We're here!

Hey everyone we know its been a while but it has been a busy and wonderful couple of weeks. We had to stop the blog half way through our trip because there was no wifi connections. We even lost cell reception. Te second half of the trip was great, we will be posting pictures as soon as the pod comes with our electronics box we packed away.

(Here's some pics from my phone of grand Tetons and Yellowstone)

 Which brings me to the not so great news. Due to incompetence our pod was not shipped out the day after we packed it. It was instead shipped the day after we arrived in Portland! Which means that the estimated day of arrival is September 10th. So although we have moved into our apartment, we won't really be moving in until a month after we arrived. But it's not all bad we were able to buy a bed since we needed to do that anyway and it has served great as our couch, desk, dining table, etc. here is a picture of our living room which has a camping table that comes two feet off the ground and two camping chairs.

And for those of you who say I am my mothers daughter the second day we arrived in Portland Lewie and I decided to add on to our little family and adopt a kitten. (As of now the cat has just as much personal items in the apartment than we do) Her name is Samus, named after one kick butt character in a video game.

She was the loudest, craziest one in the kitten room and she won our hearts with her odd meow. Since home she has become a daddy's girl and finds a way to attach herself to Lew as soon as he gets home. (I woke up at three this morning to find her sleeping on his shoulder)

So that's our life right now. Eating ramen out of mess kits and drinking out of the collected plastic Starbucks cups I get in the morning. We're pretty happy with it all.

Rock n Roll Chicago

Hello everyone! Lew here again. We have been deprived of wi-fi for our Macbooks for much of the entire trip. That, or we just got way too busy driving straight through. Time to do a little catching up for all of you hungry for some more information!

After the Buffalo fiasco, we decided we would try to get right to Chicago. Then I convinced myself and Brooke that it was worth it to take a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland. I was partially right. It was about $20 per person for essentially a very large Hard Rock Café display, with lots of outlandish outfits and paraphernalia. It was cool to learn about the different influences that major cities have had on music. For instance, I never knew about the exchange of punk music between NYC and London, even though I knew about those individual scenes. On a definite upside, there were replicas of props used in the oh so trippy Pink Floyd film, The Wall. 

Two boring, flat, states later and we were in Chicago, the land of a thousand tolls. Every few miles we got tagged about an extra two bucks. My guess is that a lot of authorities are trying to get their money’s worth. Driving in Chicago was a terror. This is coming from a guy who has been foolish enough to drive in Manhattan. Never seen so many cars moving so slowly. Ask Brooke how much I liked that part. 

Despite the traffic, we made it to a pizza place called Lou Malnotti’s just before they closed at 10 PM Central. I gave it a thumbs up, Brooke gave it a thumbs down. Part of her distaste was probably that we ate it at the Super 8 we stayed at. It smelled like cat urine and smoke, despite it being a non-smoking apartment. I’m pretty resilient, but even I had to give the management an earful. Long story short, Super 8’s were off the table for the rest of the trip.

Niagara Falls and The Worst City To Hang Out In (aka) Buffalo

        Hey everyone, Brooke here. Lew and I are sitting in the parking lot of a bar talking about the worst city we have been in so far... Buffalo, NY. Honestly people its like the doldrums here. A planners worst nightmare as Lew put it. But before I tell you how we ended up in a parking lot in a crappy city Ill tell you how my morning started. I woke up around 3:45 to Lew packing up the hotel room telling me that he changed the plans around and we were leaving then to go up and see Niagara Falls at sunrise. We got dressed packed the car and were off by 4:30. Lew drove half of the way claiming that he was still all hopped up on Mt. Dew.

 

    At around six we pulled into the rest stop I grabbed some coffee at a Timmy Hortons and we were off to the falls. Getting there early we avoided the $10 parking fee and the tour busses. The falls were amazing and if anyone were planning to visit them I would highly recommend getting there at sunrise. It was peaceful, the sun over the rapids was wonderful, and the pictures were great without having to wait for other tourists to move out of view. We got to wander around the park and see the little islands and their trails. We were shocked at the amount of spiders there were. Walking around the visitor centers webs hung off the balconies like bunting flags, the webs shining in the sun made it look so beautiful. Lew and I learned a trick early on that if we want both of us in a picture all we have to do is find a couple in the crowd and trade cameras. A bit of judging goes into this as we have to choose which couple looks the most tech savvy. We were surprised to find that iPhones are not as user friendly as we thought.

Afterword I started the long drive to Ohio when while passing Buffalo, Lew asks if I was going to get my buffalo wings. It being 9:30 in the morning I told him that I doubted there would be a place open. From here on the story varies depending on who is telling it but how I remember it is like this: Lew then kept on asking if I wanted the wings, I would keep saying no and after the third Are You Sure? I said yes. We then took the exit for Buffalo realized just how sad the city is. I have always liked Philly for how they can have modern buildings with old historic buildings next together but they just did it all wrong here. Im sure there are nice parts to it but the highway that runs through the city splitting it up into the Downtown nice-ish part with the factory/housing/rusted unused railroad system is not the most appealing. Then when driving through the suburbs we kept on asking "is this the nice neighborhood?" And twenty minutes later you find us here in the parking lot of Duff's famous wings unable to roll down the windows due to the fact that the bees in Buffalo have a vendetta on NJ cars or something. (Really they are attacking the car windows like the the car is full of honey) And now that it is 11 and the bar is finally open (we got here at 10) Lew is having me go in to the bar order wings to go and then eating them in the car so we can make up for the tim lost.... to that I say "IT WAS YOUR IDEA TO GO HERE!!!" That is all.

Cayuga Lake, Watkins Glen, and Corningware?

Good evening everyone!

Lew here updating the blog for the past two days. It was a little bit difficult to try to post last night given  that we were camping in the finger lakes near Seneca Falls, NY. We barely made it in time to check in to the park (arrived at 8:00 and the office closed at 8:30). After saying goodbye to our families and getting what I assume will be our last really good bagels for quite a while, we were on our way. Going through Philly we said goodbye to everything we'd miss: William Penn, Cheesesteaks, the Waterworks,  Ben Franklin and his crazy lightning key statue – you get the gist of it. It turns out we said our goodbyes too early, as we wouldn't leave the Philly metro area for hours. The good ol' Pennsylvania turnpike had us at an average rate of 4 miles per hour for an hour and a half. Of all the things we won't miss, it will be that northeastern traffic.

Between Allentown and Scranton we hit Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, where our friends Katie and Greg live for now. It was great catching up and nerding out with those two. To imagine Forty Fort, think about every big box or chain store you know of, then put a football field of parking between each one. I know exactly what not to design once I start my urban planning courses!

Getting off my soapbox, we drove another three or so hours to Cayuga Lake State Park, where we set up camp just before twilight. On the way there we must have seen at least ten wineries, along with sunflower, corn and wheat farms. We did some research and found that the Finger Lakes region is essentially New York's Napa Valley. Got to try some of it later. The environmentalist in me was also happy to see a bunch of "Frack is Wack" and "No LPG" (Liquified Petroleum Gas) signs right where New York state is in the middle of its battle against Hydraulic Fracturing.

Nothing like camping to reset your natural clock, and so we were asleep at about 9:30 PM that night.

Today we woke up at about 7:00 AM to get a head start on the day. Roadside America, an awesome website we use to find weird detours like the world's largest ball of twine, reminded us that in the same area we were camping was an interesting result of evolution altered by humanity. In Romulus, NY a military base was abandoned years ago and the fences were locked up. A small herd of deer with a significant number of white deer (caused by a series of recessive genes) was locked in and, due to interbreeding, the large majority of the herd is white. We drove up and down the base a bunch of times (I wouldn't let Brooke drive away!) and managed to catch three, count 'em THREE white deer! A really awesome sight. Unfortunately they spook just as easily as normal deer and so our pictures don't depict how close we really were. On that same road, as we sat wiating for our camera battery to charge, we happened upon a little farm stand and bakery called Dave and Rita's. Apparently they were featured on the food network for their unique granola flavors and are especially famous for a spicy mix. It was tasty, but we couldn't resist investing in "White Deer" flavor granola. The woman at the counter couldn't have been nicer and kept offering free tastings. If you're ever in the area, check them out.

We made our way down alongside Seneca Lake and arrived at Watkins Glen State Park. So amazing. The gorge trail runs along this series of steps of waterfalls (16 of them, I think), interspersed with beautiful green pools between. The walls of the gorge extend up on either side by at least a hundred feet. I know words won't do it justice, so we'll just post plenty of pictures!

We left early for our hotel to get ready for my interview. Thank goodness for high speed wi-fi. It went really well and so Brooke and I went out to celebrate. Thanks to Brooke's compulsive checking-in on Four Square we found a great restaurant/microbrewery in Corning, NY, about a half hour away. It was good. And when I say good, I mean so good that Brooke wants to make an entire post just dedicated to a meal review. Yup. Best grilled cheese I've ever had. For our NJ friends, Corning (which we think might be the birthplace of corningware, since they have the world's largest glass museum there) is a lot like New Hope; a little bit ritzy but with a really fun main street that shuts down around 8 pm. Sprung for a bottle of local wine to taste the region and finished the night with sea-salt caramel ice cream. Unfortunately the glass museum was closed, but we did manage to go into a few glass and art stores and found some great stuff. If only we had $2,000 to invest in a genuine hand-crafted kaleidoscope!

To top off a great night, when we got back to the hotel I found an email waiting for me. I got the job! Looks like we'll have reason to uncork that wine tomorrow. As for now, we're getting ready to get to Niagara Falls extra early. Talk to you all soon!

Our List

Here is a list of just about everything we want to do while on our trip out to Portland:

Pennsylvania:

Katie and Greg for Lunch/Breakfast

New York:

Buffalo Wings in Buffalo

Finger Lakes

Niagara Falls

Canada:

Poutin

CN Tower

Ice Wine

Michigan:

Detroit

Lake Ontario

Lake Erie

Lake Huron

Ohio:

Toledo

Rudy

Indiana:

Peru?

Malcom?

Illinois:

Chicago

Deep Dish

Dog

Bean

Millennium Park

Lake Michigan

Wisconsin:

Cheese Curds

Emma Bruden

Aldo Leopold Center

Minnesota:

Twin Cities

Mall of America

Spam Museum

Jolly Green Giant Statue

South Dakota:

Bear country USA

Badlands

Black Hills

Mt. Rushmore

Crazy Horse

Wyoming:

Lake Hebgen

Grand Teton National Park

Jackalope Statue

Thunder Basin National Grassland

Montana:

Yellow Stone

Idaho:

Craters of the Moon National Monument

The Falls In Idaho Falls

Oregon: 

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

Move In!!!