretty sick) and after a shot and some antibiotics, we hit the road to head to Seattle, to visit with our friends Keith and Sara. We were pretty sad to leave Portland, and it's definitely second (or tied for first) on our short list of cities we'd like to live in. We will write about Seattle and our Vancouver adventure as soon as we get the chance. Current trip stats: almost 9000 miles and almost 1000 gallons of gas!

-Lily

Northern California, Redwoods NP

<<<NOW WITH PICTURES!!>>>

Sorry we haven't blogged since we left Martinez! We'll actually be in Seattle today, so here I'll catch everyone up on our travels up the NoCal coast, and soon Lily will write about Oregon and Portland.

Before we left the bay area, Lily and I wanted to do a bit of tune-up work on Inigo. Our last afternoon in Martinez, we replaced the spark plugs, ignition wires, and distributor cap. The next day, we said our sad goodbyes to Lily's dad and Aunt and left.

As we accelerated up the onramp onto the highway heading north, Inigo let out some weird popping sounds, and the camper struggled to hit 50 mph! "Well," I said to Lily, "I guess we're not leaving today". We had to re-gap the spark plugs, and we found out that two of the ignition wires were swapped, so the plugs were firing in the wrong order, running on 6 cylinders instead of 8. Just a little snag, and luckily we were able to leave the next day, with the engine sounding better than ever. We were finally, finally ready to head up to wine country!

We didn't spend much time in Napa, as we had visited a couple months earlier. I did stage at Redd for a day, and I was able to absorb a good amount in a short period of time. I worked my own station, I was fed well, and could have worked there longer, but one day was enough for me. We decided to get back on the road, and I must say - the drive north through Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties was beautiful!




After a quick stop in Fort Bragg, we arrived in Eureka, a really nice little artsy port city in Humboldt county. A wonderful lady named Beth, whom we met on couchsurfing.com, hosted us in her driveway for a couple of nights. Eureka has a nice little pier area, and the downtown area has some cool art galleries and stores.

On our way up the coast after Eureka, we stopped at a tiny little oceanside town called Trinidad. The town is perched on top of a huge cliff overlooking the ocean, and the ocean shelf have these huge jagged rocks sticking up. There's a nice marina and the beaches are beautiful. We had a nice picnic lunch and then walked along the beach with Bebe off the leash - she loved it!





Our trip continued north through the slow, windy steep roads of US 101 along the coast. After some of the slowest, most challenging driving we've done on the trip, we spent a couple nights in the tiny town of Orick, where we stayed with another couchsurfer - a lifetime hippie named Steve. This guy was quite a character! He has three huge black guard dogs and six chickens, from which we cooked fresh eggs for breakfast on his wood-burning stove.

Why did we stay in Orick? It's smack in the middle of Redwoods National and State Parks! We did a few really nice hikes and saw some unbelievably large trees. We stood in the middle of a couple huge chimney trees - redwood giants that are hollowed out completely on the inside by multiple forest fires (only the bark remains, which is resistant to fire). We also picked a whole bunch of fresh bay leaves from some bay trees! The weather was pretty horrible, though - very cold and occasional rain, so we weren't able to see as much as we wanted to.






Oh, and the drive up from Crescent City to Grants Pass, OR along Rt. 199 was especially beautiful. The road goes along Smith River, and the water was this wonderful blue-green color.




-Ben

About to get on the road

We've taken a three month "break" from traveling since we got to Martinez. It's been two months since we've updated, but only one noteworthy thing has happened. About six weeks ago, Ben and I adopted a dog from an animal shelter nearby. We've been wanting to adopt a dog for a while. She's a chihuahua mix, and we named her Bebe! She's really cute and loves belly rubs. We think she probably has some jack russell or rat terrier in her, because aside from looking like that, she's very fast and has a ton of energy. I took her on a couple of bike rides a couple days ago, and it was a great way for her to run nearly full speed while I biked at a moderate pace. She loves running and it's good for her to get hard exercise, because she can be a little hyperactive sometimes... Onto the pictures!

A few days after we got her:




The next two pictures show a frequent series of events:

She just loves her belly rubs.




We've taken her to the marina here in Martinez, as well as a dog park nearby. Here are some of her looking cute in the grass.



She is very curious about inanimate objects, but not so much with people and animals.




WHAAAAA???



We will be getting back on the road in about a week, to head back to the Boston area, via Portland, Seattle, Vancouver,the Black Hills in South Dakota, Chicago and whatever else crosses our path. We will post regularly when we are on the road again.

-Lily

San Luis to Martinez

After leaving Santa Barbara, we spent a couple of days in San Luis Obispo. We had a really good lunch downtown and bought some really awesome aged balsamic vinegar. From there we drove to Monterey, to spend some time with my grandparents. We had an awesome Christmas dinner that Ben cooked most of. I made dessert, which included lime squares (which came out alright) and the best apple pie in the world. We spent some time with my mom, as she was visiting for a week also. On Dec 29th, we left Monterey and went up to Martinez. We had a very relaxing drive, and we stopped in Gilroy and a neat little market. We got some really cheap garlic and oranges and other stuff; we even bought a little ice cream cup of GARLIC ICE CREAM which I thought was actually really good (no one else liked it).

Last weekend, Ben's parents were here and we spent a nice day going to some wineries and then having dinner at Redd in Yountville, near Napa. It's been really nice to see so much family in the past month!

So we've been in Martinez for a month now, and I only just started working today. We'll probably be here for another six to eight weeks, after which we will begin to head back to the east coast. We'll try to remember to update our blogs, but we're mainly focused on working and making money right now. We are going to make sure we get at least a few days of leisure time in San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley, so we'll write about that.

Until next time...

-Lily

Santa Barbara - very nice

Lily and I spent the past four days Santa Barbara, California, and we both really enjoyed our time there. The city has beautiful beaches, a nice pier, lots of cool stores, and some pretty good restaurants downtown. A couple days ago we went to a great farmer's market right on State Street downtown, and apparently there's a farmer's market every day of the week in the Santa Barbara area in a different place each day! Last night, we had a good, reasonably priced dinner downtown at a place called Opal. All in all, it seems like a pretty good food town. There's a lot going on for such a small city - it's too bad that housing rates are among the highest in the country here. Santa Barbara is on the short list of places we've visited so far on this trip that we would consider moving to when we're done with this trip - if we can afford the rent.

We weren't even sure we'd be able to stay in Santa Barbara for more than one night, but thanks to a new discovery, we were able to stay, have a great time, and meet some new people. For a couple weeks now, we've been having problems finding cheap or free places to park the camper overnight during our travels through southern California. Someone pointed us to a website called couchsurfing.com, which is a very large community of people from all over the world who partake in couchsurfing, whether it be as travelers, or as hosts. Basically, generous people open out their homes and lend their couches to travelers who do not have a place to stay or people to stay with. It's a fun, cheap way to travel, and you get to really get to know new and interesting people along the way. While we do not need couches to sleep on, we do need places to park, plug in, fill water, ect.

We didn't know anybody in Santa Barbara and just discovered couchsurfing.com, and on very short notice, a really cool guy named Kyle emailed us and took us in! He let us plug in, hang out at his pad with his roommates and friends, and use his shower and bathroom. He and his friends told us what to do in town, where to go for dinner, and more, and of course we returned the favor by cooking for them.

Tonight, we got to San Luis Obispo, which is about halfway between Monterey and LA and again another couchsurfer responded to the short-notice request and let us park in his driveway! After spending a lot of time basically by ourselves between Denver and Las Vegas, it's nice to actually socialize with people for a change, and get to know new people.

We really wish we had discovered this sooner!

-Ben

LA - NOT a tourist friendly city (but at least Marilyn is here)

You'd think that Los Angeles, being home of the stars and thus home of star-watching, would be a city that would do its best to welcome tourists so it could make as much money off them as possible. But if you're a visitor to LA, you're really on your own as far as figuring out how to get anywhere.

LA is known for its legendary traffic, but it also has exhorbitant parking costs, so what visitor is going to rent a car here? Better to take the public transportation and get where you want to go for a lot cheaper. There's still a problem with that plan though! There are at least three different cities operating public transportation around the LA area: Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Culver City (which, incedentally, is just a part of west LA). On top of that, many of the bus numbers overlap from city to city, so when you want to get on the Metro 2, you might end up on the Blue Bus 2 instead (since they stupidly pick up at many of the same spots along their [very similar, but not similar enough] routes!). As for the LA Metro, there are Metro Local buses, Metro Rapid buses, Metro Express buses, and then just three or four Metro Rail lines for the entire city.

The public transportation has been a source of frustration for us for the past few days, and we realized how much we loved the simplicity of Boston's MBTA. We also have a greater appreciation for New York City's extensive subway system, as well as all the crosstown and up/downtown buses. Even the public transportation in LAS VEGAS was easier to deal with than here. At least in Vegas, all we had to contend with was the lack of expediency, but we always knew where we were going. In LA, the buses are slow, fares are not constant through the three seperate systems, and many of the buses have different AM/PM routes.

The biggest issue is that the vast majority of Los Angelenos drive their own cars, so there is really no motivation to update, consolidate, and streamline the current public transportation. There really needs to be a Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority, but LAMATA doesn't really roll of the tongue.

Good news (for me anyway): Yesterday we visited the cemetary where Marilyn Monroe was buried; we saw her Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame Star; and we saw the concrete slab in front of Graumans Chinese Theater where Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell immortalized their handprints and shoeprints for the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953. We also had a lovely dinner at Campanile, courtesy (mostly) of Ben working there for a couple days!

We'll be heading up the coast again on Sunday or Monday. Trip Stats: we've surpassed 5800 miles, we're holding steady around 9.5mpg, and our cost per mile at this point is down to 36 cents/mile! Yay cheap gas!

-Lily

San Diego - Our kinda place

San Diego's got a lot going for it. It's got very nice weather, beautiful beaches, a nice city park, and lots of good Mexican food. It's wonderful to be able to enjoy the weather and do outdoorsy things at this time of the year. I guess that's one of the big advantages to full-time RVing - we get to drive to where the weather is nice.

We were lucky to find a great RV park to stay for a few of our nights in San Diego right on Mission Bay called Campland on the Bay. For 20 bucks a night, we were able to enjoy a spot just a couple hundred feet from the beach, and just a thirty second walk away from the pool/jacuzzi, with all the necessary RV hookups that alone usually cost $40/night. There were a ton of big RVs there, and a lot in San Diego in general, and I can see why.

We visited a couple beautiful beaches close to where we stayed. Mission beach is a thin strip of land about two hundred feet wide with the ocean on one side and the bay on the other side. We parked the RV, hopped on our bikes, and biked north along beach on the wavy ocean side and then back south along the back on the calm bay side. We also had lunch on Ocean Beach, which is a dog beach (dog park on the beach), and visited the ritzy town of Coronado Beach, which is near a U.S. amphibious Navy base where you can see Marines and Seals training from the highway.

We spent our last afternoon/night in San Diego at Balboa Park, which is the world's largest urban cultural park. There are 15 museums in the park, all of which normally cost money, but we happened to visit on a night when they were having a holiday festival, and all of the museums were free! We had a great time biking and walking around the park, and then enjoyed visiting a couple of the museums amongst the throngs of local festival go-ers.

Our favorite part of the night was the San Diego automotive museum. This place is full of beautiful exotic, classic, and vintage cars and motorcycles. But the highlight was a car and trailer from 1954 that broke (and still holds) the world's endurance non-stop record across the United States. For seven days, three men drove in five hour shifts drove over 7,400 miles from Anchorage, Alaska to Mexico city, re-fueling on the run from trucks on airport runways along the way. The custom car/trailer refilled the radiator and changed oil on the run, and even had hydraulic jacks with wheels attached that enabled the passengers to change a tire while still driving! The trailer holds 230 gallons of gas, 15 gallons of oil, and 30 gallons of water (50 more held in a tank in the car). At the back of the trailer is a tiny table for eating with a nation-wide mobile phone (in 1954?), and the men used a catwalk attached to the bottom of the war to walk outside and climb onto the trailer while moving. The story behind the car/trailer was also very cool - a man named Louis Mattar built it over seven years as a hobby with $75,000 of his own money, with no sponsors.

If anyone reading this visits San Diego any time soon, you should definitely check out that museum. The Mattar car was a lot of fun to see and read about.

We just got to LA, and we're staying with Lily's uncle Bob's brother Art. I'm going to work at one of the city's great restaurants while we're here. Then it's up north along the Pacific Coast Highway towards our next week-long stop, Monterey.

-Ben

Las Vegas - Bring Money

After two weeks visiting national parks in Utah, Lily and I were more than ready to return to civilization. We bypassed the Grand Canyon for a variety of reasons, mainly because we would have had to drive at least a few hundred miles to get there. We were ready to be back in a city - if that's what you want to call Las Vegas.

See, to me, Las Vegas is more of a giant adult-themed 24-hour amusement park than a city. It's lots of fun, but it's best when you have lots of money to blow. We were there for a few nights, and since we didn't have much disposable income (or any income at all), we spent just one day/night doing the fun things one generally does in Vegas. We had a lot of fun that night, and as a result, not so much fun the next morning. Still, we enjoyed our time there, and will be happy to return if/when we are floating in money.

Now we are in San Diego, enjoying the ocean. I still can't get over the fact that it's December, and we're wearing shorts and T-shirts. Today we biked along Mission Beach and had lunch on Ocean Beach. It's 70 degrees in December - I think I could live in a place like this.

Our camper, on the other hand, is becoming more and more of a pain in the ass to live in. The system of piping leading from our freshwater tank to the water pump decided to leak after thirty years. Today is the first day we've been able to enjoy ourselves - we've spent the past three days attempting to find a solution for a thirty year old system of water piping. I am happy to gloat that we did fix the problem, and are very proud of ourselves for figuring it out. I can guarantee you one thing: the next camper we own will not be older than we are.

-Ben

Views from the road

Denver was a nice city, but not exactly what I had expected. It was great getting to know Lily's brother Sam. He brought us to some fun places: a great amusement park, the real Casa Bonita that inspired a South Park episode, a huge skate park, and we got to see his comedy routine at an open mic night at a bar. All in all, we had a great time with him.

Still, my experience getting work in Denver made me ready to head back on the road earlier than planned. I had to essentially jump through hoops while job hunting, only to land a job at a sub-par restaurant which frustrated me. More can be read about the fiasco on my food blog.

Nevertheless, my mood changed for the better by what we've been seeing in Colorado west of Denver and in the beautiful state of Utah. We've been to five national parks in the Beehive State: Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion, in that order (pictures to come, Arches photos are now up on Lily's photo blog). We've taken scenic byways wherever possible, which has provided some truly memorable rides. Here's some of the views from the road:

A view of the Rocky Mountains from a pull-off on I-70

Entering a canyon just west of the Rockies

We drive past the "Three Gossips", just inside Arches NP

A shot of the road at the bottom of one of the many canyons we drove through near Escalante

An ordinary sight on the road through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Our first sight of a group of hoodoos as we approach Bryce Canyon NP

-Ben

Pugs!

We finally left Denver a few days ago, and will be posting an update with pictures soon. For now here are a couple pictures of Sam's pugs!

Here's Moo Shu looking so incredibly cute (don't forget to click the picture for the full size image - she's a lot cuter when she fills your entire screen!):
And Butters chewing on one of his favorite toys, a plastic hanger:

We will be posting more soon. We've been hanging out in Moab, UT and Arches National Park for the past couple of days and we took nearly 400 pictures already...!

-Lily

Kansas is Beautiful, not Boring

Ben and I have been driving through Kansas the past couple of days, and everyone we spoke to said we were going to be thoroughly bored by the state. Although we have definitely driven through endless acres of cornfields and cattle pastures, it's not like anything either of us has experienced before. Part of the point of this trip for both of us it to see and experience people and places that are unfamiliar to us. And for that reason, we actually found it to be beautiful and enjoyed ourselves very much. Saturday night we stayed in a state park, and on Sunday we biked around the park and went swimming. We liked it so much there that we didn't end up leaving until about 5pm. We drove for just two hours and stopped at another state park. It was just as pretty there, but it was too cold yesterday to swim again. We finally made it to Colorado yesterday, but we still have yet to see any mountains! Today's drive will be through the mountains into the city of Denver, and we're hoping Inigo will make the climb well.

Below are some pictures I took on Sunday evening while Ben was driving on Rt 36 through Kansas. The sun was going down behind some clouds, and it was an incredible sight.









-Lily

St Louis -OR- How to have more fun than anyone else.

The best way to have more fun than anyone else is to go to the City Museum in St Louis. It's basically a huge playground for kids of all ages, and the only people having as much fun as you are the other people there with you. There are a ton of slides and tunnels and caves and everything you can imagine. There is actually a seven-story spiral slide you can go on, but you have to climb up seven flights of stairs to get there of course. The museum is housed in the old International Shoe Co. building, so the seven-story slide is actually a leftover "shoe chute" - like a garbage chute (what I thought it was at first) but for shoes (I probably didn't need to explain that). We did too much there to describe everything, but I'll just say that it is a must-see place for anyone visiting St Louis. Even a quadriplegic could enjoy themselves purely for the visual interest.

While in St Louis, we had dinner at Niche with our new friends Bredon and Carolyn, and enjoyed the hell out of it! I arrived a few hours early to take some pictures in the kitchen, which I will post at some point. It was pretty quiet in the kitchen, but everyone I met was really cool. For dinner, we all decided to let the kitchen send whatever they wanted, and Ben eventually had to tell them to stop because it was just so much food. Ben will write more about it, but highlights for me were: (a) eating the raw tomato slice in the tomato consumme; (b) eating RAW fish for the first time; (c) eating the entire piece of grilled trout; and (d) really liking all of the above.

The next night, Ben and I also at An American Place with his cousin Barry and Barry's wife Laura. Again, we were all very full by the end of an awesome meal. The next night we went to eat at Zia's on "the hill", the Italian area of St Louis, and it was pretty decent, but not nearly as good as the previous two nights. The best food that evening was when we went to Ted Drewe's for frozen custard. Damn it was so good, and I was really regretting having filled up so much at dinner.

We're now in Kansas City, and although we thought we were going to stay here for a couple of days, we realized that there's only one thing we are actually interested in here: going to Arthur Bryant's for BBQ. So we'll do that tonight, and then hit the road again tomorrow to head towards Denver.

We filled our gas tank yesterday for a ridiculous price of $3.229/gal. Then yesterday evening we saw it for $3.199/gal. I was sad we hadn't waited to save even more, but not as sad as today when we saw it for $3.119/gal! I don't know why the hell gas is so cheap here, but I am really not complaining.

Current Trip Stats: 3605 miles; 378 gallons of gas; 9.54 overall mpg

-Lily

A Sidewalk in Memphis Gave Me the Blues

We spent last night on Beale street in downtown Memphis, enjoying some drinks and some live blues, jazz, soul, and funk music. Our night was cut short when we got off the trolley at one point and stepped onto the sidewalk, where my clunky new shoes and mild inebriation caused me to roll my ankle pretty badly. It's still hurting a lot this morning and I'm going to try not to put any weight on it today. I'm pretty sure nothing's broken, though - it feels like a really bad sprain, and I'll probably be fine in a few days.

We had a great time yesterday. We went to Interstate Bar-B-Que for lunch, one of Memphis's temples of pork. Then we went to Sun Studio, where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, B.B.King, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others recorded early in their careers in the 1950's. We made it just in time for the guided tour, which was a lot of fun. In between explaining the history of the studio and the exhibits displayed, the tour guide played a lot of music, including the first, unreleased recording of Elvis, and some songs from a few legendary blues musicians from the 50's. It was a great time.

Yesterday (Friday) we noticed a bizarre phenomenon with the hike in gas prices due to Hurricane Ike slamming into some Texas oil refineries. Gas prices were very low in Tennessee on Thursday - usually under $3.50/gal. On Friday, we saw an Exxon selling gas at $3.99/gal, right next to that a BP station selling gas at $3.44/gal. That's a difference in 55 cents a gallon, right next to each other! That particular BP was a day behind the other gas stations in raising their prices, but hey, the lines of cars vying for time at their pumps were almost out onto the street. Another gas station a mile down the road was selling for $4.19/gallon. That's two gas stations one mile apart, with a 75 cent difference in price per gallon!

-Wax

Down South

We had a great time in Atlanta while we were there. It was great spending time with family, and we got to see a bit of the city when we stayed with Lily's uncle Bob for a few days. We went to the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world, where we saw whale sharks feeding and beluga whales having fun and showing off. Lily will post pictures soon in her photo blog.

Last night we arrived in Memphis, where we're staying at the Elvis Presley Boulevard RV Park. We took route 72 through Alabama and northern Mississippi on our way to here. Man, there's nothing as far as the eye can see in northern Mississippi. Route 72 is a very straight road with very predictable hills through forest with the occasional dreary looking farm. I could see about five miles ahead of me and behind me and I rarely saw another car on either side of the two lane highway. It makes for a boring yet peaceful drive. As we go west, I'm sure we'll start to encounter more and more of this.

Today we went to Graceland, because hey, it's Memphis and we're a few blocks away. Since it's so expensive ($29 to see it all), we decided to see Elvis's automobile museum. It was small, but pretty cool. Elvis really had a great taste in cars. Lily took pictures, which I will bug her to post. It bothers me how much Elvis is exploited at Graceland - all the museums are expensive, and there are tons of gift shops selling some really lame stuff that I can't believe people actually buy. But Elvis is and was larger than life, so why not celebrate his life by throwing money in the garbage.

From where we've been so far in the south we've notices some interesting, some troubling trends. There are churches everywhere - in really rural areas along some of the local highways it seems like half of the buildings we see are churches. Also, there are lots and lots and lots of fast food joints in the towns. I'm going to write more about that in my food blog. College football is HUGE in the south. Oh, and for some reason there are a ridiculous amount of subdivisions down south. Even though there is so much unpopulated land down here, sometimes it looks like over half the population is living in very close quarters in the same looking quarter-of-a-house. I would estimate that %75 of the buildings we see are churches, fast food restaurants, or subdivision housing.

Well that was a crabby blog...

-Wax

Congratulations to the Singers!

Ben and I have been in Roswell, GA, helping his sister and her family get ready for the baby. Mainly, Ben has been cooking a ton of food so they have yummy meals to eat in the next couple of weeks while Carrie is recovering. Ben hasn't really needed my help in the kitchen, except for taking care of a ton of dishes. Now they have a really well stocked freezer with three to five meals each of gumbo, bolo ragu, grilled chicken, and corn ragu.

On Saturday night, Carrie and Eugene decided to take us to Greenwood's to experience some southern cooking. Starting at 6pm, when we left, Carrie was having contractions, and all through the meal, Eugene was timing them. They thought it was probably just "practice" labor, which happened last time Carrie was pregnant. Around 9pm, after we got home, they decided to head to the hospital, and Ben's niece, Mia Heather Singer, was born around 8am, Sunday, Aug 31, 2008, about two weeks early. She was 6 1/2 pounds and absolutely adorable! Mom and baby are doing well, if a little tired. Here are a few pictures:

Looking like a grumpy old man:

With her proud big sister, Michelle:

-Lily

They're EVERYWHERE

So last night we stayed at my 92-year-old grandmother Romey's house in Rockingham, North Carolina. We parked our camper hidden behind her house, because she was worried people might drive by, see it, and try to break into the camper.

Little did we know we parked right on top of a huge colony of red fire ants.

I wake up at 9:00, and Lily is still fast asleep so I lounge around for an hour, reading a magazine. Lily wakes up at around 10:00, and Romey "asks" us if we want breakfast. Apparently cereal isn't good enough for Lily and me - she practically insists cooking us eggs, sausages, grits, toast, and coffee. We appease my 92 year old grandma by accepting the offer, but only under the condition that I help her, to which she replies, "Now don't you worry baby I'll fix it, now sit down with 'ya girlfriend and read your magazine."

Lily and I sit down with Romey and enjoy our wonderful breakfast, and after I am able to sneak next to the sink and start cleaning the dishes. She notices the second I turn the water on, and she demands, "Oh baby I'll take care'v those." Like an offensive lineman protecting the quarterback from a blitzing linebacker, I cut her off, "Romey I'll take care of these finish your breakfast!" She's the boss and we're the guests, but I'm three times her size and there's now way she's doing these dishes. I'm relaxed, enjoying my time with Romey, and now I'm helping.

Meanwhile, Lily sneaks out to the camper to grab her deoderant. She opens the door and sees an ant crawling across the step. Then a few more on next step up, then...

"Uh honey we have red ants in our camper," Lily says as I'm scrubbing away. I shrug, figuring it's just a few and we just need to clean up a bit and they'll go away. "Lots of ants", she says, sensing that I don't understand the urgency of the situation. "Like, all over the place." I walk out and jump in the camper. She wasn't kidding. They're crawling everywhere - on the floor, on the stove, in the stove, in the oven, on the cushions, under the cushions, in the sink, on the walls...everywhere. Red ants bite. And when they bite, it hurts...a lot.

Lily jumped in the driver's seat and moved the camper out of the yard and into the driveway. Romey points out the huge anthill we accidentally parked on, and covers it with sawdust-like at poison in a bag. We finished the bag in the camper - we put the stuff on every surface, in every crevice we could think of. It did a pretty good job of shriveling up those pesky little things. A couple hours later, with nary a single little ant left in sight, we vacuumed and scrubbed the place like crazy. Now we're on the road, and it's a lot better, but we've seen and killed about ten more ants since the first monstrous onslaught. There's bound to be some stragglers, but hopefully the vast majority met their maker.

Still, our short stay with Romey was great. We spent some quality time with her, and she taught me how to make her southern fried chicken! She sent us packing with a fridge full of food...chicken, sweet potato pudding, cake...I feel like I'm being fattened up for Thanksgiving. Now we're headed through North Caroline, South Carolina, and Georgia on our way to my sister's house in Atlanta, where I'll be cooking up a storm in preparation for the arrival of Mia Heather, my neice-to-be. And then...who knows?!?!

-Wax

Capital City adventures

Yesterday we left the Washington DC area, after spending four nights. We arrived pretty late on Wednesday night, after driving the entire way from New Rochelle, NY, an all-day drive. Ben's cousin Josh and his wife Stephanie very kindly let us stay in their driveway on really short notice. Thursday was spent not doing a whole lot, and in the evening we had a nice dinner with Josh and Stephanie, and their kids Elizabeth and Matthew. Ben made a baked penne dish that came out quite tasty. Friday we went into DC very early. We meant to go to the zoo for just a couple hours, but it ended up being more like five or six. I got some good pictures which I will be posting in the next couple of days. We relaxed for a few hours, and then met up with Allison to walk around DC and go to dinner. We went to Jaleo, a tapas place owned by Jose Andres. It was pretty good, but not outstanding; the tapas we had in Spain were, of course, way better. We were truly disappointed by Andres' rendition of patatas bravas, but the sangria was really good. More about that on Ben's food blog.

After dinner we went to a bar called "Poste" which is located in the old post office building (so shouldn't it be called "Post"?). They looked like a kind of trendy place, but they had a huge outdoor seating area and lots of home-infused liquors. I got a faux-Dark and Stormy: instead of ginger beer and rum, I got ginger-infused rum and ginger ale. It was really really good. I can't remember what Allison and Ben got, but they both ordered drinks with some of the infused vodkas. After a couple drinks, we wandered back to Allison's and got some sleep.

Since Ben and I only got to the zoo on Friday, we wanted to make sure we caught at least two museums on Saturday. The first one we went to was the National Air and Space Museum, where we again spent a lot longer than we expected. We paid way too much for McDonalds lunch (the only food available) and spend another hour or so there. I was originally really excited to go there, but I realized that I'm a lot more interested in where people go into space than how they get there. Some of the shuttles and satellite displays were pretty cool though. After taking in as much as we could handle, we made our way to the International Gallery, where they were having a special exhibit on Jim Henson! It was the coolest exhibit I've ever been to. Even though I didn't grow up watching Sesame Street or Fraggle Rock or The Muppet Show, I've seen the latter, and I was able to appreciate most of the exhibit. Henson was a funny, creative, and wonderful artist and person.

Last night we stopped at Misty Mountain Camp Resort around 7pm. Ben grilled some sausages, onions, and potatoes over the fire. Today we got on the road around 1pm and are now heading down Route 29 in Virginia on our way to Ben's grandma Romey's house in North Carolina. We drove about 50 miles through the George Washington National Forest, which was a really pretty drive, though a very gas-guzzling hilly drive. Every gas fillup is getting cheaper and cheaper, per gallon anyway. We just filled up for $3.459/gal, and not five minutes later passed a station listing $3.359/gal! Our current trip stats are about 1900 miles, about $1000 on gas, and 9.33 overall mpg.

-Lily

Great time in New York

After a short layover back in Waltham, and more than a few hundred dollars spent on brake repairs for our camper Inigo, over the past few days we stayed in New Rochelle, NY with my brother Aaron, sister-in-law Diana, and nephew Seth. We were really spoiled in New York - we got our cute kid fix playing with Seth, our doggy fix playing with their dog Missy, and we ate lots of great food, including a really top notch meal at Craft in Manhattan (more on food blog). Last night, Aaron and Diana sent us to a really fun outdoor theater (Shakespeare's Twelth Night) on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River, where we drank wine and ate a nice picnic dinner before the play. The play itself was a riot - great actors, great music...just a lot of fun all around. It was really a treat.

Today we drove all the way to Washington, D.C. from New Rochelle. It was probably too much driving in one day for us. We really want to make the most of our time in D.C. though so we wanted to be here all day tomorrow. We drove through New Jersey where we got gas for $3.51/gal compared to $4.17/gal in New Rochelle. If only we had some kind of reserve tanks that we could fill up in Jersey.

We're staying with our cousins Josh and Stephanie for a few days a little bit outside D.C. We'll be spending time with my friend Allison whom I haven't really seen in a few years. Then we're off to Atlanta to visit my sister Carrie, possibly through Charlotte, N.C. where we might stay with my grandmother Romy for a night or two. The camper is really chugging along great, which is a turn in the right direction!

-Wax