misc. domestic travel Posts

18May
3

Walmart Bingo

I’m going to Austin next month and one of the things I’m most excited about is Walmart Bingo: The game played by fellow Walmart shoppers. Its like traditional Bingo but instead of letters or numbers you use the bizzare oddities of nature and trailer parks that can only be discovered within the confines of your local Walmart.

To play: google images, pick a few, print them for members of your group, and go have fun in Walmart.

(click to see the whole thing)

This is actually a rather tame card, but I’m lazy. Anyway, I’ll let you know what all I find ;)

Posted by Caro in Life, Random, Shopping, Things to do, Travel and tagged with ,
20Oct
0

The 43 United States of America

J and I were having a discussion the other night about the states in the US. I’m not sure how this came about, but we realized that somehow despite being citizens raised in the US, we didn’t think we could identify all the countries on the map.

So we took a challenge: We printed out 2 copies of the US map. It had the states drawn in, and we gave ourselves 15 minutes to write in all the names. No list of states either – everything had to be done from memory.

I filled in as many as I could off the top of my head. Some were easy – like Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, Texas, and of course the west coast. Then I had to stop and think. Is New Mexico the one closer to Texas, or is that Arizona? Is Kansas on top of Nebraska or below it? I counted up the number I was 100% confident of and it came out to exactly 25. So 25 hopefully good guesses here I come!

About halfway through the 15 minutes I had filled in a good majority of them, but there were 10 I still couldn’t identify. I mean, let’s face it. I’ve been to NY once. Recently. I’ve never been anywhere else on the Northeastern seaboard. And I’ve never learned the shapes of those states (some states are easily identified by their shape – Kentucky looks like a chicken leg, Louisiana is an L, etc) because they’re so freaking tiny that there’s just a bunch of arrows pointing to them.

I did my best, but after 13 minutes I stopped. I had filled in 43 states and left the other 7 blank. Yes, I could only name 43 of the 50 states off the top of my head.

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Posted by Caro in Discoveries, Random, Travel, interesting and tagged with
08Sep
1

Labor Day

My parents have a campsite at a lake pretty near their house, and they go up there most weekends. They’ve been trying to get me to come out and spend a weekend up there for quite some time now, and I finally decided to trek out there on Sunday.

Why have I never made the time to do this previously?

First and foremost, when I say “campsite” I really mean high-end camping. I’ve definitely done camping a variety of ways, from the seriously rustic, no electricity/no civilization for 50 miles/pee in a bush kind to the camp in a tent that’s walking distance to a “real” bathroom, all the way up to the camp in a pop-up tent trailer that, depending on the location, may or may not have access to running water (but at least it’s more or less indoors). This is nothing like any of those. My parents bought a regular (non-popup) trailer a few years ago, and it’s so freaking wonderful. It’s bigger, has a separate bedroom area, a fully functioning kitchen, a bathroom with shower, and of course heat and A/C. The living room has a pop-out so that you have more space, and the kitchen table and the couch both fold down into additional beds. In my personal opinion, not having to leave your indoor bed in the middle of the night to pee does NOT equal true camping. It’s some serious luxury lol.

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Posted by Caro in Animals, Family, Travel, cool, fun and tagged with
23May
0

Top Chef Quest

I’ve decided to go on a quest. It will take a long time, but I plan to visit the restaurants of all of my favorite chefs from Top Chef. On the “to do” list so far:

You can’t start with any particular contestant without first mentioning Chef Tom Colicchio. He’s amazing and has every right to critique the chefs on the show. My life will not be complete until I eat at Craft. NY, LA, Dallas, Vegas, Connecticut…so many choices, clearly I have NO excuse to not go!

Ok on to the contestants I love:

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Posted by Caro in Food, TV, Things to do, Travel and tagged with
09Mar
2

BUR

I randomly flew out of Burbank this weekend, and I had completely forgotten how OLD the airport (BUR) is. Seriously, you board/exit the plane by going outside and using a portable staircase to get in and out. It’s kind of cool cuz it makes the exiting process a lot faster, but it sucks when you’re boarding cuz it’s pretty much just a giant clusterfuck of people entering from both ends and trying to find their seat. One complaint though, and fortunately I didn’t check any bags, but the baggage claim is outside!! I mean it’s covered and all, but it’s outside. The airport hasn’t been updated since like 1952, and it seems pretty janky to me. It’s a pain in the ass to get picked up and dropped off too, seeing as how there is only one small road that goes in for the single terminal (aka everyone is trying to go the same way). It’s kind of like a place that is frozen in time, which is cool, but jeez what a mess! I will definitely avoid booking a ticket that passes through BUR in the future. 

In other news, I went on a pretty sweet wine tasting trip. The places we saw all used biodynamic and organic farming methods, which seem like a great concept yet are probably totally lost on me. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between an organically grown wine and a regular one. I can barely differentiate a pino grigio from a shiraz. But it’s great that there’s so much environmentally-friendly innovation going on in the wine making business. The only problem with this region is that there are SO many wineries that they are spread out. We were out and about for almost 7 hours and only hit 3 places! It was fun, I just wish I could have sampled a bigger variety. There’s always next time!

Posted by Caro in Rants and raves, Things to do, Travel, fun and tagged with
03Mar
2

Best Pickup Line EVER

I was at a bar in Utah, and after staring at me for a bit, a gentleman asked me,

“Wanna go halves on a bastard child with me?”

Awesome buddy.

Posted by Caro in Hilarious, Random, Travel and tagged with ,
24Feb
4

Molly Mormon

I must say, one of the highlights of my Utah trip was the visit to the Mormon Temple. It was pretty much exactly what I expected: beautiful buildings and grounds + an atmosphere of extreme mystery (they really aren’t very forthcoming with information – they just give you brief, general information) + people ready and willing to convert me. 

♦ One of our tour guides referred to Jesus as “my lord and savior Jesus Christ” at least 15 times in the span of 5 minutes. I wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just abbreviate this to “Jesus Christ” or just “Jesus” 

♦ Another tour guide (approximately 19 years old) told us her major goal in life was to finish her mission, then go home and hopefully find a husband

♦ Polygamy was never explicitly mentioned. However, one tour guide did tell us that in the past, “families were encouraged to take care of other families. But then the fourth prophet received a revelation from our Heavenly Father that this was no longer OK”. That’s one way to sugar coat it!

♦Apparently there are multiple bride rooms in the temple, so multiple marriages take place at the same time. To me, that would suck. You really don’t get anything personal; it’s almost like mass-produced marriages. The brides’ dresses were really pretty though, even with all the long sleeves and whatnot (Mormon-style if you will)

♦ While touring Brigham Young’s home, we were pretty much trapped inside until we made a promise to kneel before our beds every night and pray to God. On the one hand I’m not comfortable making a promise I’m not going to keep, but on the other hand, I was literally cornered by these women. It was incredibly intimidating and scary!!

♦ l had to fill out a comment card. In fact, everyone I encountered asked me to fill one out. Fortunately I planned ahead and didn’t list my address. After we turned them in we were told that someone would be sent to our homes to explain in more detail the Book of Mormon and information on families and the temple. I’m really not interested in having someone come to my home……

But like I said, despite the inundation of religion, the grounds were amazingly beautiful! Some pictures:  

View of the temple and tabernacle (the dome building) from the top floor of the observatory. We were only allowed on the top level and had to have a guide. I think they do a lot of business from this building. It’s all very secretive.

This is the inside of the Tabernacle. The acoustics are incredible – they did a demonstration and from opposite ends of the building you could literally hear a pin drop and a piece of paper rip. Awesome!

Outside of the convention center. The inside was pretty cool too…One room has NO pillars but holds 22,000 people!

 

Outside of the convention center building, there was a random waterfall just for looks! Amazing

 

The outside of Brigham Young’s house

 

Brigham’s Favorite Sarsaparilla. It was one of the best ones I’ve ever had. Brigham knew what he was doing haha

 

Posted by Caro in Rants and raves, Travel, cool and tagged with ,
19Feb
4

Utah

I’ve arrived in Utah. So far so good. First impressions: 

♦It isn’t nearly as cold as I thought/wanted it to be

♦There is still some snow on the ground, which is awesome. I picked some up once I arrived at my hotel, just cuz I haven’t touched snow in a long time lol

♦I had about a 45 minute ride in a shuttle from the airport to my hotel. I was the only passenger on the shuttle, and when the driver started talking (“UUUUUUM” came out of his mouth every 5 seconds), I was a bit worried. He did have some interesting stories though, particularly the ENTIRE history of the Donner party. Apparently they went around some mountains that we passed. He also informed me of the more “scandelous” days this town has seen. I didn’t believe him at first. I mean, we are talking about UTAH. He said he doesn’t talk to Utah natives about that stuff, cuz they just don’t want to hear it. He was definitely entertaining. 

♦Apparently there is a microbrewery down the street from my hotel, along with a couple of other places that look like bars. I was under the impression that drinking was pretty rare in this state, and that to get into such an establishment you have to have a membership. Granted I haven’t tried to get in, but from the looks of it, maybe that’s not the case. At least not on this “risqué” street haha

♦My room doesn’t seem to have actual curtains, just the sheers. I guess that means I won’t be walking around naked in here. Sad.

That’s about it for now. Kelsey and Josh should be done with their baby class soon and tomorrow I am going to do some sight seeing. I will definitely update for any mormon experiences. It should be interesting!

Posted by Caro in Things to do, Travel, fun, interesting and tagged with ,