West Virginia (I'm coming home)

Got out of DC and drove to the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway and spent the night. Early the next morning we started out by driving 50 miles or so of the parkway.

Then we drove into West Virginia on our way to visit Joel, who lives in the Southwestern corner of the state, a major coal mining area. Here is a coal mine:

Out back of Joel's house in Logan.

We went to take a hike with Joel in the state park near Logan and ran into a Pioneer days fest and learned about a Native American vision quests and how to make a good knife blade. After pioneer fest and hiking we purchased some Big Wheels ice cream treats and did a short driving tour of the city. Yum!

We didn't stop here, but we did notice this at a stoplight on the boarder of WV and Kentucky. We were in real Appalachia.

DC (Part 2)

Res took a day off of work and we went on a big bike cruise around DC. We started the day at the Florida Ave Grill, a greasy spoon soul food diner that did not disappoint. When Kate and I said yes to butter on our grits we did not realize that it meant a ladle full of melted butter... glad we are moving into a country with socialized medicine. Here we are, almost bursting with food.

We biked to the National Arboretum and saw a cool display with lots of Bonsai trees

We biked around a bit more then ended up at Res's house for a break. Then we ate dinner at an El Salvadorian place complete with a Mariachi band.

Oh and did I mention that we went to the bar called "The Big Hunt." Yes, it was called "The Big Hunt" It was a good dive bar with, of course, Big Buck Hunter.

In the Adams Morgan neighborhood we saw bluegrass music and continued with our theme of ridiculous bar names. The bar the band was at was called the Madams Organ (a clever play on the neighborhood name....)

DC (Part 1)

Res works at a bike shop which means he has extra bikes! The weather was nice enough to bike around, and Res's old clunker cruisers did the trick. We biked from his house along a creek and ended up at the Lincoln Memorial. The authorities didn't seem to mind that we rode bike around in the pedestrian mall area of DC and that made it a breeze to get around.


After visiting the Museum of the American Indian (very cool) and the Air and Space Museum (also cool) we stumbled upon the capitol building and lots of protesters who were against the health care bill... luckily they we just finishing up their whining (ahem, sorry, right to organize....).

This fellow has "Live Free or Die Hard" on the back of his truck, not sure if he is in favor or against the bill or just really pumped about the Bruce Willis movie.

And glad to see that after a hard day of protesting AGAINST health care reform these protesters are happy to stuff their faces with lots of calories, fat, saturated fat, corn syrup, cholesterol, etc..... ahhh FREEDOM! (sarcasm).

Now to de-stress... a monkey at the DC zoo, a very cool zoo.

WEC + Delaware

So remember how I grew up in Africa and went to boarding school and had pet monkeys and chamelions and ate snakes? Well a few hours south of NY, near Philiadelphia the mission my parents work with has its US base and a few old friends from Cote d'Ivoire live there. It's like visiting extended family, I got to see (L-R) Lee and Liz, the Mums of fellow boarding schoolers, Aunty Marilyn my 6th grade teacher, plus (not pictured) all three Durben girls and their dad Dan.

We continued south towards Washington DC via the lovely, picturesque Delaware wetlands. A nuclear power plant was the highlight of what our Atlas labelled a scenic drive.


Adventure highlight: we had to ford some rivers, apparently the wetlands weren't aware there was a road there. I thought I saw a log under the water but Justin just yelled "Do it! Do it! Go! Go" So I did, and we survived.


On the banks of the Chesapeake these big lumpy balls smell good like citrus, does anyone know what they are?

NYC!

With great daring Astro braved the drive into New York City and lived to tell the tale.
We stayed with Becca, who hadn't done laundry in a month or 2 so we decided to use team power to lug all the laundry downstairs, walk it to the laundromat and have a drink next door while it washed. In the picture below you can see Becca on the phone with Alexa who is foolishly offering to do Becca's laundry if we will instead meet her at another bar (one with free pizza!) So we did, we had a couple beers with the laundry cart in the bar and Alexa took it all home and washed it. Impressive friendship.


We only had one full day in NY so decided to explore somewhere new. We had the obligatory delicious bagel for breakfast before hopping on the subway to Queens, remember, the place where Eddie Murphy found his bride in Coming to America?

The MoMa (Musuem of Modern Art) has an outpost there that had loads of cool stuff, including these structures in the courtyard:


and a swimming pool to be viewed from above or below. I want to turn my bedroom into this:


Across the street is a building where people can apply to graffiti.



We rounded out our visit with Molly and Darren, raw food, Philipino food, ice cream, and baked goods. Most of our tourism seems to revolve around food.

Halloween

Having no costume at 4pm the day of Halloween we had to scramble a bit. Kate had a green dress and that gave her the idea to go as the green fairy from the absinthe artwork, and what you are supposed to see when you drink a lot of it.

Javier and I from a misunderstanding with what Kate said decided to go as Abstinence Fairies... we didn't really know what that meant either, but after a 15 minutes of theorizing we had a loose plan. Basically we went around the party telling people not to do it and we wore garlic around our wrists to repel possible mates.

The big bash was at GPSY, the graduate student bar at Yale. It is a big place, 3 levels and since it is members and guests only (Yale is into exclusivity) it was also cheap. Spent the night people watching trying to determine how many future presidents were in the room.

New Haven/Yale

On down the east coast we go. Next stop is in New Haven, CT home to Yale university. The architecture is incredible, it is designed to look really old... it is old, from the 20s and 30s, but designed in the gothic style to look even older. Here is an example of what many of the building look like:

Yale has a Rare Books Library containing some neat old stuff and they have put it in a building with thin marble walls. The walls block out the UV light, thus protecting the books, but still let in some natural light.

There was an exhibit on avant-garde and counter culture protest art. Lots of cool posters

One of the many secret societies at Yale.. Skull and Bones!

Went on a walk of New Haven and a park the overlooks the city, it turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected, after we took a wrong turn and ended up circumnavigating the hill.

I told you it was an adventure.

This place claims to have invented the hamburger, no ketchup or mustard allowed. Javier wolfing it down like a hyaena.

ASTRO UPDATE

It been two months and about 9,000 miles, the biggest question people ask is "how is the Astro?"

Well..... she's still running, BUT there are a few issues...

#1 - The check engine light. Yeah, its been on since Eau Claire Wisconsin day one of the trip

#2 - Side window. I managed to break it way back in Ft. Collins while trying to fix it (it wouldn't shut tight). Now we have some cardboard in it.

#3 - Side mirror. On our way out of Portland, OR Kate managed to "bump" the side mirror on the highway, causing it to break. Here is a before and after.

#4 - Gas milage. The first month of the trip we were getting about 16mpg on average. Since leaving the west coast we've face a sad downward decline. Currently we are getting 11 or 12 mpg. Could it be the cold rainy weather? Something to do with the check engine light that has been on since day 1? is the van suicidal? Probably all the of the above.

#5 - Headlights. For some unknown reason (maybe a fuse blew out?) the regular headlights stopped working when we were in the UP of Michigan. Now we just get to drive around with our high beams on and make the other drivers happy.



Going strong!

Boston!

On our way down the coast to Boston we stopped at the lighthouse that is featured on the back of Maine's quarter.

Then..... 2 days in Boston! Visited Eli and walked the Freedom Trail, which is a trail around the city highlighting many of the revolutionary war sights. A lot of the old buildings are still in use, Boston has a policy of building reuse instead of just turning old stuff into museums. For example the old meeting hall where the declaration of independence was read out to the people of Boston still exists but now it is a subway station.

Here is a photo of the 3 of use pre-freedom, look at our sad confused faces.

On the trail we saw:
an old gravestone

Eli & donkey

The oldest pub in America, the Bell in Hand Tavern, opened 1795.



That night we ate some good Italian food in Boston's North End. Then the next day we walked around the Harvard campus for a bit. We also met up with one of Kate's former co-workers from the Adelaide Institute of Sleep Health (aka AISH) who is now a Post-Doc at the Harvard Medical School.

Here is a photo of some Harvard buildings.

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is on the coast of Maine and it's gorgeous. On a map this section of the coast looks like it's been shredded, there are lots of islands and inlets.

The fall colours were spectacular to hike through. It's one of the most visited parks in the US, and some of the trees on the trails had been polished smooth on their trunks from the number of people touching them to steady themselves.


As a child of the tropics and desert it always feels slightly odd for me to be at a beach where everyone is rugged up and just walking around looking at things instead of swimming, but it was beautiful. We had to take our shoes off to ford a stream at one point, so figured we might as well have a paddle while we were at it, down coat and all.

We climbed the 'beehive', one of the best hikes I've ever done. We're so used to parks making everything so safe and easy to walk through, this was a wild hike with iron rungs in the rock and a couple of ledges to inch your way along above the forest and beach views. A trail designer back in the day wanted people to be able to climb the beehive without using climbing gear, it was fantastic, don't miss it if you're in the area.

The beehive


The rungs

In town that night we had some famous New England clam chowder, crab cakes and saw many many lobsters and ice creams. Here is a picture loaded with complex questions, who is wanting to eat who/what?