The Trip Back

Side note: Did I spell travelling wrong? My phone autocorrects it to traveling, but chrome doesn't autocorrect it either way. On the other hand, autocorrect has that annoying red line under it. I am not putting a hyphen in that. No way. Okay, crisis solved. Apparently I'm secretly British, because the Brits spell it with two l's and Americans spell it with one. I'm leaving it. God save the queen!

Another side note: This is my background music right now - Kelly Valleau plays a mean guitar. Check it out! I can't help but be awed now that I'm learning how to play guitar myself.

Anyway, onto the real point of the entry...a blast from the past for posterity's sake. As I'm preparing to road trip to Texas yet again, I'll tell you the story of my epic trip home from Lubbock.

Our first stop of note was the route 66 museum in Elk City, Oklahoma. This place was one of the biggest museums I've ever been to, and it had everything from replica buildings to old cars to old-timey farm equipment. Lots of good photo ops there.

Next we trucked it through Arkansas to stay near Little Rock for the night. On our way we tried to stop for dinner in this creepy town called Fort Smith or something, and our GPS took us to the haunted mansion. No joke, we find this Vietnamese place on the internet that seems perfect, so we tell my wonderfully smart smart phone to take us there...and we pull off into a dark neighborhood....hmmm, this doesn't look right. We drive around a bend and up a hill and our GPS (which we lovingly named Cindy) screeches "your destination is on the right!" To our right, perched atop a dark hill  at the end of a super curvy quarter-mile driveway lies the haunted mansion. Seriously, if lightening struck around this thing it would have been right out of a movie. Needless to say, we  did not go there. I recall saying "No. No no no. F*** pho." I think we ended up going to a Wendy's that night.

In Little Rock we visited a civil rights museum at Central High, where the little rock nine forced the issue of school desegregation. It was a nice museum with a very powerful message. Going to the site of something you read about in history books really brings it to life and makes you think about how recent this stuff actually is.

The next civil rights museum we went to was at the Lorraine hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. This museum was small, but eerily powerful, because you have the opportunity to stand steps from where the shot was fired from and look out the window across  the street to the hotel where Dr. King died. Then, even more humbling, you get to cross the street and stand on the balcony in the very spot where  he died. That's one very powerful way to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

While we were in Memphis, we also visited the famous Beale Street (sort of accidentally...we were looking for a starbucks, but it closed minutes before we arrived). We visited Graceland and stayed in a Elvis themed hotel, which was actually more fun than I thought it would be, considering I have very little interest in Elvis. We also ate at this weird Vietnamese place (are you sensing a trend? Jessie enjoys her Asian food :)) where I asked the server what he suggested, and in broken English he told me I should get this strange sweet and sour soup, but I had to eat it very fast. This is especially funny to you if you've ever shared a meal with me, because I am a notoriously slow eater most of the time. Anyway, he kept passing by our table and rushing me along...it was quite the odd experience.  I think he was trying to say that the soup wouldn't have it's alleged medicinal/spiritual benefits if I didn't eat it fast enough. Well, I didn't finish it, and gosh did it stink up the car. Plus it was disgusting left over.

I swear I didn't hop the ropes for this pic...

In Kentucky, we visited Cave City, home of the Mammoth Cave, which was honestly pretty underwhelming. I enjoyed dinosaur world far more, even though it is intended for six year olds. In fact, the only people there with Jessie and I were a little kid (probably 4 or 5) and his family. Believe me, we were having even more fun than that kid, especially since we had spent 2 days in a car already and had just woken up to our first snow of the season that morning!

After that we zipped through Louisville, slept at Jessie's brother's house in Ohio, and got home as fast as we could :).

Fun facts:
Gas prices-
Lowest: Fort Smith, AK (the sketchy place) - $2.71/gal
Highest: Pittsburgh, PA - $3.29/gal

In hindsight that jump doesn't seem like all that much...

I'm back!

Hey y'all, happy new year!! I'm back from Texas! Actually, I've been living with my parents again since November (which is quite the adventure in itself!), but I just haven't been blogging. Lame, I know. I didn't blog about a lot of the awesome stuff I did in Texas, so I'll try to do a quick rundown here to catch you up. Also, I love numbered lists.

1.  I went horseback riding through Palo Duro Canyon. It was sooo pretty and it was by far the most challenging terrain that I've gone on a trail ride on. No worries though, my horse was awesome :)

2. I visited New Mexico - Roswell, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe. The UFO museum in Roswell was fun and photo-worthy, but there really wasn't that much else around. I did have an amazing green chile burger at a mexican restaurant there though.

Can you tell which one's me?

Santa Fe was pretty. We got to stay in a nice little motel with lots of character there, and it was only mildly creepy. We also drove down canyon road, famous for it's art galleries - which were unfortunately all closed by the time we got there. Our walk on the river was pretty though.

The balloon fiesta in Albuquerque was definitely the highlight of the trip. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced, and should definitely be on your bucket list.

So. Many. Balloons.

 
The line to park at the balloon fiesta started on the highway off ramp - at 5am. It was all worth it though when we got to see the first 10 balloons light up the early morning sky. Later in the day we stood among hundreds of hot air balloons as the took off. It was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen (in case I haven't said that a million times in this post :))

3. I visited Dallas, which I apparently pronounced wrong, according to my native Texan coworkers. I say it like Dale-iss, they say Day-lus, and my coworker who was also from NY says Dill-iss. Strange. Anyway, while we were in Dallas we went to some museums, a great vegan restaurant, and a vegetarian food festival. The food festival was cool, although I was a bit out of my element - which is strange because food festivals are one of my favoritest things in the world! Really there was more indoctrination than food, but it was a good experience.

4. I got to see Switchfoot live on their Fading West tour! The venue was tiny, like high school auditorium sized, so that was awesome, and it was Jessie's first concert!

5. I dressed up as a Wizard of Oz munchkin for Halloween at work. My Lubbock coworkers were awesome!

6. I took an free ASL class at the local college, Texas Tech. That was a very cool experience, and I got to know some of my coworkers a bit better.

7. I had a lot of spicy food and tacos!

So there's a quick summary - almost two months later :). Next post to come - our epic road trip home!