The East Coast

Hi again everyone.  We've had a busy week, so this is the first time there's been a night available where I wasn't exhausted and had internet access.

After Florida, Jenny and I went to my friend Adam's in North Carolina.  He made us a delicious dinner consisting of honey chicken, squash and yams.  This was followed by a tour of his extensive rifle collection and of Fort Brag where he works.  We returned to his apartment for drinks and gaming - always a great combination with Adam.

In Maryland we stayed with Uncle Gary, Aunt Pat and my cousins Kevin and Ryan.  They treated us to crabcakes and prawns, but the grandest gesture was Gary allowing me to bury the armadillo carcass in his yard.  Whew was that thing pungent when I extracted it from its multilayered container.  I'll retrieve the bones when I visit with mom later this summer.  It poured the following day, which made our tour of Washington DC wetter than we preferred.  Kevin was an excellent tour guide however, and Jenny enjoyed seeing the landmarks for the first time.  I had the idea to photograph a stuffed pigeon at the Smithsonian for my pigeon-obsessed friend Lyndsey back in Seattle, but was was highly disappointed that one wasn't represented in their displays, despite having every other bird found in Washington DC.  The day ended with a marathon of Rock Band songs, with me on guitar, Kevin on bass and Jenny singing.

New York was overwealming.  While I found the skyscrapers and rampant video displays pleasantly futuristic, I hate being in large crowds, so that aspect was annoying.  I much preferred the city at night, especially the Empire State Building, which faded up into the clouds.  Jenny and I watched The Little Mermaid musical, which was very well done.  Ariel's voice was fantastic.  The next day, I got to go behind the scenes at the American Museum of Natural History to study coelurosaur fossils for my dinosaur studies.  The curator (who I had spoken to before online) was very friendly, and allowed me to see and photograph several undescribed specimens.  Additionally, I was surprised by some Shuvuuia fossils which were on loan from Mongolia.  The information I gathered will certainly help my analysis, and they invited me back whenever I wanted.  After the museum, Jenny and I walked through Central Park, eventually found our way to the Statue of Liberty, and had a delicious dinner in Little Italy.

We stayed in Maine for three nights to visit my friend Mallory, who had previously visited me two Christmases ago.  That was nice because it gave me my first chance to doll up on the trip.  For those of you who don't know (primarily extended family who haven't tried to look me up on MySpace or Facebook), I'm a crossdresser (and no, I'm not gay; any other questions, feel free to ask next time we meet).  I dared not try that in the south (ha!), but Maine's nice and liberal and Mallory's been amazingly supportive ever since we met on an online makeup group.   We went out to breakfast, to a beach, and drank at her friend Tom's house.  Tom was especially nice to pay for all the drinks and the third day's dinner, while I'm grateful to Mallory for housing Jenny and I on somewhat short notice.  Jenny and I enjoyed visiting a couple other rocky beaches while Mallory was at work on Friday, and she had a girl's day out shopping and getting her hair done on Saturday.

Currently I'm writing from my Uncle Dave's house in Youngstown, Ohio.  His family provided fun conversation and should be congratulated for hosting us despite having so many people here already.  It was good to catch up with my cousin Davene, who I hadn't seen in a decade or more.  But we've exchanged Facebook pages now, which will hopefully lead to more regular communication.

Tomorrow we go to the Creation "Museum" (should be hilarious), then it's the long but fast drive straight home.  I probably won't get another chance to update until I'm back in Seattle.  Look forward to more pics then though, including the armadillo carcass. ;)

A Week in Florida

Florida's been quite the experience.  We arrived exhausted after over fifteen hours of driving.  We've been staying with Jenny's mom in Saint Pete's Beach, and her grandpa was here until Monday as well.  Her mom's been very accommodating and generous, both taking us out to dinner and cooking delicious meals at home.  Her place is basically across the street from a beach, with another waterway (the "intertidal") behind it.  It's surrounded by palm trees, and the porch is frequented by anoles which have been too fast to catch.  The beach is great for laying out on, but not really my type - too many people and too few rocks to find animals under.  Still, there are so many shells that I found quite a collection on my ventures there.  With all my trips to Florida beaches, I've collected 29 of the 54 mollusks listed here , plus several not on that list, like tusk shells and quahogs.  I also found a large fish braincase, and today found some confusing white shells I later identified as heart urchins.  The local avifauna is similarly extensive, with pelicans, doves, parrots, mockingbirds, great blue herons, laughing gulls and others all frequenting the city.  Then today at De Soto Park we saw a night heron, ruddy turnstones and a black oystercatcher.  Exciting!  Besides beaches, Jenny and I went to the aquarium at Tarpon Springs.  We were able to feed and pet nurse sharks, cownose rays and skates, and hold horseshoe crabs and pufferfish.  Jenny didn't enjoy feeding rays and skates as much as she did the deer.  haha  Tarpon Springs is a fun little Greek town, and I took advantage of the opportunity to order calamari.  There was an extremely catchy Greek dance song playing in the restaurant, but I fear I'll never hear it again since the words were in Greek, the staff didn't know the song, and searching through Greek dance songs online seems hopeless.  Sigh.  On Saturday we went to Disneyworld, which I found pretty fun, but not worth the $75 entry fee.  Only a few of the rides were entertainingly fast, with the others being pretty corny for a person my age.  Jenny says Disneyland is better.  I did get to eat funnel cake there though, which is one of my favorite snack foods.  Jenny's boyfriend Ayman visited us for a few days over the weekend and accompanied us to Disneyworld.  He proposed to her while here and I wish her the best.  My Uncle Rick also stopped by to visit, since I hadn't seen him in quite a few years.  But while many days here had some major event, I've spent most of my time just relaxing in the sun with a good book.  I finished a religious history book about Peter, Paul and Mary, a scifi/horror collection by H.P. Lovecraft, the scifi classic Ringworld, and am halfway through another scifi novel, Pushing Ice.  The internet's allowed me to catch up on some blogs I frequent, but I've been spending relatively little time online since I'd rather enjoy Florida.  Weather's been near universally great (60s-70s) and even the day it rained was entertaining due to all the lightning and wind, and still warm enough to be comfortable.  It's been nice, but I am ready to get this show back on the road.  Tomorrow morning we leave for my friend Adam's place up in North Carolina, then we tour Washington DC and stay with my relatives in Maryland.  We'll see if we have wireless in either place, and if so, you may see another blog entry soon.

The Gulf Coast of dissapointment

After Texas, Jenny and I had the goal to find a nice beach on the Gulf of Mexico to relax on.  Unfortunately, we only had three days to travel the coast, leaving us one day of relaxation and two days on driving.  I had researched Louisiana beaches on the internet at Kerrvillle and determined the best for my purposes (finding interesting animals) - Grand Isle State Park.  So we headed for the park, but it was getting dark quickly.  Our initial plan was to stop at a state park just outside of New Orleans, but due to Louisiana's terrible advertisement for its state parks, it took a very long time to find the place.  Once we did, it was equally difficult to find the entrance and camping areas.  It turned out to be closed, so we just said **** it and headed to our ultimate destination.  The drive from New Orleans to Grand Isle was 100 miles at 30 mph, which was pretty tedious.  The park is that the end of a peninsula, and toward the end we saw a "no camping" sign.  So we decided to just get a motel.  We ended up staying in this motel on stilts in the middle of the ghost town of Grand Isle.  It was overpriced and terribly underfurnished. but I slept well.

In the morning, we headed out to the tip of the peninsula, looking forward to a day of rest.  The town was just as empty in daylight, and once we reached the end, Grand Isle State Park was still nowhere to be found.  Questioning a hotel worker, we found out the park's been closed since Hurricane Katrina due to damage.  That might have been something useful to put on the signs and websites so people don't waste a 100 mile trip to the middle of nowhere, wouldn't you think?  So full of disappointment, we headed back to New Orleans and to Pensacola, Florida.  We did learn Louisiana McDonalds feature a different menu, including a McBLT and a "McDouble", which is like a double cheeseburger with only one slice of cheese, but the same price as a double hamburger.  I'm sold!

Once in Pensacola, the campsite was full and neighboring parks charged $37 for camping!  At that rate, why not just get a motel?  We stayed at the park for an hour or so, allowing me to find two king's crown snails.  But then we made an eight hour drive to Jenny's mom's in Saint Pete's Beach for our week long stay there.  And that's where I've been ever since.

   Deer and Lorikeets!

                                        

Cacti and Carlsbad
 

The Seafood Restaurant outside of Houston

The many faces of Texas

The problem with drinking rum at night is that by the time the laptop's free to type on, my blog-writing skills are severely limited.  So here's an early morning update to catch up on the pre-Florida fun.

Neither of us were looking forward to Texas, viewing it as a long flat obstacle in our way to the Gulf Coast.  Our initial foray in that state seemed to validate our view.  The landscape was monotonous and the buildings in disrepair, or "ghetto" as Jenny might say.  We were having difficulty finding an open restaurant in the tiny towns on our way, since they were either closed for Sunday evening or closed forever.  The choices boiled down to fast food, leaving Jenny with the worst Taco Bell experience she's had.  The workers didn't wash their hands or wear gloves before handling her food, then left it sitting in a counter for five minutes until she finally got their attention so that they handed it to her.  Meanwhile, I was amused by the mens' restroom, which featured a floor covered in urine due to an overflowing urinal.  Jenny was largely too disgusted to eat her meal, but my low standards let me finish my chicken strips from the KFC (it was a hybrid business).

We stayed in a hotel in the small town of Kerrville.  It was actually a decent town, comparable to any moderate Western Washington city.  When we left in the morning, we realized Eastern Texas was lush and green.  It seems Texas is similar to Washington in having a forested and developed coastal region, and a more conservative deserty interior.  Houston itself was huge and cleaner than Seattle.  We stopped for dinner at a seafood and oyster bar so that I could try crawfish and catfish.  It was shaped like a boat and very authentic, but I found the crawfish disappointing as they were the size of salad shrimp and largely tasteless.

My favorite part of Texas was what we found right before entering Houston though - an armadillo carcass.  We had both been on the lookout since Arizona (pointlessly it turns out, since they don't even live in Arizona or New Mexico), since I want a skeleton of one for my collection.  Jenny was especially helpful, even Googling armadillo roadkill photos and urging me to stay alert on a stretch of highway that was especially full of dead animals.  So when she saw the armadillo on its back on the side of the highway, she immediately pulled off.  It was quite exciting, and Jenny had the perfect way to secure it to her car.  We used a trash bag tied at both ends like a giant piece of candy, then knotted the ends to a tow rope from the emergency car kit Uncle Bob gave me.  The rope went through the rear windows, which made the trip to Florida noisier and slightly smellier, but Jenny was quite a sport for understanding how important it is to me.  Stabilizing duct tape finished the job, so the armadillo stayed intact all the way to Saint Petersburg.

In case you're wondering, on my first day in Florida, I went to Wallgreens to procure materials for an armadillo container so that we wouldn't have the open windows, smell, or conspicuous duct taped garbage bag on our car for the rest of the trip.  It's currently in a vacuum sealed clothing bag which is superglued shut, with an air freshener inside a superglued plastic container.  I bought some Liquid Nails yesterday to further ensure the smell stays contained.

Next up, gorgeous Gulf Coast beaches.

Okay, I have internet access once again.

When we last left our heroes, they were trapped in a snow storm in Flagstaff.  It turns out the entire northern part of Arizona was snowy, so we headed south through Phoenix and Tucson instead.  Along the way we stopped to take pictures of some cacti, since saguaros finally appeared around Phoenix. There were a couple horses in the lot we parked in, which Jenny was very excited by.  She grabbed two of her apples and was overjoyed to feed them.

So when I saw a sign on the highway for an ostrich farm that let you feed ostriches, I knew we had to stop there.  It turned out to also have deer, goats and lories.  While I found the ostriches fascinating (the closest thing to a Mesozoic theropod I'll ever see in life), Jenny loved feeding the deer.  It was the happiest I've ever seen her.  Jenny spent sixteen dollars feeding those animals.  The goats were my least favorite since one bit my finger. :|  But the lories (similar to parakeets) were lots of fun.  You entered a greenhouse full of lories, which then fought over the cup of nectar in your hands.  They landed wherever they wanted.  At one point, we each had a bird on our heads, and I had four on my arm.

That night we stayed with my online amateur paleontologist friend Rutger, who had just moved here from the Netherlands a few months ago.  He and his girlfriend Allison were excellent hosts, taking us to dinner and treating us to drinks.  It's always fun to speak to someone in your profession.  I type a lot about dinosaurs, but it's rare to speak to someone face to face about longipterygid phylogenetics.

We stayed a bit late, so didn't quite make it in time to use the natural entrance at Carlsbad Caverns.  But we were able to use the elevator and enjoyed the speleothems until a particularly noisy family annoyed us.  They tell you to be quiet when you enter, because the cave amplifies sound, but this group brought their little kid who wouldn't shut up.  So I make a comment to no one in particular that loud children shouldn't be allowed in some public places (this would also include movie theaters for instance), and the apparent grandfather went berserk.  He threatened to kill me, bragging about how many men he's killed on American soil, saying he's ready to pay his bail money when they arrest him.  It was pretty intense, but Jenny and I just walked away.  We figure we won in the end, since he ended up more upset than we were to begin with and embarrassed his family to boot.  While we now have an amusing story to tell.  I did learn to keep my mouth shut in the south however. :)

Next up will be Texas, the Gulf Coast and our start in Florida.  Plus more pictures.

Mud and Snow

Who would have thought mud would be the treacherous part about Death Valley?  After a long drive through scenic rock formations and palm-like desert plants, we reached the interior of Death Valley.  We didn't go to the LOWEST place on earth, but did get 100 feet below sea level.  I was proud of myself for being able to set up a useful fire, which we used to roast sausages, smores and some canned food.  The stars were beautiful.  I was able to point out several satellites to Jenny.  Neither of us got much sleep though, thanks to the rocky ground and my inadvertantly hogging the sleeping bag.  But that let us start hiking at sunrise, before Death Valley's famous heat could doom us.  Instead, we were doomed by the mud on the edge of the stream we followed.  Jenny slipped and her leg ended up thigh deep in thick, clay-like mud.  Then her other leg sank in, and she looked so sad.  It was actually pretty hilarious, but marred by the fact one of her $100 sandals broke in the mud.  My feet sank a bit too, but not over my hiking boots.  We managed to extract ourselves, wash up a bit in a more secure portion of stream, and headed out nice and early.  Jenny's had her fill of deserts.

Jenny suggested an impromptu stop at Hoover Dam, so we decided to go through Vegas.  Jenny was very excited by The Strip, but it was just a collection of extravagant crap to me (though the big black pyramid of the Luxor was pretty cool).  Hoover Dam itself was impressively large, and I was surprised to learn ninety-five people died in its construction.  Unfortunately the lake it created was too cold to swim in, in part due to the high winds.  We stayed at a casino/hotel/restaurant near the dam, which was my first time in a casino.  Jenny enjoyed the gambling and left with only a one dollar net loss.  As for me, I think it'd be more useful to light the money on fire, because at least flames would look cool.  The hotel did have a nice hot tub and pool though.  Sitting in the bubbling hot tub was extremely relaxing, and the ludicrously high winds blowing the palm trees gave it an entertaining hurricane-esque atmosphere.  Jenny collapsed almost immediately in bed, and I joined her not long after.

Today's objective was the Grand Canyon.  It was still sunny and 70ish on our way there, but got progressively colder as we approached the National Park itself.  We were quite disappointed to find the weather freezing and still terribly windy, but were still up for a short walk along the rim of the canyon.  Then it started to snow as well.  The view was very impressive, immensely detailed in its vastness.  On the way back to the main highway traffic slowed to a standstill for a half hour or more.  My exploration determined that some collision had occurred far down the road, and while the wait was tedious, the sound of the power lines crackling as I walked under them was neat.  The snow only got worse from that point on, climaxing in a storm with snow blowing horizontally and in mini-tornados.  We fishtailed and slipped a bit, but Jenny's skillful driving pulled us through.  Turns out the entire portion of Flagstaff we drove into was out of power.  Luckily, a tasty restaurant was nearby, and several hotels.  So that's where we're staying tonight.

Tomorrow it's off to the Painted Desert (Petrified Forest National Park), then to Rutger's in New Mexico.  

Oregon, California and Nevada

So today we finally have internet access, but we probably won't for another three days.

Oregon went well. We gave one of Jenny's friends a ride to his sister's house in Roseburg, and they were very accommodating. We got fed pizza and were able to share our own bedroom, though my sleep schedule wasn't in AM mode yet, so I didn't get much rest and was slightly hungover from wine the next morning.

That morning felt more like the real start of the roadtrip, since it was just us and Cali is further away than Oregon. The environment was beautiful, with rolling hills and lichen-covered trees. We found a nice sandwich shop to eat at in Northern Cali and were quite amused by the Christian radio station. We were going to visit a San Fran beach, but didn't quite have time, so eventually found our way to her dad's house instead. He has a great apartment looking over the San Fran skyline and a very amusing cat. Her dad took us out for drinks and must have bought us each six drinks or more. But thanks to plenty of water and some last minute pizza, we avoided hangovers. The bars we went to in San Fran are much better than in Seattle, as they were open-air. This lessened noise and the annoyance of smoke, and well placed heaters kept us warm. We slept in the livingroom and headed out early the next morning.

Today's drive saw quite the change in environment, from palm trees to ten foot deep snow to the semiarid suburbia of Carson City. Lake Tahoe was beautiful, but touring Carson City with Jenny was my favorite part of the day because it's where she grew up. I had shown her my history in Kent before, but it was great to see where she went to school, where she lived, and where she had all of her varied adventures I've heard about over the last five years. We're staying with her mom's ex and his wife, who are both extremely nice and make us feel at home. The homemade dinner was delicious - porkchops, mashed potatos and homegrown carrots. We soaked in a hot spring for a couple hours, so I'm quite ready to fall asleep.

Tomorrow is Death Valley, then the Grand Canyon, then visiting my friend Rutger in Las Cruces New Mexico. I may get to update again then. Thanks for reading.

Haven't Left Yet

This is where I'll be updating with news of our trip. Only a few hours left to go and I still have to shower and get some lunch, but hopefully we'll have internet access often enough to update regularly.