Welcome to Your New Vacation Destination :)

Thats just my way of saying that everyone can come visit! Elyse and I are here in Tempe enjoying the apartment. Yesterday, we got up in the afternoon, unloaded the car, and then my roommate Siggi showed us around a little bit of the area. We went out to dinner with the boys to a random bar and grill that we found. We played trivia, and failed miserably, but what are you going to do! More importantly, though, we have our final numbers of our trip.


Tuesday Mileage - 494.6 
Wednesday Mileage - 505.4
Thursday Mileage - 445.5
Friday Mileage - 593.1
Saturday Mileage - 823.8
Sunday Mileage - 598.3
      Total Miles Driven - 3460.7
               Lisa - 2188.5
               Elyse - 1272.2


National Parks Visited - 4 (Cuyahoga Valley, Gateway Arch, Zion, Grand Canyon)


States Driven Through - 11 (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, back to Arizona)


License Plates NOT seen - Rhode Island, West Virginia, Hawaii
Fun Non-US Plates seen - British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Cherokee Nation, Quapaw Tribe, Osage Nation, US-Gov
** just seen Tuesday (we were no longer road tripping, but since Elyse was still on vacation its counting) - Mexico

Total Bathroom count -

     Elyse - 80

     Lisa - 16

Now, its time to make my room look like a person lives in there :)

Its the Final Countdownnn!

By countdown, I mean destination. Destination doesn't fit with the song as well. Our last day on the road has been quiteeee filled. We woke up super early and headed north into Utah to see Zion National Park. It was ten million times more beautiful than anything Elyse and I had ever seen. We love the Adironacks, but it is nothing like Zion. Thank you Dad for that suggestion, it was definitely a winner. We hiked around a little bit, but unfortunately we had to keep our time short so we could be super adventurous and go to the Grand Canyon all in the same day. Words can't describe the beauty, so I'll just put some pictures instead... :)

After wandering around Zion for a little while, we headed out to see the sunset over the Grand Canyon. It was a wonderful suggestion from one of Elyse's managers. Yet another site that couldn't really be put into words. So, more pictures!

We made it to Tempe, AZ, just before 2 am Arizona time (that would be 5 am for you eastern time zone people...) Lots to do tomorrow, but for now, its time to catch up on a little bit of sleep.

Ready. Set. Drive.

These past two days have been mostly driving. Somehow, most of our stops were towards the beginning of the trip and a few big ones at the end. Yet, we needed to get from the beginning to the end. Yesterday, we left Rollo, MO, and headed towards Stillwater, Oklahoma. (I am a dork and wanted to stop by my fraternity's national headquarters. Don't judge.) More exciting though was the scene outside of our door when we got up yesterday morning. After grabbing some free breakfast (which we actually had to grab for ourselves instead our usual hotel stays where mom grabs everything first thing in the morning), we headed back to our room to see cops outside. We aren't quite sure what happened, although we had heard a ruckus outside the night before. Either way, we were hoping for an arrest, but didn't get to see one. We did get to hear some yelling though. But thats not as cool as an arrest.

(cops through the peephole...)

Anyway, on the road we went. Oklahoma was actually a more exciting state to drive through than we expected. There were rolling hills and trees, which is not what we expected. On our way, we somehow ran into the world's largest McDonalds. Elyse and I aren't quite sure if it's actually the worlds largest, but we took a picture and bought a postcard anyway!

We made it to Stillwater around 5:30 central time, and stopped by my fraternity's national headquarters. They were obv closed and it was private property and there was a cop chillin nearby. So, instead of getting arrested, we took a couple of quick pictures and went to grab some dinner. Rumor on the street was to hit up Eskimo Joe's in town, so we did. Unfortunately, the wait was super long and we didn't have time to waste. We grabbed some souvenir cups (they are supposed to change color!!) and just grabbed something else along the way. 

And then we drove til we could drive no more. We stopped in Shamrock, TX, for the night. Apparently there are more Irish people in Texas than we thought. Or they are just wannabes...

Today was another super long day of driving. We left our Shamrock hotel at 9:30 central time, and we got to our next hotel along the way here in Page, AZ on the north side of the Grand Canyon at 11:15 Arizona time, which is 12:15 Mountain time, making it 1:15 central time. Including all of the time we stopped today, we drove for 16 hours. We made a pit stop in Santa Fe, NM, in honor of our favorite Newsie, Jack Kelly. We didn't really see why he wanted to go to that town cause the actual city was very cramped but not in a NYC type of way. But, we found the Santa Fe National Forest and Hyde Memorial State Park just outside of the city, which is where Elyse and I worked on our jumping pictures :) The area looked like it was straight out of the Adirondacks, which makes every upstate new yorker feel at home! The whole reason we stopped was, of course, the Newsies reference. However, we didn't know where to have Elyse sing in the city, so we were going to do that at the park. We forgot, so we just pulled over on the side of the road on our way out of town for the singing of "Santa Fe".

We drove a super round-about way to where we are now, but we saw some beautiful mesas today. Fun fact, we just learned what a Mesa was today. :)

Day Three in a Nutshell

 After our visit to Starbucks this morning, we went over to a park nearby to see the gorgeous skyline of Chicago. We sat in the park, wrote some postcards, and then headed into the free park in the area. Since we wanted to get to St. Louis before the very end of the day, we didn't have a lot of time in the zoo, so we cut it down to our favorite animals. Of course, we saw the winter animals. We went into see the penguins and the polar bear. (naturally, all we thought when we saw the polar bear was the classic coca-cola commercials) We walked back to our car to head out of the city. Have no fear, Elyse still loves it.

Repping the Blue Knights and the super tourists. For the win. :)

Best Video Ever - the feet of a duck or something underwater... 

and they needed to go to the double story outhouse! 

Next up was our trip to the outhouse (which got a post of its own!) and then onto the World's Largest Ketchup Bottle. It was a decent size, but difficult to be touristy with. It was in right next to a main road through Collinsville, IL, and there was construction in the area. So, we did a few drive bys of the tower to get good pictures before moving onto St. Louis.

Finally, our last big stop of the day was St. Louis. We didn't have a lot of time, so we basically went and saw the arch. Elyse was super scared of it before we even went inside. (she doesn't like that the top doesn't have anything underneath it) I kind of forced her to go up to the top. We didn't realize that we would have to go into a little capsule to get up there. We video taped our way up because Elyse was freaking out that we were in a little capsule and I was somewhat concerned because I wasn't expecting to go into such a small space. Either way, we made it up there just fine! Elyse didn't hate me as much when we saw the view from the top of the arch.

I'm super strong. It totally moved.

a blurry view from the top!

Unfortunately, videos are still slow. Either way, we drove a couple of hours past St. Louis on the way towards our next destination to get some rest for the night. G'night all, its time for us to sleeeepp!

How does a two story outhouse really work?

Well, that is a great question. There are two slots on each level, one for men and one for women. Now, the tricky thing to grasp, is how the upstairs plumbing doesn't fall on top of the downstairs users. The top level of holes are shifted back from the downstairs so that their plumbing falls behind the downstairs users. I believe that there is a wall protecting the downstairs users from the upstairs plumbing. At least, this is how we think it works. The outhouse is in a small town in Illinois called Gays. It has a population of 250 people. The area it was in was called "a park", although it was probably the size of my parents' living room. It had the outhouse, a little memorial to a fallen soldier, a bulletin board of outhouse related things, and a small rock saying, basically, this is a park. We felt super out of place, as probably half the town drove by... Maybe not half, but definitely a quarter of the town. It seemed as though this was the only thing the town had... Anyway, we took a few pictures, and then bounced super fast cause, well, we are a couple of New Yorkers who can't handle the absurd amount of corn fields around.

(this wasn't in Gays, it was a few towns over where we filled up out gas tank. this dude put a little motor on his bicycle. pimpin.)

Dreams Really Do Come True!

Day Two started SUPERRR early yesterday, being out of our nice/sketchy hotel by 8 am (which is a shocker for us.) We left our hotel and started trekking to find our next destination, Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Well, we found the park with no problems from our GPS, but it just brought us to their headquarters, which looked like a little shack in the middle of the woods. So we drove around the park, hoping it would magically tell us where to go. It didn't. We finally stopped at one of the visitor centers called the Boston Store and asked a park ranger. After some more adventuring to find Brandywine Falls, we finally found it. It was quite beautiful :)

Yay we found it! We wanted to point to make sure you knew we were there... :)

Afterwards, we hopped back into the car to head up to Purdue University to see one of Elyse's friends from the Backlot Tour (Elyse's favorite place in Disney...) On our way, we saw a lot of wind farms. And cows. And farms. I'm pretty sure that we drove straight through the Universe of Energy. (Although, don't forget, according to Bill Nye, wind isn't always the best form of energy!) Anywho, Ohio and Indiana are super lame states to drive through, they are super flat. Whatever, we made it to Purdue and Tim showed us around the campus for a little while before we headed out to see if Chicago lived up to Elyse's dreams...

(apparently Purdue is super sexist like this. lame)

Well, they did. She was literally jumping for joy when we drove into the city, and she hasn't been upset by anything yet. I'm really trying to bring her down because I think it would be amusing, but I have a feeling I won't be able. We spent the night with another Disney friend, Catherine. We didn't explore downtown Chicago, but we enjoyed a few places within walking distance of Catherine's apartment. Basically we did a bar crawl, if you count two bars and only two beers a bar crawl. We're getting old.

(just the view from Catherine's window, nbd)

We went to Mickey's, appropriately.

We are currently in Starbucks using their internet, and we are going to head down to a free zoo to get a great view of the Chicago skyline. Yay for the city, its kind of great...


BTW- we are in Central time now, and Elyse is constantly confused since she hasn't changed her watch and most likely won't since she's going back to the east coast. Also, bathroom count for the overall trip so far - Lisa at 5, Elyse at 26. Yep, I'm not joking.

Goodbye Latham, Hello Lots of Driving!

Our first day of driving is completedddd. We took a veryyyy long time to leave the house. We were hoping to be out of Latham by 10 am, but we knew we probably wouldn’t be out until noon. Well, we left home at 2:20 in the afternoon. Just typical Zima timing. We also asked Adam to take his lunch break at our house to help us play tetris with the car. (Thanks Adam!) When we finally left, our first stop was a gas station less than two miles from home. We didn’t remember to fill up the tank before hand. Oops. But after that quick stop, we were on the road. Less than two hours in, we stopped. Naturally, Elyse had to use the bathroom and while we were stopped I already broke something. (Sorry Mary Ann, I dropped the cup you guys gave me. But have no fear, I’m going to put that Target gift card to use in replacing the cup. Ask Elyse, it made me super sad when it happened :( ) An hour and half later, we stopped because (of course) Elyse had to use the bathroom again. This time, she got out of the car and said "I don't really have to go, but still." Classic. We made a pit stop near Rochester, NY, to see a friend from high school and play catch up real quick. On the road again, now almost 8 oclock and four hours to drive to our destination outside of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Along the route, we passed a truck with a plug hanging from the back, just sparking along the road. We booked it right past that dude cause we didn't want to see if the sparks would blow anything up. Anyway, we made it here around 12:30. The place we are staying is a mix of nice and slightly creepy (as Elyse would say). Although, we do need to stop watching Criminal Minds before road trips because we are over-analyzing things... Anyway, the biggest thing that we learned today was that Elyse needs to go back to elementary english and take some spelling tests.