Holly's Summary

Ok, so an entire week has passed since we got home. I found I do not mind driving in the car as much as I thought I would, as long as it is for relatively short distances, but I hate getting gas. We stopped over 30 times in three and a half weeks and I just don't want to stop and get gas anymore. My light came on this week before I finally forced myself to fill up. Other side effects of being home: part of me misses the constant companionship, the roadside is just not as beautiful or exciting, and homemade food tastes absolutely amazing. I also am so appreciative of having cell phone reception 24/7, I missed not being able to pick up the phone and call people at any time.

I am happy to be home, and happy to be falling back into a schedule and regular routine that does not involve driving for 10 hours a day. At the same time, I am still living in the excitement of the trip. One of my first nights back, I went out and met up with some friends and just ranted about all our crazy traveling adventures. When it was time to leave and I got back into the car, I wanted to keep talking to people about the trip, I wasn't ready to be quiet and go to bed. Those are the times that I miss having the girls around, there was always somebody there to listen or sing along to the radio.

The trip really was amazing in the geographic aspect, but also in the personal. It helped me see a new side of Monica and Shannon, and despite living with them for basically four years, I learned about new aspects of their personalities and lives.

I have done my best to print out the pictures and put them into albums. I narrowed it down from over 1,300 photos to about 400. I'm trying to go back and fill in the captions so they are self-explanatory and I can actually remember all the silly details years and years from now. Because as everybody told me before the trip, it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I will always have with me. I love watching the news and being able to say, "wow, I was there..." when I hear about some distant city or national park.

There was something therapeutic in driving and watching the entire country side pass me by, knowing that what I saw would never look the same to anybody else ever again. Those scenes will fade and change as time and weather take their toll; people will continue to casually drive through those same roads, but they will never see or feel exactly what I did as I drove through there. That is a unifying and solitary thought for me and I like it that way. Sure, millions of people travel all over the world and sometimes traveling loses its excitement or hype, but despite it being a universal activity, this trip was distinctly mine. The memories and experiences are all mine for a lifetime.

...Looking forward to some more traveling, but until then, back to reality and routine.

Home

My last update.

Here I am. Four days after the return from THE ROADTRIP. I am very glad to be home, although the trip was literally amazing. It is so nice to be with my husband and kids (dog and cat) again. Steve took a day off of work to spend more time with me. We had a wonderful three days spending quality time together.


My final thoughts on the trip.

The trip was one of the most amazing experience of my life. I appreciate and cherish America so much more after this trip. It is so beautiful! I loved seeing the change in landscape especially starting in the Southwest. (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona) You can see from the previous pictures that it is so different from Pennsyvania. I was not disappointed by any area of the United States. I also must say that as for favorites, San Francisco is my favorite city. California my favorite scenic area (everyone must do the coastal route!). But, everywhere is just so beautiful. I would definitely do this trip again. Next time focusing on some of the middle states where we missed. Route 66 perhaps? I also appreciate how close I got to the girls even though we had lived together for four years. More importantly, I was able to lean about myself on this trip which added to the awesome experience.

Now, it is back to reality. School begins in about 2 weeks and I am spending time preparing for that. My last words? If you ever get the opportunity to do this, DO IT! And keep us all at home posted!

Shannon's Summary

So it seems we've all come home and started our normal routines again, not having time for this lovely website. Our last night on the trip was absolutely wonderful. We just played around with the makeup, watched one of the four DVD's of our trip (because the other three we can't get to work :( ), and we finished watching Prime, the movie we started when we were bored in Wisconsin. The next morning we all left completely excited to go home, see our family and friends, and start the routine in the SAME house, the SAME bathroom, the SAME bedroom.

More than 8,500 miles, $905 worth of gas, $495 worth of camp sites and hotel (the hotel was $200 of that $495) later, we're home and broke... or at least I am. Thank goodness that was all split by three people.

Since I've come home, the famous question is, "What was your favorite part?". Here's my answer. "Well, Austin was to me the most beautiful and diverse when it comes to nature because it's a whole beautiful area, being hill country, and there's all these secret things, lakes, waterfalls, restaurants that look over the lake from a million feet up, and a million and a half bats that all fly out from under a bridge. The trip up Rt. 1 in California was beautiful as well but not as diverse as Austin. Yellowstone was AWEsome with things I've never seen in my life and probably won't see again unless I visit the park again. I liked watching the video in Mount Rushmore at night cause at the end it had the "Oh Beautiful Song" (which was my favorite when I was three years old and I still don't know the actual title for it, for most of you who don't know that about me) because it showed all these pictures of the county as the different phrases were showing up on the screen and it just made me see how much of our country we really were able to experience and how beautiful it was. But besides nature, my favorite days on the whole trip were the days we were able to relax. It made me appreciate more of what it is to be able to be tired and fall asleep in a bed instead of setting up the tent first. Being able to sit in front of a TV or computer to watch a movie and even if you're not really talking to the people next to you, you know that they're sharing the same appreciation. To sit and chat with people you barely know and get to know more about them and share stories in a love-filled room. Relaxing can really be so great, when done correctly. :) My favorite past-time with the girls?... "I really like how..." is a game that my friend Molly helped me make up that makes you appreciate everything around you. Just fill in the sentence and since it says "how", it makes you explain why you like something. We got to pick each other's brains and see how we each see things in the world. Good bonding game. Plus, everybody gets compliments here and there. :)

I'm sooo glad Jessica moved out to San Diego and that Monica had the brilliant idea to drive out to see her. What an experience. It was wonderful to read and hear that so many people were following us along on our trip. It made it even more exciting knowing that we could tell everybody about it and they'd be excited too. Hopefully you were able to get to know more about our country and appreciate it at least a little more after following along so dedicatedly to our wesbite.

Cleveland, OH

It's our last night of our trip!!! Bittersweet of course. We drove 7 hours to Cleveland and we checked into a hotel, yes, I said it. It was so exciting. The girls wanted to do another hall of fame... rock and roll this time. I decided to stay back and organize the car and whatnot. The girls seemed to have fun, learned a lot, walked a lot, and got into Johnny Cash's tour bus. Even if it didn't drive around, they still were happy.

When they finished at the Rock n Roll hall of fame, we met up for happy hour to celebrate our last night with a drink. We had dinner at Key West Café which seems to have a wind tunnel down that street. It was crazy. I noticed the sunset as we were walking home. My Favorite! I made the poor girls with tired legs walk down to Lake Erie which was just a couple blocks down. We took some pictures and headed back for a nice pampering night in our HOTEL!!! still excited... sorry. So here we are. Our second to last update. We decided we'll all update when we get home so stay tuned!

Sioux Falls, SD and Chicago, IL

So Tuesday night it was all nice and breezy as we went to sleep around 11pm, very calming... I had trouble falling asleep with lots on my mind so around 2am I noticed big flashes of light. I checked the weather from that same phone number that got Holly and I back to Uncle Wendell's when we got lost (1-800-555-TELL, its free). Anyway, long story short, HUGE thunderstorm hits us around 3am. Thank goodness I fixed the fly on the tent so that no holes showed but it ended up not being all that waterproof anyway. About 5 minutes into the pouring rain, that was louder than ever since it hit our tent, I started getting dripped on, all over the place. The tent was under a tree, except the end where I was, so the girls stayed pretty dry. I got my beach towel to soak up the water. In the morning, after falling asleep around 4am, I wake up with my towel soaked, the underneath of Holly and my sleeping bags all wet, and the corner of Holly's pillow soaked. Monica, in the middle, managed to stay dry but woke up with a cold. Go figure.

We had a relaxing Wednesday with nothing planned except to drive to Wisconsin. We drove, stopped at Walmart, ate at Texas Roadhouse (our favorite), and then watched part of a movie until our laptop battery died. Lazy but enjoyable day.

Thursday's the day we went to Chicago! Yes, it is the windy city! We had a pass that could let you into most museums and other things that are very neat. Only we got there around 2, had trouble finding parking, and had lunch at Millenium Park which didn't give us much time since the museums closed around 5:30. Millenium Park was really neat with this Cloud Gate statue made of some shiny material that is seamless and I just kept calling it the bean thing. Holly also got run over by this guy that walked on a barrel. We went to the Adler Planetarium and watched an IMAX about blackholes and we went to the Field Museum and saw the largest and most intact T-Rex in the world. They named her sue. There was an exibit on the America's or something where it had old Peruvian culture stuff (Inca) so I went in there while the girls checked out Sue's skull. If you know me and museums, I was in and out of the exhibit within just a few minutes and if you know Holly and Monica, you know they were in there for a lot longer than that. We got separated and no reception. It took a while but we found each other again.

It was about 6 when we were ready to go and had to walk really far, next to Lake Michigan mind you, and we ate at Lou Minalti's Pizzaria. That place is known for their Chicago style deep dish pizza. We got sausage and it was pretty good, but too much sausage we agreed. Long walk back to the car but we ended up passing a street that was blocked to film for the movie "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie and the guy from Bruce Almighty that acted as God. Sorry, I'm not good at famous people. That was the end of our wonderful stay in the Windy City. We camped for our LAST TIME!!!! It's not bad camping but it is bad when you get to your campsite in the dark and all you want to do is sleep but you have to set up your tent first.

South Dakota- Badlands and Sioux Falls

Hello All!
Our day started out by "sleeping in" as Shannon said. This was until 8 am. Holly and I did NOT want to get out of our sleeping bags. We stayed at the 2nd biggest KOA and it was very comfortable grass if I must say so myself. As Holly and I stumbled out of the tent, we all decided to go the cook's tent and have all-you-can-eat pancakes. YUMMMY! Then we headed on the road. Off to the BADLANDS... dun dun dun!

This area is called the Badlands because the Indians called it that. It is an area that use to be filled with prehistoric animals and was actually a tropic area and is now very dry. It is pretty amazing. On all the rocks and buttes you can see the different levels of earth and how the earth has changed. AND.... there are all these fossils of prehistoric animals. SO SO Cool. We had lunch there. We all bought rings together. Fun Fun. So then, we left.

We drove, and drove and drove. I was tired. Holly entertained me by playing "Would You Rather". Shannon was sleeping or else she would have LOVED to play. It is her absolute favorite game. She loooooves to make choices. (Please sense the dripping sarcasm.)

Then, we arrived at the campground. We were tired. Talk to everyone soon!

South Dakota- Devil's Tower, Crazy Horse, and Mount Rushmore

So we awoke to a blustery Wyoming morning, showered quickly, restocked the ice and were on our way to South Dakota with our ultimate destination being Mount Rushmore.

We were on the road again with a shorter distance to go than we thought because we traveled farther the night before.

Our first stop was a mini detour to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. This is a huge rock that juts out of the earth. Some believe it was created by the inside of a volcano. BUT, there is a Native American legend that a bear was chasing seven brothers and the one brother had magical powers. He sang a song and the rock rose out of the earth and carried the seven brothers to safety. The bear still tried to claw its way up to the brothers which created the markings you know see in the tower. No one really knows why the tower is called Devil's Tower, but one surveyor said that a group of Indians called it "Bad God's Tower" which obviously translates into Devil's Tower. It was pretty awe inspiring. It is truly amazing all there is in America.

We left there and headed toward Crazy Horse Memorial. This is the largest monument in progress in the world. It is dedicated to War Chief Crazy Horse who took down Custer's 7th Infantry. (Look how much we are learning!) When it is finished it is going to have him on a horse pointing towards his lands. It is actually a tribute to all Native Americans and their pride in their land. Right now, it is just his face. Here we had an early dinner at Laughing Water Restaurant. We all had some variation of Native American food. I had a buffalo beef stew on top of Indian Fry Bread (very comparable to funnel cake taste, just flat) Shannon had an Indian Taco and Holly had a buffalo beef burger. We said goodbye to Crazy Horse and headed to see some of our presidents.

Mount Rushmore. A symbol of the development of America. George Washington- who began our country, Thomas Jefferson- who expanded our country with the Louisiana Purchase and wrote the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln who preserved our country by taking the first steps to abolish slavery, and Theodore Roosevelt who took pride in our country by creating national parks and monuments among his other accomplishments. Here, we spent time admiring the view and learning about the development of the monument. Then, we got some ice cream and watched the night show. Here we learned about the end of the Indian Wars, and the presidents who are on the monument. The monument lit up to the patriotic sound of "America, America". The three of us noted how it felt like the climax of our trip. We are all astounded by how much we appreciate America after this trip. Our country is so amazing, something we all probably take for granted.

All in all, it was a breathtaking day of see the country. Another plus, our campsite was only 5 miles from Mount Rushmore. Holla! We got to the camp the earliest we ever have. It was still dark. I hope you are enjoying keeping track of our journey! It is wrapping up rather quickly! See everyone soon!

Helena, MT and Yellowstone

Hello, hello!

The past few days have been filled with many more firsts and exciting moments for us girls! After we updated our blog from Boise, we went downstairs and enjoyed some tea and chatting in the family room with Jeff and Laurie, sounds normal enough, right? Well, Zipper was sitting under a chair looking out the window when Shannon noticed a light scratching noise outside, she turned and looked and was met by a huge buck with fuzzy antlers on the other side of the glass! Zipper had known it was there the entire time! Laurie said sometimes the deer and elk like to come up and eat the sunflower seeds or drink some water. It was so neat! Then we went outside to catch another glimpse of him, but were pleasantly distracted by the beautiful, starry sky. We saw the milky way again!

We heartily ate the fresh fruit and quiche Laurie had laid out for us in the breakfast nook. We sadly departed our little haven on the mountain and took off for Helena, MT to see Aunt Alice. To get an idea how sparse regular highways are let me begin to explain our travel over these last couple of days. It took us about 9 hours to get to Helena because we traveled on these two lane "highways" that wind and dip like a river through this magnificient countryside. The drives do not lack in beauty or natural wildlife, but when you just want to put on cruise control, it can get frustrating. There is no such thing as a direct route because of these big structures called mountains. It is truly breath-taking and we try to caputre these sights on the video camera and our cameras, but I think it is hard to do it justice.

On our drive through Idaho, Montana, and even Wyoming, many of the skylines are interrupted by huge billows of smoke from forest fires. So, despite the long and beautiful drive, we made it to Aunt Alice's house by around 7 p.m. Aunt Alice and her friend Mary were there waiting for us in the family room. We were greeted by about 50 smiling faces when we walked in the door, two human smiles and about 50 doll faces! Aunt Alice has quite the extensive collection of dolls! She has some that resemble royalty, Mother Theresa, some that she has even made herself! Her house was filled with interesting artifacts that she has collected throughout her life and many moves! Seeing as she is 89, she was not able to run about the house with us, but was very sweet and helpful in giving instructions as to where food, towels, etc. were and how we should prepare things. She had a meal all planned out for us and we heartily ate, excited to be using the good china and cut-glass glasses. Aunt Alice is known for her cut-glass colletion as well as her dolls! We sat around after dinner finding out about her life and her journeys before calling it a night and heading to bed. It seems Aunt Alice is a fellow Roswellian and believes there is more to Roswell than the government lets on! :)

Back around Internet access --

Sunday morning we woke up after sleeping in real beds (horray!) and attempted to get ready for an 8:30 church service with Aunt Alice. As I ran downstairs to jump in the shower, she warned that we were not going to make it, but I assured her we were becoming pros at running around and getting ready. Monica got started on breakfast and before you knew it the four of us were en route to the church, oxygen tanks and all (for Aunt Alice). We wheeled her into the service and were yet again greeted by smiling faces, all eager to see "Saint" Alice, as one of the men referred to her. After the service we went out to the garden area for tea and cookies; we met several of her friends and she lovingly introduced us as her three nieces from Philadelphia. When people responded with an astounded and somewhat questioning glance she clarified by stating that I was her real niece and she adopted the other two :) It was very sweet! After Aunt Alice loaded us down with provisions for the road we sadly headed out yet again after a short visit.

Aunt Alice had a neat windmill made by one of her students from 35 years ago sitting in her front yard. Monica took a really cool picture of it.

On our way to Yellowstone we attempted to finalize our housing arrangements for the night. After some adjustments, we decided to drive extra tonight after Yellowstone so we would have less to drive the following day. Let me say now, that our plans are always better and shorter before the follow through...I'll get there in a minute though.

Yellowstone was beautiful! We saw geysers, rivers, rolling hillsides, etc. etc. Yellowstone is sooo massive and each bend offers new beautiful sights to see. And yes, we have frequently broke out into song with Poccahontas's "Just around the Riverbend!" I will let the pictures speak for themselves. They are beautiful. We saw lots of wildlife, too. It was funny because we would be driving around and then you would hit a point in the road and everybody is breaking and rushing to pull over and grab their cameras. So, we always had a heads-up about animals. We saw elk, herds of bison, and deer. The herds of bison were honestly feet away and crossing the street while we were trying to exit. There were literally a hundred of bison along both sides of the street, but unfortunately it was dusk and our cameras could not capture it very well. And of course we had used the rest of the battery power and DVD to record Old Faithful -- but believe me, it was pretty amazing.















The picture of the pretty clouds are actually smoke clouds coming from one of the 2 huge fiers happening around Yellowstone. We tried our best to make the clouds look nice with the sunset. Putting the beauty of Yellowstone aside, it is a monster to get out of when the exit you need is closed because of fire and there are herds of bison blocking your way! It took us two and a half hours to get out of the park! So, then our not-so-bad-drive to the next campsite took so incrediblely long! We were honestly on these ridiculous no-where roads that yet again just wind back on themselves and you look down the cliffside or drive right along intimidating rockside. It was quite the adventure yet again. Needless to say, when we finally collapsed into our tent (which we put up with only Shannon's night light in ten minutes yet again) it was a happy silence for all of us.
Next adventure: Mount Rushmore and whatever else South Dakota has to offer!

PS - Thanks for all of the comments, we are so glad that everyone is able to check in on us and it's nice to have support!!

Boise, Idaho

Hello, hello family and friends!

We left Petaluma, CA at 6 am this morning in hopes of making it to Boise at a somewhat reasonable time and much to our surprise we made it here around 5:30 pm! It was not that hard to get us moving this morning after Shannon shooed us out of our warm sleeping bags because it was a chilly morning! We took down the tent and brushed our teeth in less than 15 minutes! Because I have been a little groggy on medication and unable to drive lately, I told the girls I would gladly take the first shift today. Today we went through four states, which rivals our first night of five states: California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho. We drove through a lot of desert and mountain/hills. Being from Pennsylvania, most of these large geographic structures look like mountains, but I'm not sure if that is a ignorant generalization or if most of them really are mountains. I try to find them on the map, but most of you know my map skills, so I will leave it at that :)

I have been excited about coming to visit Jeff and Laurie since Jimmy expressed enthusiasm about this place. For those that don't know my cousin Jimmy is normally a pretty subdued, happy-go-lucky individual with minimal emotional outbursts, so when he expressed sadness that I was only going to be staying here one night, I knew it had to be amazing! :) How right he was!!! Jeff was afraid we would get lost on the mountain so he kindly offered to meet us about a half hour away and then we followed him to his house. Oh my goodness -- what a beautiful place! Beautiful cannot even begin to describe it, and being an English teacher, I feel bad for not being able to come up with better adjectives. They honestly live on the top of a mountain! Jeff has gotten quite comfortable with the guardless roads that lead to huge drops, Shannie was a bit more cautious and reserved with her driving though. We passed several wild turkeys on the way up, only later to learn that they are frequent visitors and are actually pretty tame. We were also greeted by humming birds, dogs, cats, fish, and the less than desirable yellow jackets. How fun!

Then we had the most delicious fresh veggies with hummus. Now normally, I'm not the biggest hummus fan, but this just tasted so good! I could not stop eating it! (sorry Mom, I'll be sure to give your hummus another try) We had grilled chicken and pesto pasta for dinner and it was so nice to sit at a table and have a home cooked meal! Now don't get me wrong, we loved eating out at the different restaurants, but at this point in the trip, this place is just what we needed! The house and, obviously, the hosts were so welcoming and wonderful it is not going to be an easy departure tomorrow. Even Sam and Linus are just so sweet and adorable.
We have the entire downstairs to ourselves and Laurie has made it abundantly clear that we are welcome to take advantage of being in an actual stable home and not our tent! A big thanks goes out to Uncle Jay for helping to arrange this for us and of course to Laurie and Jeff for accepting three strange girls into their home so willingly! On our way down the mountain, we saw 2 foxes!!

Tomorrow we are off to visit Uncle Wendell's Aunt Alice in Helena, Montana. She is a retired biology teacher excited about hanging out with more teachers! Fun, fun! Thanks for keeping us traveling girls in your thoughts and prayers, it is truly and sincerely appreciated!

Route 1 and San Fran, Cali.

Today we left the campsite at 9 and drove up route 1 until around 4pm because I kept making the girls stop so we could take more pictures. I have been waiting to drive up route 1 since I was in high school. Thankfully, the northern part of California has a prettier coast than the southern part.


One place that we stopped has this friendly squirrel and Monica even had it eat from her hand. It was so awesome. When we finally arrived in San Francisco, we went to Fisherman's Wharf where we went shopping, had dinner, and saw the sea lions. The girls were mostly excited about a make-up store and then Ghirardelli's Square which has a cafe and store dedicated to Ghirardelli's chocolate. Yum. The ice cream was delicious. It was so wierd driving down Rt. 1 because it was in the 70's and 80's but as soon as we hit San Fran, 63. What? It was cold and it just got colder as the day went on. We saw people with winter jackets and gloves on. That was a bit much, but we weren't dressed warm enough. We managed with our ice cream. :)

Avila, California

We drove all morning and afternoon up route 1 and 101 and I was sadly displeased so far. I hear how beautiful it is, but so far, I've only saw about 2 parts where I wish we coulda pulled over. We arrived in Avila around 4 and went straight to the beach. We were only there a couple hours, but I explored a bit and took some pictures. I'm sure all the beaches are beautiful like Avila, but you have to stop and drive off the main route to see any of it. Hopefully tomorrow's trip will be more exciting. By the way, poor Holly brought a box of tissues while she laid out. It was pretty funny, but sad.