If you have any pictures of any of the 50 United States, please email me a link to your picture, the location (within the state), a link to your site, and the state. It’s for a project I’m trying to do. Only one picture per state, but you can mail several pictures. Fair warning: If you don’t want this picture online, don’t email it to me. I don’t plan to touch the pictures in any way and full credit will be given to you. The pictures have to be taken by you or someone who gives permission to have them posted, in which case, I’d like their name as well.
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After a week of non-stop unpacking, our apartment is beginning to look almost normal. We still haven’t hung any of our pictures but all the computers are installed, so are the TVs and stereo, every box is unpacked except for two. You can even walk around without tripping over stuff. Part of me is happy to finally get to slow down and take some down time during the day, the other part of me knows this means having to finally get a job. That part wishes the unpacking could go on forever. Driving isn’t going so well. I know millions of people do it and I know that technically I am capable of doing it, but it’s really stressful and quite painful. I hate feeling as incompetent as the car makes me feel. Only two weeks to the exam and I am sure to fail it. It’s amazing how little we tend to enjoy downtime. We’re either busy with the job or desperately looking for one. Seems like a sad existence. No wonder I prefer to work for myself. I seem to remember Heather having a post about dying her hair black that I should have paid much more attention to before I used the Nice’N’Easy bottle I bought yesterday. My brand new tub is now covered with black stains that threaten to stay permanently. I knew there was a reason to let the gray grow. After a morning at the DMV, I am now the proud owner of a temporary California license, my very first in the United States. My driving test is scheduled for the end of the month and I am scared shitless. I started unpacking my books yesterday and it’s amazing how happy the act made me. I love my books, just looking at the titles and the authors filled me with joy. It made the everlasting unpacking considerably more fun. After five full days of trucking down all the major highways between Boston and San Diego, we made it back to our new home. One night at Audrey and Tom’s and another at Ashlie and Travis’ meant that we only paid two nights of hotel fees. Even including the gas and paying people to unload the truck, we still saved around 3000 over the price the moving companies quoted us. On the fourth day, we even managed to take a side trip and see the Painted Desert and the Meteor Crater in Arizona, two sites we had missed in July. Besides the severe allergies to the truck, my body handled the trip quite well. The birdie played, ate, or slept the whole way. He did get quite a bit more anxious when the sun set and started climbing to the top of his cage. After four months of separation, he’s now with his family, in his new home. He should enjoy the attention and freedom until a dog is added to our family. The last three days have been a frenzy of unpacking. Now that we’re finally here, I seem to have gone back to my usual rushing self and am quickly getting worried about settling down, finding a job, and such. We’ve already got our phone, cable and electricity connected. I’ve unpacked the kitchen, clothes, and bathroom. The TiVo is connected and merrily recording. Since my computer broke during the move, I even bought a new one last night. On the surface, our lives seem to have started. Now, if only I could shake this anxious feeling in my stomach. Right now, Jake’s driving down a highway and I’m reading my mail, finding the nearest grocery store and updating the site using my laptop and Ricochet. San Diego is one of the two cities where Ricochet is available in the country and the flexibility it allows is awesome. It doesn’t seem to work in our apartment all that well but it works pretty much all over San Diego and it’s really fast. It’s quite affordable and means I can work at the beach, by the poolside or any other attractive location. When we drove across the country, I was telling Jake that such a service should be available across the country. It would have let us lookup hotels or campsites along our route and made life considerably easier. We’re off to Boston tomorrow to arrage our moving. We’re still waiting for info from one mover and otherwise we’re going to use Budget trucks. We figure we might as well get there and get started. I’m also planning to update my resume and order our utilities here in the meantime. In a week or two, we might actually look like we live here. After four days of extensive searching, we signed the lease on a place that was way above our planned budget but we got an unbelivable list of amenities, including two pools, two gyms, free yoga and pilates lessons, and a movie theather that shows films twice a week with free sode and popcorn, oh and free coffee each morning till 11. And they let me get a dog, which is appearantly a huge luxury in San Diego. All this in the very complex we live. We figured we could love like this for a year and then depending on how the job and living situation works out we will adjust accordingly. At least we will have a home and a bed to call our own tonight. Cross your fingers. Next order of business is moving our stuff here, getting serious about learning to drive (this is just me as Jake is normal and drives perfectly. I have about 20 days under my belt and am not fully ready to make the progress to daily driving). Not to mention, I need a job. If you have any advice on whether to get a company or UHaul stuff ourselves, we are open to suggestions, and of course, if you have a job to offer, I am open for those too. We made it! Our amazing trip is finally over and we’ve now started the fun business of looking for an apartment. It will be followed by finding a moving company and a job. I suppose the vacation was bound to end eventually. Hoover Dam is on the way from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas so we, invariably, stopped for a few minutes and took some pictures. I thought, as I knew I would, that it wasn’t that impressive. However, I am sure it must have been in the 30s. I had reserved a hotel, Treasure Island, using hotels.com, a night ago in Williams, Arizona. We drove in around 6pm and waited too long to check in. Since it was a Wednesday, the Cirque de Soleil show in our hotel, Mystere, was dark for both of our nights. We asked about tickets to the other show by the same group, ‘O’, which was sold out but we could go and wait for last minute cancellations. We rushed to Bellagio to get in line which already had 60 people in it. While Jake waited, I walked up and asked if there were any tickets for the next night and it turned out there was a cancellation so we walked out of the hotel, thrilled not to have to wain in the line. Neither of us being gamblers, Vegas didn’t promise huge excitement for us. We walked around to see the Mirage’s volcano erupt, we watched the magnificent lights of the Bellagio. On the way back, we walked into a casino, played for 2 dollars and won 45. We went to the hotel and slept. The next morning it was pouring so we took our time getting up. We visited a chocolate factory with a cactuds garden. We walked around, seeing the lions in MGM, the fish and tigers in Mirage, playing pinball, visiting Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Tropicana, Excalibur, New York New York, and went back to take a nap to make sure I’d be able to stay up through the night. The Cirque de Soleil show was breathtaking. I can honestly say I enjoyed every moment of it. We waited in the extremely long yet very fast-moving line to take a cab to Hard Rock. After dinner, drinks and winning 5 bucks we took another cab to Tropicana and walked into some more of the hotels, ending up in the same casino. An hour, drinks and losing all of our winnings later, we went to bed at 4am. A true Vegas experience. We arrived in Utah in the afternoon. We drove right to the Salt Flat and was awed by the uneding flat road. We were scared to take our little car onto the flats since the person at the cafe by them told us that many cars get stuck. But while we were standing on them, an SUV came up and drove right onto them. It disappeared into the horizon within seconds. If you’re a fan of speeding, that’s probably the best place in the States to visit. Not to mention it’s quite neat. We then drove to Provo where I decided I was too tired to continue so we spent the night in a hotel and relaxed and did the laundrey and logged in. In the morning, we took our time leaving and drove towards Zion National Park. On the way, we stopped at Marysvale around where we had read about two ghost towns. We stopped for lunch at this tiny cafe which had the best burgers I’ve eatned in quite some time. We then drove up to Bullion which wasn’t really a ghost town; it was an old town which was really no longer there. There was an exhibit with the mining equipment. It was interesting but not exactly what we were looking for. We then drove down tothrough Red Canyon to Bryce Park. It had started to rain and within minutes, it ppoured and started to thunder loudly. e saw several flashes of lightning. We drove anyway and by the time we arrived at Bryce, it was trickling a tiny amount. The shaved and cony mountains of red, pink, yellow, white and orange covered miles and miles. I was so awestruck that I couldn’t stop taking pictures. I thikn it might be the most beautiful sight I’ve seen on this trip. An hour or so later, we drove to Zion Park and got there throught the east enterance, which turned out to be interesting but a bummer. The winding roads took a long time to get through and by the time we were in the park and got on the shuttle (you can’t drive in the park, you have to take the shuttle) it was already 8:30pm. We went up to Weeping Rock and walked a trail that was only a quarter of a mile long before it got dark. We made a note to definitely come back to this park as the huge mountains that towered over us in multicolor fascinated Jake and he wanted to do some of the longer and steeper hikes that we hadn’t had the time to do. A truly inspiring park. We drove to St. George for the night and plan to take the quicker, though by no means quik, route to the Four Corners, Canyon of the Ancients and then Canyon de Chelly.We’ll see how far we’ll get. Utah, albeit hot, was amazing and we haven’t even seen half of it. Lodging: La Quinta Inn, Provo @ $62.10 , Singletree Inn, St. George @ $41.50Car’s Mileage: 16,110 Gas: $11.87@1.69 & $14.07@1.78 Roads: 80 to SLC, 15 to Provo, 70 and 89 to Bryce and to Zion, 15 to St. George Sites: Bonneville Salt Flats, Provo, Bryce National Park, Red Canyon, Zion National Park After a very long day of driving we decided to skip Boise and get as close to the Craters as possible. Around 10:30, we passed the last large (population of about 1,500) town on the way and decided to turn around to stop for the night. It was getting tool late to camp and we weren’t sure the two tiny towns up ahead had hotels. We spent the night at the only lodging in town and got back on the road at 8, right after eating the pancakes cooked by the owner. We chatted with a Seattle couple who were also going to the Craters. The lava at the Craters was very different than the one in the Valley of Fires, NM. You were not allowed to walk on this one because there was a high chance of its caving in. The chunks looked like wood but sounded like metal. The entire place was one big bed of black. We had read the one of the caves, the Boy Scout Cave, had ice on its ground all year round so we decided to check it out. We took our flashlight and walked down the path. The entrance to the cave looked like nothing more than a tiny hole. Jake was skeptical that it was the entrance but sure enough it was. We walked in to the cave which had low ceilings, sharp rocks and ice. There was a family of three in front of us so it felt less lonely and dark than it would have. We walked/crawled all the way to the end and back. The inside of the cave had been cold and drippy so going back out to the steaming weather was a bit of a shock. Since our next stop was the Salt Flats in Utah, we decided it would be faster to cut through Nevada. As we entered the state, we saw a sign on the map for a Ghost Town and decided to drive out of the way a bit to find it. We spent the next half hour searching for it. Unsuccessfully. Do any of you know a ghost town in Utah or Arizona? Lodging: Governer’s Mansion B&B@$55, Shoshone Our visit in Arizona turned out to be racing from one end to the other. FromZion Park in Utah, we drove all the way to Canyon de Chelly through smallroads, passing Grand National Staircase, Glen Canyon National Recreation Areaand Monument Valley on the way. The drive was a feast on our eyes. A site wehad never experienced previously. We drove to Four Coners, paying 6 bucks to get in and being majorlydisappointed. The one place that definitely wasn’t worth the time. Canyon de Chelly was quite beautiful but we’d heard so many stories about itbeing the best place to visit in the US that I think it was a tiny bit of adisappointment. We then drove all the way back west, almost immediately south of Zion Park tospend the night in Williams. We drive to the Grand Canyon at 7 in the morning,thankfully missing much of the crowds and traffic but not enough of the heat. The canyon is immense, words cannot adequately describe its size. The hillsare pale and I am worried my camera didn’t do justice to its beauty. We took asmall hike and decided to call it a day. We’d already skipped Sedona because wewanted to save a day so we started on the drive to Vegas. On the way to Nevada, we took a side exit to visit another ghost town, Oatman.The town was overpopulated with people selling items and burros left from themining days. It was interesting but not what we had in mind. Lodging: Mountain Side Inn, Williams @ $49.10 We arrived in Portland around noon. We drove down to the historic district where the saturday market made its home. We walked around for a while and bought a postcard. I read that Powell’s bookstore was in the city so we asked around and drove to it. After the two Sedaris CD sets and Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding that my friend Ashlie had lent me, we were out of audio CDs so we bought Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser, Fraud by David Rakoff, maneater by Gigi Grazer, Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency by Douglas Adams and the Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans. Cause Celeb was quite dumb really. But I am not a fan of Fielding anyway. I imagine Maneater will not be so great either but it might be fun. Schlosser’s voice is too monotonous but the reasearch, like in Fast Food Nation, is quite detailed and interesting. Though obviously biased so far. We’re now on the way to Idaho; spending the night in either Boise or Craters of the Moon. Even though we stayed in Portland only 2 hours, the city was very clean, very green and quite beautiful. Lodging: none |
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