Weblog

Well, I'm back from down under. After 23 days and 12 flights, I am glad to be home. The group that I traveled with was quite friendly, and our tour director was superb. I am extremely happy that I went.

New Zealand and Australia are both very beautiful, and also quite unique. Both countries contain a vast amount of unspoiled land. Australia has the outback, and New Zealand has the beautiful Southern Alps. At the same time, the two countries combined make up only one tenth the population of the United States, while having nearly the same landmass as the lower 48 states. In fact, sheep outnumber Australians 5 to 1, and Kiwis (not just the name of the fruit, but also of the bird and people) 10 to 1.

In three weeks, I took just over 3600 pictures. I am working on posting them, but first I need to revamp my methods of doing so. It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage my photos, so I am in the process of creating a small piece of software to allow me to better manage them, and the rest of my web site. It will also provide the framework for the next iteration of the site itself, whenever I get around to redoing it! At any rate, hopefully the pictures will be posted soon.

Well, I have been back from my trip to the Southwest for a week now. The trip was great; I shared a hotel room with Matt Johnson and James Stevenson, and we bummed around Phoenix when I was not occupied with wedding duties (I was one of two ushers). Tracy and Eric's wedding was a success, though one of the bridesmaids did faint during the ceremony. However, water was quickly administered, and the ceremony resumed. The wedding and reception were held in the Desert Botanical Gardens, with a nice backdrop of dozens of saguaro cactuses. I finally got to meet "Grandma from Loveland," and I even danced with her, at the behest of James, who danced with Tracy's other grandmother.

Besides going to Phoenix for the wedding, my trip also consisted of visiting a few national parks. On the way to Phoenix, I went down to Carlsbad to see the gorgeous caverns near the city. The drive from Loveland to Carlsbad was a lengthy 630 miles, the longest leg of my trip, but the time to get there was reduced by New Mexico's US highway speed limits of 70 and 75 mph, or at least on the ones that are divided highways. The next day I got up early to go see the caves, and was greeted by very strong winds. The winds were so strong that they were blowing the shingles off of the roofs of the trailers that were set up as the temporary visitor's center. I was told that after I went into the caves, the park would be closed until the winds died down. This meant that I got the caves mostly to myself, which was very pleasant. After the caves, I traversed the Sacramento Mountains to visit White Sands National Monument. Finally, I spent the night in Lordsburg, near the Arizona border. The next morning I began the trek to Phoenix, stopping at Saguaro National Park, where I saw more cactuses than anyone could ever imagine, including hundreds of the gigantic saguaro cactus. After that, I made my way to Phoenix. Little did I know, and much to my delight, my hotel was just a few blocks away from an exotic car dealership. I went there the next day to take pictures. This included countless Ferraris, a Dodge Viper, and a half dozen Aston Martins. My dream car, the Aston Martin DB9 Volante, turned out to cost a mere $190,000. I guess I will have to live with my Civic for a while.

After staying in Phoenix for three days for the wedding, I made my way to the Grand Canyon, where I stayed for sunset. It was absolutely stunning. I stopped at every viewpoint I could find on the south rim. After sunset, I made my way to Tuba City, where my hotel reservations for the night were. Despite being the largest city on the Navajo reservation, there wasn't a whole lot there; in fact, my hotel was the only major chain. While deciding how I was going to get to Moab, I discovered that the route I had initially planned on taking went through something called Monument Valley. I had never heard of it, but when I looked it up, it looked gorgeous. Indeed it was. In fact, US 163 in Utah is the most beautiful stretch of highway I have ever been on. Not only were there the mesas of Monument Valley, but there was also a good deal of other rock formations, including a place called Valley of the Gods, and also what appeared to be part of the painted desert. I took my poor little Civic onto the dirt roads for some of it, and the offroading paid off. I had so much fun that it took me roughly four hours to go the hundred miles from the Utah border to US 160, which goes to Moab. I finally made it into Moab at around 5:30, checked into my hotel, and went to Arches National Park in hopes of a nice sunset. Unfortunately, the clouds did not cooperate, and the sunset was somewhat disappointing, though I did get a few nice photos. The next morning, I went back to the park until just after noon, and I managed to see the rest of the more popular locations. I then made my way for Grand Junction. I originally planned on staying an additional day to see some of Canyonlands National Park, but I decided against it. Once in Grand Junction, I made my way up to Colorado National Monument, where I got many more pictures of cliffs, but this time from atop them. Afterwards, I made my way up I-70 to the Eisenhower Tunnel, which proved to be a very painful experience in my Civic. On some of the climbs, I was in third gear. Once I made it to the tunnel, though, it was mostly downhill and much more pleasant.

Anyway, all of the photos from this trip, along with my trip to New York, have been posted. I have not gotten around to giving them captions yet, but at least they are up! Also, I know that my site is quite slow right now. With the posting of these pictures, it has become woefully obvious how inadequate this site has become. I am hoping to do a rewrite in the near future, but for now, it is what it is.

Well, I am back from my first vacation to New York City. Matthew, James and I made the long voyage in Matthew's car. The trip began with me getting up bright and early to drive to Omaha, as we wanted to leave by 8:00. We arrived at our Chicago hotel early in the afternoon, so we decided to drive into the city. Parking proved to be expensive, but we bit the bullet and did it anyway. We bummed around the city for a bit, eventually stopping for some great Chicago deep-dish pizza. After that, we went up to the top of Sears Tower, where I got in trouble for using my mini tripod. For $20, however, I decided that I had earned the right to use it, and continued to do so, though a bit more carefully so as to go undetected. After the tower, we went to the Navy Pier, which was mostly closed, but we made it out to the far end anyway. Strangely enough, that wasn't all that was closed - most of Chicago seemed to close shop around 9:00. None of us could figure out why.

The next day was basically just a lot of driving. We made it through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey before finally arriving at our destination. There was a nice traffic jam in Pennsylvania, apparently caused by a simple lane merge (of which we had already seen two) - we were baffled as to why this caused a 45-minute wait. Eventually we arrived in Newark. We decided to park the car there and take the train for $1.50 to the city, as nobody really was looking forward to driving in the traffic. After the train ride and a connecting subway ride, we finally made it to our hotel at around 11:00 at night.

The first day in the city involved seeing most of lower Manhatten. We went to ground zero of the World Trade Center and then Battery Park, where we attempted to go to the Statue of Liberty. Upon arrival, though, we discovered that we were too late to go up into the statue, so we bought tickets to the ferry for the next day. We got up early the next day to go back to the Statue of Liberty, only to discover that we were once again too late, so we went anyway and abandoned the idea of going into the statue. In retrospect, this was probably good - Ellis Island ended up being much more interesting anyway. I found (I think) some of my ancestors on the wall of names of people that passed through the island when it was still used for immigration. There was also plenty of historical information and other displays that took a good amount of time to go through. We eventually made our way to the Empire State building, and then Rockefeller Center. We went to "The Top of the Rock" around sunset to get the mandatory nighttime shots of the city. On the third day, James and I went to the Metropolitan Museum, and Matthew went to the Museum of Modern Art. Apparently New York's definition of modern art is a bit skewed, as Starry Night was at the museum Matthew went to, much to my dismay. After the museums, we met up again at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. We then went to the new authentic gelato shop, which turned out to be incredibly expensive, and in my opinion, not as authentic as they claimed (even if it was an Italian company). We then went to what is supposedly going to be the largest Roman Gothic cathedral, and when we were ready to leave to go see more of Central Park, we discovered that it was absolutely pouring. We waited out the storm, and made it to FAO Schwarz after it died down somewhat. Before going back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner at a fairly upscale restaurant near the hotel. James and I had wine with our meals, and the wine was more expensive than the food. I had duck, which was absolutely amazing, and my wine was paired very well with it. On the fourth day, we made it back to Central Park where we spent most of the day.

The next morning we got up very early to drive to Philadelphia. We took the New Jersey Turnpike, which had a total of seven lanes each way at its peak, and was actually two highways in one with dividers between them - one for cars only, and another for cars/trucks/buses. We made it to Philadelphia around 10:00, parked the car, and saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. We also had some authentic Phily Cheese Steaks, which turned out to be very expensive ($7!) and highly overrated. We then took James to the airport so he could get home to his brother's graduation. We were pretty bored with Phily by then, so we went to the grocery store to stock up for the trip home. Amazingly enough, I found Comte cheese at the store, so I bought two pounds to take home. Another interesting fact - apparently in New Jersey (where our hotel actually was), people don't like to turn left. Ever. We were on a few parkways that the only way you could actually turn left was to turn right before an intersection and double back. There were even signs that said "All turns made from right." Needless to say, it was quite frustrating.

The next two days consisted almost entirely of driving - we stayed in Indianapolis, but we never even went into the city. Matthew and I arrived in Omaha around 4:00 on Sunday, and then I went the rest of the way back to Lincoln.

One last thing - I have loads of pictures from the trip - 820 to be exact. I'm hoping to go through them this week, but I'm pretty busy with packing for the move back to Colorado, so we'll see.