Our Journey back to Montana!

Our last few days in Franklin were bittersweet. We made sure to eat lunch and dinner on the porch everyday! I went to the library and updated the blog and our Shutterfly book nearly everyday. The best part was enjoying a night out with friends to say our goodbyes. We went to the pizza place/bar again. There was a guy singing, and we just enjoyed telling stories. Everybody shared what his or her plans were for the summer. We hope to see many of them again someday! Hopefully sooner rather than later :)

The day we arrived

The day we left!

Josh and I have packing down to a fine science now! I do all of the actual packing and cleaning. Josh does the heavy lifting/packing the car. He could probably beat the ultimate life size Tetris game after moving us to the East coast and back in a Toyota Camry! However, the day before we actually packed the car, we finished up a few last minute adventures. 

We drove the Tail of the Dragon. It is 318 curves in 11 miles! We were going between 30 and 40 miles per hour, and there were motorcycles passing us the whole way! The curves in the road are so angled the car is shifting back and forth the whole time. It wasn’t scary at all, but I did get a little tense in a few places :) Josh was on cloud 9 the whole drive! Rather than drive the long way around, we decided to take the same road back at a little slower pace to give our poor brakes a break!

Tree of Shame
It is covered in bike parts!

After finishing the Tail of the Dragon, the next plan was to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is a portion of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and the most visited National Park. (Since it is a parkway between two parks ;) We had been in Smoky National Park before, and we weren’t impressed. We felt as though all of the stuff outside of the park was prettier. However, we needed to say we had done it anyways. Well… we got about an hour into the park, stopped for lunch, and decided we were bored! I know were crazy, but honestly the trees weren’t even in bloom. All it was was a 45 mile per hour highway. SO, we decided to head back to Cherokee. It is the Cherokee Indian reservation, but it is a big tourist attraction. They have an awesome movie theatre, a casino, and lots of shopping. We looked around at a few of the shops, bought a few souvenirs, then headed home to pack! We said our goodbyes to Becky and got to bed early so we could get up early and hit the road!

 

Our last selfie in Franklin!

Day 1: The first day of our journey took us through Tennessee to Charlottesville, VA. One of my roommates from USU moved their for her husband to attend UVA. We got there around 3:30. Cara took us around the grounds (campus) while David studied for his law school finals. Before heading back to pick him up, we got an awesome cup of coffee at Shanendoah Joes. It was a really cute coffee shop that used fresh ground Guatemala coffee and a drip system to make our coffee! It was so neat and really yummy :) We picked David up to head to dinner at ZinBurger. It is a gourmet burger joint. They were awesome! After dinner we headed next door to Cups. It is a frozen yogurt place owned by Hooters! The workers are very attractive women that wear tank tops and yoga pants :) It was a fun place. We had such a great time catching up with Cara and David! They are a great couple, and we are so glad to have them in our lives :)

Day 2: The next morning we headed to DC. We had plans to ride a trolley and visit all of the different monuments, but when we got there, it was already lunchtime. 

Ben's Chili

We headed to Ben’s Chili to get a chilidog! No Bill Cosby or Obama sightings, but it was still fun :) After navigating traffic, we found a parking spot right by the White House! We were able to see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflection Pool, Veterans Memorial, and the WWII memorial. We knew we wouldn’t have time to tour Capital Hill, so we decided to drive by and get a few glimpses. (It was raining all day, so we were glad for a break in the car!) We found parking right outside of the Air and Space Museum, so we toured that for a while. I am not into that stuff at all, but it is an amazing museum. We made it through very quickly as we did for all of our stops. We are more of a quick take a picture, ok I saw it kind of people :) Our hotel was 40 minutes outside of the city, so we headed for the room. Of course it was right during rush hour! That was miserable driving. Poor Josh! :( He was a trooper though :) We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then enjoyed our first chance to watch TV in 4 months! It sounds silly, but I don’t think we had ever been so excited to “flip channels” haha. Our motel was kind of sucky :/ that’s the down side of Hotwire. You get some awesome places, and some not so awesome places. Oh well it’s cheap and we’re young :)

Day 3: Our second day in DC was pouring rain like crazy! The first day said rain too, but it would just drizzle on and off. Day 2 in DC was miserable!! We started off navigating rush hour traffic! (Why oh why must everyone want to go everywhere at the same time??? We didn’t have enough time to wait to start our day any later.) We got to the Arlington cemetery first thing. We planned to have enough time to look around at a few of the famous graves before heading up to the Changing of the Guards. Of course right when it started to rain harder, we headed that direction. Every sign would tell us to take another turn. We kept following them and it kept getting closer and closer to the start time. We finally gave up and figured we would just wait for the next time slot. Turns out we were right on the other side of the building! However, it worked out kind of well. We were able to watch the guard walk in peace and quiet for a while. We looked up a lot of information about their service, and we enjoyed talking about what they do for our country. We are both so grateful for our military! We are well represented from all sides of our families :) Anyways, when it finally started, it was well worth the wait! It settled down to a drizzle, so we were able to get a video and pictures. After the changing of the guards, we also watched two sets of changing of the wreaths. I can’t remember what that is called, but it was really cool! Both schools had students representing them for the ceremony.

After the cemetery, we headed to the Holocaust museum. We wanted to go early and get tickets since we knew a lot of people would be escaping the rain in all of the museums. It worked out great! We were in within a half hour; just enough time to tour the exhibits. Josh and I aren’t too fond of museums. We are amazed by them, but we both like to cover ground pretty quickly :) We are great tour buddies!! Plus we could only find 2 hour parking! 

By the time we finished in there, we went on the search for the DC food trucks. Josh had seen them on TV multiple times, and we couldn’t wait to try them. Unfortunately they were nowhere to be found :( We saw them the day before, but we drove around for about an hour before ending up in Chinatown starving. We were planning on heading to Chinatown for dinner, but it worked out well to go there for lunch instead. We weren’t too into touring or shopping there, but we got the classic Chinese Arch picture. 

We also found an amazing authentic Chinese restaurant! IT was sooo yummy!! I LOVE Chinese food, so this was very exciting :) They had ducks hanging in the window, and they were making their noodles homemade right in front of the customers! Definitely worth it!! Plus it was probably the cheapest meal we found the whole trip! Our next stop was the Smithsonian Art Museum. Josh is the artist of our family, so we were excited to check out what they had. We were kind of disappointed :/ It was amazing art work, but we really like modern and abstract art. The museum had mostly 17^th & 18^th century religious art. It was still amazing, but not as exciting as we had hoped for. Once again we booked it through without disappointing the other person :) 

The last stop was Capitol Hill. We were hoping all day that it would stop raining. When we came out of the museum, it was back to a drizzle. I insisted we had to walk up to the Capital to talk pictures, and since it wasn’t raining too hard why not walk around the back to see the Library of Congress and Supreme Court building??? That was a giant mistake!!!!! It started a full out downpour when we got half way around the building. We were literally wading through water while walking up hill! I kept saying, “It will stop, let’s just wait it out.” Josh was soo over it. I had been there before, so I insisted he had to see these building. It just kept getting worse and worse. We finally decided we were soo wet we may as well just walk around the back, snap a few pictures, and head back to the car. 

Cherry Tree Selfie :)

Rain Rain Go Away!!

Well, by the time we got to the car, we had to wring out our pants just to sit down! I have never been so soaked in my life! We had given up on the umbrella because we were still getting so wet. Even though it was now rush hour AGAIN, we decided to head for the room. We had hit all of our must sees, and honestly we were miserable :( We couldn’t wait to get to the room, shower, and put on dry clothes! In fact, we had to wash and dry our pants and coats that night! DC was great, but it would have been nice to see a little sunshine while we were there!

Day 4: We wanted to beat rush hour the next morning, so we left the room at 6:15. By the time we hit the Maryland state line, we had been driving considerably under the speed limit most of the way :( Oh well! 

We crossed the Pennsylvania state line a little bit later, and eventually ended up in Hershey, PA, home of Hershey Chocolate World! 

This was sooo much fun!! We absolutely loved everything about Hershey!! We started off by taking an interactive roller coaster type thing. We sat in cars that took us through the tour at a slow pace. There were dancing/singing cows, and a guy explaining the process of making chocolate along the way. It was definitely designed for kids, but still very interesting! 

After finishing that, we hoped on the trolley for our tour of the town. We had a tour guide and a driver. The “Conductor” told us all about Hershey’s business journey. He started out making caramels, but the only place that would buy them was a company in England. He later found out that the company would coat them in chocolate before selling them. People would suck the chocolate off and spit out the caramel. That led Hershey to sell his caramel business and start his chocolate making business. He came up with the idea to add milk to the chocolate, which became today’s milk chocolate! He failed 5 times before finally succeeding with his chocolate business. Also during the tour, we learned about the Hershey School for underprivileged kids. The school is privately owned and funded, designed by Hershey.  Students preschool through 12^th grade attend the school while living with house parents. They attend on full scholarships, so you must apply to get in. 90% of the graduates continue on to college! The house parents are paid $65,000 a year to be full time parents! Elderly also volunteer to be honorary grandparents. They spend at least one day a month taking the kids out for “family” activities. They also give them gifts on their birthday and Christmas. It is such a neat concept! Josh and I decided we should retire there someday! It was such an awesome town with great history! The tour was well worth the money!! We highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves near Hershey, PA!

After a few more pictures, we got back on the road to head to Cleveland, OH for the Christmas Story House!

When we got there, we realized that is the sight of the Zombie Apocalypse! It was creepy!! We drove through right at 5:00pm, and there was hardly a car in sight! The entire town looks like old abandoned factories. The neighborhoods we saw were scary! We had been trying to find a restaurant from Diners, Drive-In’s, and Dives the whole trip. We followed Siri to the first place, and it was closed. We followed her again to another place, and there was a dumpster diver right outside! It looked super sketchy, and there was no way we were going to leave the car jam-packed full of all of our belongings with him there! We drove around looking for other decent places before giving up and heading for the room. We were staying right by the airport, so I decided to find a place near there. I figured it would be a little better. I found a tavern with really good reviews, so we decided to give it a try. It was a score! We ordered chicken fettuccini alfredo (my favorite!!) to share, and got bruschetta for an appetizer.
Best. Decision. Ever.!!!! It was awesome! That made our night a little bit better :)

Day 5: The Christmas Story House didn’t open until 10:00, so we found a McDonalds to get some breakfasts while we watched the news and used their Internet. It gave us a chance to upload some pictures, and regroup before a long few more days in the car.Josh LOVES Christmas Story. He faithfully watches many airings of the 24-hour special every year :) We watch the DVD multiple times throughout the year as well. We are just Christmas junkies all around! The house was used for all of the outside scenes, and any scenes that showed the outside. The director wanted to have the 40’s era show through from the surrounding steel mills. It was a low budget movie, so they sent out letters to a ton of major towns asking the malls to let them film inside. They had a few stipulations: they had to leave their Christmas decorations up for as long as the filming took, they had to shut down every night at 5pm and let a bunch of kids come in and run around, and they would receive no monetary compensation. Out of the 40 some letters they sent out, Cleveland was the only place that responded! When the director came to town to check it out, he asked his driver to take a side road so he could get a better look of the factories. The driver said, “Oh you don’t want to go over there, that is where all of the steel mill workers live.” Well that is EXACTLY what they were looking for! It was the perfect location to film! Also, they fully expected there to be snow in December and January. He found the house he wanted, but no one answered the door. He figured if he had just gotten home form a 12-hour shift at the mill, he would probably be at the bar. He walked in and asked if anyone owned the house, and sure enough, the owner was there. He offered him like $20,000 to rent the house for 9 months. Well, filming began, and the snow never came! They finally decided to call in a ski resort to make snow. That quickly became too expense, so they chose to use fire hose foam on the streets! Also, the “snowing” is actually potato flakes coming down! That is a low budget film for you ;) It was such an awesome experience to hear all about the filming. The best part was the house has all replica pieces in it, so you can touch everything! The guy who opened the tours bought the house on eBay for next to nothing. It is the same person that started making and selling the leg lamps! The house was trashed, so he maxed out a ton of credit cards to completely gut it and start over. He went through the movie frame by frame to make it look exactly like the movie even though the indoor filming was actually done in Canada. 

There is a museum next door with as many of the original items as they can recover. I think this made the trip much more bearable for Josh :)

Original Chalk Board front he school

Dept. 42 Christmas Story Series Village

After leaving Cleveland, we headed through Indiana, the land of the toll roads! We spend $4 to cross one bridge!!! It was insane! We spent like $25 in tolls just to cross Indiana and Illinois! That put a bad taste in our mouth!! Our next stop was in Chicago for some deep-dish pizza! We missed our first exit, so, once again; we took the “scenic route” through sketchy down town Chicago! I have never wanted to live in a city, but after this trip, we know for sure that we have NO desire to live in any city!! There is way too much traffic, it is dirty, and you constantly feel uncomfortable with the weirdos wandering around! Once we got our pizza and got back on the interstate, in rush hour traffic I might add, it was worth it! The pizza was very yummy :) 

The last stop for day 5 was Elkhorn, Wisconsin to see Ed and Toni Davis; Tara, Doug, Max, and Zetta; and Cameron, Ashley, and Aubrey. It was sooo fun to see them and catch up! We had a great time hanging out, visiting, playing dice, and watching the kiddos run around. The beer and brats were perfect! We hadn’t seen Cameron in forever! It was the first time we met Aubrey, the cutest little girl ever! And it had been way too long since we had seen everyone else too! We can’t wait to see everyone again, and hopefully spend some more time in WI!

Day 6: The next morning, we were on the road by 6:15. We had a LONG day of driving ahead of us :( just before the Minnesota state line, we stopped for some cheese curds! We had to get a picture with him :)

When it came time to stop for lunch, we just picked a town. It turned out to be the Home of the Green Giant!

The next place we planned to stop was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Every year the designs are different. We thought the whole building was made from corn, but it is just the décor on the outside and a few “posters” inside. We were kind of disappointed, but it was still neat to see.

After 12 long hours of driving, we stopped for the night in Wall, SD. We got there just in time to see Wall Drug before closing. We didn’t have enough time to look around, so we just grabbed some dinner and headed to the room. When we got there, the maid had forgotten a wet towel in the bathroom. Everything else was spotless and nice, so they took $10 off our total! We ended up paying $50 for a 3 star hotel, not bad! I’m always looking for a deal ;)

Day 7: Once again, we were out of the room by 6:30. We headed straight to Wall Drug after grabbing some breakfast. We looked around a took a few pictures, but the backyard was closed :( We were soo disappointed! Josh got to ride the Jackalope, but that was about the only thing we could see! We are just gonna have to go back someday haha We were so anxious to get home, so we got on the road right away! 

It was another long day of driving, so after a quick pit stop in Billings we were on the home stretch! It was so nice to be back in our home state! We were exhausted from being on the road for a week. Plus Josh was in decompression mode from finishing school. I was so ready to see our family and friends. It was just a really great feeling :) After leaving Billings, I started getting the giddy bugs! I would just randomly get butterflies in my stomach, and all I could do was smile! 3,048 miles and 12 states later, we were home!

 

Welcoming Committee :)

We have absolutely no regrets for the last 4 months :) We were able to see and do sooo much. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would have the opportunities that we did. We will be in West Yellowstone for the summer and probably the winter. We are still hoping Josh will get a job as a Park Ranger somewhere close by. For now we are just enjoying being married, graduated, and free!