Living the Life of Luxury

Be proud, we actually got this out pretty quickly…thanks to our 9-hour car ride to South Carolina. Upon arriving in New Orleans, we did our usual…check-in, get ready, and then go out for dinner. When we first got our drinks at dinner we were taken aback by the fact that they were served in plastic cups. However, we quickly realized that they’re “to-go” cups so you can carry them around on the street with you. How awesome is that?! Obviously we had no problem finishing ours prior to leaving, but it’s a nice security measure. Following dinner we made our way to Bourbon Street, which as I’m sure you all know is party central USA. Similar to Austin there are no covers and tons of great live bands, making for great bar hopping. To add to the epicness of New Orleans they have “Huge Ass Beers” (Yes, that’s actually what they’re called), which consist of an entire 6-pack in one giant plastic beer bottle. Obviously one of us had to get one, and Lindsay volunteered to be the brave soul to take it on. Don’t worry she had no problem finishing it. Sam and Britt decided to go with the other classic Bourbon Street drink and got one of their 176 flavors of daiquiris. Between the delicious drinks, great bars, and camaraderie of every one on Bourbon Street it was just like being back at UConn for spring weekend, making for a great night.

Since we have been considerably under budget (Go us!), we decided to treat ourselves, and upgraded to a better hotel. Probably one of our better decisions because they found out it was Sam’s 25^th birthday and gave her a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine. Apparently this is why people enjoy staying at nicer hotels. In the afternoon we decided to make our way down to New Orleans’ famous French Market, containing a mix of various food and shopping vendors.

While at the market we got lunch, and being the brave souls that we are, we decided to try alligator sausages. Turns out it tastes just like other sausages with a slightly thicker skin. Needless to say it was much better than we anticipated. Having eaten a late lunch, we decided to order room service for dinner while we were getting ready. Talk about an upgrade from our previous hotels. The only challenge with this was that they’re very strict about how many people are staying in your room because if there are more than two, they charge you an absurd amount, especially staying in a nice hotel. This made for an interesting conversation when we ordered three meals since they specifically asked how many people were eating in our room, and we obviously had to say that there were only two of us…”Uh…we’re just really hungry tonight”.

When we went out to Bourbon Street our first stop was obviously the daiquiri/”Huge Ass Beers” shop. After our first daiquiri, Sam ordered a vodka tonic. With it being her birthday the bartender decided to make it “special”, and by special we mean extra extra large. It was like a supersize me vodka tonic. Britt on the other hand opted for a fishbowl, which is literally the size of a fishbowl, and Lindsay stuck with her beer. Being a Thursday night it was even more packed than Wednesday, making for another great night. Friday morning we were pretty dead, so we decided to sleep in and get a late breakfast. It ended up raining most of the day so we just hung around the hotel, which is probably what we needed. We grabbed an early dinner and then did what probably 95% of America was doing…we watched the Olympics opening ceremony in the hotel bar. Knowing we had a long day of driving ahead of us, we called it a night after watching the opening ceremony. Since we’re currently driving to South Carolina, you’re as caught up with us as you can be. With another long day of driving ahead of us tomorrow, you can expect another update soon.

Until next time,

As they say in Creole, Ba Bye

Baking Our Way Through Austin

**Disclaimer: This blog post was written a while ago, but we weren’t about to pay $10 for internet in New Orleans because quite frankly that’s just ridiculous.

Once again we did not make our deadline…big surprise. Oh well, guess there’s not much we can do about it now…except catch you up on our time in Austin. We had heard from numerous people to check out Barton Springs Pool, especially since it was going to be 100 degrees outside, and the pool is kept at a constant 68 degrees. Perfect way to cool off. So our first morning in Austin we decided to make our way over there. Unbeknownst to us, it was closed that day due to flooding. Once again Mother Nature ruined our plans, but we guess that’s just how road trips go. So instead we decided to head over to our hotel, and by hotel we mean motel, but all we cared about was the pool. We’re pretty sure that it was impossible to lay out for more than 4 minutes without jumping into the pool to cool off. Fortunately, this pool was a little cooler than the one in Phoenix…84 degrees.

After a strenuous day of working on our tans, we headed out for dinner and some drinks on the infamous 6^th street, which apparently is also known to locals as “Dirty 6^th Street”…homeless people + downtown bar area = dirty but entertaining. Hence why everybody goes there. Fortunately for us, we picked a great place to go to. It had an amazing live band, and a great bartender. Free drinks are always welcomed.

Lucky for us Barton Springs Pool was open the next day, so obviously we spent the majority of our day there working diligently on our tans. Such a tough life.

Once again the weather maxed out around 100 degrees leaving us constantly covered in sweat to the extent that if you looked at us, you wouldn’t be entirely sure whether or not we had just gotten out of the water. It honestly felt like we were put in an oven set to bake at 350 degrees. While 68 degree water is incredibly refreshing, the extreme change in temperatures pretty much put our bodies in shock. Even still, it made for a really enjoyable day, and we wish we had something like this back home. Since we were so exhausting from working all day, we decided to just order in for dinner and save our energy for an evening of barhopping on Dirty 6^th. Good for us, there are no covers at the bars, and the drinks are incredibly cheap.

The next morning we began our trek to New Orleans. For the first time on our trip we hit annoying, pointless traffic caused by incompetent drivers. Apparently Texans and Louisianans were never required to go to driver’s ed. because they clearly have no idea what they’re doing on the road. Good thing none of us have any serious road rage or we may have ended up in jail. We’re currently in New Orleans living up our last night here. Check back next month for our next update.

Until next time,

Namaste

The Natural Wonders of New Mexico

Oops, we lied. We are not getting better about blogging, actually, we’re getting worse. But come on, cut us some slack, we had a very busy last few days. And by few days, we mean 5. Man, it’s been that long already? Ok, take a seat, get a glass of wine, and get ready for some catch up time.

Our trip to Phoenix was quite deserted, as we expected, since we were driving through the desert…that is, until we drove into a parking lot on highway I-10. Obviously, we were curious why we came to a complete stop, so, like everyone else, we got out of the car, made some friends, and chatted with the po-po. Mind you, it was a brisk 110 degrees outside. Yes, that means we were covered in sweat after about 30 seconds. We debated putting our bathing suits on and sun bathing, but when we realized our sandals were melting to the pavement, we thought that might not be the smartest idea. We couldn’t actually see the accident, but we could see the 4 separate Lifestar helicopters come flying in. Never a good sign. Turns out a woman with 3 little kids rolled her Ford SUV over onto the opposite side of the highway. It took about 45 minutes until we were moving again and making our way to Phoenix. Once we got to Phoenix, obviously the first thing we did was restock our food pantry, and then we hit up the pool. To give you an idea of how hot it was in Phoenix, with no heater, the pool was easily 92 degrees. It felt like we were taking a bath. Good if you want to shower, bad if you want to cool off. Oh well. That night we asked the concierge for some Mexican restaurant recommendations. I mean, we are in Phoenix here, how could you not get Mexican? And since one of the places was called Sam’s Café, we obviously went there. The food was phenomenal and the location was beautiful…..outdoor seating in what looked like an outdoor mall with water fountains, palm trees and a sunset to top it off. Not too shabby.

The next morning, we started our trek to White Sands, New Mexico. The highlight of our drive was being stopped by border patrol. We were interrogated with questions such as; are you a U.S. citizen? What are you doing out here? Where are you coming from? Why are you on your trip? What were your majors? What size bra do you wear? Can I join you for dinner? As you can see, he was extremely bored with his job and wanted to be entertained. Besides, based on stereotypes, we are probably the least threatening people to border patrol. Three blonde white girls from CT? Come on now.

White Sands can be compared to the Grand Tetons in that words, nor pictures, can accurately depict how gorgeous the area is. But since pictures are worth a thousand words…. 

We had done our extensive research and found that they have sand sledding. We rented wax and saucers and made our way out to the dunes……in 107 degree weather. We quickly figured out that more wax = a faster ride and more intense sled races. Now let us tell you, sand sledding is extremely exhilarating, but at the same time, exhausting. As you know, every time you go down, you have to climb back up. It’s pretty comparable to hiking up snow, except your feet do not leave footprints, they just slip back down. After we sweated through our first pair of clothes, we changed and moved on to a new sand dune. If you can’t tell yet, we sweat a lot, get over it. That night, we were pleasantly surprised with our Marriott hotel, mainly because it had an overhead shower. It’s the little things that count! We knew we had a long day ahead of us since we would be driving to Carlsbad, NM (4 hours), doing a cave tour and then driving to Austin (8 hours) all in one day. Needless to say, we went to bed pretty early.

The drive to Carlsbad was not exactly what we pictured. Almost the entire drive consisted of windy roads ascending and descending through mountains, and speed limits that changed from 35 mph to 70 mph. Once we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns, we got our tickets for our tour, and began our 800+ ft. descent into the caverns. While the temps outside are a constant 100 degrees, the constant temperature inside the cave is only 56 degrees. Thank God we brought sweatshirts because it got pretty freaking cold. As we began to tour the caves, we realized that New Mexico’s natural wonders trump Wyoming’s. We never thought we were gonna say that, and if you recall how in awe we were of Wyoming, you can only imagine what this was like. Therefore, we are not even going to attempt to describe the caverns, instead we will just show you our pictures. If you want to have a minor inclination as to how incredible the caverns are, go watch Journey to the Center of the Earth. One of the scenes was filmed in one of the caves we saw on our tour. 

By the way, Sam’s camera died right at the beginning, Britt’s camera was taking pretty good pictures, but funny enough, the IPhone took the best pictures. Who would have thunk it? On our tour, we got to experience a total blackout. As our guide was telling us the story about how the cave was discovered, he turned off all the lights in the cave, giving us a feel for how the founder, Jim White, felt when his lantern died. If you think you’ve ever seen a blackout, that’s false…..unless you were in a cave. Your eyes do not adjust even after 5 minutes because there is literally no light, nothing, nada, zip. We were waiting for the Boogey Man to jump out behind us while our tour guide told us the story. Don’t worry, he did not make an appearance.

Following our tour of the caverns, we started our journey to the Lone Star State. Our drive went from tumble weed, cacti and open spaces, to oil rigs with wind turbines in the background and finally back into the world of trees! What a concept. Oh, and we saw deer too! Well, Britt dodged about 4 of them while driving, along with 2 people dressed in dark clothing. Smart idea, right? Once we got to our hotel, we moved in and hit the sack.

We’re currently still in Austin, but to leave you on the edge of your seats, we’re going to make you wait to read about our Austin adventures until they are complete. Check back tomorrow at 4:53 pm. That’s probably a lie, but it’s worth a shot. We do have a whole day of driving tomorrow.

Until Next Time,

Later Skaters

Going Wild in SoCal

So we opted to discontinue the blog because it has been consuming too much of our precious time. We figured it was only worth continuing the blog if we had 10,000 views in 3 weeks time, which did not happen. Just kidding, we got side tracked…again, but let’s try to get you all back up to speed.

After leaving San Luis Obispo, a “pop-up” town with strip mall after strip mall of the most stereotypical chain restaurants, we made our way to yet another one of Britt’s study abroad friends, Carrie, who was kind enough to host us for 3 days. Thank you Carrie!! En route to Carrie’s condo, as always, we did all the stereotypical touristy activities in downtown LA, including the Kodak Theater, the Walk of Fame, and Rodeo Drive. We also saw some of the not-so-stereotypical things such as drag queens and cross dressers in WeHo (West Hollywood), some of whom decided to ride bicycles while wearing a thong. Not exactly the sight we were looking for. After being scared away, we finished our journey to get to Carrie’s. At this point in our trip we were absolutely exhausted and in desperate need of some R&R. We decided to lay out our beach towels at 10 am on Monday and lay there until it was time to leave on Wednesday morning.

While in LA we had our first experience with Taco Tuesday, which also included a special guest, Miss Katherine Maria Loughridge Garner, who just so conveniently works 20 minutes from Carrie’s.

Great food and beer for 4 people = $16. This is clearly a tradition we need to bring back home. While dropping Kate off that night, we made sure to stop at California’s infamous In and Out Burger to discover the glorious taste of animal fries.

By the time Wednesday morning rolled around, we were feeling refreshed and ready to go take on some more animals at San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park, a mere 1600 acre park containing wildlife primarily from Africa. While there we decided to go on an African Safari Tour. Oddly enough, they let you ride the giraffes, hold out red flags for the African buffalo, and put your head in the lions’ mouths. Pretty on par with Yellowstone, so we felt right at home. In all honesty, the tour was truly amazing. Based on the environment in which the animals are kept, it is easy to see why the San Diego Zoo is considered one of the best zoos in the world. As an example, for the most part, the animals are allowed to roam freely across the 1600 acres with only a few exceptions, mainly being that predators such as lions are separated from the other animals. Even though they’re separated, the predators are still located close enough so that the other animals can smell them. This is to teach the animals how to protect themselves from predators so that they can eventually be reintroduced into the wild. Pretty extraordinary if you ask us!

After getting some great R&R in LA, we moved on to San Diego, where we decided to get some more R&R. Our lives are so difficult! The weather was beautiful, 80 and sunny. We pretty much did the same thing in San Diego as we did in LA: beach, food, drinks. While in San Diego, we did get to experience our nicest dinner thus far, and what we’re sure will be our nicest dinner of the whole trip. Being the classy blondes that we are, we got all dolled up and went to an amazing steakhouse for dinner. Since we had been deprived of quality red meat for the last 3 weeks, we decided to step it up a notch and go all out, and let us tell you, it was well worth the money!

Next stop: Phoenix, and we promise to try to be better about blogging for the remainder of our trip.

Until Next Time,

Shalom dear friends

California Dreamin'

Our greatest apologies for keeping you all on the edge of your seat for the last few days. Fear not, we are clearly still alive. If we remember correctly, we stupidly thought we would be sober enough to write a post the night of the wine tour. As you may have noticed, we were sorely mistaken as we were up partying with our new best friends from Kansas and Canada (mind you, they could have been our parents, making it even more awesome). Let me tell you, they had some pretty awesome stories and were able to out party us. In our defense, they had not just done a wine tour all day long. Speaking of which, simply put, it was awesome! The day began with a popped bottle of champagne in a limo with four other people, and an extremely knowledgeable and entertaining driver. 

Throughout the course of the day he took us to four different boutique wineries, all in different areas of Napa. We also got served a gourmet lunch of pickled frog legs, fried alligator, and chocolate covered ants. Apparently these are delicacies of the area. Besides becoming best friends with these four other winos, we got some helpful hints for our stay in California that included strip clubs in San Francisco, crack dealers in LA, and nude beaches in San Diego. We’ll be certain to put all this advice to great use. Once we got back to our hotel, we thought the best option would be to go do another wine tasting in downtown Napa, followed by the bar. Smart idea, right? So naturally, when we finally returned to our hotel, we thought it’d be an even better idea to party it up with our neighbors. And good thing we did because they were honestly the most fun and entertaining people we’ve met so far. Eventually, we decided to throw in the towel and call it a night. Finally a smart idea!

The next morning, we took our time getting ready since, as I’m sure you could imagine, we weren’t exactly feeling 100%. If we had to guess, we were probably feeling close to 43%. Good enough to get ourselves to San Francisco. Despite not feeling up to par, we still managed to see a good amount of sites including Market Street, Ghirardelli Square, Chinatown, and Jackson Square. Impressive, we know.

  

Just in case you were wondering, not all of California is warm. In fact, even with pants and a long sleeve shirt on, we were still quite chilly. Little did we know, the next day was going to be even colder. While we did prepare for cool weather, we did not prepare for weather in the 50’s and extreme gusts of wind that literally almost blew us off the Golden Gate Bridge. Friday morning we met up with another one of Britt’s friends from Australia. Together we literally biked every block of San Francisco. Okay, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it sure felt like it. If we had to guess, we probably biked between 25 and 30 miles. Keep in mind, San Francisco is nothing like New York City. These roads are curvy and mountainous, making it extremely difficult for those other than Lance Armstrong. At points we even had to put all of our weight forward on the bike to keep the front tire on the ground. Now we knew that Lombard Street is known for its crooked downhill path, however, we did not put two and two together that in order to go down Lombard Street, we first had to go up it. And by “go up” we mean climb Mt. Kilimanjaro while pushing our bikes. Not an easy task. Although we were completely terrified, we thought it’d be a brilliant idea to get the full experience and bike down the crooked path. Insert petrified/nervous/excited face here.

After biking down Lombard Street, we all needed a new pair of underwear, so we decided it was time to bring the bikes back. This is starting to become an issue for us as our underwear supply is limited and we can only do laundry so frequently. At this point we were famished and decided to try and get mercury poisoning by stuffing our faces with sushi ASAP. Nobody succeeded, but we did manage to overload ourselves on wasabi. Following our sushi expedition, we headed into the downtown Marina area where we all met our future husbands dressed in Polos, plaid pants, and boat shoes, all of who own their own yachts. Score!

Saturday began our adventure down the Pacific Coast Highway. Our first stop was in Carmel, a west coast version of Nantucket. Fortunately, we had our new husbands with us who gave us free rein of their credit cards. Obviously we did what any normal person in this position would do, we spent it on food.

As we continued down Highway 1, we drove through Big Sur, a sparsely populated area of the California coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. Please refer to Wikipedia for further descriptions of Big Sur. In case you couldn’t guess, the views along this road are some of the most spectacular views in the U.S. We even got to see some elephant seals! And let us tell you, “elephant” is the perfect word to describe these massive animals. Despite their size and lazy demeanor, these animals are also quite playful, and somehow manage to move around much quicker than you’d ever anticipate.

As always, the pictures do not do the area justice. So far our adventure down the coast has been nothing shy of spectacular, and we hope it will continue that way.

Until next time,

Peace Out Cub Scouts

Flying Through the Great Salt Lake

Before telling you more about our super boring and lame road trip, let us ask you a question. How many blondes does it take to write a blog? We’ll give you a clue, it’s not one. Just because it is posted under someone’s name, does not mean they were the one that wrote it. Also, aside from what Jack may think, we are not alcoholics, we just really enjoy our 5 o’clock happy hour…it’s 5 o’clock somewhere right? Ok, now that that’s off our chests, where were we? Oh right, leaving Yellowstone and moving on to Salt Lake City. Before leaving Yellowstone, we desperately needed to do laundry. Actually, we were in dire need of some clean clothes because I think we were beginning to scare people away with our scent. On the bright side, it kept the wildlife away from us at night….or so we think. Minus the wolves Britt heard howling in the middle of the night, but whatever, they didn’t come get us.

Our drive to Salt Lake City was painstakingly boring. There was no wildlife to feed, nowhere to stop for gas, no crop circles to look at, we didn’t even get lost. There’s pretty much nothing else to tell you, unless you would care to know we stopped at Subway for lunch. The highlight of our day was by far taking gloriously long, hot showers and feeling human again. We no longer could be mistaken for being French, because, wait for it……we got to shave! No caveman legs, no manly armpits, no more questions as to being tan or dirty. We even wore our hair down and put some makeup on, something that seemed foreign to us at this point. After googling restaurants in the area, we came upon one called Squatter’s Pub Brewery, very fitting for our trip. The food and drinks were delicious. For those of you who are considering visiting Salt Lake City, it is highly recommended. Please refer to Britt and Lindsay for any questions about the beer. 

After dinner we grabbed a few drinks at a local bar and called it a night.

Being in Salt Lake City, we obviously had to visit the Great Salt Lake. Let’s begin with saying it was NOT what we were expecting. Driving in to the park area, we saw a total of 2 cars. Not a good sign. Once reaching the beach area, expecting more people, we were disappointed to find a whopping 6 people on the beach, none of whom were laying out enjoying the hot sun. At this point we opted to scope out the lake before making camp on the beach. Good thing we did, because we lasted a total of 23 minutes. We cannot even begin to describe how many flies were on the beach. 

The scattered black dots are live flies, while the large clumps of black are a combination of dead and living flies. Nauseating, right? It felt as though we were being violently molested by these vulgar creatures. You know how in the fall when a big gust of wind blows a pile of leaves? Imagine that times a million, but it’s flies instead of leaves. Absolutely disgusting; to the point where we wanted to leave, but we had our hearts set on at least putting our feet in the water. After gaining enough courage to walk through the filthy flies, we managed to get our feet in the water and say we’ve been in the Great Salt Lake. Within seconds of putting our feet in the water, we wanted to get the h*ll out of there as fast as we possibly could. Since our hopes and dreams were crushed of laying out at the Great Salt Lake, we opted to hang out by the pool at our hotel and melt in the 100° heat. Whatever, as long as we were getting tan, it was fine with us. While getting into the car to go to dinner, we noticed an interesting smell, but couldn’t quite figure it out. As we began to drive, the smell became considerably stronger and we recognized the fabulous smell of wine. Well, this was not so fabulous in the car because the cork had exploded out of the bottle due to the extreme heat. Who knew this was even possible? Actually, after thinking about it, it made complete sense. Thankfully, we had considered this with the propane. Had we not, we may have been renting a car the rest of the way. Dinner was good. Drinks were good. Bed was good. Life is good.

In the morning, Sam and Britt headed for a quick workout at the hotel. While there, they encountered their first Olympic athlete, a marathon runner no less. He may have been in his mid 60’s, but who cares, it was awesome to hear his stories. People here are so much friendlier and willing to share stories than in the Northeast. Such a nice change. Since we were sick of packing the car, we decided to just leave it all at the hotel. You can always buy new clothes and toiletries. This saved us about 20 minutes and we got an early start on the road. Even though our trek to Napa was close to 11 hours, it was filled with absolutely nothing. Once again, the roads were boring, however, the speed limit was 75mph so that’s always a plus. Actually, we lied. We did see some aliens while driving through Nevada.

We swear on our lives this picture was not doctored. Immediately we sent the picture to CNN after hearing about the CIA agent who confirmed that the aircraft found in 1947 was in fact an alien aircraft (we’re serious here, go look it up). After arriving at the hotel, we did the usual….unpack the car, find food, then alcohol. What a tough life we live. However, you all should be honored that we are spending our first night in Napa blogging, just so you can vicariously live through us. Let’s be serious, we’re actually just resting up for our full day of wine tasting tomorrow. As you may have noticed, we’ve been in training for quite some time. This will make for a very interesting next blog.  

Until Next Time,

Zai Jian

Bison Gone Wild

While we were sad to be leaving the Grand Tetons since they were probably one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been, we were ecstatic to be moving on to Yellowstone. For once, luck was on our side when we arrived at Yellowstone because our campsite was ready 3 ½ hours early. Thank God they were early risers. At this point we’ve become professionals at setting up our tent and campsite and whipped it together in 2 minutes and 38 seconds tops. Since this wasn’t part of our original plan (stupid wildfires) we had not done our proper research on various sites to see throughout the park. So naturally, our first stop was to go to the general store to get some food, followed by the Visitor’s Center to have them map out our day for us…priorities. The rest of the day was spent feeding the animals and taking the animals for rides to the various sites, breaking all federal regulations. Clearly we felt like being rebels that day.

While touring the mud volcano on foot we encountered our first bison face-to-face. Just to give you a clear image, there were designated walkways with wood railings for a majority of the path, however, some areas did not have these railings. Apparently the bison are very well aware of this and took the liberty of joining us on the walkway. We were hesitant at first to cross this part of the walkway since the bison was literally 10 feet away from us, but after some discussions with him, he agreed to let us cross. Unfortunately, some people were not as smart as us and did not obtain the bison’s approval to cross. While we were walking on the path we heard a loud scream, and when we turned around we were horrified to see the bison legitimately charge a young boy.  Luckily the boy’s father temporarily distracted the bison long enough to allow the boy to get away. By the way, this is actually not a joke, this actually happened. Between this and the atrocious smell of the sulfur, we opted to use our speed pass and cruise along the rest of the way through the mud volcano.

We may not have mentioned this yet since parts of it may or may not be appropriate for this blog, but we have an ongoing bucket list for this trip, one of which includes watching a sunset. With the little research we had done, we learned that it was highly recommended to see Old Faithful at sunset. Double whammy!

Initially, we were unimpressed with this Top 10 attraction to say the least. In fact, we probably would have ranked it 97^th or 98^th. That is until we saw it erupt. Please refer to the video on Britt's Facebook.

After going through withdrawals, we decided to satisfy our cravings and ended the night with some delicious ice cream. It was no Sweet Claude’s, but it got the job done…

Uncertain of what to do the next day, we decided to go back to the Visitor’s Center to look for some cool hiking trails. En route, we were rudely interrupted by a herd of bison that decided it would be a fantastic idea to make camp in the middle of the road. Unfortunately, these bison were unwilling to listen to our pleas. They did, however, think it would be hilarious to surround our car. Threatening the lives of humans must be their daily entertainment because it must have been hysterical to watch us scramble to get as far away from our doors and windows as possible. But let’s be serious, if you were surrounded by 10 bison that were as tall as you, weighing in at 2000 lbs a piece, you’d be scared sh*tless too. Again, please refer to the video on Britt's Facebook.

Let’s just say we all needed a new pair of underwear afterwards. After this experience, we had all decided that we wanted to be around people while we were hiking.  This way, if something were to happen, we’d throw the other people in front. Hey, it’s every man for himself out in the wild. Upon arriving at the Visitor’s Center, we were given absolutely no helpful information for hiking trails. In fact, she was probably the worst ranger ever. One of the two trails she directed us to was supposedly covered in bears. Why would anybody sane enough want to hike that trail by themselves? To add to her list of great advice, she provided us with trails that didn’t overlook any of the scenic overviews of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone (something we had specifically asked for). Clearly, she was useless. Thank God for Doug though because he hooked us up big time. He basically planned out the rest of our day, directing us to the best lookout points and the best attractions at Yellowstone that we hadn’t yet seen.

While we absolutely loved the time we spent camping in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we were ready to sleep through the night in a real bed, take a shower, and be around civilization. Just an FYI, if you visit Yellowstone in the middle of the summer, it does not mean that it is still warm at night. In fact, it kind of felt like our tent was an icebox at night. Thank God for mummy bags.

Until Next Time,

Arrivederci

A Brief Moment of Solitude

After attempting sleep, but only managing to do it in half hour intervals, we crawled out of our tent and got ready for our adventurous hike. Feeling ambitious, we planned to attempt an 18 mile hike, despite the elevation changes. After cheating the first 2 miles and taking a boat across the lake, we began our 14 mile journey to Lake Solitude. For those of you that don’t know, this is bear country. It is no longer our territory. We are not in Kansas anymore. Luckily, we had our handy dandy bear spray just in case. Within the first mile, we all wanted to die. Why would you make the hardest part of the entire trail in the very first mile…..and in the last? That is one way to turn people away, but not us! Only those brave enough to attempt the treacherous trek through the rocky terrain and snow deserve to see the majesty of Lake Solitude. 

And we were some of the few! One challenge we came upon while hiking was the lack of trail markings. Unlike the northeast, the Grand Tetons rely solely upon signs that looked like tree bark with size 12 font (Times New Roman) placed so infrequently we had to rely on others around us to figure out where the trail was. That’s okay though, we made some friends and enjoyed the scenery together. As we got closer to Lake Solitude, we walked/slipped across snow in shorts and a t-shirt which was a very bizarre feeling, to say the least. However, while making our way through the snow and ice, we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery any of us had ever seen. At one point, we pretended to be the Von Trapp family because the views reminded us of a cross between The Sound of Music and Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, once we got to Lake Solitude, we were no longer comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. We all brought sweatshirts, but when it’s only 45 degrees and you’re covered in sweat, that just doesn’t cut it. We ate our lunch, took some pictures and headed back down the mountain.

As always, down is much easier than up cardiovascularly, but NOT muscularly. Our legs were feelin the burn, but no worries, we kept going. Towards the end, we started to ease up on our pace, that is, until we came across some droppings. Now these are not your everyday droppings mind you. We had previously seen a sign on the trail that said “No horses past this point,” so we ruled out horse dropping. Welp, that left us with bear, moose or elk. Whatever it was, we did not want to stick around and find out. Our slow pace picked up dramatically, as well as the volume of our voices. They say as long as you’re talking the bears will hear you coming and leave you alone. Needless to say, we talked the entire way down the rest of the mountain….and by we, I mean Sam and Britt. Linds was too focused on not being eaten by a bear. 5 hours, 49 minutes and 48 seconds later, we completed our 13.48 mile hike. 

Still caught up on the idea that we could have encountered bears, we showed the ranger a picture of the droppings. While initially hesitant on whether they were bear or horse droppings, he confirmed for us that they were in fact horse droppings. This made us feel a little better, that is, until he said we probably passed numerous bears along our way without even knowing it. At that point though, all we cared about was getting dinner…..and Britt a shower, because putting it nicely, she smelt like dead fish. 

Until Next Time,

Auf Wiedersehen

We're Smarter Than the Average Bear

In the morning, we woke up extra early (okay normal for Sam) to ensure we get a campsite for the 4^th of July. Knowing this is a big holiday, we weren’t sure we would get a site, which is why we had Britt put the pedal to the medal while driving the 40 miles back to the campgrounds. Just a few short miles away from the campsite, we saw our first bear! Lindsay almost died, while Sam and Britt immediately whipped out their cameras (yes, while Britt was driving). We even pulled over to pet the bear and feed it one of our now infamous PJ&J sandwiches. He loved it and said, “Thanks.” Oh, and you’ll never guess who it was! YOGI BEAR!!! He even asked us for our pic-a-nic basket, which, since we’re poor, we did not give to him. Sorry! We had more luck this time around, as we were able to claim a campsite for not one, but TWO nights!! Score! Let me just give you a quick image of our view for the next 2 ½ days. 

Jealous yet? After scoping out our campsite and setting up our tent, we desperately needed to do laundry. Sam and Britt had accidently left sweaty, and by sweaty we mean soaking wet, workout clothes in a plastic bag for 5 days. Oops!! For those of you who know anything about biology; damp clothes + containment + darkness + 5 days = pure disgustingness. A stench so repulsive it makes sticking your head into a sewer system smell like a dozen roses. Let’s just say, it was definitely time to do laundry. Since we had no other plans for the day, we decided to have a joyous pic-a-nic with our new best friend Yogi bear on Jackson Lake overlooking the Grand Tetons. It was absolutely breath-taking.

You know those fake looking backgrounds that you see on green screens? That’s what our life looks like right now, except it’s real life. We opted to stay at this site and soak in some of the scorching rays in order to prep ourselves for the next 4 days of no showers and no makeup. Britt’s fantasy world, Lindsay’s greatest nightmare. Sam…..just in the middle. As you may or may not have noticed, we have been on a mission to stock up on wine for quite some time. In fairness, this is a camping area, which beer and camping go hand in hand. Not so much the wine. For those that don’t drink beer, there can be problems. After what we had seen, we had pretty much given up on the idea of finding wine. In fact, for those of us that don’t drink beer, we (Sam) even resorted to Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Desperate times call for desperate measures. While on an expedition to find the pool at Jackson Lodge, we decided to stop at some stores to scope out some potential gifts for our most avid followers. In the process of doing this, you will never guess what we stumbled upon!!! Wine, wine and more wine. And by wine, we mean boxed wine, which turned out to be freakin fantastic. AND, as an added bonus, it had 1.33 times the amount of an average bottle. What more could we ask for? I mean, come on now.

Once we got back to the campsite, we downed all 25 bottles of wine. At this point, we were feeling a little tipsy and decided to write a blog. **DISCLAIMER: This blog may or may not have been written while slightly intoxicated. 

Until Next Time,

Au Revoir

Country Driving: Population 4

We had a long drive ahead of us, so we figured we better plan some pit stops along the way to keep us entertained. God knows, we all get bored quickly. One of Britt’s dreams is to run through a corn field, so we thought the perfect place to stop would be the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. It turns out, it’s just a building decorated with corn….no cornfield. Fail. But, it was pretty neat to see all the decorations. It’s clearly a big deal because they even make signs that say, “Road closed. Corn Palace decorating area.” After spending 43 minutes at the Corn Palace we were off on our way to the Badlands. Let me tell you, they don’t lie when they say it’s freaking HOT there. This was our first stop where pictures just don’t cut it. I think all three of us were in awe when we drove through the areas snapping approximately 158 pictures, attempting to prove how amazing the views are. Sam was smart enough to take a short video, but still, it doesn’t do it justice. We’re assuming this is how the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone will be as well. Don’t worry, we’ll still try to capture the beauty by taking another 1,000 pictures. Next on the list was Mount Rushmore. All in all, it was cool to see, but once is enough. We got our standard picture picking the noses of the presidents and being all touristy. What was more impressive was the surrounding area which included the Black Hills and Custer State Park which is where we camped for the night. I don’t think Lindsay spoke one word while driving from Mount Rushmore to the campgrounds (30 minutes) due to fear of bears. Let’s just say, some of us would prefer to stay in hotels, but upon arrival, we were all enlightened to find that we were surrounded by people and located right on a scenic overlook. We then proceeded to take part in the best, most stereotypical part of camping: making dinner, drinking some beer/wine, and playing some cards before calling it a night.

The next morning, we took the Wildlife Loop Road around Custer State Park where we saw bison, pronghorns, horses, cattle and mules. Speaking of which, talk about some aggressive mules. They enter the road, stop traffic and attempt to steal food out of the cars through the open windows. And yes, they do in fact put their head through the windows. 

Once the loop was done, we were off on our way to the Grand Tetons. Basically, we drove, and drove, and drove some more. On our way, we did see some wildfires in western South Dakota, which was cool to see, but only from a distance. I mean, they did already ruin our trip by destroying Colorado. Couldn’t they have started like 3 weeks later? Stupid fires. Besides seeing these wildfires, our drive consisted of seeing absolutely nothing. We thought South Dakota was bad, that is, until we drove through Wyoming. Throughout the 9 hour drive, we saw numerous towns with a population of 4. AKA, one family owns and dominates the town. Upon arriving to the park, we were pleased to see signs that there was still availability at our campground, which doesn’t take reservations. About 5 miles later, we arrived at the campgrounds and were informed that they were no longer available. In fact, all campsites in the surrounding 30 miles were booked. Insert panic face here. We immediately went to the handy dandy smartphones to look up hotels in the nearest town (40 miles away, ugh). After searching for about 20 minutes, we finally found a hotel that gave us a good deal, because at this time, it was approaching 9:00PM. It didn’t help that our service was spotty at best, so even making a phone call was a challenge, let alone trying to give a phone number or credit card number. I’m pretty sure Britt attempted to give her phone number at least 10 times before being successful. Oh, by the way, we still hadn’t eaten dinner, but no worries, PB&J to the rescue. At this point, we were in desperate need of alcohol, preferably wine. The town was clearly a cute, little resort town. Wouldn’t you think there would be a liquor store on each corner? Nope. It took us about 20 minutes to find some wine, which happened to be in a specialty oil and vinegar store. Who would have thought? Clearly not us since we had to ask. Once we got to the hotel, we were finally able to drown our sorrows away in food and alcohol. One plus, the hotel had warm cookies waiting for us, which went perfectly with our wine. 

Until Next Time,

Farewell Friends

90 on I-90

Last night, we ventured into Wrigleyville, and let me tell you, it was quite an adventure. The night started off with an extremely intoxicated kid and his train conductor coworker. Dream job, right? It actually sounded pretty cool, so props to him. After being fed up with the ridiculously wasted kid, we decided it was time to go to the next bar, which by the way, they have no covers. Amazing! Freaking New England and their ways to take steal our money. One of the guys that we met worked at the Whole In The Wall Gang camp in Hartford, which was pretty ironic. Needless to say, he was immediately bumped up to the status of “cool people.” After having numerous drinks, we decided it was time to stumble back to our hotel and try to get some sleep before driving to Sioux Falls the following morning.

Luckily, Britt was coherent enough to set an alarm for the morning. Initially, we were planning on leaving by 8:00am, but that quickly changed on our way home from the bars at 2:30am. 8:00am turned into 10:30am, but whatever, we really had no place to be right? In fairness, we did have to go to the market to stock up on more food, and obviously Starbucks was a necessity. The drive was extremely eventful! We saw a horse drawn buggy, an Amish village playing volleyball and cornfield after cornfield. I mean, who doesn’t look forward to driving by that on a daily basis? Oh, and in more exciting news, we spotted our 37^th state license plate, including the highly sought after South Dakota plate. Count it!

After driving for about 5 hours, we decided to use Sam’s IPhone app and find a local winery in Minnesota called Whitewater Wines. Who knew it would be quite the adventure? Actually, I take that back. I think most people reading this would assume we did not find it on the first try. Our first attempt landed us at Whitewater Tax and CPA services, which would normally be right up Lindsay’s alley, but we were all desperate for wine. This just did not cut it. However, we did manage to find it on our second attempt, despite the road closures, gravel roads and impatient locals on our ass. Okay, all two that we saw. In fact, just to provide you all with a little bit of comfort, this place reminded us of a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Criminal Minds. Thank God we were not here at night because I think Lindsay might have shit her pants. When we did finally arrive at the winery, we realized it was well worth the hour long detour. Actually, we might even be willing to come back here because the winery was that incredible. This was the most beautiful and peaceful winery any of us have ever been to. The wine was delicious, the people were as friendly as they come and the ambiance made us feel like we were living in a dream. For those of you who appreciate the process of making wine, Minnesota has to grow their own grapes because of the extreme temperature changes…..90 degrees in the summer and -40 in the winter. Cold enough to freeze any typical grape. Another bonus, we got 16 tasting for $12. What the hell is Connecticut doing? One more reason to leave that state. If you couldn’t already tell, it was well worth the detour.

Our arrival to Sioux Falls was fitting, as we were greeted with fireworks. Britt said she worked some magic and arranged them just for us!

Until next time,

Sayonara Suckers

The Windy City

Seeing how we did drive 15 hours with minimal sleep, we opted to nap quickly before heading to Wrigley field to watch the Cubs take on the Astros. When we woke up, we were astounded to find out we slept through our alarms and it was now night time. After checking a cell phone, we discovered that we did not actually sleep through an alarm, there just happened to be a horrible storm moving through, similar to the one we drove through. I mean, it was pitch black out, what would you have thought? Impeccable timing for a baseball game though. Luckily, the storm passed and we were off on our way to watch the Cubs kick ass. None of us had been to a baseball game in quite some time, so we pretended we were back in high school and cheered like little girls for every hit and play made. Ok, not seriously, in fact the way we were sitting and acting you would have thought we were three dudes. Naturally, Britt was sitting with her legs wide open, burping and farting the whole way through the game. Fortunately, we picked a damn good game to watch…..3 homeruns leading the Cubs to a 4-0 win, some awesome plays, and getting to see Alfonso Soriano (please come back to the Yanks!)

If anyone watches Man vs. Food, they know to go to Gino’s East for their infamous deep dish pizza, so obviously, we went there for dinner. Besides, it’s Chicago, you have to get deep dish pizza when you’re here. I mean, that is the only reason we added Chicago to our list of places to visit. Unfortunately, no one could quite accomplish what Adam Richmond did on the show and eat an entire pizza. In fact, we couldn’t even manage to finish a medium pizza for the three of us. Pathetic. Oh well, leftovers. After dinner we grabbed a few drinks at an Irish pub and called it a night. All three of us were fighting to keep our eyes open, forcing down alcohol hoping to find a 16^th wind, but no one was able to find that. Figured it was better to rest up for Saturday.

Wow we did a lot today, and we haven’t even gone to the bar yet. We started off by going to the lakefront trail which was absolutely gorgeous.  

Then we went to the Navy Pier in hopes of finding our future husbands. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful, but it was way more entertaining than we thought it was going to be. Talk about good people watching. And wedding watching. Speaking of which, how cool would it be to rent a yacht for your wedding? Apparently, that’s the thing to do here. We then met up with one of Britt’s roommates from Australia, Zach, and he took us to Portillo’s/Barnelli’s which are famous for their hot dogs and pasta respectively. Being the tourists that are, we had no clue how to order (since apparently there is a “proper” way to order). These stupid Chicagoans write their order down on a flipping bag, which you, in turn hand to the cashier. Isn’t that their job? Aren’t they the ones getting paid to do that? Keep in mind, the line is about a mile long, so they do this in hopes that it speeds up the process, but how are tourist supposed to know this? Needless to say, we felt pretty stupid. At least the food tasted good. After refueling, we met up with Zach’s cousin, Carlos, who is currently interning at Obama’s national campaign headquarters in the Prudential building. Carlos was kind enough to get us clearance to enter the building and get a tour of the marketing headquarters. Ironically, Barack, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and Bo (their dog) were in the building and invited us out to dinner. As it turns out, their favorite restaurant is McDonald’s, so clearly we had to join. Alright, maybe that’s not true, but we did get to see where Barack does press conferences and the campaign manager plays ping pong. Pretty sweet. Next, was the infamous mirror ball in Millennium Park and Sears tower, which is actually called the Willis Building. Thank you Google for that information and thank you society for constantly changing the names of everything.

Since we had already walked marathon distance today and our feet were killing us, we opted to take a cab back and drown our pain away with wine……aka, happy hour. Speaking of which, we need a new bottle so we’re off!

Until next time,

Adios Amigos

The Journey Begins

Somehow, we managed to pack a small SUV with clothing, camping gear, snacks and alcohol for a month and could still see out the back window. Impressive, we know. Actually, we even had room to spare in the back seat, which will most likely be used for more food, seeing how we downed all of the candy and numerous other snacks like Hugh Heffner downs Viagra. Needless to say, we will need to restock immediately. Oh, and this car will definitely need a carwash in the near future. The number of lives lost on our windshield is becoming quite repulsive.


So now, fifteen hours and 872.7 miles later, we made it thanks to the help of coffee, red bull, candy and lots of loud music. There’s no doubt about it, we reached the point of insanity/extreme exhaustion numerous times throughout the drive, but together we were able to stay sane enough to make it to the beautiful city of Chicago. We actually had a pretty uneventful trip, minus the half hour of being consistently struck by lightning and having rocks thrown at the car…also known as a really bad storm. While at a pit stop in Indiana, we made an executive decision to detour 0.7 miles to Michigan and add another state to our list, which now totals 7. Does that mean we’re already a quarter of the way through our trip? After just 30 minutes into our drive, Sam figured out how she was going to put her journal to great use. Without mentioning any names, someone actually thought Alaska was an island. Immediately, Sam decided the journal would be best for writing down stupid/funny lines said throughout the trip (Thanks Mom for the journal ☺). 


Until next time! 
Ciao