September 2008
33 posts
Bay Area
Arlen’s friend Dan goes to
Berkeley for Russian Lit and lives in Oakland; he
became our home base for three nights. Our first day there we took the bus
into campus and walked around a little bit. One of the programs I’ve looked
at, the School of Information, is at
Berkeley. The campus is nice enough, but I think it’s too many people for my
taste, both on campus and in town.
...
University Tours: Santa Barbara and Monterey, CA
Tess is going to be applying to grad school for F2009 and was checking out
programs in marine science and policy at UCSB and Cal
State at Monterey Bay. In both cases, the buildings
that Tess would be studying in were new and well-architected, and both programs
are well-regarded. However, CSUMB’s academic philosophy is much closer to
Hampshire’s, and I thought Monterey was a much...
Manhattan Beach, CA
Tess’ cousin Kevin lives in Manhattan Beach, CA. He’s got a cool 2BR apartment
a couple blocks from the beach. While we were there, the AVP Manhattan Beach
Open beach volleyball tournament was happening a bit further along the beach.
Beach volleyball is a sport I’m always excited about so I was keen to go check
it out. Little did I know that this tournament was the crown of...
Arizona: Sedona and Dead Horse Ranch State Park
We’d heard good things about Sedona, but didn’t have any idea what it was known
for. With a bit of time to kill, we took a side trip there. It was another
scenic, windy drive through the Oak Creek Canyon on the way there. Instead of just having canyon walls around us, there were also lots and lots of trees. It was a gorgeous drive, but nearly impossible to do justice to with...
Arizona: Navaho National Monument
We rolled into NNM around 10pm. Tess had some directions to the park that we
decided to follow, but after going half a mile down what would charitably be
called a road we decided to go back and follow some signs. Setting up camp
wasn’t too difficult with the moon being nearly full, so we got to bed without
too much trouble. During the night, we heard two coyotes, one off the front...
Utah
Another state we didn’t stay in. We drove by Arches National Park, though, and
saw one of the arches outside of the park. Driving along the Colorado River
was beautiful, with rock walls going up hundreds of feet on either sides.
Tess and I decided (before we got to the windy parts) that this would be a good
place for Arlen to practice driving. She’s had her learner’s...
Colorado
Cold. We stayed at Routt National Forest and the mercury started dropping
as the sun started to set. We broke out the cold-weather clothes and started
to make dinner. We ended up with Kraft Macroni & Cheese with some veggies
thrown in for vitamins. In the plate, it looked like yellow paste, and it had
the texture of paste, but being warm when everything else wasn’t made up for a...
Larmie, WY
From Nebraska, we kept heading west on I-80 through the rest of Nebraska (the same as the first part) and into Wyoming. We were heading towards Laramie, 96 miles from the NE/WY border, to visit Emma and Jesse. Emma is in a Ph.D program at UWyoming and Jesse works at Cold Creek Coffee. This also was the place where we were dropping off Meg for her move to Utah.
The afternoon we got in, we just...
Chicago -> Iowa -> Gibbon, NE
Nothing much to speak of here. A roughly 12 hour day over the flattest terrain I’ve ever driven on. Lots of sunflowers, though.
Michigan -> Chicago
We left in two cars on the 9th. Meg and Arlen left around 10am in Tess’ Civic coupe, while Tess and I stayed around to pick up some food and pack Baby Blue. We hit the road around 1.
We all got into Chicago around 3 CST and hung out with Tess’s friend Faith who recently moved to Chi-town. After getting dinner and drinks at the delicious Chicago Diner we took the El downtown. My...
“One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present...”
– Clive Thompson - Games Without Frontiers: How Videogames Blind Us With Science
M1FY Goes West →
Communal tumblelog about our cross-country road trip
Into the Wild West →
Meg’s tumblelog about her move to Utah
Alas, I’m coming to the end of my staycation. Luckily the rain NPR was
predicting for this morning/afternoon doesn’t appear to be coming. That means
I get to spend my day outside (although on the computer nonetheless). Today
has mostly been a reading day, as was Friday. I’m a little over halfway
through Picture of Dorian Gray and I read Into the Wild again on
Friday. I did a...
“All art is quite useless.”
– Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
“The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.”
– Sheikh Yamani, former OPEC oil minister
Maryland -> Pennsylvania -> Ohio -> Michigan
After getting Arlen and Meg up at 6:30am, we left for Michigan around 7:15am. Other than a lot of construction in PA and some traffic and rain in MI, the 11-hour drive was uneventful.
The three ladies, as well as Tess’ parents have all left for the Wheatland Music Festival. They’ll be there all weekend, while I’m “cat-sitting” for the cats that don’t really...
Ian Bicking: a blog :: On the RNC, Monica Bicking,... →
Wonderful post from Ian Bicking (whose sister (and her boyfriend) were arrested at the RNC protests) about why they’re protesting.
“If you want to go forward, put it on D — if you want to go backwards, put...”
– At Speedway, Clinton Says to Put it in D | The Trail | washingtonpost.com