Tom's Reflections

Let me answer the question I've gotten most: How was your trip!? Well, I can put it this way: It opened my eyes to an entire world that already is my own country, changed my behavior and outlook on life, and was more crucial to shaping my self-identity than Birthright in Israel, or studying abroad in the UK. Besides choosing to leave New England for college, this may very well be the most life-changing thing I have done yet in my life.

I had begun planning this trip in middle school, tracing out the ultimate route on the time-zone map in the back of my agenda planner. This idea of a cross-country road trip simmered with me though high school and college until this year when I finally found people who shared my passion for travel. Like the "about me" says, we are all east coast natives. I had personally only been once to San Diego, and once to Western Michigan in this country prior to this trip that was off the Florida-Massachusetts eastern seaboard. It had upset me a little that I had seen more of the United Kingdom and Israel than I had of my own country. So to me, this trip meant discovering what exactly the general cultural identity of an American is (rather than just a New Englander), and more importantly, if there is anywhere else NOT on the east coast that I would enjoy living once I graduate college. I had both of my goals answered. I have to say that, we may be one country, but in terms of cultural identity, we definitely have huge differences.

One of the things I've learned is that country music is much more pervasive and ubiquitous in this country than any other genre out there. We began to get almost nothing but country by the time we hit Indiana. I have never really been a fan, but by the time we hit California, I could recognize songs that I had heard before. By the time I hit Louisiana heading back east, I could recognize artists, and by the time we reached Tennessee, I was officially a fan. Since being back, every time I am in the car, I only listen to 103.7 and 92.5, the two local country radio stations out of Philadelphia and Havre de Grace. My new taste in music annoys my roommate so much, but I like it because it counters his new love for dubstep.

I have heard that you don't know your own culture until you leave it. I definitely found that to be true on this trip. I began noticing a difference in the extroversion of people to strangers as I hit Colorado, and there we're finally people to interact with. It was so much easier there, and on out from Colorado through California and all the way back in Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee to talk to strangers, and strike up short, but friendly conversations without seeming creepy or mentally challenged. The entire side of the country west of the Appalachians is just more laid back and not uptight about every aspect of their life, and they seem to be much happier because of it. I now understand why we are called "east coast freaks".

I have brought this attitude back to Delaware with mixed reactions. Most people seem to be just waiting for a stranger to come up to them and strike up a conversation but are just too shy to do it themselves, but others do look at me like I am about to ask them for money. Which is understandable if that's all that you're used to. This same behavior has been reflected in my driving attitude as well. I no longer feel the need to make power-plays on the road, nor do I feel affected by drivers who act like that towards me. I don't let trivial things like a friend changing plans last minute, or a sink full of dirty dishes bother me anymore either. Its all good, man, and I hope it remains that way.

After considering the cities and regions that I visited on this trip, I have decided that there are, in fact, other areas of the country that I find habitable that aren't in the east coast megalopolis. I immensely enjoyed the Denver metro area, and would love to re-visit it. I (of course!) loved California, in a way that it seems like living there would be cheating myself of hardship. Its that nice. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed Texas. San Antonio was quaint and cozy, and I heard Austin is the same way. Houston, which we passed through for lunch, was as metropolitan as any place on the eastern seaboard.

So to conclude, I have a very special choice I can make in this upcoming post-graduation year. I am an EMT, and need to work up about 1000 clinical hours before I can apply to graduate school to be a Physician Assistant. So for this year between undergrad and graduate school, I have the ability (if I am brave enough) to move anywhere I wish and work as an EMT before I have to re-locate again for grad school. So in an ideal situation, with a job in the location, after this trip I can say that I would love to move to these cities for the next year:

1. San Francisco, California
2. Boston, Massachusetts
3. Denver-Boulder, Colorado
4. San Jose-Santa Cruz, California
6. San Antonio-Austin, Texas
7. New York, New York
8. Washington-Annapolis, Maryland
9. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
10. Nashville, Tennessee

This being said, I still have yet to see the north-central, Pacific northwest, and most of florida. So I cannot say whether I would like places such as Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, or even Tampa, but I have the same good feeling about Chicago and Seattle that I did about Denver.

My next trip is already churning idealistically in my mind. I want to do it in the summer, probably right before grad school. I want to camp my way to Seattle. Starting in Chicago, I will head over to the Missouri River, and follow a modified version of Lewis and Clark's travels, camping my way across the Missouri, Yellowstone, Platte, Snake, and Columbia Rivers until I hit the Pacific, staying in national parks from the day I leave Chicago, until I hit Seattle. Should be fun!

I can't believe how much I have seen and experienced over this past winter session. Doing it seemed like no big deal, but now that I am back and reflecting on all of it, I realize what a big deal it was for the four of us to pull this off. Looking back, the title quote at the top of our blog rings even truer now that we have done just that.

I hope you've enjoyed reading, thanks for being our fans!

-Tom

Kelly's Reflections

Finally being back is a little unreal, mostly because the exhaustion has caught up with me. I've not got everything unpacked quite yet, but I still feel like I should be going somewhere new. Sadly enough, that's not my reality as my last semester of college starts tomorrow morning. However, I wanted to take the time to reflect a little and share my personal thoughts with any of the people still reading this blog. I prefer lists, mainly to keep things organized.

1. I feel like I left my heart in San Francisco. Thank you Frank Sinatra. It was the most beautiful city in this country that I've been to. It was actually hard to find things I didn't like about it--other than the east bay with Oakland and Berkeley, but that's technically not San Francisco.

2. I'm seeking intelligent people to help me make lots of money so I can move to Carmel.

If you have interest in living in front of a natural grotto in a cottage like this, please join my team: Operation Carmel. 

3. Las Vegas was...Vegas. I can't say that I loved it, but I can't say that I hated it and I was completely content with the amount of time we spent there. Driving down the strip with all of the lights blasting Chamillionare isn't something I'm going to forget any time soon.

4. Denver was my favorite stop outside of California. I want to go back soon.

5. I couldn't of picked 3 better people to share this journey with. I love all of you.

I'm sure there will be deep feelings of nostalgia from all of us as time moves forward, but having this blog is going to be a fun way of remembering details. Thank you to all of the family and friends who kept up with us this way. Also, I'd like to thank Dorothy, Lisa, Dave, Barbara, Eric's entire extended family, Lael, Ben, Isabelle, and Beck for opening up your homes to us during our journey. 

Signing off for the last time!
--Kelly

On a Front Porch Looking In

Wednesday we spent the day in Nashville. My Aunt and Uncle had the generosity of putting us up in their kid's bedrooms for the night. They showed us places to go in town and where to meet up with them later.

Nashville

We first headed to downtown Nashville, where all the live music bars are, at 2nd ave and Broadway. We walked around, going into some handcrafted cowboy boot shops, old country record stores, and where we wanted to go later that night.

Broadway

After, we drove past the Vanderbilt campus, and went to the Parthenon in Centennial Park. Nashville has the world's only replica of Athens' Parthenon, which makes for an excellent centerpiece for a really beautiful city park. Inside the Parthenon was an art gallery, and a 4 story statue of the goddess Athena. This would be cool enough, except for the fact that my Uncle Ben, who is an artist, works with the sculptor who made the 4 story Athena. After seeing the Athena, we got to go to his studio and meet the artist Alan LeQuire.

Parthenon

Athena

Ben's studio was very cool. He is a sculptor, working primarily with copper for his pieces. He came up with a look for his work of combining antler with copper in his work to come up with some beautiful bowls, spoons, candlestick holders etc. He was also making copper and silver jewelry for a show he has this weekend. He had some ingenious machines that he designed himself to help him pound the metals into the shapes that he wanted. He also showed us some really nice "paintings" that he had done by taking a sheet of copper, and fire blasting colored enamel onto the copper (because paint will get rejected on copper overtime) and then bending the sheet of copper into a 3D work of art. Alan's studio was equally fascinating, with large busts of famous musicians, nude sculptures, and this tree forest that was carved in the shape of human figures. With all of us coming from a science world it was really fascinating to meet people who do art for a living, and actually make a living at it.

We met up with Lael after seeing the studio, and she gave us a tour of the rest of Nashville. Following her in our car with her on speaker phone, we passed by Music Row where all of the country music studios are. The studios are small and unassuming, most of them in houses like professor's offices at a university. If a recording studio's artist had a hit at the time, they would display a banner of congratulations to the artist. We caught a glimpse of Darius Rucker's banner as we drove down music row. She also drove us past the enormous mansions of Big and Rich, the dudes from "Save a Horse."

We got home for dinner that night and played with the kids, Isabel (10) and Beck (6) outside for a bit. They opened up to us, and we had a lot of fun running around the yard and watching Beck do his skateboard tricks. It felt really cool to have little kids looking up to us and it felt great for us to be good role-models to them. I wish that they lived closer to the east coast, so I would be able to visit more often.

We ate dinner with them, where we argued over who loved cheese the most, which Beck won by putting the most parmesan cheese on his pasta out of all of us. They went to watch their mother perform that night, and the 4 of us had some quiet time to discuss our trip, and all that we had seen, what places we liked, disliked, and could possibly see ourselves living.

That night we went out to some of the bars in downtown Nashville. We listened to some live music and watched the Maryland/Duke game over a few drinks.

Snoozing thru the Appalachians

In the morning we drove the 14 hours back to Delaware, and got back home at about 2am.

Ocean City, Maryland boardwalk, 3073 miles from Sacramento

You'll hopefully hear from each of us 1 more time, as we plan to post a little personal conclusion and reflection to our trip.

So Much Weather

Today was relatively uneventful. We passed on the waffles at our hotel this morning and found a bakery to grab a bite at before we hit the road for Nashville, Tennessee. The drive was about 8 hours, and we passed through the remainder of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally in to Tennessee.

The only real problem we encountered through the day was 7 hour rain storm. It was on and off sheets of rain and high wind for most of the day. Other than the small storm we hit driving in to New Orleans, this was the first weather we had encountered in nearly 20 days. INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF WEATHER. Meanwhile at home, our friends and family are dealing with feet of snow and inches of ice. We really can't complain too much if the only unfortunate weather we had was in the last 3 days of the trip while still being 55 degrees out.

We arrived safely into Tennessee and are staying with Tom's cousin Lael, her husband Ben, and their two children Isabelle and Beck. Tomorrow we are off to tour the Nashville area. Tomorrow is also our last official day of sightseeing, as we are driving back to Delaware early Thursday morning. Night ya'll.

Some of that Bourbon Street Stank

We spent the day in New Orleans today. What a city.

Cafe du Monde

Delicious Beignets!

We got up around 9, some of us somewhat hungover. Went downstairs for our complementary hot breakfast which literally was nothing but waffles. We walked through the French Quarter to Cafe du Monde. We had some great coffee and beignets at the famous cafe stand.

French Quarter

We then got in the car and took a field trip around New Orleans. First stop was the Lower Ninth Ward. This was the area that was completely destroyed during Katrina. The neighborhood, which was already kind of a poor area, showed signs of both absolute abandonment in parts, and then regrowth and rebuilding from the various charity organizations (like Habitat for Humanity) of some homes and a new school.

Lower 9th Ward, 5 years later.

One rebuilt house on an empty block

This was a somber moment on an otherwise exciting and fun trip. There were even some houses still left abandoned since the hurricane with the rescue cross on the front, noting inhabitants/bodies etc.

Spray painted symbol means entered on September 11, by task force 1162, house not safe for entry (NE), no bodies found.

From there we explored other areas of the city, specifically the park in Uptown. We took a nice walk here around the bird pond under some spanish moss. It was a balmy 71 degrees in New Orleans today.

Bird pond.

Some nice spanish moss.

We ate at Mother's for lunch and had some really good New Orleans soul food. We had turkey, roast beef and ham poboys, fried shrimp poboys, gumbo, and jambalaya.

Riverboat!

Regina posing in front of the hot teens.

After lunch we took a 2-3 hour siesta back at the hotel, and then went out for dinner and drinks back in the French Quarter. We ate at Coop's Place, got some fried chicken, gumbo, jambalaya, and red beans and rice. Some of the best food of this trip came from today.

Eric getting his drank on.

We made our way to Bourbon Street, where we all got more alcoholic slushies, walked around and took in all the riff-raff, and went into a few bars. We ran into a 40 year old couple, of which the wife was incoherently drunk. She had a prophet-like word for each of us. She first hugged and kissed Kelly, telling her that she was "gorgeous!" Looked at Regina poked her, and told her "you never tell the truth!" Moved on to Eric, stared at him, and said "you look like a Jersey asshole!" Tom came in late, and when prompted she looked at him and yelled "you're so goood looking!" It gave us a laugh, and we wished them a good night, and carried on.

Silly hipsters think that the broken thrown bar chair is art.

Regina and Kelly both got on the mechanical bull at one of the bars, and started actually started a line of girls who wanted to go and ride the bull too.

"OH! Shes from Maryland, so she definitely knows how to ride a saddle..."

Trend starters of Bourbon Street

She needed to be cooled off.

You can doooo it!

womp womp....

After a great night of drinks in a wonderful city we are excited to get on the road for our last stop... Nashville, Tennessee.

N'Awlins!!

Tonight was probably most definitely one of the most fun nights we have had to date. It started with an early morning goodbye to Wrigley, Jordan, and Victoria, and we got on the road for another long day of driving. Most of the day was spent enjoying 60 degree weather and the first hint of humidity we've seen in months, then we hit the Louisiana state line. Then it poured, heavily, all the way to the hotel.

No hurricane, just normal Louisiana swampland.

When we arrived at the Queen and Crescent in the french quarter, we were greeted by the Valet guy, aka Denzel Washington. He was very nice and took good care of Ian.  Once we got to our room, Eric was very quick to inform us that the classic historical New Orleans-syle room gave him the heebie jeebies, and it reminded him of the room in the movie 1408. As comforting as this was, we decided to leave and go out.

Queen and Crescent.

Kelly and Tom found an awesome local place for us to eat, drink, and listen to some local jazz. It was called The Three Muses, and it was easy to find from our hotel after a quick drive down Bourbon Street to see some of the sites. The food was delicious, the drinks were exquisite, and the band was awesome! Tom re-discovered his passion for whiskey. As the night went on, more and more people who were walking by came in and joined the band. It was a very fun experience in a very cool timeless atmosphere.

Absolutely unreal.

I was born in the wrong generation.

Big Easy

To her credit, she got the only flavor without everclear.

While Tom and Kelly went out after for some extra exploring on bourbon street for some fun-cup slushies, we are all very excited to see the town in daylight and full color tomorrow (after bourbon street has been bleached) and experience the tradition and culture that comes from this historic and beautiful city.

If Tahoe is heaven, Bourbon Street is hell, and so much more fun.

LETS GET READY TO RODEO, SAN ANTONIO!

Today we went out around San Antonio with Eric's cousin and his girlfriend, Jordan and Victoria. They took us to downtown to see some sights, and a cattle-drive parade, that began a week of barbeque competitions and a rodeo.

Cattle-drive.

As we were walking toward the parade route we passed the Alamo. Pretty impressive, and even more impressive that after the battle it became the center point of an entire downtown of a city.

so many cowboys and ranchers.

The cattle drive and parade was like nothing I had ever seen before. There was so much Texan pride, and cowboy showmanship. The first bit of the parade was a handful of cowboys on horseback leading a pack of about 50 longhorns through downtown as the traditional start to the rodeo. After that it was a standard town parade, but with that Texan twist that gave it an entirely different cultural feel. The standard youth groups from churches, and dance classes, and high school bands were replaced with horseback riding schools, boys making lassos, Apache tribal dances, and mariachi high school clubs.

God Bless Texas.

If there was one place on this trip where I had felt as if I was in an entirely different country and culture, it was Texas, without a doubt. I wish my part of the country had as unique of a culture, and were as proud of that unique culture as Texas is.

And God bless that country to our north too.

We took a tour of the riverwalk afterward. The riverwalk is a section of downtown that has a canal running through it with shops and restaurants along it. If you have ever been to the canal in Providence, Rhode Island, its like that, but it actually has things around it. It gave a great feel to the city and made it very friendly for pedestrians to walk around downtown, something that the Providence version fails at.

Riverwalk.

Tex-Ven-nice.

We had lunch at Rudy's Barbeque, a gas station-restaurant north of San Antonio. They had a sign out front that said that they were the worst BBQ in Texas, and the second I got inside, I knew they were lying.

Awful BBQ.

Not.

The place smelled amazing, and the food was delicious and cheap. Best barbeque any of us ever had. The table got ribs, chop, brisket, turkey, creamed corn, beer, potato salad, beans, peach cobbler, and basically a full loaf of white bread to wash it down with. Regina was almost in tears it tasted so good.

"I'm so full, but it's so good I cant stop!"

Best meal yet.

Then we took a siesta until about 7, when we went out to an icehouse called The Friendly Spot for drinks and tex-mex. An icehouse is an amazing creation that the southwest has come up with. Its a bar, but the only thing inside is the actual bar (hence ice-house), all the seating is outside. So its basically a really chill party in someone's back yard, except theres a bar and live music as well. If it wasn't so damn cold in the northeast they would be such a big hit. We spent a few hours there drinking dressed (lime and salted bottleneck) beers, eating amazing quesadillas and tacos, and watching the Spurrs game on a big projector.... in 60 degree weather.... on January 29th. That's all I have to say about that.

There was also this guy, hauling a tree he chopped down in the back of his F-650.

Tomorrow we are off to New Orleans, where we are staying at the Queen and Crescent in the French Quarter. We plan to eat and drink our way through the neighborhood. There will be lots of pictures. We wanted to thank Jordan and Victoria for being lovely hosts to us and bringing us to delicious places to eat during our stay in Texas.

Don't Mess With Texas

Right. So to add on to the first blog that we posted this morning, we have an updated account on our 10 hour drive through western Texas to San Antonio. For the most part it was pretty uneventful, so here's a quick run down of the main highlights:

1. About half of our hotel's inhabitants were vacationing from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. This calmed my fears that not everyone from Ciudad Juarez was involved with Cartel business, and some were just normal people who work or vacation in El Paso. Regardless, why you would want to vacation in El Paso bewilders me. They had cool license plates too featuring Emiliano Zapata that I bet none of you have ever seen before.

2. Western Texas is prettttty boring. In a more positive light, it is not as boring as Kansas, not as dirty as Nevada. You can also drive really fast through it, and have to reallly screw up to get pulled over.

Thats right. Everything is big in Texas.

3. Cars in Texas come in 4 flavors of 'Murrican pickup truck: Ford, Chevy, GMC, Dodge. No exceptions. Bonus points for it being a white pickup, or having extra-sized wheels.

Seriously, Kansas was worse.

4. Lunch was Subway (again). Kelly discovered their buffalo chicken flat bread which became topic of conversation for the next hour or so.


5. There was this truck:

Just in case you need a fake pig...this guy has one.

 At about this point, Kelly and Tom had completed their portion of driving for the day, so they took a happy hour in the parking lot with some Budweiser tallboys bought from this gas station.

6. Upon arrival in to San Antonio, Eric's cousin, Jordan, took us to a really neat place to get fish tacos and fun Texas style burgers. We sat outside (yeah, I said it) and listened to live local music and chatted about our trip.

7. Jordan has a really cool Labradoodle, we're debating stealing him for the ride back to Delaware.

Tomorrow we're off to downtown San Antonio to watch a cattle drive. Apparently the rodeo starts next week, so this event is like the kick off. After that, there is promise of famous southwestern barbeque.

Grand Canyon...in 3 hours

Pictures do not do it justice.

Yesterday morning we woke up about 10 minutes away from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. It was slightly colder in Arizona than what we are used to (40s) but we found it to be bearable. We entered the national park and started our fast track through the canyon. Regina was describing the canyon as "so big, it's a little bit obnoxious"... she was kind of right. However, every stop we made offered different views of one of the wonders of the world. We knew that we had a 10 hour drive to El Paso, Texas waiting for us, so we had to limit our time and get through the park...fast. All in all, we spent about 2.5 hours driving around the canyon and stopping at the look outs to take pictures. There was a short hike that we took to stretch our legs.

Rick lookin sharp at the canyon.

The rest of the day proved to be uneventful, as most of it was spent driving. In Phoenix, we stopped to get Greek food and kept driving. On interstate 10, there were a few exits for the US/Mexico border...right. Kelly spent a good amount of the evening reading wikipedia articles on Ciudad Juarez and their drug cartel. Just to note, Ciudad Juarez is our neighbor city in the next country over (as in we could probably see it from El Paso. Wikipedia said that Juarez is the most dangerous place in the world outside of named war zones. Not to worry moms, we're safe and well...and getting out of El Paso, ASAP.

Oh yes, did we mention it was 73 degrees?

It's 9 am, and we're back on the road today for 10 hours to San Antonio to see Eric's cousin.