This morning, on nytimes.com, I saw a link to an article which is being updated all day today, as the journalist liveblogs Thanksgiving. I thought liveblogging was corny before (mostly because I am picky about which internet/blogging trends I fall for), but now liveblogging has gone too far. To out corny them (because that’s what we’re about here at Wanderful, corny), I’m going to take it one step further and liveblog MY THANKSGIVING! But not like that, no - see, I always wanted to keep a list of all the things I am thankful for on Thanksgiving, but I usually forget or fall asleep for most of the afternoon. This year, whenever something comes to mind that I am thankful for, I’m going to liveblog it right here on Wanderful. Perhaps this isn’t really liveblogging - I think liveblogging is supposed to have something to do with following your own or someone else’s actions for a day. I don’t care, I’m liveblogging my thoughts, that’s what I’m liveblogging. Here we go:
I am thankful for…
9:13PM
Wine.

9:00PM
THE DINNER WE JUST ATE!
 

(more…)

Let’s get us some equal rights, dammit.

(more…)

Read the first half HERE.

According to Penny, we still had three miles to go before we would reach the bottom of that hill. I was nervous for our own safety, but it was hard to concentrate so much on that when I was worrying about the fate of Wanda, stuck in the mud, cliffside - especially because we realized ten minutes after leaving the T@b, that we didn’t put her emergency brake up. After a minute of wondering how much of a chance she had of not rolling off the cliff, we realized she would be pretty safe because she was STUCK IN THE MUD.

(more…)

A long and detailed recount.

Mark, Mister and I left Fort Bragg and headed towards San Francisco, around 6pm on Sunday night. Mark drives most of the time during the day, and always when it’s dark out. Lately we’ve only been driving at night and always down some loopy road. As Mark guided the three of us in the jeep, with Wanda the T@b in tow, down and around a windy highway, my mind began to wander. I thought about what I should write about for Wanderful’s Monday morning post. The past two weeks have been pretty enjoyable, but all we’ve been doing is spending the time looking at the Pacific, picking up rocks and thinking about the Redwoods - nothing you guys want to hear about I’m sure. My thoughts shifted as we made a left on a road (as advised by Penny, our GPS) with a bright yellow caution sign that read “WARNING: Through Traffic Not Advised”. A sign anyone would have listened to….except for us.

(more…)

Three years ago our friend Brian went on a one month road trip across America. When he got back to New Jersey we invited him over to share his tales from the road, and that he did - He told us about a hundred stories that night and showed us even more photos. What I remember most from his stories:
-A photo of him jumping on what looked to be the edge of a cliff in the Grand Canyon
-A story where he attended a powwow with some weird hippie dude who ran a hostel he stayed at
-A photo of him holding a cougar cub as big as your average cat.
-And when he proclaimed “Portland is a cool city. It’s like a city made up of a bunch of rejects from other cities and they’re all just living and doing things and wahwahhaahahaa…” and he kept going on in his Brian language and using hand motions I don’t always understand.

Brian has a lot of time to go in his head and think and come back with well thought-out opinions on just about everything in life. Then he tells me “hey Katie, go see this movie, it is good.” and I go see it and hey, it’s good! So I trust Brian’s opinion most of the time and feel quite inspired by him after we hang out (which doesn’t happen often enough these days). So of course after hearing all about his road trip I realized that a road trip was probably the thing for me.

Brian’s definition of Portland sounded great! And on our long list of things to do and places to see, Portland was first on my list. As the road trip neared, I realized I was growing out of Montclair and maybe it was time to find a new place to live. So the search began: I would love to live in New York City but I refuse to live in the semi-affordable Brooklyn and I don’t believe I’ve got the money or balls to make it in Manhattan. Boston is too Boston (it’s the only way to describe it, go there and see for yourself), Chicago is cool and all but it’s too cold (actually it was really warm when we were there, I just hear about the cold), Cleveland is bleeeaaahhhghhhhh, Milwaukee is too drunk and iPhone droppy (well, for me it was), and Minneapolis is just too cool for us losers. Perhaps, I thought, I am one of those other-city rejects who would fit right in, in Portland, Oregon.

Hopes were high when we drove into the city almost two weeks ago.

“Holy crap Mark! Are those purple mountains….majesty??” So I looked up the lyrics and then tried to figure out where the purple mountains mentioned in the song are located. I still am not sure. These looked purple to me.

(more…)

This morning I woke up with all intentions of doing something in Portland all day. Instead I stayed in the T@b and threw myself a pity party. Ooooh poor me I’m on a road trip and feeling sad. What is wrong with me?

Tired of my whining, Mark slyly slipped out and went to the Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (STSNBN) to exchange our propane tank for the second time in TWO WEEKS! How can propane run out so quickly? I’ll tell you how: Winter. Really, it’s coming along quite nicely this year. Although Portland has been great when it comes to weather, the 70’s! Could you imagine? And they have trees here! Real trees! All we’ve been seeing for the past two or three weeks are pine trees. I thought surely by the time we reached a state with leafy trees, all the leaves would have fallen off the branches. But I was wrong and wow they’re orange and red and yellow! So Mark’s propane exchanging trip took over an hour because he had to wait over an hour for someone to simply unlock the cage, grab a propane tank and give it to Mark - He already paid! But for some reason the store just couldn’t function correctly in that hour leaving Mark with no choice but to “yell” at them. Sometimes I laugh when Mark yells at me because I think he’s joking, but sometimes his yelling can be scarier than how my mother yelled at me when I was younger. And I have a feeling Mark scared those people because he said all the managers had a meeting and then came out to apologize to him. And at the end of the story he added “And all the customer service people looked as though they were crying, must have been a tough day.”

So while Mark was making everyone in customer service cry at the STSNBN, I was laying in the grass, recovering from a run and was approached by our neighbor who lives in the sweet Airstream (can I mention Airstream on here since we are sponsored by T@B? T@@@BBB T@B. Okay, that should make up for it.) Maybe our neighbor, Alan, knew I was having a self-inflicted bad week, because he went on and on (in a good way) talking about how everything ‘just is’ - if it’s good, that’s because you are thinking of it in a positive way. And if it’s bad, that’s because you’re thinking of it in a negative way. And you’ve got to step back and think about whether you like the way you feel because of the way you’re reacting to things, etc. etc. Everything he said I’ve thought of before, but maybe he was just supposed to remind me about these things.

Mark came home an hour later as Alan was giving me an energy cleansing……………….

And that turned into Mark and me laying in our bed for an hour, earphones connected to our computers and ears of course, playing BRAIN POWER, a CD we copied to our iTunes that Alan loaned us. Maybe it was the sun shining on my already-tired-from-running forehead for the entire hour Alan and I spoke, or perhaps the vibrations produced by the deep beat that CD made, that caused me to fall asleep right away. I woke up ten minutes before the CD ended, freaked because it was now blasting a noise that sounded like an airplane taking off next to our T@B. My ears adjusted and I fell back asleep only to be woken up by extremely loud beginning notes of Led Zeppelin’s version of You Shook Me.

Then we ate some excellent Indian food and so much ice cream that my stomach muscles hurt from being stretched too far. Good night!

(more…)

If I were to ask you who has worse gas, Mark or myself, who would you choose?

(more…)

Thanks to Waterslidegate last Thursday, Mark and I had to spend the whole day attempting to defuse the situation and missed out on a quick trip to Minneapolis. We were going to head in there around 1pm, stay until 8 or so and then get on the road to the Badlands. But of course that didn’t happen…

Instead we camped out that evening at some blaaah KOA, twenty miles outside of the city and watched the vice presidential debate online, we also ate Thai food and Chipwiches so it turned out to be a good night. The next day we woke up late as always. Mark thinks it has something to do with the T@b because we can never seem to get up earlier than 9:30, and most of the time it’s after 10. We blame you Wanda the T@b, for being too comfortable. Check out was at 12pm so of course we were late doing that as well and eventually we were on the road and looking for some breakfast.

So this is where it begins: Eggs benedict (with no meat, thank you) is my favorite food, EVER. We began this road trip on September 1st, it was October 3rd and I hadn’t come across any eggs benedict on the trip thus far. Mark found a Chowhound review on some eggs benedict meals in Minneapolis and everyone seemed to love Al’s tart and lemony hollaindaise sauce over at Al’s restaurant. Looking at the review on my iPhone my mouth began to water “TO AL’S WE GO!” Oh no! Al’s closes in 20 minutes! So I called ahead - “Aaaaalll’s Breakfast!” said the guy on the other end.
“Hi, what time do you guys close?”
“1pm but if you’re on line by 1 you will get food.”
“A line?”
“Yes. A line.”
“Do you have eggs benedict?”
“Yes best eggs bene in town. See you soon, Katie.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Al’s knows all.”
We somehow arrived at Al’s before 1pm. I think because the fear of me whining all day if I didn’t get those eggs bene fueled Mark to drive like I’ve never seen him drive before. We made it past twenty minutes of traffic lights in five minutes, WITH Wanda in tow. I didn’t even have to help him find Al’s “THERE IT IS GET OUT GETOUTGETOUT!” He opened the passenger door and shoved me out. Leaving me in his dust. Would I ever see him again?

(more…)

I don’t miss living in an apartment at all. Of course there are things I miss about having an apartment, like having a place to go to the bathroom or showering more than once a week (just kidding, I showered less than I do now when I had one). So I’m trying to think of ways to extend this road trip. Of course that means extending money, which seems to be impossible somedays. On a road trip, 3 days = 1 week. So when I think about three days ago, it’s like I’m thinking about last Tuesday. I don’t even remember what I did last Wednesday! Wednesday was practically a month ago!!!

Every state has it’s own accent, which is GREAT. Right now we’re in Wisconsin, where they say ‘backpack’ and pronounce the ‘a’ like the ‘a’ in ask - a backpack. Once again we’re not too close to the city, this is because either there are no campgrounds close enough, or we cannot find one close enough with Wifi. Not having the internet is a pain in the rear and I’m thinking about just giving in and signing up for a measly 5gb of upload/download bandwidth.

Mark and I have this problem called “We live next to New York City”. So we know most of what there is to know about NYC and expect all cities to be as great as it is. But no city is like New York City, and I found this painfully true in Boston the first five times we visited. Finally I realized that maybe Boston isn’t 1/8th as awesome as New York, but for Massachusetts, Boston is pretty great and has it’s own little flavor (and accent). But then we experienced Cleveland and all my hopes of enjoying a city for what it is, were smashed. We recovered from Cleveland in the countryside of Illinois for a few days and finally ended up in Chicago, from last Friday to Sunday.

I was in a good mood when we headed out there on Friday. Chicago and the surrounding areas are flat, so when you’re driving into the city you can see it from at least 10 miles away. That combined with the Metra running along side of our car, driving down some highway and I had a feeling Chicago might be more exciting than those other Non-New York Cities. “WOW! It looks like New York City!” Once we got to another section “Hey! This looks like Boston!” Then it looked like Philadelphia and Baltimore so I figured maybe Chicago is just Chicago.

We arrived at the Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant. We were served tasty food by a bunch of hipsters who I suspect spend a lot of time looking in the mirror to look like everyone else (but guys, to your credit you all look good).

(more…)

Hot sun blazed through the jeep windows as we drove northward yesterday afternoon. Air conditioning is very touchy in that stinky jeep — the vents refuse to blow cool air if the vehicle goes faster than 59 miles per hour. To make things more complicated, I’m so worried about maintaining reasonable gas mileage that I refuse to roll down the windows on highways because of wind resistance. Needless to say, Katie and I were feeling sick, sticky, and sweaty when I pulled off into Kankakee to stretch my legs for a bit. What was meant to be a five minute pit stop problematically escalated into a ninety minute excursion themed “squander your entire day.”

(more…)