Thursday: Montana to Idaho and soon to be home!

When we started planning our trip across the country, we thought we'd stop to see Glacier National Park. After traveling with a sick dog for a day, we decided it was time to head straight to Washington and put an end to all the driving. We really enjoyed the scenic drive through the Rocky Mountains and logged another 8 hours in the car. We arrived in Coeur D'Alene around 6:30pm and had a nice dinner at a floating restaurant on the lake. We are getting ready to hop back into the car and head to Adam's parents' home in Cashmere, WA. So this concludes our cross country journey. I have some final thoughts about our time on the east coast, which I will write about next week. At that point, "deMars: Life on the East Coast" will come to an end. Hope you enjoyed the ride!

Wednesday's Road-tripping: North Dakota to Montana

I have missed a couple of nights of posting after some long travel days. On Wednesday morning, we woke up to find that Max is not feeling well. Sparing you details, his crate was vile. After getting everything cleaned up, we got on the road. We drove not 30 minutes before he got sick again. We had to stop at a gas station to hose everything out again. We were heading to the Dakota Dinosaur Museum in Dickinson. I decided to let Adam take the kids inside so I could stay out with Max and hope that some fresh air would do him some good. We're not sure what's going on with him. We have been traveling through a lot of different parks so he might have drank some bad water. He's also a very anxious dog so it could also be a combination of stress, traveling, and some bacteria. Eventually we made it to my uncle's house in Billings, MT. He has a fenced in backyard so that was a nice place to keep Max. We spent about 7 hours in the car on Wednesday. Here are the photos:

Gavin posed outside the Dakota Dinosaur Museum. According to Adam, two words for you on this one: Tourist Trap.

 The important thing is that the kids enjoyed it and really, that's all that mattered. After being so good in the car, they need some fun.

Unfortunately, Olivia wanted nothing to do with photo-ops with the dinos. What can you do?

After slamming on North Dakota's boring landscape in our previous post, (and getting in a little trouble for it, I might add) I must say that we were very impressed while driving through Painted Canyon in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

The kids were less impressed with Painted Canyon than we were. They spent the time outside of the car wrestling and goofing off. Again, happy is the goal and that was achieved.

We wrapped up the day at my Uncle Dave's house in Billings. It was so nice to see him and Denise. We walked over to a park near his house so the kids could play. Pioneer Park is actually a park that I lived by when I was a little girl. It looks different now, of course. But it was fun that the kids were able to play at the same park I played at when I was their age. Back at the house, Gavin and Olivia loved playing with Uncle Dave. It was a great evening of visiting on their back patio. We hope to get back to Montana next fall to go play in the national parks.

A Day at UP Michigan

Today's post is being written at the Comfort Inn in Ironwood, Michigan. We spent all of yesterday exploring waterfalls and beaches. We had dinner in Marquette, MI and then decided to drive until midnight to make up a couple hours while the kids slept. I was far too tired last night to write. When I researched the upper peninsula of Michigan, the most used description was pristine. It absolutely is pristine. The highways are immaculately maintained, pretty much no garbage or litter to be seen. It's very remote up here. Last night when we were driving, we had about 20 different deer sightings along the highway.  To their credit, most stayed on their side of the asphalt divide. I was relieved when we finally stopped driving because I was sure we'd be hitting a deer at 70 miles an hour. Here is a photo summary of our day.

We started off at Tahquamenon Falls. Gavin had a tough time pronouncing Tahquamenon, but Liv got it on the first try.

 

 The falls look more like root beer than water. The rust color, according to a placard, is due to organic debris. This degrades to tanic acid, giving the water its characteristic color, as well as filling the pools with foam. Anyone for a root beer float?

 

 The only moose we've seen to date.

 

 Lake Superior is just on the other side of this dune. In the late 1800s, loggers used horses and a special log-canting wagon to pull logs up the hill where Gavin is seen sprinting in the above picture. On the other side, the dune drops off sharply for a few hundred feet to the shore. By sharply, I mean take-a-step-and-you're-plummeting-to-your-death. The old wooden log flume is remembered only in pictures and stories, but the sand channel persists. We regret that we were unable to take the short trip down and the long slog back up. However, carrying Liv up 300 feet of calf deep 70 degree dune did not sound fun.

 Liv was woken from a car-seat nap (known in the industry as the best nap on the market) to take this sand dune walking, Lake Superior viewing side trip. She was not amused.

 Superior. Dunes. deMars. Awesome.

 Bird Nerds unite.

 Nice view.

 

 Throwing rocks.

 Throwing other rocks.

 Painted rocks.

I love UP

The Big Trip Home: Albany to UP Michigan

We are on our way back to the Pacific Northwest! Our day began before 4am and it is now 10:30pm as I sit and type this at The Quality Inn in St. Ignace, Michigan. We pushed extremely hard and drove for over 14 hours. The best I can offer at this point is a picture summary of today's events.

By the time we had the car packed up, it was 5am. The kids were thrilled to be up so early! Also, notice that our car was a mess from the very beginning. We also failed to remember proper luggage for our road trip and all of our stuff was off on the moving truck before we realized. So, we have several trash bags filled with miscellaneous items and clothing. It's super classy to drag trash bags into hotels, right?

Our route took us up through Ontario, Canada and we decided to take a small detour to view Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. We saw the American Falls on our way out to Albany. The view is definitely better from the Canadian side, but it was far more crowded this time around. It was almost impossible to get a decent shot and really none of mine do the falls justice.

 

After viewing the falls, we stayed in Canada for a few hours of extremely boring driving. I'm serious- you could show me a photo of rural Ontario or a picture of rural Ohio and I wouldn't know the difference. We then crossed back into the U.S. through the border of Michigan. We drove along Lake Huron for quite some time, working our way northwest to the Upper Peninsula. We drove across the Mackinac Bridge, which happens to be the world's third largest suspension bridge. (Fun fact!) We arrived at St. Ignace around 8pm.

Gavin was psyched to be out of the car and able to run free for a while. St. Ignace seems to be a very small town but it has a gorgeous lighthouse and walkway that overlooks Lake Huron. I told Adam I was shocked at how much the lake looks like an ocean because it's so large. He made some wise-ass remark about them being called "great lakes" for a reason. Whatever!

 

Running and having fun after a very long day. These kids were unbelievably good in the car. Tomorrow we are going to spend most of our day playing along the upper peninsula of Michigan. We have plans to visit several parks and beaches. We have only planned to spend about 3 hours driving tomorrow but if we find ourselves up for driving more in the afternoon, we may try to make it a ways into Minnesota. If not, we'll stay in Marquette. 

This was tonight's sunset in St. Ignace. I am seconds from going to sleep and I am sure this post is filled with typos. I don't have the energy to edit tonight so I will just apologize for said typos. It was a long day but we feel great about getting so far. We'll see what tomorrow brings and where we end up! Good night!

Weekend in Virginia

A couple of weekends ago, I made one last visit to Alexandria, VA to visit our friends Melissa and Earl Ardales. I have really enjoyed being able to visit them each year that we've lived back east. Last year we did a lot of sightseeing in the Washington DC area, so this trip I asked them to show me some of Virginia. Visiting Thomas Jefferson's Monticello had been on my east coast bucket list so they took me to Charlottesville to check it out. The drive through rural Virginia was lovely. Along the way, we stopped at Barboursville Vineyards for a wine tasting. I was pretty skeptical because I have not been impressed with east coast wine but Barboursville proved to be a great little winery. We then stopped for lunch in downtown Charlottesville. We found a great rooftop restaurant and enjoyed a perfect 75 degree afternoon. After lunch, we headed to Monticello. I love seeing the homes of past presidents. Thomas Jefferson was an interesting person. It's amazing to me that he could draft the Declaration of Independence and then run his household with slaves. The grounds at Monticello are beautiful. The house is not what I expected, yet the decor all makes sense now that I think about it. The entryway has a bunch of animal skins and other things sent to Jefferson by Lewis & Clark as they explored the land that Jefferson purchased to expand the country west. Unfortunately, you can't take photos in the main floors of the house. I was able to take some pictures of the cellar level where the kitchen was located and of the grounds. After our visit at TJ's house, we headed back to Alexandria and finished the day with dinner in Old Town. Once again, Melissa and Earl were great hosts and I had another wonderful visit. Here are some photos from the weekend.

Barboursville Vineyards

Skybar, Charlottesville

 

Gardens at Monticello

 

Beer Cellar- those bottles are so cute!

Kitchen

 

 

 

"Welcome to my home!"

Tagliatelle and Gelato: my trip to Italy!

Recently, I was lucky enough to accompany my good friend, Chelea, on a reward trip to Italy that she earned through work. We went to Milan and Florence and spent the week indulging in pasta, wine, and gelato. When we were making plans for what we wanted to do and see on our trip, we both came to the same conclusion that we each just needed a vacation and not another to-do list. Traveling is so fun but it can really be exhausting. Our goal was to take in the scenery, eat amazing food, relax, and catch up on each other's lives. We skipped the daVinci art tour and the city walking tours. We did not go to a museum. Some of you may find that appalling but we got the vacation that we wanted and it was wonderful.

Milan is a much bigger city than I expected. It's very industrial and cosmopolitan. There is a definite hustle and bustle on the city streets. Once we got checked into our hotel, we took a walk down to the city center. We walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which is an amazing shopping center covered with an awe inspiring glass dome. There, you see all the fancy fashion shops that make Milan a fashion destination: Prada, Louis Vuitton, and the like. We found a little cafe outside the galleria to eat lunch while taking in the scene. The cafe also had a great view of the Duomo di Milano.

 

This is Duomo di Milano, the cathedral church of Milan. It took nearly six centuries to complete. The architecture in Europe always takes my breath away. It was interesting seeing this Duomo and then the Duomo in Florence. They are so very different but equally impressive.

One of the more hilarious things that Chelea said while we were walking around was, "what is with all these people and their ice cream?" Haha! That would be gelato, my friend! I am never one to buy a pint of ice cream and sit on the couch, but I can assure you that if I lived in Italy, I'd be stopping for gelato on a regular basis!

There was a day that Edward Jones had offered a free city walking tour where they'd point out all the prominent landmarks. Initially we thought we'd sign up but then changed our minds. Something about walking around with a hundred other people just didn't sound like the Italian experience we were after. Instead I suggested we check out a beautiful city park called Parco Sempione. It's situated adjacent to the Sforza Castle. We walked through the castle gardens to enter the the park and found a little place to order a glass of wine and enjoy the sunshine. It was lovely and completely enjoyable. As we were leaving the park, we actually ran into the tour group. They were all standing around with their headphones, listening to the history lesson. I'm sure hearing about the history of the castle was plenty fascinating but they seriously looked so bored. When I close my eyes to think about Parco Sempione, I can imagine that little cafe in the park where the sparrows scam potato chips from the patrons' table. Something tells me that I wouldn't have such fond memories of the walking tour.

We spent a lot of time doing the above, which is looking at the map, wondering where we were and where we were heading! We walked more miles than I can count and it was the perfect way to justify all of our decadent pasta and gelato stops.

We signed up for a side trip to Lugano, Switzerland. We took a tram to the the top of Monte San Salvatore. The view is supposed to be outstanding, however, we visited on a very foggy day and the view was basically non-existent. Oh well, at least we can say we went to Switzerland!

Lugano, Switzerland

After three days in Milan, we took the train to Florence. Florence is near the top of my list of favorite places. I had been there once before and it's such a breath of fresh air. After hitting the city streets of Milan, walking through Florence is completely different. Life seems simpler and calm. Mostly, it's just completely beautiful.

This is the Duomo Firenze. The architecture feels softer and more inviting to me than the cathedral in Milan.

In Florence, we spent our days walking around, shopping, and eating. We had one meal that was the standout of the whole trip. It was at a little place called Mamma Gina's. We had walked around all evening and it was pretty cold. We decided to start with soup. Chelea ordered a minestrone and I ordered pasta fagioli. This was the best white bean soup I have had in my entire life. The beans were pureed in a savory broth that was infused with rosemary and the noodles tasted like they were freshly made. We were served huge bowls of soup and the meal could have ended there and left me satisfied. Of course, then my second course of tagliatelle bolognese arrived and it was equally mind-blowing. The pasta and sauce was so good that I ate every last bite. Stuffed beyond reason, Chelea suggested we order dessert. I looked at her as though she was insane. She ordered us a tiramisu to share and I planned on having one bite just to taste and being done. As I took my first bite, I looked at Chelea and said, "Oh shit." Seriously, that is what I said. We both started giggling because we knew that plate was going to be empty when the waiter returned. That meal sums up my trip to Italy. It was indulgent, satisfying, and fun. Here are just a few more photos.

Streets of Florence

One of my favorite things about Italy is you just order "red wine" and they bring you something inexpensive but completely fantastic. Chianti always tastes better in Italy.