What's the best program to make a map online of our 14,000 mile trip, to share with others?
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What's the best program to make a map online of our 14,000 mile trip, to share with others?
Maybe someone who knows, will come over and tell you. But I would not worry about a map. Tell us the story. We like to read how you got on. the places you stopped, where you saw amazing sights and what they were. In 14000 miles, you must have gathered a book full of stories. We wanna read them!
And we would love to see lots of pics.
Lifey
All right but it may take a while. (this thread is going to be mostly pictures) We left on May 25th, 4 days after our wedding. We couch surfed and camped our way the whole time. We hit 36 states and 11 National Parks.
We are from Lancaster PA and drive a 2005 Nissan Xterra. Our first stop was NYC.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum...2&d=1316359128
our first state
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Day 2
Our couch surfing host in Brooklyn recommended that we stop at her alma malter, Yale U, so we did. It is a beautiful campus with an amazing library.
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My wife is vegan so we ate at a vegan Jamaican place near campus.
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It was cheap and delicious
We left New Haven and arrived in Boston late and made it an early night.
I'm still working on the best way to post photos. More to come
If you uipload the pictures into 'photoshare' - the members tab on the green bar - you can then include them into your story as you go. Like this.
Lifey
Thanks for the advice. I'm going to try a better format for this post.
Day 3
We woke up early so that we could fit a lot into our Boston day. We decided to do the Freedom Trail and our couch surfing host recommended that we see "Old Ironsides" first before we walk the trail.
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You can go down to the 2nd to last level on the ship. The ceilings are very low, they were much shorter back then.
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The Freedom Trail is a line that you follow to historic points in Boston. Lots of cemeteries and churches. Also Paul Revere's house
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We also stopped and had a beer at the Cheers bar
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Beer is a pretty common theme throughout the trip.
I can't remember what this was called:
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Game 7 of the Bruins was that night and although we were offered a few scalped tickets we watched it with our couch surfing pal John.
Day 4
We drove up to Lowell to visit the hometown of Jack Kerouac, an inspiration for the trip. Lowell is an old industrial town with a canal that surrounds the city. We visited Kerouac park and his grave.
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We couch surfed that night with a wonderful family. We stayed up late with them and swapped travel stories and explained our plans for the rest of the summer.
Day 5
We headed for Concord Mass today to see Walden Pond. We took a hike around the pond, dipping our feet in, and stood in the spot that thoreau's cabin used to stand.
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We went to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and saw Thoreau and Emerson's grave sites as well.
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Old North Bridge:
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For dinner we joined our couch surfing host at a vegan pizza place. It was delicious. We spent the evening talking to local Boston people, couch surfers and non csers.
Day 6
We enjoyed a vegan Memorial day BBQ with our couch surfing friends
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Day 7
Megan and I decided to spend the day walking around Boston. We took the bus to the science museum, it was interesting but packed with school children. We walked through Chinatown and Boston Common. We took an art tour of Downtown Boston's Library and then walked to Harpoon Brewery for a hour of free taste testing. We met up with a couch surfing friend who made us homemade coffee and told us his travel stories.
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Day 8
This was the day this past summer where a tornado ripped through Mass and did some damage. This was also the day we took a whale watch trip. After a few hours going out to sea in choppy water an announcement told us that it was too dangerous to continue and we would have to head back. We saw no whales, got wet, and got sea sick.
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After getting back to land we headed to Shelburne Falls to meet up with our couch surfing hosts for the evening. We enjoyed great conversation and cold beer with them. We walked their small town and saw Glacier Holes and the Bridge of Flowers.
Day 9
Heading back south we stopped at the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, NY. It's an incredible museum and you get to walk on the site of Woodstock afterwards.
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making lunch outside the museum.
After Bethel we headed back home to see my cousin graduate high school. After home we started our trip south, that's to come later.
I hope I'm not posting too slowly, I have 80 or so more days to go. Thanks for reading
Wow... eighty more days. This is going to be some report. I am loving it, especially Boston and surrounds. Brings back so many memories... only 190 days till I am there again. Not that I'm counting.
Do you think you could put one blank line between the photos. Will stop them from all running into each other.
Lifey
We loved Boston, we agree it's one of the places we could move to one day.
Thanks for the advice about the photos, it does look better this way.
Day 10 (a few days home later)
Most people have a week or 2 honeymoon. We did 10 days came home and left with the plan to be gone for 3 more months. Day 10 we hit our first National Park. When we pulled into Shenandoah National Park we bought the NP Pass for $80. It is so worth it when you are visiting more then 4 or so NPs. Shenandoah did not disappoint. As we pulled past the guard at the front we saw 2 deer walk across the road. Shenandoah's main road is Skyline Drive and it is considered one of the most beautiful drives in the world for a reason. Every couple miles there is a pull off where you can get out and see a beautiful view of mountains and forests. At 1 such pull off I met up with a young guy with a big backpack who told me that he and his girlfriend had been hiking the Appalachian trail and she hurt her knee so they needed a lift to their campsite 30 miles down Skyline Drive. Megan and I rearranged the back of our car and we were able to fit Cole and Sarah in there, although uncomfortably. We had achieved one of our goals of picking up hitchhikers! They told us their story of the AP hike and we told ours of the road trip. We invited them to stay at our campsite that night but they had already paid for theirs. We dropped them off and wished them luck.
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When we got to our campsite later in the day we set up our tent and we saw on a map that you could thru-hike a small part of the AP trail near our site. We walked the trail taking in nature and amazing views. That night Megan made a delicious dinner and we sat in the dark looking at the stars. I got a text from Cole asking if we would be willing to take him and Sarah to our next destination, Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We said of course and planned to meet them early the next morning for our 8 hour drive. We spent a quiet night sleeping in our tent for the first time this summer.
Day 11
Virginia is a bigger state then it looks.
We picked up our hitchhiker buddies in the morning and drove south. We stopped at a strangely religious diner for breakfast, great food. We talked music, politics, travel, and future plans on our ride until Cole found out that I've never eaten at a Chic-Filet before. We decided to make it our quest to hit one for dinner. When we got into Tennessee we got off at an exit and went into a mall to find there food court. I enjoyed my first Chic-Filet dinner there, awesome, and Megan had fries. We got to Great Smoky MT NP and set our tents up in the rain. We left the park and grabbed a 6pack at a local very dive par. That night the 4 of us ate and drank and looked at very big trees. Megan and Cole stayed up and chatted late into the night, while Tony fell asleep early, weary from the longest drive of the trip so far.
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Day 12
There was an entrance point to the Appalachian Trail not to far from our camp site so we said goodbye to Cole and Sarah there with the promise to meet again some day. Megan and I headed back into the park and drove straight through the middle taking in the nature as much as we could. We had planned on stopping in Asheville NC but when we got there it was getting late and we could not find parking. Asheville is one of those places we will go back and really see one day soon. That night we stayed with a college buddy of mine in Charlotte NC. We met up with him at the bar he works at and had dinner there.
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Day 13-14
My buddy's place in Charlotte was a great place to sit around drink and watch the simpsons for 2 days. We only really left the house to go to a drive in double feature( Hangover 2 and Bridesmaids) The movies were tough to watch because a giant lightning storm was going on the whole time.
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Day 15
Athens GA, our next stop, is a great college town. We had walked all through downtown, had a few beers, and then went and met up with our couch surfing hosts for the night. They were a great young couple with a new baby. They knew a fantastic vegan place in town so we went there for dinner. We came back and exchanged travel stories with our new friends. Athens is another one of those places we want to visit again.
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Day 16
On the way to Fort Myers Florida we stopped in southern Georgia at a stand on the side of the road that sold peaches and boiled peanuts. Both were delicious. We spent our day driving south on the way to a week of rest in southern Florida.
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Day 17-22
My buddy Monte's (and our preacher from our wedding) parents have a retirement place on Sanibel Island in Florida. He allowed us to spend a week there and enjoy the retired lifestyle. We spend most of the week drinking, cooking, and swimming. It was also our first swim in a body of water that is not the Atlantic. We swam in the Gulf of Mexico. Also we spent a day dreading Megan's hair. I got sun poising really bad our first day there and spent the next week with painful blisters on my legs. This was our first real week of relaxation for a long time. We had been planning our wedding for months and a few days after the wedding we hit the road, so this week was much needed.
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The next post will be our week in Disney World!
Day 23-27
We were lucky enough to have great friends (Dave and Vicky) who gave us a weeks lodging in Disney as a wedding present. They also have been to Disney loads of times and were great to have along as guides. We went to all the parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Disney Hollywood Studios) We stayed at the amazing Animal Kingdom Lodge where animals are right out back doing there thing. My favorite ride was Splash Mountain and also as the Star Wars ride. We saw a bunch of shows and got our picture with loads of characters. There are over 1000 photos for these 5 days so I just picked out a few.
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Day 28
Megan is a huge Harry Potter fan so we went to Harry Potter World after Disney. Before we went to the park I had never read any of the ooks or watched any of the movies. Since then I've read them all and we watched all the movies on the trip, including the final one in 3d in a movie theater in Washington. The park was fun and seemed to be pretty consistent with the books. We had butter beer and pumpkin juice. The rest of Islands of Adventure was kind of boring in comparison, although Megan rode "The Hulk" and said it was great.
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My husband would love to go to Harry Potter World. It's on our list of things to do someday! I wasn't aware that WDW in Florida still had the Electric Light Parade. (It's been gone from CA Disney properties for a couple of years now.) It's my FAVORITE part of Disney!
Donna
yeah the parade was amazing. I probably took 80 photos of a 20 minute parade.
If you go to Islands of Adventures you need to get there early (before they open) and go quickly to the Harry Potter World section because it gets very busy all day. We were able to ride all the rides in a half hour period when we first got to HPW, but after 11am or so the lines were crazy. thanks for reading our thread
Love the post so far, and all of the pics. I have "Baroque Hoedown" (the song played during that parade) as my ringtone, lol. Looking forward to seeing more!
We carried around a spot GPS with us that kept track, every 10 minutes, where we were. I'm going to try to post a few of those maps.
I can't figure out how to actually see the map on a post so I'll post links.
First one is Harrisburg, PA (home) to Boston
http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view?trip_id=255810
Here is PA to Fort Myers, FL
http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view?trip_id=259526
You can zoom in on the red line and see specific streets we visited (as long as we remembered to turn the gps on) We did not figure out the best way to use Spot GPS until later in the trip so the way points are a little off at some parts.
Thanks for the comments
anybody know how to change the thread title? It's kind of misleading at this point
Mod noteTitle has now been changed.
Day 38, 39, 40, and 41
This is going to be more a photo update. We drove to Mobile after Universal Studios and spent 3 hanging with our new couch surfing friend Kenneth. He shared with us his own home brewed beer, lots of it, and great conversation. I still text back and forth with Kenneth every once in a while. Day 41 was spent in New Orleans drinking too much and eating too much.
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entering Alabama sign
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A sea horse at the Mobile, AL Sea Lab
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Mobile Bay
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Mobile city
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An old mansion we toured
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Megan thought that the dude on the beer bottle looked like me
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Another state sign
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Cafe Du Monde beignets. (I know something is spelled wrong here)
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Some guy playing outside the cafe
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A Cathedral
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Megan dipping a toe in the Mississippi
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French Quarter
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New Orleans Cemetery
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French Quarter
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Drinking a Hurricane at Pat O'Briens
Those photos would tend to support the notion that you had way too much fun on your trip!
It really was a great time. If anybody has any questions about the places we visited I'll do my best to answer them.
Here is our map from Disney to Texas:
http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view?trip_id=263301
Days 42-50
My long time friend Jeremy and his wife Ashley were our amazing tour guides in Texas. We crashed at their house and they showed us all the best spots in the San Antonio area. We spent the week like real Texans.
Note: Megan did not eat any of the meat shown, Tony is the meat eater. We did find a place in San Antonio that had a decent vegan menu, it was also a car wash and laundry mat.
Baton Rouge-San Antonio was one of the longest drives of the trip up until that point, and it felt like it. We drove on 10 most of the time, we did drive for a few minutes through Houston. Austin, TX is where we got our first and only ticket on the trip: a $50 parking ticket.
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Entering Texas sign
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First thing we do in Texas: ride horses and pretend to be cowboys
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Jeremy grilling us a Texas dinner
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Very excited to see one of our favorite musicians Todd Snider from the front row
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Todd barefoot
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Todd with Robert Earl Keene (who we never heard of, but is huge in Texas)
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Our 17 pound brisket
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Jeremy by his smoker with our brisket inside
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Kevin Fowler concert on July 4th
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We went tubing on the Guadalupe river. Lot's of drinking and scraping my ass on that 6 hour trip
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We used a disposable camera that got very wet on the trip and the photos came out looking very cool
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1 of the 7 missions we visited in San Antonio
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Outside the Alamo with our Bill's refill cups
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On a guided boat ride on the river walk
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Capitol building in Austin. We toured the whole thing, it was huge and beautiful
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Where the governor, Rick Perry, says stuff
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Austin is live music and weird
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very cool local blues band we heard from the street
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If you go to Austin you have to see the bats fly at sunset
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Stevie Ray Vaughn statue (he's the man)
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Austin skyline
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Cathedral of Junk. This local man has built a giant tower of trash in his backyard and people can come see it. google it
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Austin also has tons of food carts, even vegan for Megan, and plenty of greasy mexican food for Tony
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We saw Princess Bride in a quote along movie at the drafthouse. If you've never been there and you love movies you need to check this place out.
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Megan drinking a Margarita at the Jackalope bar
We had a great time in Texas and Austin is one of those places where we want to spend another week.
Thanks for reading
It's an absolute pleasure, thank you !! What a wonderful trip report.Quote:
Thanks for reading
Can imagine you getting out of that tube with the back of your shorts torn to shreds after that comment lol.Quote:
We went tubing on the Guadalupe river. Lot's of drinking and scraping my ass on that 6 hour trip
Great picture of you addressing the good people of Texas. ;-)
thanks for the comments Southwest Dave
Day 51
A day of driving through west Texas, which is like nowhere else in the country. I have 50 pictures that all look like these out my windshield.
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530 mile/9 hour drive. We passed by Big Bend NP and Carlsbad, 2 places we will see on our next trip.
Here is our map of those couple days:
http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view?trip_id=265414
(I hope the spot thing works if your not logged into it, if someone could let me know I'd appreciate it.)
Spot works fine here.
thanks for the update
You can zoom in to see specific streets and places we visited.
Day 52 Roswell NM and Santa Fe NM
We stayed with a very nice couch surfing family in New Mexico who shared their travel stories and dinner with us. We told them of our travels and our future plans on the road. They suggested we skip the alien museum and check out Bottomless Lakes, Roswell museum, and the Roswell Free zoo. We did her suggestions and also went to the alien museum(probably should have skipped it, but while in Roswell)
This is from Wikipedia:
"Bottomless Lakes State Park is a state park of New Mexico, USA, located along the Pecos River, about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Roswell. Established in 1933, it was the first state park in New Mexico.[2] It takes its name from nine small, deep lakes located along the eastern escarpment of the Pecos River valley. The escarpment is an ancient limestone reef, similar to the limestone mountains around Carlsbad Caverns, 80 miles (130 km) to the south. Caves formed within the limestone, and as the Pecos River eroded the escarpment, the caves eventually collapsed, leaving behind several deep, almost circular lakes known as cenotes.[3]"
It is a very beautiful and interesting state park that we would have never heard of without our couch surfing hosts.
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we hit 6000 miles as we left Bottomless Lakes
Then we went to the free Roswell Zoo
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Roswell Museum was free and fantastic (also empty)
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Alien museum was packed and very cheesy
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what our drive to Santa Fe looked like the whole 200 miles
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the first thing we did when we got to our couch surfing hosts house was meet his neighbors pet wolf
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our host, Terry, brews his own beer and used to be a brewer for Flying Dog Brewery. He appropriately had some Santa Fe beer available.
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Terry drove us around in his small white school bus to bars around the Santa Fe area. He picked up some of his other friends and along the way we saw these people who were staging a "monster war" and they gave us push up pops
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the monsters were filming their weirdness so they asked to get on and off the school bus for the film
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Hanging out at a karaoke bar in Santa Fe (Fat Tire on tap, you can't get that in PA)
Thanks again for the comments. We are getting to my favorite parts of the trip: a bunch of National Parks, the Rockies, more beer, and Las Vegas.
Day 53 Santa Fe
We spent our day in Santa Fe looking at art, local (weird) people, and a church.
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Terry's house was on a mountain with a 360 degree view. We had a great rainbow after a storm:
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and an amazing sunset:
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Terry found a rattle snake by the side of the road and brought it home:
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foreshadowing??
Terry suggested that we drive to Durango, CO and spend some time there, so we did.
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the drive to Durango was my favorite drive of the trip, at that point.
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our first pass of the continental divide
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entering 1 of our top states to move to.
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first view of Durango, built into the mountains
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We did a brewery tour at Ska Brewery. (delicious)
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we found a place to camp way up on the mountain
Day 54 Durango
We walked around Durango in the morning and spent the afternoon in Mesa Verde National Park (that will be a new post)
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No matter where we turned, we had a beautiful view of the mountains
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of course we went to another brewery and drank a few before heading to Mese Verde
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Note: The last time I shaved or cut my hair was a few days before the wedding, May 21st. I still haven't shaved or gotten a hair cut.
Day 54 Mesa Verde National Park
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A rattle snake that was making lots of noise next to the entering Mesa Verde sign
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When you enter the park you drive all the way up that mountain and around the other side is where all the real Mesa Verde stuff is
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The view from the top of the hill.
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Our first day in Mesa Verde we drove down into the park and checked out some amazing views and nature walks
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nice view of the road
Day 55 Mesa Verde
The campsites in Mesa Verde are stacked on top of each other and the deer have no fear, they come right up to your tent. We woke up with the sun and spent the whole day touring the park. We saw many dwellings including: Cliff Palace, Long House, Spruce Tree House, and many pit houses.
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I don't know what to say about Mesa Verde other then it is beautiful, way beyond what any of the photos can show. Also the rangers are all friendly and they help make the park interesting and educational.
When we have children this is one of those places where we will visit again.
Day 55
Like most of our drives lately, this drive was beautiful. We drove from Mesa Verde NP to Big Water, UT to stay with a couch surfer. We stayed on the border of Utah and Arizona most of the drive and drove right past Monument Valley. Most of these pictures were taken as we drove.
Our first stop was Four Corners Monument:
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something that everybody has to do when on a roadtrip in the southwest. We spent 6 minutes there.
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When we got to Utah and met our Couch surfing he host he immediately gave us a tour of his very small town. It's one of those towns where he knew everybody there(he was the former mayor of the town) He showed us where the local polygamist live and where the whore house used to be
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Also he took us to a museum that had dinosaur bones that were found yards from where we stood.
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We spent the night in Big Water and left the next morning to go to Zion National Park
Day 56 Zion National Park
Looking back on the trip I see that starting with Colorado we had a week or 2 of seeing the most beautiful parts of our planet. It's hard to describe Zion other then it's like entering a different world. We turned off the ipod because we could not find music that matched what we were seeing out the windshield. We came through the east entrance and after about an hour of driving you get to a tunnel that is 1 lane and 1 mile long, cut straight through the mountain. Every quarter mile or so the sides of the tunnel open up to give you another great view of the park. We set up camp and made it an early night because tomorrow we would try to see as much of the park as possible.
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Day 57 Zion
We woke up very early and caught the bus into the park.(Zion does not allow cars in the park, they provide a free bus) We did a few of the hikes, mostly the ones that did not have large groups of people already there:
Emerald Pool
Weeping Rock
Riverside Walk (including the beginning of the Narrows)
and a few others that I can't remember right now
Next time we go I'd like to do the Angels Landing
There are a lot of photos here but I found it very hard to not show some of them off.
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This was also the day we decided we needed a vacation from our vacation so we booked a $20 motel room in Mesquite, NV for a night before Vegas. For the most part, every time we met a new couch surfing host we would spend hours trading stories, not just about the trip but many topics. We needed a night where it was just her and I in our own bed.
Next post: Grand Canyon.
Zion is quite something isn't it ? Your photos have taken me right back there and many of them are so familiar. Actually a couple of them could be mine, other than the people in them ! ;-)
Did you you follow an RV through the tunnel at all ? I ask as it is actually 2 lane traffic [one in each direction] but traffic is stopped from entering the 'other end' temporarily, to let larger vehicles through as they have to drive down the centre of the tunnel to avoid contact with the edges of the arch. Oh yes, it was fun in a 30ft RV !
Day 58 The Grand Canyon
Quick bit of background. When I was 15 I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. 30 days, to the day, after I turned 16 I got my drivers license and started planning road trips. I drove to Boston, Philly, NY, Cleveland, Parris Island SC, Florida, NJ, Newport RI, and South Bend IN before I turned 21. (some of those places several times) In college I would get done with class on Thursday afternoon and drive as far as I could until Saturday night and then drive home. I started planning a cross country trip very early on. I have so many variations of a United States Road trip on google maps that I lost count. When I met Megan we clicked right away on the issue of spending a lot of time driving around America. Finally, 3 days after we got married we hit the road. I've thought about this trip for more then a decade and it was completely different then what I expected. The only place that Megan said was a no way we skip was San Francisco. The only place that I said was a no skip was the Grand Canyon.
When we first got close to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon we both commented on how it was the closet match of driving through our part of PA. You don't expect so much green on the way to the canyon.
My first glimpse of it is something I can still recall right now. It was not only the Grand Canyon but the culmination of everything that we planned this trip to be. Looking at it I thought back to everything we had already done on the trip and just how much this trip would stay with us forever.
This was the first picture we took of the Grand Canyon:
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We drove to Angel's Window and to the highest point on the Grand Canyon, I can't remember what it's called right now. I picked up a rock on the trail of one of the views and I still have that in my car now. Some times on the way to work I'll hold it and think back to what we did this summer.
Day 59
We woke up at 4am so that we could see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. Although we were tired the rest of the day, it was worth it. For 5 hours or so we watched the light change the canyon. Afterwards we went back to camp and slept for a while, got one last look at the Grand Canyon and spent our last night in Arizona.
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After spending so much time in the quiet wilderness of the Southwest, we ventured into civilization headfirst, to Las Vegas.
Day 60
We left The Grand Canyon and headed for Mesquite, NV. We spent the night in our motel room, eating take out chinese and watching TV. It was exactly what we needed at that time, a vacation from our vacation. We slept in and headed for Vegas.
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Day 61 Vegas
Megan has never been to a casino or gambled before so that was my goal for these 2 days. I achieved that goal very early on.
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driving into Vegas
Our couch surfing host gave us advice on where to park and what to do. We went to the strip around 3pm and walked around hitting as many casinos as we could. We also drank as many frozen drinks as we could.
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Megan played the slots/Tony played blackjack
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We came back to Vegas later to experience it at night
Day 62
We went to downtown Vegas and saw the alley with the movie screen on the ceiling. I can't remember what the place is called right now.
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We went back to the strip and did some more gambling/drinking that night.
That would be Fremont street.Quote:
We went to downtown Vegas and saw the alley with the movie screen on the ceiling. I can't remember what the place is called right now.
Day 63 Death Valley
Today was the hottest day of our trip. We heard someone in the park say it was 110, but I'm not sure. We did a few very short hikes and drove a good part of the park. Once out of the park we drove towards Bakersfield, CA, on the way we heard a very loud boom and we think it was a plane flying around the valley we were in. I'm just curious if anybody knows if there is a place a few miles west of Death Valley where they test planes. On to the photos:
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even our car looked hot
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the lowest spot on our trip, literally.
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Death Valley NP was worth the stop, we had the whole place to ourselves and it was different then anywhere I've ever been before.
Probably the Naval air weapons base at China lake in the vicinity of Ridgecrest and Trona. Its HUGE.Quote:
I'm just curious if anybody knows if there is a place a few miles west of Death Valley where they test planes
LOL. And the lowest spot you can find in the USA !!Quote:
the lowest spot on our trip, literally.
Thanks for the updates, good stuff.
I know exactly what you mean. I was on 190, heading for Lone Pine, when I was scared out of my wits by a low flying jet.... well, it appeared to be very low. Probably wasn't.Quote:
... on the way we heard a very loud boom and we think it was a plane flying around the valley we were in.
Am loving this report.
Lifey