Moving Vacation Best Of/Worst Of

• Best Hotel: Embassy Suites, Salt Lake City, UT
  
• Worst Hotel: Quality Inn, Lawrence, KS
  
• Best Continental Breakfast: Embassy Suites, Salt Lake City, UT
  
• Worst Continental Breakfast: Rodeway Inn, Reno, NV
  
• Best On The Road Lunch: The Chicago Diner, Chicago, IL
  
• Best On The Road Dinner: Free State Brewing Co., Lawrence, KS
  
• Best Random Roadside Attraction: Hannibal, MO (home of Mark Twain)
  
• Worst Random Roadside Attraction: Little America, WY
• Best Driving Experience: Being woken from a nap and seeing a gigantic wind farm
  
• Worst Driving Experience: The insane descent into SLC (beautiful, but Marc was driving)
  

Arrival

We arrived in San Mateo yesterday afternoon. Our apartment is nice and a decent size. Of course, we have nothing to fill it with. haha. We're at a coffee shop right now and Marc is trying to figure out the internet situation.

Right now we're at a coffee shop in downtown San Mateo. There's a really nice downtown area with quite a few asian and indian restaurants, which is always a good thing. After we're done here we're going to trek to Whole Foods to do a little grocery shopping.

General area demographics observations (only a trip to Target and 2 hours at a coffee shop to base this off of): Mostly white and asian, sprinkling of hispanic.

Current weather: Sunny, 70. Overnight low: high 50s. Marc loves it. It's beautiful, but I could go just a tad warmer. However, not having to use an AC is great.

We also have an address; I will email it very shortly. I love mail! (hint, hint)

Reno...

... is an odd city. We got here around 7 PM PST and, following our cross-country routine, only had enough energy to go get something to eat. Marc found another vegetarian/vegan diner (not as schwanky as the one in Chicago, but still delicious) in the downtown-ish area, but we did not feel like sticking around. I wouldn't characterize Reno as sleazy, but it's a little... off. It's like an Allentown with gambling. But we managed to find a cheap hotel and we leave tomorrow for San Mateo! I'm looking forward to getting a look at our new apartment and moving our (minimal amount of) stuff in. We might be sleeping on an air mattress for awhile, but we finally have our own place :)

Day 5 - The Great Divide

Picture Post:

Figure 15. Scrub brush and rolling hills -- Not quite the
Majesty I was expecting.

Figure 16. There's the Majesty. Unfortunately, I was driving
and someone-who-will-remain-nameless is slow with
grabbing the camera, so there are no pictures of Utah's
Fireworks 'N Liquor stores.

Figure 17. Again, Colorado to me says, "Rockies," not,
"Just like Kansas."

Figure 18. Ah, there we go.

Figure 19. Getting better..

Figure 20. More like the Arizona mesas, but I'll take it.

Figure 21. Not as impressive as it looks.

Figure 22. One of the impressive Utahan river valley
descents, but nothing like the final descent into Salt Lake
City. At that point, I was busy driving, and someone else
was holding on for dear life.

Figure 23. More valley.

Figure 24. While Em was on the phone with her grandmother,
I scrambled up a chalky mountain in slip-ons to snap some
shots of Echo Reservoir.

Figure 25. The white thing on the right is the car.
Harrowing descent.

Figure 26. Awww

Figure 27. Downtown SLC. Gorgeous, but I can't take
credit for this one.

Figure 28. This one, I can. Cheap cameras don't do well in
low light, but because SLC is in a basin with a larger
mountain to the East, pre-dawn has this odd glow,
and it's technically pre-dawn long after the sun has
risen on the other side of the mountain.

Playlist:

• Basically, just Freakonomics on cd.
  

Picture Post, Day 3 (short)

Figure 14. Y...yeah. Chicago.

Picture Post, Day 4 (Denver, CO)

Figure 9. Reppin' Wamego for my boy Zack.

Figure 10. Dwight Eisenhower's boyhood
Presidential Library and cement factory
(background).

Figure 11. Dwight D. Eisenhower is actually in the
statue. When druids pray around the circle on the
first Sunday of the lunar month, he wakes and
roams the grounds in search of Heinrich Himmler.

Figure 12. F This Guy

Figure 13. Thank You, Jeebus

Kansas in a nutshell

Wind power!

Wind farm

Eisenhower Presidential Library

Yep, that's about it.

We're leaving Denver this morning for Salt Lake City. It's cloudy and cool (50 degrees now at 7:30 AM), but SLC is supposed to be sunny and in the low 80s. Last night we had Mexican at Santiago's and had the infamous green chile. It was very good, but even the half mild/half hot was a little on the hot side for me! Thanks to Erin and Travis for their suggestions. Also for Erin, I just saw commericiasl for Mark Udall's senate campaign and I thought of you.

I need to post _something_. Pictures later

Playlist, Day 3:

• Alison Krauss & Union Station - New Favorite
• F*** Buttons - Street Horrrsing
• Man Man - Six Demon Bag
• Os Mutantes - S/T
• Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals
  

Playlist, Day 4:

• Amadou & Mariam - Tje Ni Mousso
  
• Bjork - Vespertine
• Deerhunter - S/T
• Nice Nice - Yesss
• Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles
• Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot

Emily's Day 3 Lists

Playlist

• The Essential Billy Joel (disc 1)
• Bruce Springsteen Live in New York (disc 1)
• My ipod on shuffle

Read list

• The Omnivore's Dilemma

In pursuit of Steak and Shake (for Erin)

Mission: Accomplished

The Breadbasket

The New American Way: To use a schwa in every possible place.
The New American Dream: To live in a country where using a schwa at all times is desirable.

Missouruh.

Mark Twain Mania

I've never actually read anything by Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), but Marc and I stumbled upon his birthplace and childhood home today in Hannibal, Missouri. It's a teeny tiny town that is saturated by anything and everything Mark Twain. It's kind of creepy, but it was a nice day so we decided to walk around and have lunch there.

Marc at the site of the infamous Tom Sawyer jail. I'll have to take the sign's word for it... never read the book

Me and Cardiff Hill. I guess I have to read the book now...

Darn!

I do what I want!

Last night, I had a dream that I did something other than drive through Kansas today.

Lake Michigan

You forgot to show them that we visited Lake Michigan!

Day 2 - The City Wasn't THAT Windy, Pt. 2

Long day, short post.

Figures:

Fig 3. Leaving Indiana

Fig 4. The illustrious RV and Motor Home Hall of Fame

Figure 5. The Chicago Diner makes a mean vegan Reuben.

Figure 6. Ah, the Cubbies' Mustard.

Figure 7. Best seats at Wrigley? Above your apartment.

Figure 8. As close as we came to the only stadium in Chicago that matters. (*Single tear*)

Playlist:

• Stephen Colbert - I Am America (And So Can You) [seriously. the entire thing. funny, but long]
• Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes

Readlist:

• The Pragmatic Programmer - about 5 pages, then sleep.
• Can I count "America" for this, too?
  

What Emily listened to (Day 1)

NPR (eastern PA)
Various FM radio stations (including Susquehanna U college radio)
Moody Blues - miscellaneous
moe. - Wormwood
NPR (eastern PA)

We're headed to Chicago this morning. The plan is to get lunch and explore a little bit. There's a diner in Chicago that serves only vegan/vegetarian food, so I think we're definitely going to try to eat there. I'm also hoping to see to Oprah. Or anything remotely related to Oprah.

Pist Frost

First post; we've made it as far as Toledo, OH. There is nothing here. Em set the hotel we'd picked out as our final destination in the GPS, but I accidentally deleted that (presumably while looking for C Waffles [see below]) and picked a random point in Toledo. At some point, we decided to select the hotel we actually wound up staying, but because the GPS meticulously tried to get us to both waypoints quickly so we had to take back roads through the rural Ohio to get here.
The first 500 miles or so have been fairly uneventful. I'd only been about 2/3rds of Pennsylvania on Rt. 80, and as it turns out, the other 1/3rd looks precisely like the rest. Wooded, with a side order of nothing. I'm looking forward to Chicago--and less nothing--tomorrow, and I'm hoping there's a little more to report.

Fig 1. Jersey Shore, Middle of Nowhere, Western, PA



Fig 2. Attempting to find the elusive "C Waffles"

Playlist:

• Shellac - Terraform
• Russian Circles - Enter
• Dalek - From the Filthy Tongues of Gods and Griots
• The Cure - Disintegration

Readlist:

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software - 100 pgs

The Passenger

This is what I look like driving across Pennsylvania