Planes, Trains, and Automobiles... and feet.: October 2014

Thursday, October 16, 2014

It's the end of the trip as we know it.

We left Memphis and headed towards our last city on the trip *sniff* Knoxville.

On the way, we stopped in Nashville and walked around the Tennessee state capitol building and saw some awesome food trucks outside (one was named Confeastador). Then we headed on to Knoxville.

There we walked around the site of the 1982 World's Fair which has something called the Sun Sphere and a cool pavilion and a man-made pond with a bunch of waterfalls and fountains. Then we took a stroll through the campus of the University of Tennessee. It is a very nice campus, but I started noticing that it seemed like a zombie apocalypse had happened and we were the only ones left because i guess the school is on their fall break and there was hardly any signs of life. After that we headed to Market Square which is an awesome little block downtown Knoxville that has restaurants and shops along the sides and in the middle is a band stand and there was a full 20-member jazz band playing and they were good! It had a really cool atmosphere there.

Tomorrow, we are leaving for home. We will stop in Blacksburg to see my grandfather (Papa) and grandmother (Grammy) and have lunch with them. Then we are off to Waynesboro.

Thanks to everyone who followed along on this blog. I appreciate all the notes, emails, texts that I got while on this trip. It's always nice to know people are right there with me. Also, Thanks to all the friends who met us along the way and let us stay with them. I am forever grateful and extend a welcome for you if you are ever in Waynesboro to stay with Mom and Dad, and if I have a place, you can stay with me too.

Tennessee State Capitol Building

Sun Sphere

Neyland Stadium, Where the University of Tennessee Volunteers football team plays.

Ayres Hall.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Walking in Memphis

Memphis is the home to Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, Blues, Brews and Bar-B-Ques. We had a great stay there.

We went to Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley and took the tour. I'm not a big Elvis fan, but going through his house and museums gave me a bigger appreciation for him. He was a very generous person and it seemed like he really enjoyed life. He also had some great dance moves, flashy Vegas suits, and nice cars.

We also went downtown and walked up and down Beale Street and saw some neat restaurants and blues bands were playing up and down the street. It was an awesome cultural experience. Then we went into the Peabody Hotel. That is a luxury hotel that has a funny tradition. Every day at 11am, they have a few ducks that live upstairs in the hotel that make their way down the elevator and into a fountain in the lobby and then at 5pm, they go back into the elevator and go back to their room. It was very cute watching the ducks walk down the red carpet. After the ducks, we had some Memphis-style BBQ at a place called Rendezvous and it was delicious!!

The front of Graceland

The Billiard room.

I need to get me one of these!

The king has left the building

Pink Cadillac

BB King's on Beale Street

Just ducks going back into the elevator to head up to their room in the hotel for the night.

Everything is bigger in Texas

After leaving New Mexico, We entered Texas and headed to San Antonio. Texas is a very large state... we were on the road for most of the day, but we got to San Antonio and headed downtown to the River Walk. The River Walk is just what it sounds like, a river goes through the downtown section and there is a sidewalk on both sides of the river. All along the river are nice little restaurants and bars and shops. There are people all over and it has a great energy to it. Right next to the river walk is the Alamo! Remember that? That was a cool thing to see, because you see it in history books, but there it is.

Leaving San Antonio, we headed to the small town of Montgomery, TX to stay with our friends Mike and Anne Roy. We had a great time hanging out with them and I was able to talk football with Mike all weekend. It just worked out that our Fantasy Football team was playing against his this weekend, and it was a good thing we planned to leave on Monday, because after the beating I gave him, I don't think he would have let me stay there any longer anyway :) But for real, we had a great time with them and got to go to their church, do some wicked hard crossword puzzles, and have some deep conversations with them. We also got to meet some of their friends and see a plane Mike was helping a friend of his build.

After leaving there, we spent the night in Bossier City, LA, on our way to our next destination, Memphis, TN.

Waterfall at the River Walk.

The Chapel at the Alamo.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Deep, deep underground

In New Mexico (and parts of Texas), we headed through the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and then into to Carlsbad Caverns. The mountains were really cool because you could really see the layers of rock on the mountains. We explored the caverns for a couple hours and they were magnificent. It was a little creepy climbing down, down, down into a huge hole in the ground, but the speleothems (cave formations) were amazing.

El Capitan is the big mountain on the left (one of the highest points in Texas

Entering into the caverns.

This stalagmite looks like it is from a nightmare.

Rising from the ashes

After San Diego we traveled to Phoenix to see and stay with our great friends Mark and Joanna (and their childrens too!). We had an excellent time with them and got to see a bunch of Arizona. We went to their church on Sunday and then got a tour of downtown, and around Scottsdale.

On Monday, we took a day trip to the Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at Sedona and saw some gorgeous red rock formations and took a short hike/climb onto one of the rocks. Then we went up through Flagstaff and had lunch at a cool microbrewery called the Lumberyard. Then it was north again to head to the Grand Canyon. All I can say about the Grand Canyon is "wow!" It is such an amazing sight. We walked up and down the south rim of the canyon for two and a half miles and still barely scratched the surface of the amazing views and features the Grand Canyon had to offer. The canyon is just about a mile from the south rim to the Colorado River which runs through the canyon and can be up to 18 miles across in some places. Then on the way home, we got to experience the sunset which was one of the best I've ever seen. There were so many different colors, bright pink, deep purple, blaze orange, every view of it was stunning.

Tuesday, Joanna took dad and me around the place where she is doing some volunteering and we stopped by the historic capitol building, then had lunch with Mark at his office. That night, they had a big indian food feast and had a huge group of people over to share the meal. It's always wonderful to see Mark and Joanna using their gift of hospitality.

Wednesday we left for New Mexico and stopped in Tucson and saw the Norman's, another family who used to live in Crozet who is now in AZ. It was fun to see them and catch up.

Sedona red rocks. Bell Rock is on the left, and Courthouse Butte on the right.

More red rocks in Sedona

Grand Canyon

More Canyon.

Even More Canyon.

The sunset got more spectacular after this, but I wanted to see it without looking through a camera screen.

Saint James Place

After leaving the city of angels, we headed to San Diego.

San Diego is an awesome city! The people there seemed way more relaxed and laid back than other places in California. The weather was fine and the ocean was great! When we first got to town, we went to Dog Beach and Ocean Beach. Dog beach is just that, a beach that is dog friendly, so there were tons of dogs all over the place. Then we got to watch some surfers catch some waves at Ocean Beach. Then we headed to a place known as the Gaslamp Quarter.

The Gaslamp Quarter is a historic neighborhood in downtown San Diego that has tons of restaurants, bars, and shops all around. The buildings were beautiful and there was a fun feel to the area. The baseball stadium where the San Diego Padres play is right next to that district too.

The next day we spent most of it at the San Diego Zoo. The zoo was amazing and very fun to see all the animals! The zoo is also a botanical garden, so it was beautiful with all the varieties of flowers and plants all around. That night we went to Stone Brewing Company and World Bistro for dinner which was also a neat experience because it was re-purposed from an old military base. The mess hall was the main building and the quad between that and the barracks and the chapel was all outdoor seating. It was very well done!

The next day we went to Balboa Park and walked around that which was really cool and had old spanish style architecture all around the park. A replica of the Globe Theatre is in the park and they have the worlds largest outdoor pipe organ, a Japanese friendship garden, a model train museum, some cool fountains, a sculpture garden, and an air and space museum (and that is just about half of the park).

Big waves at Ocean Beach.

Historic Gaslamp Quarter

San Diego Convention Center

Welcome to the San Diego Zoo

I think the red panda is my spirit animal

Meerkat, just chillin'

The Old Globe Theatre.

California Tower and Building.

Statuesque Balboa.

Cool Fountain!

Oh, and if anyone is wondering why I titled the post St. James Place and then didn't mention it once... San Diego means Saint James contrary to what Ron Burgundy might think.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

The City of Glitz and Glamour

Next stop... Los Angeles! We headed to LA and the route we took, brought us down the California Pacific highway. We got some awesome views of the cliffs and ocean meeting up and also saw a beach full of Elephant seals along the way. Then we headed to Pasadena to meet up with a great friend of mine from back in the days of late middle and early high school... Stephen Finkel! He and his housemates were incredibly gracious to let us stay there for the couple days and I couldn't thank them enough. That night Stephen took us up to the Griffith Park Observatory which is on a big hill near the Greek Theatre, where a show was getting ready to start so it was crawling with people. Then he took us to this burger place that was a bacon lover's heaven (Most everything had something to do with bacon... bacon ketchup, bacon thousand island dressing, even bacon salt).

The next day was a SUPER busy day. It started out with Dad and I heading into the downtown section of LA. First thing I noticed was the transit system of LA is very nice and well done! Congrats to them on that. We got to the city and at our first stop we got out and saw the City Hall building, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and the Disney Concert Hall. Then we headed to Hollywood. We walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard and saw the stars on the Walk of Fame and saw the Dolby Theater, and TCL Chinese Theater, and the Hollywood sign off in the distance.

We went back to the house and picked up our car at that point and went for a "leisurely" drive in the city. We drove to the Sunset Strip and down Sunset Boulevard, drove around through Beverly Hills, up and down Rodeo Drive, and then down Santa Monica Boulevard out to Santa Monica. There we walked to the beach and walked up the Santa Monica Pier and watched the sunset from there. Then we had dinner on the pier and made the 30 mile drive back to Stephen's in under an hour (wooo LA traffic win!)

The next morning we drove around Pasadena in the morning and stopped by the Rose Bowl, met up with Stephen one last time before we headed out of town and then stopped by the house where Father of the Bride took place. Then we headed out on our way to the next stop...San Diego!