We made it!

Well, we are officially with Uncle Matt and Aunt Jeanie as of two days ago. Our road trip is over. Now we are relaxing and enjoying not living out of a suitcase.

Oregon is beautiful. Matt and Jeanie's little town outside of Portland is storybook perfect, the weather is nice, and the view gorgeous. I am very glad to be here, although I have to admit that I am getting a little homesick. We visited the winery and the vineyards yesterday up at Illahe vineyards and got a tour of the place. I learned how wine was made, what equipment we would be using, and what to expect in the upcoming month. It's all pretty exciting! Winemaking seems like it will be a lot of fun, although a lot of hard work! We walked through the grapes yesterday (I couldn't stop eating them) and picked a few. We brought them back to the winery and I weighed them and found the average weight of two types of grapes, Pommard and 115, and then I stomped them with my feet! My first real winemaking experience. We then took the juice and measured the sugar level to determine how much riper the grapes needed to get before they were ready to be made into wine. Neither of them are there yet. Once I get back from Boston, the grapes should be good for picking. I hope the weather cools down by then! The view from Illahe is beautiful--green rolling hills, mountains in the distance, grape rows, cows, flowers, etc. Too bad it is so isolated!

We had appetizers on a rooftop bar in a cool old hotel, and then we went for dinner elsewhere and got a bunch of tapas, or little appetizer plates, to share. Completely vegan! I have not eaten anything that involves any kind of animal for almost 48 hours now! It's more of a test of willpower for me than anything, and believe me, it's been hard so far. Cutting out dairy is not fun. I should write a whole other blog just about what I eat during the day. The problem is, I still hate some vegetables, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, which are in almost everything labeled as vegan! I wish my taste buds would mature already.

WildAire wines are sold in a few places around here, which is exciting to see (WildAire is Matt and Jeanie's wine)! Uncle Matt and I went to a farmer's market type thing today, where we sold a taste of wine for a buck each. I only stayed for a couple of hours, but the day hopefully hasn't been too shabby for WildAire. I plan on heading back over in an hour or so to help out some more, although I don't think I was really helping too much to begin with! Haha. It's pretty simple.

I'll probably continue to post updates every week, just probably not every day. Harvest party tonight!

It's Canada!

Yesterday I was unable to update my blog because, well, we were in Canada, and our AMAZING hotel did not allow me internet access. But that is okay, because like I just mentioned, our hotel was incredible. We stayed in The Prince of Wales hotel in Waterton, Alberta. But before I get ahead of myself, I want to recount a funny tale of our border crossing:

When we got to the Canadian border, we were almost through and the guard asks us if we are carrying any weapons or firearms. Of course, we answer "no." We are being cleared to drive away when Tricia takes it upon herself to go "oh!" prompting the guard to stop us again.

Aunt Trish: We have mace...

Guard: Oh...that's not allowed in this country. You're going to have to follow me and fill out a form in order to register it.

(Amy and Kaitlin glare at Tricia and wonder why she said anything at all.)

So Tricia went in and filled out a sheet, and the funniest part is that when asked what the "weapon's" use is (shooting, stabbing, etc.) she checked the "other" box and wrote in "destruction." Yes, apparently now pepper spray is used for DESTRUCTIONNNN!

I thought it was hilarious.

After that little glitch, we got to our wonderful hotel, all lit up in the evening light, and fell completely in love with Waterton. Our hotel sat on a hill at the end of a chain of mountains, between which sat a teal blue lake. Below the hill sat the adorable town of Waterton, very quaint and pretty. Here is a picture of our hotel, and here is a picture of a view from our room first at night, and then in the daytime.

It was stunning. We had a lovely dinner in a restaurant in the hotel, where I had my first full glass of wine (drinking age is 18!), and the next morning we drove into Waterton and had breakfast there at a place called "Zum's."

From there, we traveled back to America, staying in Canada only a mere 14 hours. Our overall purpose of being so far north was seeing Glacier National Park, and it did not disappoint like Yellowstone did. I can't even describe what I saw. No picture could ever do it justice, but I am going to try to at least post as many pictures as I can reasonably post in order to try to convey its beauty.

Do you understand now? Go to Glacier National Park once in your life if you can. It's spectacular.

Well, we are almost ready to finish our trip! We've got one more day left of driving before we reach Uncle Matt and Aunt Jeanie in Portland, Oregon! It's been an amazing trip!

P.S.- Do you want to see our hotel room tonight? It's hilarious--there are THREE queen beds in it, and it was only $65!! And I mean, it's not gross or anything. Here's a picture. It really does make me laugh. I wish my dorm could be like this!!

Yellowstone

Yesterday evening we drove through the Rocky Mountains for the first time. It was quite a surprise seeing them for the first time—we’re driving on these grassy knolls and then, just as we came over a hill, there was the faint, light blue outline of the mountains against the sky. It really did look like a painting. Nothing about the mountains were defined, just a blue trace of the peaks across the entire horizon.

The car did well for its age. The Rockies were absolutely gorgeous to drive through, with massive cliffs which dove into steep valleys. The road was like something out of a picture—twisting right into mountain crevices. At one point we stopped and looked into a valley that had a creek at the bottom, where supposedly there was a memorial for a man who had fallen to his death while hunting sheep. We never could find that memorial across the panorama of the cliffs.

I guess it’s worth mentioning the trouble we got into last night. It was the first real could-be glitch of the trip. We had booked a Pohaska cabin to stay in, but when our GPS got us to the “location” of the cabins, we couldn’t find it. We asked around, and it turned out that we were still an hour away. Note: don’t put “Yellowstone Avenue” in the GPS when you are looking for “Yellowstone Highway.” We left the town we were in, Cody, set out for the cabins, and didn’t realize our gas was almost empty until half way there. Then my aunts realized that in many cases, if one doesn’t check into a cabin early, then one cannot check in at all. Then the drama started. We tried calling the cabin, but all of the lines went to voicemail. Aunt Trish then read the fine print that said “If you do not check in by 7:00, we will give away your cabin.” It was 10:30. We tried calling for back up hotels, but all three of us either had no signal, or had a dead phone. We also knew that we wouldn’t be able to make it back to Cody with this little gas. We were also driving through the Rockies. It was one big hectic situation. Everything had the potential to go wrong. However, thanks to what Aunt Amy calls “Aunt Tricia’s unfailing luck,” we got to the cabins, there was a gas station there, they had not given away our cabin, and there was someone there to check us in. Thank God. The cool thing, for me, about this whole ordeal was that, since we were driving through the Rockies and it was completely dark, I could look out of the window and all I saw were the mountains, moonlit, with stars above them. How can I even say how pretty that is?

This morning we went to Yellowstone National Park, which we all expected to be the pinnacle of the trip. I’ll break it down simply: Yellowstone is more of a park to visit if you are interested in natural occurrences, science, or hiking/camping. Because of a fire back in ’88, a ton of the trees are dead all over the park. I mean ugly dead. In that sense, the park was not very pretty. However, if there is a view far into the distance of a lake with mountains in the background, or a huge waterfall, it is gorgeous. These are two of the prettiest shots of the day:

I took maybe my favorite shot of the day when we approached a huge line of cars pulled over and I was the only one of the three of us who decided to get out and see what it was. As I passed one little girl, she looked up at me and said, with incredible awe: “It’s a bear!” I walked over to the crowd and expected to see this bear in the woods, right, but I literally gasped when I saw that the bear cub was less than 10 feet away from me. It was happily munching on a tree, not threatening any of its admirers, so I was able to steal this shot:

I love it!

Other than that, Yellowstone isn’t much to look at. It is full, and I mean FULL, of steaming geysers that send what looks like smoke into the air at all times. We saw quite a few of these bubbling pools today, and while some had a rainbow cascade in them, others were just green or gray mud boiling. It is very interesting, however, to watch this pool of water boiling naturally on a very chilly day. Of course, we went to see Old Faithful, and luckily, we only had to wait about 20 minutes for it to erupt. That was pretty awesome to watch. It was like one huge firehose shot into the sky. I don’t know how else to explain it. I really think it is something one has to enjoy in person.

I’m trying to keep this post shorter than the rest, because the other ones have just been silly. Tomorrow we drive to Canada!

Forever West

Yesterday we started out bright and early to see one of the greatest American monuments: Mount Rushmore. Seeing something in person that I’ve seen so many times in textbooks and pictures is actually sort of surreal. The faces of the four American presidents sit high up on top of a cliff, smaller to look at than I had imagined, but still a startling size when you first see them. We hiked half a mile up to them and stopped in the Sculptor’s Studio and listened to a speaker tell us the history of Mount Rushmore, some of which I must share with you because it is so interesting:

The idea of Mount Rushmore was conceived by some guy, simply because he wanted to increase tourism in the Black Hills. The idea was originally meant to sculpt American heroes, but when the guy hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum to carve out the faces, he instead decided to do four prominent presidents. The rock into which the faces are carved started off as completely flat. Borglum actually invented a projector that was so big that it could project an outline of the faces from the ground all the way onto the rock, and the workers outlined in white paint. Jefferson was supposed to be on Washington’s right side, our left, and they had even started carving his face, but they then hit a huge crack in the rock that prevented them from sculpting anymore (you can still see the crack). They blew up all that they had done, and put Jefferson where he is today. 90% of the sculpting was done by dynamite, and the other 10 % was done by workers who sat on what looks like a wooden swing with a two-inch wide leather back to it, who hung from a cable the size of one’s pinky finger from the top of where the heads are today. They used what look like today’s jackhammers. Behind Washington’s head are hundreds of stairs and a small workhouse. Each worker was provided with a respirator, and there was not one fatality in all of the 14 years that Mount Rushmore was being built. Lincoln and Washington were originally meant to have coats and hands, but when Borglum died, his son did not want the project to go on without him, and declared Mount Rushmore finished. To give you an idea of the size, Lincoln’s nose is 20 feet long. The faces are as smooth as “the smoothest sidewalk you’ve ever walked on” according to the park ranger, and they have only been cleaned once, in 2005, with water pressure.

Sorry that was so long! I just thought all of that was really fascinating. Mount Rushmore was one of my favorite stops so far. We continued to drive through the Black Hills, where there were lookout points that were stunning. We had to drive through a number of caves on the scenic Needle’s Highway, and saw Needle’s Eye, a rock known for it’s unusual shape. We then drove through Custer National Park, where, much to my delight, we got to drive past fields of grazing buffalo, not fenced in, completely in their natural habitat. One came as close as ten feet to us. They are ridiculously big- they can get up to 6 feet high and weigh one ton- and can outrun a horse. It was amazing. I now love buffalos.

We also went through Deadwood, which is a famous town from the early 1800’s, and while it is still set up like one would imagine an old western town, but now it is all casinos and bars.

This morning, after Amy and Tricia changed our car oil themselves (we’ve put over 2000 miles on this baby!), we drove to Devil’s Tower, most famous for being in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” It’s crazy how this huge rock formation (made from an upsurge of molten rocks) is just in the middle of nowhere, rising up over the fields. It’s an especially sacred spot for Native Americans, and their story for it is pretty interesting: seven sisters were playing when a huge bear started chasing them. They could run fast enough, so they climbed on top of a rock and prayed to it to have mercy on them. The rock began to grow, higher and higher, and the bear clawed at it, resulting in the rock patterns along the sides of the Tower. The Tower rose so high that it vaulted the girls into the sky, where they remain, the Seven Sisters, or the modern day constellation Pleiades. Pretty neat stuff. We hiked a mile around the Tower and saw some crazy mofos climbing it, without anything pulling them up (they just use a rope in case they slip).

At one point we came to another lookout, far over a vast area of land with a winding river going through it and grassy hills in the background. One of the best things out here is that the lands are almost completely untouched, and as childish as this sounds, I swear you can look out onto some of these hills and plains and see the Native Americans and/or settlers just riding across the field. It’s just easy to picture. People out here preserve their natural lands incredibly well. The fine for littering is $750.

I have more to say, but this is quite long already, so I’ll save it until later. Thanks again if you are reading this.

South Dakota

People told us not to drive through South Dakota, and I cannot figure out why. True, South Dakota is very desolate (driving directly across the state, we never even saw a grocery store), but it has so many sources of natural entertainment that it’s really a state that cannot be overlooked.

Our first stop was Sioux Falls, which is one of the only cities South Dakota has. It was full of casinos, saloons, and motorcycles. At eleven at night, everything shut down and the stoplights all started flashing. At first I thought that the city was simply one big truck stop, but when we got to the actual waterfalls of Sioux Falls, I was proven wrong. It has a cute little downtown with a train that goes over a bridge in the background of the waterfalls. The waterfalls are in the center of a nicely manicured lawn with a lookout building and the remains of a mill built in the 1880’s. There are strange formations of rock surrounding the area. It was very pretty.

A couple of hours later, we got to Mitchell, SD to visit what is advertised as “the world’s largest palace made entirely of corn.” I was pretty excited, as I’m sure any reasonable person would be. This thing was advertised like it was freakin’ South of the Border, so I figured it must be good. I was mistaken. The Corn Palace is a gymnasium with corn decorations on the outside of it. Yeah, that’s it. Such a disappointment. Don’t waste time seeing it. Nothing but the outer décor is made of corn.

THEN WE SAW BUFFALO. We had been looking out for them, and all we saw were cows, cows, cows. But there they were. Four of them, just standing in the middle of a field. Huge, awkward looking things, but also oddly majestic. It was SO cool! We freaked out.

After driving a little bit further, we stopped at the Badland’s Petrified Garden, which had a backyard full of petrified wood and moss and animal bones. It was pretty cool. The last ice age pushed all of the trees deep into the earth, and when the ice melted, the trees resurfaced and were rock. The place had petrified animal bones from 40 million years ago, and a ton of fossils. It was cool.

From there we drove further to something that made up for my Corn Palace excitement: the Badlands National Park. Looking at pictures of the Badlands, I thought that it would be interesting, but nothing stellar. Those pictures don’t do it justice; the Badlands are amazing. I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, but I imagine this was a formation vaguely similar. Here’s the scene: we’re driving in the car, watching all of the rolling South Dakota hills and seeing a lot of cows and such, and then all of a sudden, there are canyons and mountains of rocks spanned out right in front of us. The Badlands in total are 240,000 acres. It’s massive. We took a windy road through 40 miles of the Badlands, where there are look out points all over, where we stood on the edge of these cliffs and look out 50 miles into the distance at more cliffs, plateaus, grasslands, and more mountains. It was incredible. The Badlands all look pretty much the same, but against the bright blue sky, they also all look different.

My eyes actually are open there.

At the very end of them, we saw a bunch of cars stopped, only to get out and see fields full of prairie dog holes and the little creatures generously posing for pictures, only feet away from us. They were so cute!!

Our final stop was Wall Drug, a drug store that has been around since the early 1900’s and is now the biggest drug store in the world. That is not an exaggeration. This thing had, among many other things, a drug store (go figure), a boot shop, a clothing store, two restaurants, a donut shop, an ice cream shop, a souvenir shop, a mineral shop, a place to buy guns, an art gallery, a place to buy deer heads, and a chapel, just in case you wanted to pray in a drug store. It was insane.

Let me just finish this unnecessarily long entry by saying that the scenery of South Dakota is truly beautiful. There are rolling hills, bails of hay, and tiny farms everywhere. We started passing huge sunflower fields all along the highway, where all you can look out and see are fields of yellow. No one litters out here, so it’s all very clean. There are lakes with horses grazing nearby, and so far, the sky has always been a vivid, clear blue. But I have to say, the most stunning thing so far, and this applies for almost every night, is the sunset. When the land is completely flat, we can see an entire horizon of a rainbow-colored sunset. Seriously, the sky goes from dark blue to light blue, green, yellow, pink, orange, and red. The sun casts yellow rays through all of the colors, and it is breathtaking. And since we are driving west, and since it’s the right time of year, we can look forward at the sunset and then look behind us at the Badlands, completely dark, but with a full moon over them.

More Chicago.

After the Navy Pier, we had a baseball game to get to (Chicago Cubs!), but we hadn't been able to see the Chicago River at all, which is a river that splits Chicago right in half. We decided to be a little late to the game in order to take a river taxi up the river. The trip was gorgeous. The water is a pretty color, and Chicago's greenery really made it all the better, again. It dropped us off near the Sears Tower, and we caught the subway far uptown to get to Wrigley field.

I realize now why people call Cubs fans the best in the world. Now, it was 1:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. I expected this game to be dead. This was not the case. The game, from what it looked like, was completely sold out. There were 40,000 people there, as the scoreboard later told me. 40,000 Chicagoans who were not going to work or school that Wednesday. We missed the first three innings, but that was okay, because it was 0-0 when we arrived. Cubs v. Houston Astros. I soon learned that it didn't take the Cubs doing much for the crowd to FREAK out. Cubs catch a pop-fly, people stand up and cheer. Cubs make it to first base, people stand up and cheer. It was so cool. Can you imagine the amount of cheering when Lee hit a home run with Blanco on first base? It was insane. The team spirit was so much fun. There is nothing like it. After the Cubs won, the whole crowd started singing "Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today" over and over. It was so much fun.

Dinner was also one for the books. We decided to try a Chicago steakhouse. Oh.my.god. Filet mignon. Mashed potatoes. Mushrooms. Salad. Need I say more?

Our last venture in the Windy City (and I forgot to mention that this nickname is COMPLETELY TRUE. It is always windy! You can be in the middle of the city between tons of high risers and there a strong breeze!) was going to the famous comedy club "Second City." Jim Belushi, Tina Fey, etc. We saw a show called "America: All Better!" I mean what can I say? It was hilarious, and not only did the actors do their normal two acts, but they also came out for a full-length, completely improvised third. I definitely recommend it.

Yesterday morning we bade goodbye to Chicago, only to drive many hours across Minnesota to get to Sioux Falls, SD. We stopped in Madison, Wisconin (a college town), and toured the capitol building, which is beautiful both inside and out. I'll have to put a picture up later. We saw the Northern part of the Mississippi River, which, as always, is gorgeous, and other than that? Fields. Corn. Farmhouses. Flat land. Although we did pass a ton of fields with hundreds of wind turbines, which really looked pretty crazy. I'll also put up a picture of that once I upload them!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Chi-Town!

How do I even begin?

Chicago is AHmazing. I guess to begin, I'll say that it is beautiful. This city values architecture, so none of the buildings are the same, many with the traditional, elegant older look about them and many more with modern, in some cases almost space-age, build. The skyline is magnificent and can be seen in full in a ton of places in the city, such as the Buckingham Fountain, and other spots along Lake Michigan. To add to what I was saying about how pretty the city is, I have to applaud Chicago's horticulturalist. On every street there are flowers, in all different arrangements. And they aren't just generic flowers--many of them are very ornate, beautiful kinds. The streets are clean, and the people, so far, are incredible nice, and go out of their way to help you. So far, so good. If I tried to do Chicago's character justice, I would write way too much.

Aunt Amy and I started off headed towards the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears tower. Along the way, we ran into a nice little street market, where at least 30 vendors were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, among them softball sized beets and purple cauliflower. We encountered our first sculpture, a ridiculously huge red thing. Yes, that's all I can say to explain.

Once we got to what I will continue to call the Sears Tower, we were sat down for a little movie about Chicago/the Sears Tower's history, which proved very interesting. It told us how the Sears Tower's shape was thought of by arranging cigarettes at different heights, how many square feet the building is (4.5 million), the amount of bathrooms (something outrageous), the length of pipes (also something ridiculous), etc. The elevator we were on went at a rate of 24 floors per second. Once we got up there, the view was amazing. On a clear day, and they don't get much clearer than ours was, you can see 50 miles. They also have two completely glass boxes which extend over the street, so you can look straight down. I recommend visiting.

We went to the Museum of Modern Photography, which was small, but free. Afterwards, we took a leisurely stroll along the Lake Michigan's coast, where the water is a very pretty green/blue and the sailboats all bob picturesquely. We then illegally sprinted across a six lane highway and its median to get to Buckingham Fountain, a very large and attractive fountain. We passed many gardens with many gorgeous layouts and made our way to Berghoff's, a famous German restaurant (delish).

The parks, two of which we toured elaborately--Millennium Park and Grant Park (where Obama gave his victory speech)--are incredible. Millennium Park is full of crazy sculptures. The Crown Fountain consists of two big rectangular prisms which project videos of faces onto each other while water cascades down. When the person's mouth changes to squirt out water, a stream of water shoots out. Very strange. The Cloud Gate, known to me and many people as the Mirror Bean, is a just what it sounds like: a giant, bean-shaped mirror. Here is a picture of it:

I had a lot of fun taking pictures in that bean. We walked along, saw more sculptures, more beautiful gardens. Our last stop of the day was the Historic Chicago Water Tower, which is the only building which didn't burn down in the Great Chicago Fire. It is very pretty, and serves as the center of a sort of square. Dinner was at a place called Big Bowl, Asian cuisine, which was entertaining just because it has a HUGE bowl over it's entrance.

This morning Aunt Amy fetched Aunt Tricia from the airport, so she has now joined us on our journey. We started off by going to Navy Pier, which is seriously a little kid's dream place. There is, among other things, a hot air balloon (today was the first day it was ever open!), a ferris wheel, a children's museum, an IMAX theatre, a carousel, one of those big swing things, boat races--everything.

We went up in the ferris wheel, which gave us this amazing view of the city:

and this one:

I'm almost done telling you about Chicago, but I cannot finish because I have to go to dinner. More later.