Second Impressions

It feels like we've been here for ages longer than we actually have. Tonight is hopefully our last night in the hotel before we move to the house tomorrow. This means we won't have very easy access to email, but it also means that we will actually get to unpack, do laundry, and go grocery shopping. Right now, this seems like very good trade off. The house isn't 100% done, but it's mostly finishing touches and we're pretty tired of living out of our suitcases.

First Impressions

First impressions are good! DC the morning we left was incredibly hectic--I realized the night before that I had packed my glasses into the boxes that we weren't going to see for another three months. I could probably get glasses here, but the idea of spending the flights with my contacts in the whole time sounded miserable, so I spent the morning at Lenscrafters getting new glasses, which made it really hard to get the apartment cleaned up and be all packed up and ready to leave. At the airport, a United agent looked at the rabbit crate for 30 seconds (which we spent a lot of time researching the requirements for), said it was unsuitable, and walked away. We then waited in line for about 20 more minutes freaking out until someone else came over and judged everything ok and checked us in. We then had to take the rabbits out of the crate and hold them for about 5 minutes while the x-rayed the crate. Orion was alright, but Gillig tried to jump out a few times. I had terrible visions of him darting across the busy Dulles terminal never to be seen again, though Brad pointed out later that the floor was slick so he wouldn't have gotten very far.

In the Interim

Well, hello there. It's been awhile, so here's the last 8 months, in brief.

When we left off, we had just moved to Washington.

We did a number of things in Washington. We lived in Logan Circle, frequented a few bars and restaurants, camped twice in Shenandoah, started new jobs or variations on previous jobs, learned Swahili, prepared to move to Tanzania, make the playoffs on a kickball team and played on less successful but more fun softball team. We visited friends and family, family and friends visited us. In the winter, we were buried under the most snow Washington had ever seen, and in the summer we sweltered through one of the hottest on record. We went to museums and the zoo. I learned to cook, Brad learned to play keyboard and make V.O. Manhattans. We did a lot of online shopping. A lot.

To be honest, DC's not really our style, so we're bidding it a not-so-fond farewell and moving on. Next stop: two years in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

When the dotted yellow lines are closing in

Knoxville, Cleveland, Knoxville, Washington (12/21-12/30):

Google puts the drive from New York to DC at 227 miles and three and a half hours, so our 33,852 mile/122 day drive was considerably out of the way. In total we hit 48 states and 44 national parks, a few dozen motel 6s, several state parks and national forests, a half dozen breweries, and a raccoon. We somehow avoided the po-po for the entire trip, and while going through 2 cobalts, 2 sonatas, 2 focii, a corolla and a budget truck, had no car trouble outside of a door that wouldn't close in new orleans. So, a few bests and worsts of the country:

Top five national parks:
1. Wind Cave, SD - we nearly skipped this to go to the Badlands instead, and we never did go to the cave. But it, along with neighboring Custer State Park, was one of the best parks we visited for wildlife, with lots of buffalo and pronghorns hanging out by the road. And Custer had the burros and beeping prairie dogs too.
2. Olympic, WA - Rainforest, and as good a beach on the Pacific Ocean as you could want.
3. Bryce Canyon, UT - Maybe the most geologically interesting, the hoodoos are unlike anywhere else we saw.
4. Great Sand Dunes, CO - There was just so much sand.
5. Saguaro, AZ - Cacti.

Yellowstone/Grand Teton would probably be the best park to spend a week at, with Yosemite close behind, but the five above are the ones that seem to stick out.

Top five states:
1. New York - for the city if nothing else, but the finger lakes and Niagara put it over the top
2. Colorado - all four parks are worth seeing.
3. Minnesota - the north country is delightful.
4. Missouri - St. Louis and KC were better than expected.
5. Washington - nice parks, nice cities, and Seattle seems a bit less silly than Portland.

Top five cities/towns:
1. NYC, NY
2. Duluth, MN
3. Missoula, MO
4. Mitchell, SD if just for sheer ingenuity. (I would LOVE to meet the guy who one day said, "Hey guys--wait, I've got an idea. What if we build a giant palace out of CORN?)
5. St. Louis, MO

Worst state:
1. Florida

Worst park:
1. Hot Springs, AR


And with that, we're settling down (for a little bit).

Browns 41, Chiefs 34

Kansas City, MO (12/19-12/20)

We really liked Kansas City when we passed through at the beginning of the road trip way back in September, but we didn't have a chance to do much more than drive through before heading on. With tickets to the Browns-Chiefs game on Sunday, we arrived early Saturday afternoon so we'd have time to explore the city a bit. We had dinner and drinks at a microbrewery in Westport, a trendy area of the city. We shopped a little in Country Club Plaza, an outdoor mall of upscale shops near Westport, before watching some football on TV.

On Sunday, we watched football for real in person, in just about the most exciting game you could hope to watch. While neither of the teams are exactly the best that the NFL has to offer, lots of points and some broken records on the Browns side kept the game exciting. The Browns extended their winning streak to 3.

Texas

Carlsbad NM to Alpine TX via Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe NP (12/15)
Alpine TX to Fort Stockton TX via Big Bend Ntl Park (12/16)
Fort Stockton TX to Austin TX (12/17)
Austin TX to Wichita KS (12/18):

Back when we were young road trippers, one of our first stops was Mammoth Cave NP in Kentucky, where the rangers gave us a tour and mentioned several times how their cave was bigger than Carlsbad Caverns. Mammoth Cave may be bigger, but Carlsbad has more impressive formations. Unlike Mammoth, you can actually visit the cave on your own without a ranger-guided tour, which we also appreciated.



We spent awhile at the caverns, which only left us a little time to visit Guadalupe, a Texas national park not far from the caverns. Turns out that was plenty of time because most of the national park is also designated wilderness area, which means there are no roads, etc, so it's largely inaccessible unless you're ready to do some more serious exploring, which we had neither the time, equipment, or initiative to do. The visitor center at least had wifi.



Post-Guadalupe, we headed through the Big Bend region of TX, which is probably the least populated place we've been through. There are only a handful of small towns and absolutely NOTHING on the highways in between them...except outside of Marfa TX, we inexplicably passed a Prada storefront. And not just some shack where someone spray painted Prada on a piece of wood and nailed it to a shack. It was dark, so we didn't get any pictures, but some googling provides the explanation for the weirdest Prada location ever.

After a night in Alpine ("In the Alps of Texas"), we swung through Big Bend National Park, on the Mexican border. It was a pretty perfunctory swing-through, as Brad has given me his cold, and I was sick and didn't feel like hiking. We drove north from Big Bend, passing little except tumbleweed and border patrol agents, sleeping in Fort Stockton, a rather unfortunate little town, except for this road runner:



The next day we visited Austin, where we were armed with suggestions from my friend Rebecca as to places to go. Unfortunately, I was still sick and not up for much, so we satisfied ourselves with pizza and football (though, that seems an appropriate way to spend time in Austin). We're now on our way to Kansas City, a favorite from earlier in the trip and the location of the Browns next Sunday showdown.
-M

Contact

Socorro NM to Carlsbad NM (12/14):

Sunday night before bed, we heard some light thudding on the window and found a cat outside trying to get in. He looked non-feral enough, so we let him into our hotel room to run around for awhile. We fed him some granola and gave him some water and sent him on his way.



Contact was one of my favorite books when I was younger, and I liked the movie back in the day as well, so on Monday we took a detour through rural New Mexico to the Very Large Array, or VLA. It's 27 radio telescopes on a plateau and there's a visitor's center and walking tour. They're very pretty and symmetrical sitting there in the middle of nothing. We were underneath one when they moved it, and they move a lot faster than you'd think.



After that, we headed across New Mexico, driving through Roswell, which is less alien-y than I expected. There's some alien stuff around (the Toyota dealership has a 75 foot inflatable alien in front of it and there are a couple museums), but it's mainly just a normal town. Somewhere south of Roswell, we crossed that invisible line that marks the south, and we stayed the night in Carlsbad, which is more Texas than New Mexico. People here are nice, except for the hobo who screamed "I hope you both die!!!" at us. You can't win them all.

-M