Yellowstone

           After leaving SLC we headed north to Yellowstone.  Our drive to the park brought us through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, but we stayed in the small town of West Yellowstone, MT which was literally right outside the west entrance to the park.  I was excited to see Old Faithful as I was certain that was going to be the highlight of the park.  I was dead wrong.  Old Faithful was impressive, but there were so many incredible things to be seen.  I quickly developed an obsession with geysers with bright blue water and bright orange bacteria mats.  Apparently geysers are fairly rare and the majority of the geysers in the world are in Yellowstone.  It’s not really a place you want to be if you’re allergic to sulfur as the stench is very strong.  Almost as soon as we drove into Yellowstone we saw a bunch of bison crossing the road just feet from our car which was pretty cool.  As we started our drive through the park, we quickly realized it was going to take us much longer than we had planned to see everything we wanted to see.  We saw rivers, geysers, trees, bison, elk, mountains, waterfalls and tons more.  It was really an incredible place.  As we left the park on our first day a herd of buffalo was crossing the road and we sat in traffic for at least an hour just waiting for them to move.  It was insane, but really fun.  And there were baby bison too and they were adorable.

On our second day in Yellowstone we covered a lot of ground.  We saw Yellowstone Lake which is absolutely massive, the Fishing Bridge which you can’t actually fish from, Upper and Lower Falls and we eventually made it out to Mammoth Hot Springs.  After finishing up there I wanted to see one more geyser.  As we were walking back to the car, Brianne ran into some UF alumni and ended up taking a picture with them for the alumni magazine.  It was actually pretty funny since we’ve been seeing UF people everywhere we go.  Anyways, I’m not sure that my words do a good enough job of describing how awesome Yellowstone was so I think I’ll just leave you with some pictures.  Enjoy!

Salt Lake City

Our drive to Salt Lake City started later than anticipated as we had to do a few errands before we could get on the road.  Once we got going the drive was absolutely incredible.  We drove straight through the mountains and it seemed like the view around every corner was even better than the one before.  The lack of guardrails was still a bit disturbing although much less so than it had been at 12,000 feet on Trail Ridge Road.  Along the way we stopped in Georgetown, CO making that the third Georgetown I've been to in the country (DC, South Carolina and now Colorado).  Georgetown, TX and Georgetown, KY are next!  It was a super small town and we only stopped long enough to take a picture with the Georgetown sign and buy alot of candy, but it was definitely worth the brief visit.  As we crossed into Utah, the landscape changed drastically as we began to cross open, barren land with rocky hills and cliffs and nothing to see for miles.  It was spectacular.  I loved looking at all the cliffs.  As we got closer to Salt Lake City, however, the mountains began to become more green and the scenery was just beautiful.  We drove by Provo and I was hoping to see the BYU campus, but we couldn't see it from the highway and after a long day of driving we were eager to get to our hotel and rest up for the next day so we continued on to SLC.

 

LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah

Salt Lake City, or as Sarah has dubbed it, "Mormon Central," was incredible.  I was very, very excited to get to SLC to see Temple Square.  After spending a summer in England with a bunch of incredibly nice BYU students I've learned alot more about Mormonism and I think it's super interesting and I love learning about it.  Plus, Mitt Romney is Mormon! Romney 2012!  We began our day in SLC by heading right to Temple Square.  Even the visitor's center was awesome.  In one of the visitor's centers they had a model showing the inside of the temple.  Since non-Mormons aren't allowed to go into temples, this is as close as I'll ever get to the inside of one, but I desperately wish I could go in.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  There are five or six floors and a bunch of different rooms that are all used for different things.  My favorite rooms were the baptistry, which is where baptisms are performed for the dead, and the celestial room which looked beautiful.  After checking out the rest of the exhibit in the visitor's center, we headed outside to see the temple.  I was so, so excited to see it and it was stunning.  There were people everywhere willing to answer questions and give you information and they are all so friendly.  There were also a bunch of wedding's going on so people were taking pictures everywhere.  Brianne didn't want to get in their way so she went somewhere else, but I was too excited about seeing the temple to care.  Of course I took a million pictures and then went and explored the gardens and some of the other buildings.

I saw the LDS Headquarters building, the Conference Center, the Assembly Hall and the Tabernacle which is where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs!!  Then I went into the other visitor's center which was also awesome.  They had tons of artwork, various exhibits explaining different aspects of Mormonism and one of the coolest rooms I've ever been in.  This room housed one thing: a giant statue of Jesus.  But that's not the cool part.  The cool part is how the room was designed.  It was a circular room that was painted to look like the night sky and since I really love astronomy I thought it was pretty awesome.

Overall, Temple Square was the highlight of my time in SLC.  I'm pretty sure that I could just sit in Temple Square every day for the rest of my life and be very happy.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to go back because I really want to take a tour of the Conference Center since I didn't get a chance to do it this time.  After we left Temple Square we headed to the Great Salt Lake.  It's absoultely massive and it was pretty cool to see.  After that I went to the Utah State Capitol building and took tons of pictures.  The views from the steps of the capitol as fantastic.  You can even see the temple from there!  Next I made Brianne go to the "This is the Place" monument.  I have to admit, I had never heard about this until I looked up things to see in SLC, but essentially it's a monument at the location where, in 1847, Brigham Young announced, "This is the right place" that the LDS pioneers should settle.  After seeing the views from there it's not hard to see why that was the place.  It's such a beautiful area!  If only there was an ocean in SLC, I could move there tomorrow.

 

After going back to the hotel for a little while to book our hotels for the next few nights, we headed back to Temple Square to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearse!  They were actually rehearsing in the Conference Center as opposed to the Tabernacle so we got to inside a gigantic room there to hear them.  They are so good!!  It was so exciting to be there on the night they rehearse!  They do a live broadcast called "Music and the Spoken Word" every Sunday at 9:30 a.m.  It is the nation's longest running network program and has been run continuously since 1929!  That's over 80 years!!  I would have stayed in SLC for days, but after a very full and busy day there we had to head out for Yellowstone the following morning.  I really cannot wait to get back though!



Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal (tried to upload
a video but it wouldn't work)



Trail Ridge Road

On our last full day in Colorado we headed to Estes Park to meet up with one of Brianne's friends for lunch and then headed into Rocky Mountain National Park to drive Trail Ridge Road.  This road is the highest continuous paved road in North America and tops out at 12,183 feet.  As we began the drive up we quickly realized that Colorado doesn't care one bit about safety as there are very few guardrails along the road and there's just a few inches between you and almost certain death.  Needless to say it was somewhat of a terrifying drive up to the top.  After many stops along the way for photo ops and to play with snow we finally got to the top and spent some time climbing around on the rocks.  The views were amazing the whole way up and it must be even better when there's more snow on the mountains.



Driving down Trail Ridge Road was much easier than driving up for some reason.  I didn't feel like I was going to drive us off a cliff the whole time so it was a much more pleasant (and much quicker) journey.  Once we got back to Denver we had dinner with Bethany and just relaxed for the night.  Brianne and Bethany both like True Blood so we had to watch that.  I have always assumed that True Blood is the dumbest show ever and now I am absolutely certain of that.  It's really, really awful.  We tried to get to bed early (and failed) because we had a long drive to Salt Lake City the following day.

Mile High Madness

 Our first full day in Colorado got off to a late start but it turned out to be a great day.  We headed out well rested and drove to Boulder.  We saw the Jonbennet Ramsey house which is apparently for sale.  I'm not really sure who would want to buy it though.  After that we headed down the street to Chautauqua Park to hike the Royal Arch Trail.  Bethany told us that the hike would be easy, but I think she may have slightly overestimated our abilities.  It took us longer than expected, but we made it to the top and the view was absolutely worth the hike.

After hiking back down we had the best and most well deserved lunch ever and then headed back to Denver to meet up with Bethany.  Later that night we went to Red Rocks Amphitheater for film night.  We grabbed dinner there and saw Iron Man which was better than I expected it to be.  Red Rocks was awesome!  It's a naturally occurring amphitheater with spectacular views of Denver and the surrounding area.  In addition to movie nights they also have concerts there and The Beatles actually played there!  Definitely a place to see if you're ever in Colorado.

The Mile High City -- Denver, CO

Our drive from Topeka to Denver was fairly uneventful apart from ridiculously strong winds and the discovery that Kansas is actually gorgeous.  Yes, it's basically just miles and miles of flat open land, but there are some rolling hills thrown in there just for fun.  We were driving west as the sun was rising behind us and it was just fantastic to see.  We got to Denver just after 11:30 a.m. and we were surprised that we couldn't see any mountains.  We had been under the impression that Denver had a perfect view of the mountains, but we decided to google it just to make sure before we asked someone and sounded stupid.  It turns out that you should be able to see mountains from Denver so we were right, but the wildfires around Colorado had made it so smoky that we couldn't see them.  Anyways, we hung out in Washington Park until my cousin Bethany was ready.  I think Bethany has been in Colorado for about 12 years now and I had never visited her before this trip!  I'm so glad I finally got out there though.  We met Bethany at her house and got settled in since we would be staying in Denver for a few days.  After that we immediately headed down to Coors Field for the Rockies vs. Angels game.  The Rockies lost, but it was still fun!

After the game Bethany took us on a driving tour of Denver.  Apparently, Denver has a fascination with giant animal statues.  They have giant cow statues, a horse on a giant chair and a giant blue bear.  For those Rhode Islanders reading this you can compare it to the big blue bug in Providence!  Although I'm not sure if Denver decorates this bear with lights and antlers for Christmas.

 After our driving tour of the city we stopped at the Denver Botanic Gardens.  I know absolutely nothing about flowers or plants of any kind, but it was absolutely beautiful.  They also had some really interesting pieces of art as part of an exhibit called "Kizuna: West Meets East."  All of the pieces were made from bamboo by two different artists who used different methods to create their work.  After we toured the Botanic Gardens and were completely wiped out we went to dinner at a pub called The Irish Snug.  Of course I was happy because I love pub food and I got a burger with an egg on it.  No better way to end our first day in Denver!

St. Louis and Topeka

After leaving Nashville we basically planned to book it across Missouri and Kansas in order to get out to Denver as quickly as possible.  We stopped in St. Louis to check out the Gateway Arch and we grabbed lunch along the Mississippi.  It was my first time seeing the Mississippi River so that was pretty exciting, but we were in and out of St. Louis pretty quickly nonetheless.  We kept driving until we got to Topeka where it seems that there is nothing to see except Westboro Baptist Church.  Of course, I had to drive by and get a picture.  I didn't see anyone around, but I'm sure they were off somewhere protesting something.  I can't imagine that the members of the church are very happy people with all that hatred built up inside.  It's really quite sad.  After creeping on WBC we headed to our hotel and got to bed early since we planned to be up at 4 a.m. to head to Denver!

Music City -- Nashville, TN

As you can tell, I haven't been doing a great job keeping up with this blog.  Being on the road constantly and having unreliable internet access has taken its toll on my blogging.  But I'm going to start catching up right now!  Our first full fay in Nashville began with a visit to Belle Meade Plantation which was founded in 1807.  We took a tour of the mansion which was pretty nice.  My favorite piece in the whole house was the square piano.  I think the highlight of the tour was not something, but someone.  There were two little boys on the tour -- Cody and Clayton.  Cody was very inquisitive and kept asking the tour guide a million questions and pointing out things in all the different rooms of the house.  He also kept taking pictures of the other people on the tour, including Brianne and me.  It was a bit strange, but he was like nine so whatever.  At the end of the tour, after we had walked around the grounds by ourselves for a bit, I ran into Cody again in the gift shop.  He told me that it was nice to meet me and then he gave me a hug.  It was actually pretty adorable and I don't really like kids so that means alot coming from me.  After finishing up at Belle Meade, we headed down to the Parthenon which is an exact replica of the one in Greece.  We hung out in the park for a bit and then went into downtown Nashville.  Unfortunately, we were there during the CMA fest so it was packed and there was country music blasting which made it even worse.  But the city itself was pretty cool anyway.  Later that evening we had dinner with Brianne's friends Mariah and Ben and got to bed early in preparation for a long drive the next day.

Road Trip Beginnings

On Monday morning after getting my car checked out I began the trip down to Myrtle Beach.  It was an uneventful drive and I was happy to arrive at Nick's aunts house.  I had dinner with the family and rested up for the drive down to Brianne's house in Dade City, FL the next day.  Once I arrived at Brianne's I increased my outdoor activity experience by about 200%. I pet and fed a horse and rode a four wheeler.  Obviously my outdoor skills are lacking.  We decided not to leave FL until Thursday so the following day we bought stuff for our trip, planned out our trip in more detail and then we rode horses.  I was slightly nervous at first, but it was fine and cool to do although I'm not sure I'd be interested in doing it all the time.  The next morning we left bright and early for Nashville.  When we arrived we met up with Brianne's friends Mariah and Ben who are kindly letting us stay at their apartment.  We went to dinner at The Wild Hare and headed to bed pretty early because today was going to filled with exploring Nashville!

Welcome!

Well my new blog is finally up and running.  It will be all about my travels from now on.  I'll eventually post a bit about my recent trip to Europe and Africa, but since I've just started a cross country road trip it won't be for at least a month.  There may be some style changes made once I have time after my road trip.  For now, I hope you'll enjoy reading and leave comments! Enjoy!