The Trip

Okay, so I totally lied about posting stories from our trip to Maine. But here are some pictures: :)

Philadelphia, PA. The Liberty Bell, from the back. It was bigger than I expected, smaller than Dustin expected, go figure.

Philadelphia, PA. Dustin needs a hat and cane.
Somewhere, PA. This is a bridge that crosses the highway, pedestrians only. On one side is the river and on the other side is where they keep all the boats. It was kind of weird to stand in the middle and watch all the cars go under your feet.
Princeton is the prettiest place. Even the people are pretty, in a non-model way, but they dress well.
My boy. :) Some lake in RI.
New Port, RI. This is a monument to a Dutch nautical navigation school, the first discoverers of America.
New Port, RI. Dustin took this picture, I like it.
New Port, RI. This is at a wildlife preservation. I'm standing in front of solar panels that supply 15% of the preservation building's energy. Portland, ME. The Portland Headlight. It was windy but beautiful.

Diana's Baths in Maine are very beautiful. They are made up of a series of waterfalls that fill (or filled, as the actual baths have now decayed) the man made baths pictured below.
The water in the baths was crystal clear and icy cold. We lost feeling in our feet after about 20 seconds. :P
Somewhere in New England. I don't actually know what this is called but it regulates the water flow, Dustin was checking it out.
The Strongs on vacation :D
No, this is not in Ohio. I think it was in Vermont. But a little taste of home.
Niagara Falls are huge. Duh, but no kidding, huge.
Niagara Falls, NY. This little guy is a harbor seal waiting for lunch. He kept looking a the visitors and then at the door to the exhibit. Apparently the seals are fed by trainers at 10 AM and then visitors at 12 and 2 PM. He just didn't' know whose turn it was.
Niagara Falls. An abbreviated version of our trip. We have over 100 pictures and just as many stories but they're not getting typed out :P

We're Back!

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

It's good to be home. It's amazing how a stationary day (a.k.a. not constantly in a car), hot shower, full kitchen, bed (not sleeping bag), and reasonable prices can make one feel so happy an content. :)

The trip was awesome! I'm so glad we went. For those who don't know, we started out traveling to Philly to visit a friend of mine who is currently working for Teach For America. Philadelphia is a very cool city. I hope to go back again. I rode my first ever tram and learned that even city people can be nice (although, not all city people, we learned that, too). We randomly met a newly-wed couple from Portland, ME (which is where we were headed) who had missed their flight to Jamaica and were stuck in Philly for the night who had family from where Dustin's from and a sister who works and my favorite restaurant in ME (D'Millo's floating restaurant, no really, you should go). We visited some of the historical buildings and had fun observing all the tourists. I suppose I retain my status as a nerd because I got all excited over the first Bank of America.

There are lots of super cool parks throughout the city. Our favorite was the game piece park (we don't know what it's really called but it is a collection of majorly over-sized game pieces). They had a giant Rook from Chess so we had to have a Rapunzel shot, Gail kindly obliged without throwing up. I love the look on the woman's face in the back ground. Perhaps she's the one we should have been worrying about throwing up. Sigh, oh for longer hair...

I could go on and on but it was a 10 day trip so I'll just give you the highlights:

• We couldn't find a campground so we ended up staying in an Ethan Allen hotel, which is part of a company that sells really expensive interior design stuff (use PriceLine.com, it's amazing).
• We stayed at a campsite in RI for three days and are pretty sure a moose ran through the camp and by our tent when we were in it but we couldn't get the zipper open in time to see it. Dustin woke up the next morning with four perfect finger bruises on his arm that happened to fit my hand. Go figure.
• People in Connecticut can't drive, not to mention that they're incredibly rude. If anyone tells you God doesn't do miracles in modern days, take them to CT and point out that all these people are still alive, that none of their cars are totaled and that 99% of their cars don't have dents or scratches. Wow.
  
• Your in-laws in-laws are probably pretty cool people.
• Maine is heaven on Earth. At least in the summer, apparently it's the other place in the winter. Gorgeous landscape, perfect weather, clean air, crystal water. My sister in-law's husband can testify that the bottled water in Paris, France is from Maine.
• Oh, and we saw the Strongs. But not in Syracuse. They were on a family camping trip and couldn't meet us. Ask Dustin, he can tell the story better.
• The sunset over New England lakes is the most beautiful I have ever seen.
• Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream is really good. Their HQ is really cute and their tour guides need a seminar on public speaking. But if Sweet Cream and Cookies makes onto store shelves you should definitely give it a try. Mm-mm.
• Niagra Falls is (are) beautiful. We'll be going back some day.

There are more little stories about the trip but it's lunch time and I'm hungry. So you'll have to wait :).

Glad to be home.

Lonely

I miss my husband. He's gone for the weekend on some Survival trip that's not supposed to kill him *rolls eyes, right, and his wife's not supposed to worry *sigh. Men have no concept of women at all. He's my very best friend and I'd worry even if he was going on a roller-coaster with full safety marks. He was in the worst mood I've ever seen him in this morning and admitted to being rather nervous. Well, duh, I'd be nervous, too.

It didn't hit me until mid-afternoon (he left at 1) that I'd be alone tonight. No one to cook for, no one to play games with and laugh with over the dumb stuff. It was very saddening. I thought about finding someone to hang out with but decided that loneliness might teach me something now that it doesn't completely depress me. We'll see how many pages of story and thought I crank out this weekend...

Camping!

The boy and I just rolled in from our first ever camping trip together :D It was a lot of fun. We randomly bought a tent last Saturday (well, not randomly, we're camping this summer and they happened to be a pretty decent price) and were just dying to try it out (okay, okay, I was dying to try it out Dustin just humored me).

We set out about six with a tent, six blankets, two pillows, enough chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers to make four S'mores, our P.J.s, a jug of water and his survival kit. Oh, and a roll of toilet paper, you never know. And other than wishing we had brought a couple more snacks, we did alright. Who says you need all that fancy stuff?

We most of our time starting a fire... and warding off the caterpillars who seemed to think the fire was a good place to crawl to. Everything was still wet but we had better luck than last week. I believe our fire died out twice before we got it going and even then 'going' was a very watched and tended 'going'. Dustin has mastered strike anywhere matches :D so I can rest easy about his upcoming trip. It amuses me that my absolutely briliant and creative husband, who has no trouble diagnosing and fixing computer, learning how to fix our car and just about any other mechanical thing, could struggle so much with a teeny-tiny strike anywhere match. But in the end, we had our S'mores, could warm ourselves by the fire, and laugh at how even after all those years of schooling, we still have trouble lighting a fire.

We're really happy we had those six blankets, two on the bottom and four on the top and we were toasty but one less either way and we would have gotten pretty chilly. I'm so glad we keep emergency blankets in the car. But it was really nice to be snuggled in a mountain of wool, down, and sleeping bag. I think I'm going to start leaving the curtains open at night, it was wonderful to wake up with the sun, it didn't feel too early at all. We ended up heading back about 7:40, when we had originally planned on waking up, just because we were up and ready to go.

I like camping, I hope we go again soon.

Fire in the Rain

Dustin and I were out buying some chocolate and he got the sudden craving for S'mores. So we brought them home and were planning on toasting them over the stove when I suggested that we go to the local park and make a camp fire. Now, for those of you who don't know, it's been raining the past few days, not good for a camp fire, which my husband kindly pointed out. Also for those of you who don't know, Dustin is in a Wilderness Survival class this quarter and has spent the last few weeks creating a survival kit. This would be perfect, I replied, to test out all those petroleum covered cotton balls in survival conditions. He agreed. We spent probably half an hour to an hour tromping out in the woods trying to find the driest stuff we could as the rain sprinkled down. The good news is, the cotton balls do indeed burn for a really long time, the bad news is, my husband can't light strike-anywhere matches or start a fire in the rain.

We'll go practicing again sometime :P

The microwave is good for making S'mores.