Day 6--Quincy Market

The first evening in Boston, we asked the front desk workers at the hotel where we should go just to see some of the city for a couple hours before sundown. They recommended we go to Quincy Market, where there was a little of everything; the harbor, tall buildings, restaurants and shops.

As in all big cities, there were people who acted like statues. . .
and crowds of people watching street performers.

Day 6--Courtyard Marriott, Boston

Our destination for day 6 was one of the stops I was most looking forward to: Boston! We decided that we couldn't handle another nasty motel where we didn't even want to use the shower, so we made sure to find a nicer hotel. We found a great deal (for Boston) for this Courtyard Marriott hotel. We were so incredibly excited to walk into this room that was clean, comfortable and smelled good instead of like stale cigarette butts.

The hotel was perfect for us because it was just a little bit outside of the center of Boston, so we didn't have to drive into the city, and it was only a couple of blocks from the subway station, or a short taxi ride to downtown Boston.

Day 6--Prison!

The reason we stayed in the obscure town of Albion, NY was to visit my cousin who is in the prison there for violating his parole about two years ago. He gets out in about two months, and rarely gets visitors since it's so far away from everyone, so he was very happy to have us. It was definitely a new experience for us, but it was much less strict than we had imagined. We had to get there very early in the morning, and waited about an hour for them to call us in, but it wasn't bad, and it was really good to see him. We sat at a table inside a big room where there were a lot of families visiting other inmates, then we got to sit at a picnic table outside for a little while with Brian. It's actually a very pretty area up there, and the weather was pretty nice, so it was pretty pleasant to sit outside. Of course, we can't take pictures inside the prison, so we didn't get any good pictures, but these are just to prove that we were there! You can see part of the prison in the background, and if you look really carefully, you can see the crazy fences they use to keep the inmates from escaping.

Day 5--Driving into New York

The next day, we hurried out of the dump that was Motel 6, and began another long day of nothing much but driving. We crossed the New York state line.

We enjoyed a lot of beautiful scenery in upstate New York as we drove through the buffalo area. We even spotted this little guy, who we think was a baby coyote?
Our destination was the tiny town of Albion, about thirty minutes north of Buffalo. We found this motel that had good reviews online. I guess people's opinions of motels depends on what kind of people stay there. The outside didn't look too bad, but the inside was less than par. It wasn't nearly as bad as the Motel 6 (once we changed rooms) but the beds were just as uncomfortable.

Day 4--Indiana

So after a while of looking up places to stay, we ventured into Indiana. . .

and found a Motel 6 that had decent reviews. It was about midnight when we got there and we were exhausted from driving all day. Before we went to our room, I begged my mom to take me to get food because we didn't eat dinner and I was starving. Since it was so late at night, all that was open was fast food, and I saw a Taco Bell on the way to our motel. I directed my mom back towards that Taco Bell, sure that I knew the way. As we drove, looking for Taco Bell, my mom kept saying she was sure we must have passed it because it wasn't this far away. I assured her that I absolutely knew where I was going. It turned out that there indeed was a Taco Bell this way, but it was NOT the one we had passed. I had actually taken her the opposite way that we had come in and we crossed all the way back into Illinois to find this other Taco Bell. After I dragged my mom all the way to another state for stupid Taco Bell, I ordered the wrong thing and only ate a couple bites of the nasty tacos anyway.

One of the reasons, besides just that they were disgusting, that I didn't eat the tacos was because by the time we got them back to the motel room, I lost my appetite. Our room was, to say the least, not the best. The worst part was the beds. The mattresses were basically box springs. I refused to sleep on box springs, so I complained to the front desk lady, who was super slow at everything she did. She offered my another room. I looked at about 3 other rooms, in which each room had a box spring as a mattress on one bed, and a real mattress on the other. Finally, I gave up, but the super slow lady at the front desk was at least also super nice, and she gave us the room for free!

By the time we went to bed, we had driven for about 15 hours and it was 1:30 in the morning, so were actually tired enough to sleep, even if it was on springs.

Day 4--Chicago

The next we drove for a VERY long time. We planned on staying in Chicago, but didn't set up a place to stay beforehand. We planned on arriving in Chicago around 6:00, having a few hours of daylight to see part of the city, and find a place to stay. What we didn't count on was waiting in traffic for two hours.

We really should have done more planning because we drove around the city, and it really was beautiful by the lake, but the traffic was awful, it was typical scary city driving with extremely aggressive drivers, and we didn't know what we were doing or where we were going. Plus, after sitting in traffic for a couple hours, it was getting dark and harder to see. So after driving around a bit, getting scared out of our minds from the traffic, and taking some pictures through the windows, we ended up driving a couple hours out of Chicago to spend the night.

Day 3--Ending our day in South Dakota

Driving through South Dakota, we saw these Wall Drug signs every mile so for about three hours. The billboards stretch for over 500 miles on interstate 90. The first one we saw advertised ice cream and cold drinks at Wall Drug, so we figured it was just a regular drug store. But as we kept driving, it advertised just about everything, including western clothing, mining equipment, burgers, and even dinosaurs! It also offered free coffee and a donut to veterans, honeymooners, hunters, and truck drivers. We were very curious to see this drug store that housed a giant green dinosaur as well as free water, so we pulled off the interstate to see it. It ended up being less like a single store, and more of an outdoor mall with many little shops, and-you guessed it-a giant green dinosaur!

We finally arrived in the town of Mitchell, South Dakota late in the evening, and went across the street to a 24-hour restaurant frequented by travelers and truck drivers. As depicted by the picture below, we were very tired!

We stayed in this lovely Thunderbird Lodge that night. It was by no means luxury, but by all means better than what we stayed in the next night!

Day 3--More Mt. Rushmore

As we walked, we stopped not only to see the faces of the monument, but also to admire the views. I should take this moment to say that I don't always look happy in the pictures because I never know when my mom is actually taking them. She doesn't say count or say "ready?" or anything. I only know that she took it because she puts the camera down.

At the end of the boardwalk, you go in this building to learn more about how the monument was made. My mom captured this amazing view through the window.
The gentleman two pictures down may look dead, but he's actually the last original Mt. Rushmore worker still alive. He was in the gift shop signing books!

Day 3--Different Faces

Once we got the audio tour, we followed what they call the "boardwalk" around the park. Before we got there, I wondered how you could really spend much time there. I mean, what do you do besides stand there and look at the faces in the rock? It was actually really amazing because you walk around this path which is beautiful in itself because it's up in the mountains with beautiful scenery. But the most amazing part is seeing all the different angles of the monument. Each time there is a stopping point on the path, you look up to see the carvings from a different angle, and each different angle brings out different, amazingly accurate details in the rock. These pictures are just to show how different it looks from different angles.

Day 3--Beginning Mount Rushmore

We weren't sure whether or not we would see Mount Rushmore at first. We figured it would look exactly as you would imagine; a bunch of faces on a big rock. But since we were so close, we decided to go ahead and take the hour-ish detour up the hill. In the end, we were glad we did. We first passed through this little faux frontier town in Rapid City, South Dakota. It was so cute, and if we had more time and money, we would have loved to stop here and enjoy it for a night.

This next picture is not the best picture of Mt. Rushmore, but it was exciting because it was our first sighting of the monument as we turned a corner.
Thankfully, it was very easy to find the parking garage, and we just followed these steps up towards the monument.
Before walking the around to see everything, we rented an audio tour (that I only partially used) to lead us through. This first passage way consisted of pillars which each of the fifty state flags hanging in alphabetical order. You can see California's on the left in the front.
Okay, so it was way more amazing in real life than you can see in the pictures. The faces were incredibly detailed, and I felt like George Washington was really there looking over us!

Day 2--More Yellowstone videos

Day 2--Yellowstone Videos

Our T-shirts

I designed some awesome matching t-shirts for our road trip. We wore them for the first time in Yellowstone, and got lots of compliments and questions about them! We also got a lot of people walking closely behind us, staring at our backs and trying to read it all :-)

Day 2--More Yellowstone

Some of the hot springs were this beautiful, crystal clear blue color. These were the ones my mom wanted to swim in. I was giving this one a thumbs up!
This is my new friend, Marilyn. As we were walking to the gift shop to get some ice cream, this nice lady started asking about our road trip. We got to talking, and found out that we both are seventh-grade English teachers! I love meeting new, awesome people on road trips!
We drove along Lake Yellowstone for a good amount of time on our way out of the park. It was so incredibly gorgeous; we had to stop several times just to admire and take pictures.
I climbed down the steep embankment in my flip-flops because I couldn't resist walking along this little stretch of sand and feeling the chilly water. The water was amazingly clear and clean.

Day 2--More Yellowstone Geysers and Hot Springs

Old Faithful before it erupted.
Old Faithful Erupting