r u l y

On our road trip across America, we spent a lot of time in hotels. Mostly, it was just to check in late at night, sleep, shower, change, eat breakfast and get back on the road. Occasionally, a pool visit was thrown in.

There were some definite organization trends among the hotels of various chains we visited. We generally stayed at mid-price hotels that were a step above the “bargain” level but lower than “luxury” offerings. Occasionally, we had a bargain stay or a luxury stay and it was interesting to see that the trends continued at all price levels, but varied in their execution. For example, a mid-price hotel usually offers a cook-it-yourself waffle machine, while a bargain hotel offers toaster pancakes.

Hotel trends are interesting because they sometimes foreshadow trends for the general home. After all, the hotel has made their selections to appeal to a broad variety of people while conveying a sense of luxury and pampering. Below are 8 trends we noticed among the hotels we visited.

1. Visual Room Numbers

Many hotels we stayed at used visual as well as numerical cues to designate their rooms. If you are on the road constantly, it is hard to remember what city you are in, not to mention your hotel room number. It is easier to remember that you are in the “cowboy hat” room or the “apple pie” room. Many hotels have added picture references next to each room number, usually showcasing tourist attractions in that city or tying in to the hotel’s décor but sometimes just an odd mix of “stuff.”

2. The Oatmeal “Sundae” Station

Two years ago, the “hot” item in hotel breakfasts was the cook-it-fresh waffle maker. This time, the new breakfast trend was a huge pot of oatmeal. Next to the oatmeal was a cute little caddy with varying toppings like raisins, craisins, walnuts and almonds. Each place added their own twist on the ingredients.

I liked this idea and often had the oatmeal instead of the waffles. The first time I tried them, I put a generous sprinkling of what I thought was wheat germ on my bowl. When I sat down to eat it, I was surprised to find how sweet the oatmeal was. I then discovered that my “wheat germ” was really some sort of crystallized sugar. Curiously, once my husband found out about the sugar topping, he started eating more oatmeal too.

3. Patterned Rugs
You would literally have to be blind not to notice all the wild patterned rugs. Often there was one rug pattern in the room and a totally different pattern down the hallway. In general, I like patterned rugs. They hide dirt incredibly well and they become instant artwork for the room. You don’t have to spend as much on your wall décor when all the interest goes to such a bold pattern.

Patterns and colors were bold and bright in most major cities. While I liked the artistic statement they made, I couldn’t help but think that the patterns would look dated very quickly. We wondered if the bold pattern trend would hold as we ventured to smaller cities in the center of the United States. Interestingly, these smaller cities did have patterned rugs but they tended to go for more subtle tone-on-tone patterns or more classical, repetitive patterns.

Some hotels are still learning how to use these bold rugs. There are some situations where the busy-ness of the pattern can be distracting and dangerous. Take these stairs for example. You really had to watch your step going down.

It is much easier to get your visual cues when walking down a staircase with plain carpet.

4. Curved Shower Curtain Rods

The curved shower curtain rod is not a new invention and has been around for a very long time. What was new this year, however, is that every hotel has them now. From the least expensive to the most expensive hotels, they all had the curved rods. Once you get used to the extra space you get from a curved shower rod and the luxurious appearance it provides, it is worth thinking about how you can put one in your own home.

Where you can start to separate inexpensive from more expensive hotels, however, is in the installation of the rods. Curved rods sit back about 4-5 inches from the holes where straight shower rods sit. Newer hotels install the curved rods from the beginning and drill the right holes. Cheaper hotels take out the existing straight shower rods, roughly patch the old holes and drill new ones for the curved rods. It significantly cheapens the upgrade.

A good compromise for remodeling shower rods from straight to curved is to find a rod with metal cap pieces that cover up the old holes, like this example.

Moen DN2141CH Double Curved Shower Rod, Chrome at amazon.com.

So, if you are attempting this yourself, take the extra time to either do a high-quality patching job on your drywall or find a shower rod with a bracket that covers the old holes. This double-rod from amazon.com might be an option.

5. Double Soap Dishes

Another shower trend was the presence of double soap dishes, one placed at tub height and one at shower height. I assume this is to accommodate the needs of both types of bathers. For our family, it was a great way to store more stuff in the shower. While many people are opting for shower niches with built-in shelves to improve storage, the double-soap dish method also works for this purpose.

6. Plugs and Internet Connections

Two years ago, I don’t recall seeing many, if any, plugs and Internet connections in hotel rooms. This trip, plugs were everywhere, particularly in high-end hotels. They are a wonderful luxury! If you are reading your tablet/Kindle/iPhone in bed, you can just set it on the bedside table to charge. If you need to work late on your laptop, there is no wrestling to stretch the cord from the wall to your bed or to a desk. It is easy to find your phone in the morning and it is charged and ready to go.

At breakfast, there are plugs and Internet connections built into the breakfast table.

Once you get used to staying in hotels with these amenities, it seems like a real step backward to stay in one that doesn’t. I have yet to see any products oriented for the home that incorporate these design principles but I imagine it is only a matter of time before they are everywhere.

7. Washable Duvets

Hotels get a bad rap for the well-known fact that hotels tend to wash the sheets after each guest but the comforters and other bedding get washed less often. The Hampton Inn advertised heavily within the hotel that the entire bed gets washed between guests. Traditional bedspreads have been replaced with lightweight but warm duvets and sometimes the “duvets” look more like sheets. It is really a neat solution as you can alleviate any germ/bedbug concerns of guests, simplify the number of linens and possibly cut bedding costs as well.

8. Incorrectly Installed Shower Water Controls

Not every hotel organization trend was a positive one. In many hotels of all brands we stayed in, a sad organizing trend was that the shower water control plate was incorrectly installed so that the “C” for cold water was actually the hot water and the “H” for hot water was actually cold water. While, ideally, the hotels would actually replace the plates with the water temperature in the correct place, a quick fix would be to put either waterproof stickers over these plates or write on them with a Sharpie. I hope any hotel owner reading this checks their own shower controllers and makes the appropriate changes to avoid safety hazards and injuries. If you are traveling with children, just be aware of this and check the shower before your children use it.

Any other road warriors out there? What hotel trends have you noticed? Please share in the comments.

*I have no affiliation with Hampton Inn or any other hotel brand.

The last day of a big adventure is always bittersweet. We were ready to go home in some respects, like sleeping in our own bed and stopping the unpacking, packing madness cycle. In other ways, however, like having the chance to have the whole family together 24-7, we weren’t ever ready to go home.

We awoke that morning in Ohio and, per usual, packed up the car for our journey home. After a short time on the road, we were in West Virginia. There are many ways for us to travel home but for some reason, West Virginia is always the route that draws us in with its natural beauty.

During our drive we crossed briefly into a corner of Pennsylvania, just long enough to capture this sign, then right back out again into West Virginia.

Our first stop was Morgantown, West Virginia for lunch. We hard about Mountain State Brewing Company online where it was well-reviewed. As we pulled up to the restaurant we saw numerous people walking out of the restaurant with smiles and to-go boxes and knew we were in the right spot.

First, we had to park the car in a nearby garage. In stark contrast to the sticker shock we experienced in Chicago, here garage parking was a rock-bottom $0.50 per hour!

Mountain State Brewing Company’s menus were printed on these great clipboards. It was a great organizational and stylistic choice. The clipboard makes it easy to swap out pages for specials, update prices or replace soiled pages. It also ads a little bit of edge and lets you know the restaurant doesn’t take itself entirely too seriously.

Other touches in the restaurant, like these sawhorse bar stools added to the edgy creative vibe.

The menu was full of fantastic and clever recipes. I especially liked their salad and dessert offerings. Here is a sampling:

The chef was hand-tossing pizza crusts high in the air and they were baked in a wood-fired oven that took up most of the center of the restaurant.

After a delicious lunch, we took a brief stroll outside. The restaurant overlooks the Monongahela River in a section where an old railroad bridge has been converted to a walking path.

We got back in the car and began a serpentine route through the mountains. The roads curved sharply left and right as we zig-zagged up one mountain, then down another.

From the back seat, our girls squealed with delight around every corner of this homemade roller coaster:

“Here we go again! Woooooooooooooooooooooah!”

There were numerous warnings along the road about steep grades, especially for trucks. When my husband saw this “Runaway Truck Ramp” at the bottom of a very steep grade, he commented,

“That’s not a runaway truck ramp. It looks more like a launch pad!”

Sure enough, it appeared that if you hit it with enough speed, you would become airborne.

As we wound along our route, we saw beautiful mountaintop farmland.

Our drive recalled numerous country songs about “winding mountain roads.” Yet, as we drove we saw signs of the future as well. An enormous highway bridge is being constructed that will create a direct route from mountaintop to mountaintop in a curvy area.

This development is also a bit bittersweet. While I understand that it must be a major pain to have to wind through those roads on a routine basis for truck deliveries and I would be very afraid if the ambulance taking me to the hospital had to take that route, it takes something away from the journey to flatten out the road. After you wind through all those mountains, you feel like you have been somewhere.

Alongside the highway construction, we saw more and more wind turbines in the landscape as well. As I understand, there are few, if any, wind turbines in Virginia at the moment but if West Virginia is any indication, they could be headed our way as well.

After a lot of winding, we hit the final tourist destination of our trip. We walked down some steps.

And some more steps. . .

Until we found our roaring surprise . . .

Blackwater Falls is claimed to be one of the most photographed sites in West Virginia. The colored water in the falls comes from tannic acid produced by fallen spruce and hemlock needles. The wooden path leading to the falls is lovely in itself and we practically had the entire park to ourselves, sharing it with only a few fellow hikers.

After gazing at the falls and bidding farewell to our time on the road, we headed back up the 214 steps to the car.

We drove out of West Virginia, into Virginia and were very nearly home when we encountered yet another frustrating traffic backup. We sat for probably half an hour or so.

This time it was for a fallen tree on some power lines.

At last, we were home and what do you think our children were most excited about?

Pizza Pizza!

We heard a hilarious laudation from my 6 year old all the way to Little Caesars about how wonderful their pizza, breadsticks and sauce were. You would have thought we were buying a fine diamond.

It was an amazing journey and an incredible bonding experience for our family. I hope that everyone has the chance to make an epic voyage like this during their lifetime and that every American takes the opportunity to see our great country beyond the popular tourist destinations.

I hope you have enjoyed the ride at least as much as I have had fun sharing it with you. Thanks for reading!

We woke up day 16 of our journey just outside of Chicago. My husband described our hotel as the “largest and busiest Hampton Inn” he had ever seen. The breakfast area was huge and a large crowd of Sunday morning diners descended for waffles, eggs and oatmeal.

After breakfast, we hit the road and traveled in to Chicago. Driving Chicago’s highways can get expensive quickly. There are numerous toll stops and we were constantly digging for change. The tolls were of varying amounts ranging from $0.90 to over $3! By the time we got into downtown Chicago we had paid over $16 in tolls, which seemed astronomical at the time.

To add insult to injury, check out the fee for garage parking in downtown Chicago.

After this cash hemorrhage, we were not in the best mood but most of us were still excited to be in Chicago. After we exited the garage, we were in Millennium Park. Millennium Park is (thankfully free to visit) enormous and beautiful with expertly landscaped and manicured gardens, interesting sculptures and, best of all on a hot summer day, fountains!

There were terrific views of the Chicago skyline from the park.

One of the biggest draws in Millennium Park is a sculpture by Anish Kapoor called “Cloud Gate,” but commonly known to everyone as “The Bean.”  It is extremely shiny and mirrors every object around, including a large number of tourists taking self-portraits.

Another huge draw in Millennium Park, particularly on a hot July day is the Crown Fountain by artist Jaume Plensa. Wikipedia indicates that this fountain has an interactive video component where it appears that water is spouting from people’s mouths on a video screen on the fountain’s surface. However, when we were visiting there were signs out that the fountain was under repair. All we could tell was that it was a regular water fountain but every kid for miles around was thoroughly enjoying it, including our own.

After our fountain visit, we took a few photos in the park and then sat down in a quiet corner of the park on some cement steps leading to some shallow channels of water about 4 inches deep. These water features are designed to allow you to dip your feet in but every tourist takes it one step further and starts wading in the water. We were guilty of this too and were quickly advised by a park volunteer who seemed to appear out of nowhere:

“Hey, you can dip your feet in the water but you can’t stand up.”

“Oh, sorry!” we apologized and pulled the children in to sit back down.

“No worries,” the cheerful man replied and went on his way.

As we were sitting relaxing and soaking our feet, other tourists also began wading in the water. We didn’t have to tell them not to because suddenly a singing security guard appeared!

“No standing in the waaaaater . . . . No wading in the waaaaaater . . . No boating in the waaaaaaater . . . No jet skis in the waaaaaaater,” he sang, with the lyrics getting increasingly silly as he went on.

Chicago has to win the award for friendliest rule enforcement. In DC (and Fredericksburg) the most common disciplinary phrase for this situation would be either a stern, “Ma’am, don’t stand in the water!” or “Sit down!” It seemed like Chicagoans were really trying to preserve a friendly, fun peaceful space.

After our water adventures, I wanted to explore The Art Institute of Chicago nearby. My 4-year old was a bit soggy but quickly dried off enough to be suitable for a brief tour. The Art Institute has a truly impressive collection of extraordinarily famous works of art, including Georges Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, A Sunday on La Grand Jatte, which seemed extremely appropriate for our Sunday visit to Millennium Park.

The Art Institute is enormous and could occupy a visitor for days. Fortunately, the Art Institute provides a 1-hour tour outline in its standard brochure, highlighting about 16 works of art that the museum considers its finest. With young children in tow, we knew our clock was ticking fast so we followed the 1 hour route, which took us very quickly through just about every exhibit the museum had to offer from Asian pottery to African masks, to Impressionist paintings to modern works. My daughters loved that it was basically an art scavenger hunt. About the time we hit Grant Wood’s American Gothic halfway through our tour, my son decided to exercise his vocal cords and was promptly evicted from Gallery 263!

Fortunately, my son calmed down enough that we could finish our tour, although his lung capacity surfaced again as we were trying to get lunch in the rooftop café and we decided not to press our luck further. We made our way to the car and drove on into Indiana.

There was some beautiful farmland scenery.

Finally, we arrived in downtown Indianapolis. Since we had so much success in Des Moines and Omaha walking around public parks to get the wiggles out while getting a quick flavor of the city we were in, we continued the trend at the Indiana War Memorial.

Before we started making these cross-country trips, I had no idea how many cities and towns have huge monuments honoring veterans from World Wars I and II. When you see them, it really drives home what a tremendously sad and difficult time period that was and how so many people must have needed an outlet for their grief. The War Memorial is enormous and has large stone steps, stone lions, obelisks and brass orbs. It provides an incredible view of the city.

As we drove out of Indianapolis, we hit our first major traffic jam of the trip. We were stuck on the highway for roughly an hour, just sitting in the car. Despite all the advances in technology and communication we have, it is still really hard to get information about local traffic. After hunting websites and Twitter, I finally came up with a vague Tweet indicating “crash clean up.”

I wish the traffic news would at least entertain us with a few juicy details while we are waiting. What kind of vehicles were involved? Was anyone badly hurt? Have the police/fire/EMS arrived? How long are we going to be sitting here? Alas, “crash clean up” was the best we could do.

We finally drove past the accident . . . a U-Haul and an SUV had some sort of terrible collision.

We lost quite a bit of time waiting for the accident to clear. By the time we reached the Ohio border, it was getting dark.

It was another fast food dinner since all the good restaurants were closed. We were excited that this was the last night on the road, the last time we had to unpack and repack our suitcases and that we were very near home.

Continue reading: Day 17 – Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Home!

 

We were strangely content being on the road over two weeks. Maybe we are starting to build up our traveling stamina.  The only sign of fatigue was the query from our 6-year-old:

“Are we going front or back?”

meaning were we headed back to where we had just come from or forward onto another stop.

We woke on Day 15 of our journey just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska.  Our first stop today was the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska.  This stop was requested by my husband to indulge his love of military and Cold War history.

The museum is a very modern-looking building with a missile perched right outside.  Inside is a very large atrium with airplanes hanging from the ceiling, several large hangars filled with aircraft, some smaller exhibit spaces and some interactive, educational exhibits geared toward children.

My favorite memory from the museum was the small stage in the main hangar, where I assume the museum hosts events or lectures from time to time.  My children climbed up on the empty stage and as I climbed up to shoo them down, I sensed that I had an audience.  The immense aircraft were positioned almost in a perfect semi-circle around the stage.  It gave a sense of a Superbowl-sized crowd staring down at you.  It was a really impressive and humbling experience to think of all the people these aircraft represented, from the engineers who designed them to the craftsmen who built them to the pilots who flew them.

My children enjoyed the children’s exhibits, particularly anything that involved pushing buttons.  We talked about an exhibit exploring whether asteroids would hit the earth but this was a bit confusing and scary to them at such a young age.  They also loved constructing buildings out of the architectural foam blocks.

My husband’s favorite part of the museum was this quote:

After the museum, we stopped briefly at another Nebraska institution, the nearby Cabela’s store!  We did a little shopping and then ate in their cafe for lunch.  What a menu they offered!

My husband tasted some of the more exotic meats while I stuck to something more traditional.  The ambience for the restaurant was very unusual.  Our table was an interesting homage to hunting:

There were lots of animal heads on the walls and it made you stop for just a moment to think.  For some reason, it struck me that while this display was a little shocking, it represented a completely different mindset–one that was much closer to and more comfortable with the cycle of life and the pecking order of the universe.  In my bubble of life, I don’t have to kill my own food.  In Nebraska, it appears that many people do (or could) and it takes enormous strength of mind to handle the emotions involved with that.  It is not surprising that so many people in this region turn to fervent religious belief to make sense of it all.

After lunch, we drove on to Omaha, Nebraska.

Our scheduled stop was to walk around the “Heartland of America Park” which is supposedly home to the second tallest fountain in the world.

As we arrived at the park, it began to rain lightly.  A handful of elegantly dressed people came running out of the park in prom-like dresses and tuxedos, with one woman in a princess-style gown.  We asked it if was a wedding and were informed it was a Quinceañera (15^th birthday) celebration.

The park has a central lake with a sidewalk all the way around.  It was very beautiful and peaceful.

When we were about halfway around the lake, the sun came out.

We never did see the record-breaking fountain.  Perhaps it had turned off due the rain or due to the droughts.  We finished our walk near some Norman Rockwell-like patriotic statues.

Then it was back to the car and on to Des Moines, Iowa.

This part of the drive was one of the prettiest of our journey.  When I look back at my pictures, I am not sure I have captured its beauty but I remembered thinking at the time that Iowa was really more like a landscape painting turned into a state.

We caught up with the rain again.

Which just made for even more dramatically beautiful landscapes.

Close to the city of Des Moines, we saw signs along the road reading:

Urban Sprawl

Ain’t too pretty

Save Our Farms

Build in the City.

Apparently Des Moines is plagued by the same problems we see here in the Washington area.

We arrived in Des Moines in the late afternoon

and took a walk downtown in the Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

We didn’t have very high expectations for Des Moines but it really blew us away.  This was an incredible display of art and the whole of downtown had an arts community sort of vibe.  There were people drumming in the park, lots of art gallery spaces and a vitality to the place.

The sculpture park was a wonderful way to create an outdoor art gallery that is accessible to all.  Many children were enjoying the park during our visit and we learned that the park is even open at night!

We left Des Moines

and headed toward Davenport, Iowa.  What is in Davenport?  Dinner!

We ate at The Machine Shed, which is an odd name for a very delicious restaurant.  They serve traditional farm-style food.  Drinks are served in Mason jars, there are oversized knives in the silverware

and you could make a full meal out of just the appetizers, which included cottage cheese, coleslaw and fresh bread.  I have never been served cottage cheese as an appetizer before but I must say it was delicious!

There was a wonderful gift shop attached to the restaurant selling everything from pie-making supplies to die-cast tractor toys.  There were some wonderful humorous but true quotes among the merchandise.

There were some mouth-watering desserts on the menu but we had absolutely no room for them.  We would have gladly taken a to go box if there was any way to refrigerate the leftovers.  Overall, it was a fun Iowa culinary experience.

We drove on through the dark to our hotel in Aurora, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, where tomorrow’s adventures awaited.

Continue reading: Day 16 – Illinois, Indiana and Ohio

 

We left Wyoming the next morning, headed east through Nebraska.  The landscape slowly morphed from mountains to plains.

You often hear the phrase “middle of nowhere” when driving through places such as this.  After all the traveling we have done across the United States, I don’t like to use this phrase.  After hours spent in the car staring out the window, you start to realize that everywhere has something to offer, even if it is “just” the landscape.  In this part of the country, though, it is true that you are somewhat literally disconnected as cell phone service (at least data service) was practically nonexistent.

As with every state, there were some unique aspects of Nebraska:

Advertising for the antler trade

Large religious sculptures

Cropdusters

Cattle Feed lots (the stench from this enormous feed lot was overpowering!)

We also saw plenty of wind turbine farms as well as trucks transporting the enormous wind turbine blades.  Trying to shoot pictures of trucks carrying the blades in the opposite direction required very a very fast shutter finger.  I was reminded of physics problems in high school about two trains passing each other.  Fortunately I managed to catch a shot.

We stopped for lunch in North Platte, Nebraska, feasting on delicious Japanese-inspired cuisine.  The restaurant owners were incredibly indulgent as our son crawled around exploring their koi pond.  When they served our meals, they took the extra step of creating “child-friendly” chopsticks for our children by creating an impromptu tweezer out of the chopsticks with the paper chopsticks wrapper and a rubber band.

They were a success even for my 4-year old!

Our meal ended with fortune cookies.  All of the fortunes were terrific words of wisdom!

After lunch we headed to the Golden Spike Tower in North Platte, Nebraska.

It is advertised as “the world’s largest bailey yard.”  I didn’t know what a bailey yard was and I was in for an education.  Before visiting the Golden Spike Tower, I had a very simplistic understanding of the rail system in the United States.  I assumed that train travel worked much the same as airline travel.  If you want to move yourself or your goods, you book passage from Point A to Point B.  What I was missing was that sometimes manufacturers load up their goods on a train and just get them moving to market.  As the train travels, businesspeople are actively buying and selling the goods on board the rail cars and they let the engineer know when and where to dump cars along the route based on the sales.

Changing around the cars on a train appears to be a highly complicated process on the face of things.  How do they do it?  There is a big hill in the bailey yard known as the “hump.”  The train drives to the top of the hill and the railyard workers slowly uncouple the cars and let them roll downhill to the next waiting train.  The North Platte railyard sorts 3,000 railroad cars a day and over 10,000 train cars pass through North Platte daily!

Overall, it was quite an eye-opening stop.

Afterward, we continued east, stopping at a highway rest stop to view some art.  Yes, really!  Nebraska undertook a public art effort in 1973 to celebrate Nebraska’s bicentennial. Nebraska commissioned major artists to create works of art along various rest stops on I-80, which runs straight across the state. The one that sounded most interesting was George  Baker’s “Nebraska Wind Sculpture” near Kearney.  The work is a large metal sculpture of modern design that floats around a lake.

When we arrived, we saw the lake but no sculpture!  After some looking, we found the sculpture stranded in a small cove.

Yet another victim of the droughts.  I think the artist would find this an interesting continuum of its kinetic journey.  While it wasn’t the floating whirligig I envisioned, it was still wonderful to see such beauty at a highway rest stop.

We continued on our route, scheduled to overnight near Lincoln, Nebraska.  As the sun was setting, we called ahead to the restaurant we selected for the evening to confirm they would still be open when we arrived.  Sadly, the answer was no and it was the same story with several other restaurants we tried.   We even tried to find a Little Caesar’s pizza location per our children’s request.  Did you know that there are no Little Caesar’s franchises in all of Nebraska?  Explain that one to a 6-year-old!

So, again, it was McDonald’s for dinner.   By this point, we were so tired it didn’t matter and our kids never tire of their grilled chicken sandwich.  We collapsed into our economy hotel and fell soundly asleep.

Continue reading: Day 15 – Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois

After a long visit in Utah, it was time to head back home.

My adorable mother-in-law sent us on our way with a delicious breakfast of abelskivers, a sweet pancake-like treat that can be eaten with either syrup or jelly and powdered sugar.  It is a favorite of many Utah families, including our own, but strangely I have never seen them on the menu outside of Utah.

We buckled into the car and headed out into the mountains toward Wyoming.

You know you are in Wyoming when you see:

Fireworks stores

Enormous wind turbine farms

and drive-up liquor stores.

The landscape in Wyoming is an interesting cross between mountains and plains.  The sun is bright and high and puts strong shadows on the mountains that can be mistaken for black mineral deposits.

We crossed the Continental Divide, which Wikipedia reminds me is a hydrological divide representing the point where water stops draining into the Pacific Ocean and starts draining into the Atlantic Ocean.

We stopped for lunch in Rawlins, Wyoming at a wonderful Thai restaurant called Anong’s.  They stayed open just for us and were very patient as my son crawled all over the restaurant.  The food was excellent, including these gorgeous summer rolls.

We ordered the yellow Thai curry for our children.  “That’s spicy!” they warned us.  “It’s ok,” we said and they all watched in amazement as our girls ate every morsel on the plate.  Yellow curry is one of their favorites.

For dessert, the restaurant gave us a free “sticky rice.”  This was my first time tasting it.  It looks like this:

It had a little piece of bread on top and some sort of cream.  It was very sweet.  I asked if the brown part on the bottom was raisins.  “No, it’s brown rice!” they told us.   Delicious!

A little more driving and we got to our destination for the evening, Laramie, Wyoming!

We arrived just in time for the “Laramie Days” celebration, including the carnival and “Street Dance.”

We weren’t sure what to expect but the announcement mentioned wearing country attire.  Our little ones put on the cowgirl hats and boots they acquired in Utah on a shopping trip with their grandfather.

They loved the supercute cowboy Uggs that are not only fashionable but comfortable too!

We wandered downtown and found a street carnival packed with Wyomingites, bright lights, food and music.  The girls had their first taste of cotton candy

and first ride on the ferris wheel.

As part of Laramie’s tourism and redevelopment efforts, a large pedestrian walkway bridge was constructed right over the railroad tracks that run through town.  It was a great place to stand to get an aerial view of the festivities.  It also gave an interesting picture of the diversity that exists in Laramie.  On the country stage/beer tent side of the bridge the sound was more like this and on the carnival side it was more club and R&B like this.

Laramie residents were boogying to both kinds of music.

It was one of those perfect summer nights where a warm wind is blowing and the sun sets late.  It was wonderful to be outside walking around.  It also made for great train watching.

As the evening wore on, the band and the street dance portion began.  A local country band was playing and a lively audience consisting of a mixture of high school students (some wearing Future Farmers of America T-shirts) young families and older adults listened and danced.  At one point, the band stopped to yell out:

“Give me a ‘Hell yeah!’”

The crowd weakly responded.

“We’ve got 300 frickin’ people standing out here and you can’t give me a proper ‘Hell yeah!’     Are you guys from Wyoming or not?”

It was tough to fire this crowd up for that “Hell yeah!”

Maybe “Heck yeah!” would have been more effective?

(Side note: One of my random thoughts at this time was trying to come up with a list of distinguishing characteristics between Western and Southern culture.  There is a lot of overlap between the two and some very subtle distinctions.  “Hell yeah!” was one of those distinctions.  After living in Virginia for a while, I am accustomed to hearing the word “hell” with a southern drawl so that it sounds more like “hail.”  I don’t often hear “Hell yeah!” in Virginia– the “yeah” is probably more Western.  You do hear a lot of “Hell no!” however, which when said with a southern drawl has an inherent humor to it that somehow gets lost when you take the drawl away.)

At this point, we left to find a late dinner at McDonald’s, the only restaurant we could find open at that hour and took our tired cowgirls back to the hotel.

 

After five long days on the road we arrived at the midpoint of our journey and our prime destination.  Ironically, just as in Denver, we arrived to find our supposedly tinder dry city getting doused with rain!

We were ready to stay put for a few days and get a break from the constant packing and unpacking.  We weren’t so much tourists in Salt Lake as we were visitors.  We spent nearly all of our week shuttling from one social appointment to the next, catching up with family and friends, many of whom we hadn’t seen in years.

*Since I am not sure about the privacy desires of our extended family and friends, I am going to share just a few pictures from this time.  Imagine beautiful women, handsome men and adorable children.

Probably the biggest reason people wanted to see us was to meet our new son.  Grandmothers especially want time to snuggle with their grandchildren.

There is now another “cousins dress” in the world.  I managed to just stretch out one more dress from the fabric we had but we had to use some filler for the back to make it work and my girls enjoyed having another “sister” for a while.

We also managed to spend some time in the pool and our girls made so much progress in their swimming!

As for other updates:

I enjoyed watching the first season of the ballet reality show Breaking Pointe featuring Ballet West based in Salt Lake City.  The season finale occurred when we were in town and my sisters and mom and I gathered around the TV to watch.  Interestingly, almost no one else in Salt Lake took note of this occasion!  While we agreed the show could use a little more ballet and a little less personal drama, it was really a great season.  Here’s hoping it renews next year and makes the company tons of money!

When I went to pick up our take-out dinner for our viewing party, I was reminded of all the beautiful dessert in Utah and picked up many samples for a dessert buffet.  Utah does sugar like no one else can.  Pastry and dessert cases are absolutely gorgeous.  I took pictures of so many sweets.  (We also ate plenty as well.)  Here are some of the dessert cakes we sampled for our viewing party:

And here is some gorgeous fudge from the local Cabela’s store.  It came in flavors ranging from chocolaty “Moose Drool” to sweet “Dulce de Leche.”  A customer behind me inquired about their “Red Velvet Cake” fudge which sounded awesome but apparently they were all sold out.

In contrast to all this sweetness, I caught up with a friend and her family following the “green smoothie” trend.  As I understand it is a mostly vegan diet emphasizing lots of fruit and vegetables.  If you have never had a green smoothie before, it generally tastes pretty sweet, as most people put in sweet fruits like apples (or as my friend chose, bananas) to make the greens go down easier.  We tried to trick my daughter into drinking rice milk but she is too much of a milk connoisseur for that.  She knew instantly that it wasn’t “real” milk and refused to drink it.  “Ice cream” made from coconut milk and cocoa powder, however, went down just fine.

From another friend, we learned a great lesson about hosting guests.  When it comes right down to it, being a great host is not about having a pristine home with everything perfectly organized.  If you can offer a warm, genuine smile, infectious enthusiasm, and a steady stream of entertaining conversation, all the rest is just window dressing.  Most of us aren’t quite so socially gifted so we tend to patch together a mix of social graces and organization but it was nice to have a reminder of what graceful entertaining can be.

We did sneak in some touring, checking out the new Utah Museum of Natural History which has been totally redone and is a gorgeous work of art and architecture.  It compared favorably to big city museums and (fulfilling the sugar legacy) had some fun and delicious dinosaur cookies in the café.

At the museum, we picked up this interesting fact about magnolias.  Magnolia trees are pretty rare in Utah now but we certainly have them here in Virginia.

We also went to This is the Place Heritage Park, also renovated in recent years.  The park primarily discusses Utah’s Mormon pioneer ancestry but also pays tribute to other groups who came through the valley.  Our favorite was touring Brigham Young’s farmhouse (which he never actually lived in).  It’s architecture was a very interesting variation on Colonial style.   One organizing tip from this house was that historically when there were so many mouths to feed (from Brigham Young’s enormous family to farmhands and other visitors) the dining room table remained constantly set.  After you were done eating, you washed and dried your plate and put it back on the table turned upside down so that it would be clean and ready for the next diner.

Our visits to family always go by too quickly but we had a wonderful time, made many memories and look forward to returning again someday.

After a mountain of laundry was washed and dried, we packed back up for the return journey east.

Continue Reading: Day 13 – Wyoming

The next day was July 4^th and we awoke to a birdseye view of downtown Denver.

“Where are all the people?” my daughter asked, having gone to sleep with a view like this:

Since it was a holiday, the city remained quiet this morning.  We had a lot of miles to cover today so we got started early.

This part of the journey picked up the theme of natural disasters that began our journey.  Much of Colorado and Utah was on fire!  Concerned family had been emailing us tips and encouraging us to be careful.  It was hard to tell exactly which areas were on fire and as we were driving through the entirety of nearly both states the chance we would encounter something seemed quite high.  We checked the Colorado Office of Emergency Management before heading out.  Their website provided a great Google map with the fire locations marked.  We were able to overlay our driving route on it and fortunately just missed all the fires.

Utah's fire status at the time of our journey!

Utah was not faring much better with new fires sprouting daily. We wondered if we would see smoke or encounter flames along our route. It was frightening to think of trying to out-drive a fire! Fortunately, we were far enough from the fires that we never encountered a single problem and saw no signs of fire other than warnings not to light fireworks.

We hit the road and drove through some gorgeous Colorado country.  The view changed about every 5 minutes.  This is one of the most beautiful parts of the country to drive through. There are mountains, and tunnels and ski towns and desert environments and all kinds of terrain. Even my “bad” pictures are pretty good from this section of our drive.  Here is a sampling:

At one point, the highway was under construction and it looked like we were off-roading.  The people in front of us certainly were!

After a while, we entered eastern Utah, a.k.a. dinosaur country.

We stopped for lunch at Café Rio, which we have heard wonderful things about.  Their barbacoa is more sweet than spicy but everything was delicious.  They had a selection of interesting lemonades, with strawberry, mint and even hibiscus flower!  They also had vanilla Coke on tap, which was an unusual find.

Next, it was on to Dinosaur National Monument, which was recently renovated.

My children loved the “dinosaur train,” a.k.a. the open air shuttle that takes you from the visitor center to the fossil quarry.

When you see the fossils in the rock wall, you appreciate how much thought and effort must have gone into figuring out that a pile of bones like this:

Might be a dinosaur like this:

We paused in the gift shop to admire treasures like a giant Allosaurus foot, which would make an interesting and masculine conversation piece in a corporate office.

We hiked through the dry and beautiful country along sandy paths.  We wanted to continue hiking but there were more miles to cover and we had a rodeo to get to!

Reluctantly, we got back in the car and headed through more beautiful country, which became more green, lush and ranch-like as we headed through the mountains.

We arrived just in time to our destination, Oakley, Utah.

While my parents tell me that I went to a rodeo once when I was little, I don’t remember it.  This was the first rodeo I recall watching.  It was an absolute blast!  Many of the audience members were perfectly dressed in country attire, from cowboy hats to chic jeans and boots.  It made for some fascinating people and fashion watching.

The rodeo itself was a supremely masculine event, with men saddling up on powerful horses that were “bred to buck.”  They piped in rock and country music as each cowboy competed and it was really fun to watch.  We saw saddle-bronc and calf-roping.  Apparently this is the busiest time of year for rodeo professionals, with back-to-back rodeo events.  Many of the cowboys were saddling up despite elbows and knees in enormous bandages and braces.

My youngest daughter kept insisting that she wanted to ride a horse and even began crying as we told her that this was not an event for little girls.  After her dad told her that she would have to practice really hard to ride a horse in a rodeo, she kept yelling out, “I’ll practice! I’ll practice!”

Meanwhile, my son had this intense look of fascination on his face, staring at something behind us in the stands.  When I turned around to see what it was he was looking at, I found only two beautiful cowgirls!

This was also our second encounter with Australians and horses (the first being in Kentucky).  There were Aussies seated behind us in the stands who generously shared an extra program with us.  There was also at least one Australian cowboy competing in the rodeo.

When the children could not sit still about halfway through the program, we headed to the playground in front of the rodeo grounds.  While my children tested out the swings and the slide, my husband watched barrel racing and bull riding.  I could hear the loudspeaker from the playground and had to laugh when not one but two rodeo professionals shared my son’s first name.  I had no idea I had a cowboy on my hands.

We had hoped to see fireworks for the 4^th but they were canceled due to the fire risk.  So, we drove on in to Salt Lake City.  We arrived late and hungry since we had not had dinner just yet. The only restaurant open was a local McDonalds.  When the car in front of us had some problems with their order, a clean-cut college-aged man came to the window to complain:

“I don’t know what the freak you guys are doing back there!  I need a small fries and an orange soda.”

We had to keep ourselves from laughing at the uniquely Utah phrase, “what the freak”!  We were now in the land of Zion.  After our gourmet dinner and a shower at the hotel, we rested up to meet our families the next day.

Continue reading: Days 6-13, One Week in Utah

We awoke in Colby, Kansas, ate a terrific breakfast at the hotel and got in the car headed for Denver. We passed a lot of dry prairies, dotted with cows.

After a few hours, we entered Colorado.

Soon after, we hit downtown Denver.

The drought has certainly affected Denver as well.  There were many signs that they were being water conscious, like this billboard, and a sign at a restaurant that they were only serving water upon request.

Ironically, the day we arrived, it was cloudy, overcast and slightly raining!  We spent our day in Denver with our wonderful aunt mostly outside enjoying the gorgeous weather.  After days packed full of touring, it was nice to have a day to relax and take it easy.

 

We stopped to eat at some of Denver’s fun eateries, where we had these delicious crepes.

 

Denver has some California influence with its eco-friendly and healthy lifestyle emphasis.  In one restaurant we were given a special menu for those following a gluten-free diet.

In the evening, we headed toward downtown Denver where the city’s July 3^rd celebration was being held.  The city was in full-on party mode.  It was a beautiful desert night.  The rain from earlier in the day had subsided and people were out enjoying the party atmosphere.

As for us, we learned from past experience that the easiest way to view 4^th of July fireworks with children is from a hotel room.  The kind staff at the Denver Sheraton helped us find a great room on the 8^th floor and we settled in for a wonderful show.

My son was especially thrilled to see his first fireworks show, tapping on the window excitedly with each explosion.

After such excitement, it was tough for the children to settle into bed but we had an early start the next morning awaiting us.
Continue reading: Day 5, Colorado and Utah

We woke up this morning in Jefferson City, Missouri.  The city’s name at first didn’t really mean much to me.  It was just the location of an inexpensive but well-rated hotel at a good stopping point on our journey.  My husband had passed this way before in other travels, however, and reminded me that Jefferson City is the state capital of Missouri!

So, when you are in a capital, it is nice to drive by the capitol:

After that short detour, we got back on the road toward Kansas City.

Our destination in Kansas City was the Crown Center, which is the corporate headquarters of Hallmark Cards and a huge shopping and entertainment complex Hallmark has developed.  Hallmark Cards has a longstanding relationship with Kansas City and is credited with turning around a very dilapidated section of Kansas City after World War II.

The Crown Center is a highly popular spot for families, housing a Legoland Discovery Center and a unique place called Kaleidoscope.  Kaleidoscope is a free service Hallmark Cards offers to children, where children and their parents can sign up for a 40-minute crafting experience, using materials left over from Hallmark’s manufacturing process.   I loved the concept!  It was a great way to recycle, provide service to the community and built corporate goodwill all in one simple idea.

We had a short time to wait before our assigned time in Kaleidoscope so we visited the Hallmark corporate museum next door.  This is a wonderful corporate museum showing many of the treasures of the Hallmark corporation, including correspondence between Hallmark’s founder, Joyce C. Hall, and famous artists like Norman Rockwell.

Each child entering the museum is given a passport to stamp off in each section of the museum.

There were sections of the museum demonstrating Hallmark’s manufacturing process, like how they die-cut and print cards and a wonderful bow-making machine where children can push a button, watch a bow being made and get a free bow to take home!

There is also a wonderful section of Christmas trees.  Joyce C. Hall, the founder and chairman, must have been beloved by his employees.  Each Christmas, the employees would create an elaborate Christmas tree, constructing both the tree and the ornaments, for their boss.  Mr. Hall would display the tree in his office for all to see.  Some trees were created by famous artists but the homemade-looking ones were my favorites.  Here is one example:

What would make the employees work so hard on these Christmas trees?  There were many posters up expressing Hallmark Card’s corporate philosophy.  One read: “We believe that our products and services must enrich people’s lives.” But the phrase that impressed me the most was this one:  “We believe that the people of Hallmark are our company’s most valuable resource.”  For a company that has so much intellectual property, so many licensing deals and original works of art, to still value the employees above all of that is truly heartwarming and impressive.

Hallmark even values people who visit its corporate museum!  As we were leaving the museum, an employee made sure to grab my attention in the bustle to say, “As a thank you for visiting the Hallmark museum today, here is a free box of Hallmark cards.”  WOW!  The cards are lovely and I left completely full of good feelings about Hallmark Cards.

We then went on to our time in Kaleidoscope.  My daughters loved this! Hallmark also owns Crayola so between the Crayola markers and the Hallmark scraps, they were in heaven making all sorts of things.  Their favorite was the custom puzzle, where you draw your own picture on a piece of stiff cardboard and then run the drawing through a machine that cuts it into a puzzle.  My eldest daughter cried when our time in the Kaleidoscope was over.  She so wanted to stay longer.

We did some shopping in the Halls department store that is owned by Hallmark.  These types of cute department stores have practically disappeared everywhere else in the country but they are alive and well at the Crown Center.  The merchandise was wonderful and unique.  My daughter found a spiked pink backpack for school that she loves (and has received tons of compliments on).

While we were exploring the Crown Center, my husband made a journey to the World War I museum.  The entrance has a beautiful bridge over thousands of red poppies.

We met up for lunch in the Crayola café.  I had another wonderful salad with supremely fresh produce.

There was so much more to see in Kansas City but we had to make our way west.  We got in the car and found the landscape changing more toward “heartland” and “plains.”  Notably by four key signs:

We ate dinner at a small Mexican restaurant in Kansas and then drove a short way to our hotel.  A full moon was out over the plains and it was so gorgeous it was beyond description.

We arrived at our hotel in Colby, Kansas and experienced class A midwestern hospitality.  We inquired if the pool was still open.  “No, but we could open it for you!” the employee helpfully offered.  We decided to just tuck in early for the night but appreciated the offer that made us feel like royalty.

 

Continue reading: Day 4, Kansas and Colorado