Roadtrip Summary

Yes, I know this posting is a bit delayed, but better late than never right? :)

On September 17th, my friend Elena and I set out for Phoenix, Arizona from New Jersey. It was an awesome adventure and filled with the blessings of God. We had not one drop of rain fall on our windshield during the entire 11-day roadtrip, although hundreds of bugs did fall (smash) to their deaths on our windshield (as proven by many of the pictures we took from inside the car). We met several nice people along the way, particularly as we headed south, and besides a few wrong turns here and there, we did not get lost at all (thanks to Wilma, our faithful GPS). The hours that we spent driving was such a blessing - it was a great time of fellowship and sharing. And we got to spend time with family and friends in various cities, and exploring a few cities that we've never been to! For two girls who have hardly driven in their lives (and have never filled a gas tank before, those of you from NJ know what I'm talking about), I'm proud of the two of us surviving the 3,800 mile trip! For those interested in what we did, below is a summary of each day, with a 'highlight' picture of my choice. More pictures are posted on ofoto, which I should have emailed you all by now. Please enjoy!

Day 1

Good thing we rented a SUV, otherwise, our stuff would never have fit in the car. You'd think we were going on a year long journey with the amount of luggage we had, haha. We grew to love our Hyundai Santa Fe, since we spent the majority of 11 days in it. We were well-stocked with water bottles and granola bars, and we're off to DC! We set out with the goal of getting a picture of every state welcome sign as we passed, but it is actually more difficult than we thought (given the speed, camera delay, trucks blocking the view, and human error a.k.a. we forgot it was coming up). Anyway, we went the whole day without using our GPS (we wanted to see how long it would take before we turned it on). We got to our destination mid-afternoon, and did some sightseeing for a few hours (the White House, Lincoln Memorial, etc.) We came across many sites that were 'good for weddings' (if you like historical monuments in the background). One thing we could not understand was why so many government buildings (like the department of agriculture) looked like castles and took up so much space. What can they possibly do in the building for the department of agriculture?! And we saw a building for the Department of Interior. The interior of what?! It was pretty humorous. But seriously, D.C. is a beautiful city. And we loved the second-countdown on the lights for pedestrians, every city should have this. We then met up with a friend for dinner at a Latin restaurant, and stayed at his apartment for the night. This was the beginning of the many huge and beautiful apartments/houses that we came across which can only be found outside of NYC. Eric was nice enough to miss most of Monday Night Football while we watched the season premiere of Prison Break which he DVR'ed for me. It was a relaxing start to the roadtrip.

Day 2

We woke up around 7am in DC, and made our way to one of the many Starbucks in the city. We were the only people in the long line not in business suits; it felt great :) Once we had our caffeine for the day, we got on the road towards Atlanta, GA. We saw on the map that there was a scenic route through Shenandoah National Park via Skyline Drive and then it leads into the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's supposedly one of the nicest drives in the East, and we were so excited to see the views! Little did we know that after hours of widing through the mountains, we were still in the park ... first mistake of amateur road-trippers. A straight line on a state map may not actually be straight. The view was beautiful though, we were over 3,000 feet above sea level, at some points, the clouds seemed almost within reach. However, the 'fear-of-heights' in me took over when I drove along roads that did not have railing on the side, when all you see to your right is blue sky and clouds, I somehow instinctively ended up driving completely on the left side of the double yellow line. So after hours of winding on the 45 mph road, we realized that we needed to get onto an interstate (otherwise we'd get stuck in the mountains after dark). And out comes the GPS - only Day 2, haha. We finally found the interstate where we made real progress towards our destination. Around 10:30pm we got stuck in some heavy traffic and Elena realized that the low-fuel light was on (we weren't sure for how long), and we were in the most-left lane in a 5 lane highway with trucks everywhere, not moving. We were half in a panic and half laughing hysterically. Good thing the other drivers let us change lanes and get off the highway to a gas station. Finally, at about 11:30pm, we arrived at Amy (Elena's sister) and Scott's apartment. Ah, it was a long day of adventurous driving.

Day 3

We slept until we woke up naturally, ah, it felt great! Amy (who is 6 months pregnant) made us a home cooked breakfast, and it was so nice to see Elena and Amy reunited after a year of them not seeing each other! Since Amy couldn't walk around too much, she stayed home while Elena and I went to the Georgia Aquarium. When we parked at this $5 parking lot, we accidentally hit a huge blue dumpster next to the parking spot. It scratched a blue line into the front of our car. We thought the lot owner would be mad, but he ran out to us with polish for our car and fixed the scratch for us! Now that's when we knew we were not in the north anymore! The aquarium was fun, and we were able to 'pet' a few of the animals (can you call things in water animals?) They had this tube-like area that you can walk through and there is water and fish all around you, it was pretty cool. Afterwards, we walked around the park right outside of the aquarium and got one of the best iced caramel macchiato's ever. We then went home and met up with Amy and Scott, and went out to a restaurant called Ray's. It's on a lake, and the sun's reflection off the water was beautiful. Our server was very diligent and detailed in explaining everything, including how they catch the fish and where they're stored and how they're cleaned ... he also gave us a lot of wine advice that went over my head, but he suggested that we try a wine called conundrum, which really was quite tasty. After dinner we watched Blades of Glory and went to bed. A wonderful day of no driving and it was so nice to see Amy and meet Scott. They're going to make great parents!

Day 4

We started Day 4 early, and asked Wilma our GPS to get us to the nearest Starbucks. It was difficult to find since it was hidden in a shopping center, and we ended up missing the turn at least 3 times before we finally got to it. It set us back about 30 minutes, but it was worth it! And on towards New Orleans we went! We originally had planned to go the 'scenic route' but after the DC to Atlanta lesson, we decided to stick with the interstate. As we got near New Orleans, we understood why there would be flooding in the area. It is literally surrounded by water. We could still see the remnants of Katrina as many buildings were abandoned and trees were slanted at nearly 45 degree angles. The French Quarter is beautiful, the architecture is amazing, and the streets were so narrow and cute. By 5pm, there was already live music on Bourbon Street, and our hotel was just a couple of blocks away. We ordered cajun catfish for dinner and then walked around Bourbon Street afterwards. It was strange because there was almost no one inside the bars. Everyone just walks around outside with their drinks in their hands. The only places that appealed to Elena and me were the live jazz bars, where all the old people were, haha. And every bar has 'advertisers' standing outside with signs showing the 'specials' and trying to get people to go in. We could not understand why groups of people who don't know each other would cheer ('wooooooo') as they pass by. We finally ended up getting a drink and went back to our hotel at 9:30pm (yes we are party animals), and hung out.

Day 5

After checking out, we followed our friends Gina and Philip's suggestion of going to Cafe Du Monde to get beignets (French fried donuts). It was SO delicious! They had great coffees too! Thanks Phil and Gina! What a simple, yet brilliant, business. There were so many people there. Then we walked around the area, and got on a couple of trolleys to see the sights. These trolleys were ancient, noisy, and slow, but it felt authentic and the rides were fun and peaceful. Before getting back on the road, we decided to get a roast beef po'boy (with cheese and gravy) to complete the New Orleans experience. Wow, that was one of the best sandwiches I've ever had! Messy, but really awesome! By evening, we got to our destination, Houston, where we stayed with Elena's aunt, Maria, and her husband, Mario.

Day 6

After another good night sleep in a beautiful home, we woke up refreshed for Day 6. Good thing too, cuz Elena's family is very welcoming and energetic! We went to get breakfast at a place called the Texas Cafeteria, where the breakfast special is $1.85, yes you read correctly, $1.85!! The portions were huge, and I could not even finish what was on my plate. After we finished breakfast, we took a 'tour' of an adjacent room to the cafeteria where the animal trophies were. Apparently the owners of the restaurant are avid hunters. They're all real animals! We had a fun photo session there. After that we went to a pie store, wow, did it smell good in there! We bought a couple of pies and headed to Elena's grandparents house, where the rest of her family were meeting for a short reunion. I met Elena's other aunt and uncle, cousins and their kids, it was a full house! I enjoyed meeting everyone, they all treated me like I was one of the family. Made me a bit nostalgic for those huge family gatherings in Taiwan, but I'm not worried, in a few years, our family in the states will be pretty big too! :) After we took the family pictures, we headed out towards San Antonio. The Riverwalk is absolutely stunning (it's a bunch of restaurants along the river below the street), we walked around a lot cuz we were indecisive about where to eat, but finally settled on a Mexican restaurant. After dinner, we hung out on the Riverwalk a bit longer, and decided to go up to the street. Not used to a city with so few people, we weren't sure how safe it was to walk around by ourselves (go figure, New Yorkers ... ), so we called the hotel shuttle to pick us up (I think it was 9:30pm, haha, go us!) We learned from our driver (who Elena thought was cute), that no one actually lives in downtown San Antonio (which we had gathered), but rather everyone commutes from the suburbs. There were also not many bars around where we were, so I guess it wasn't that lame that we went home so early. We hung out in the hotel and pondered over Luke 16 for a long time but could not figure out what Jesus was trying to say in the parable. With that, we called it a night and went to bed.

Day 7

We woke up early and headed for the Alamo, where we heard one of the guides tell the story of what happened at the Alamo and what it symbolized. It's a pretty amazing and heroic story. There was also a 'museum' of sorts where we saw the actual weapons that they used in battle, we even saw some of Davy Crockett's personal belongings! We walked around the market plaza area and then had another Tex-Mex meal, yum. And we're off to Dallas-Forth Worth! A short 4 hour drive later (in comparison to our DC-Atlanta trip), we arrived at my friend Seth's parents' house before dinner. They took us out to dinner at an Italian restaurant (after so many Tex-Mex meals, I was craving Italian), it was delicious! It was really great catching up with them. Since they were in the process of moving, they let me and Elena have the entire 4-bedroom new house to ourselves (no we didn't throw any wild parties). We each had our own queen-sized super aero-bed and huge comforters! It's an amazingly beautiful house! If you're looking for reasonably priced mansions, Texas is definitely worth checking out! :)

Day 8

Ahh, and so begins our second longest drive of the trip - Dallas to Albuquerque, where the roads are straight and no one cares about the speed limit. It was also a very successful sign-taking day, well, as compared to previous days anyway. I was expecting New Mexico to be really hot, but it was surprisingly cool although extremely windy! I don't know how people live in the windy-ness, I couldn't stand all my hair and clothes being blown all over the place in just the few minutes that I was outside at the gas station. Early afternoon, after having passed many Denny's and IHOPs, I started craving eggs. Up until now, we haven't stopped for a meal on the road, just ate a whole lot of granola bars (and once we took some Wendy's to go). I felt bad about making us stop for my silly desire for eggs, but I REALLY wanted breakfast food, so I brought it up. And Elena said, 'Ohmygosh, I've been wanting to stop every time we passed an IHOP! But I didn't want to make you suffer through MY craving!' It was pretty funny, so we found the nearest Waffle House and had a delicious huge breakfast. We made really good time (because of the 75 speed limit that no one follows), and got to our motel before sunset. And right next door to the motel was .... Denny's! So we went to get some dinner to go, and the manager took our order. He highly praised their garlic bread, which came with the salad I ordered. I guess they were shorthanded, cuz after he took our order, he went to the kitchen to make our food. After we got our food, walked out of the store, and were almost at the door of our motel room, we hear someone calling us from behind. It was the store manager! He had forgotten to give me the garlic bread, and chased after us! Wow, now THAT is customer service! I said he didn't have to do that, but he insisted that the bread was worth it. (It wasn't really, but I still ate most of it cuz of all the trouble he went through, haha). We ate our meals in bed and watched Prison Break. It was nice :)

Day 9

We woke up early the next morning and ate a simple but free continental breakfast at the motel. While we were sitting there, we heard this guy on the phone, who was really pissed off at someone and was complaining about her to the person on the other line. After about 10 minutes of listening to his side of the conversation, he walked away and we went back to our room to pack up our stuff. It was hilarious when we discussed what we thought he was complaining about. I thought he was talking to a good guy friend and was really mad at his ex-girlfriend and he's really emotionally hurt by something she did. Elena laughed. She said he was talking to his girlfriend about this girl who tried to run him over with a car and that he's a drug dealer. LOL. Wow, my brain is really naive when it comes to things like this, haha!

The drive to the Grand Canyon was beautiful. It was strange because you can't see the canyon while you're driving, even when you're like 30 minutes away. So you're looking around and all you see are tall trees to the left and right, and you're wondering where this huge hole in the ground is! When we got to the Grand Canyon National Park, we bought some stuff to cook over our campfire (assuming that we could get this fire started), we played it safe and went with hot dogs. Since it was quite chilly (and the sun was still out), we also bought a bottle of reisling to help keep us warm :) We picked up a 2-person tent that we rented, plus a foam pad to sleep on, and headed to our campsite. Okay, so a 2-person tent is tiny, even if only one person were to sleep in it! For some reason, we didn't get tent pegs with our tent, so our tent was pathetic and wimpy looking. Turns out that everyone brought like 8-person tents that were very sturdy and fashionable looking (for 2 people). They also brought pots and pans and had huge fires going! Yeah ... we were the most primitive people there, haha, but I guess that makes us adventurous.

After setting up our tent, we headed towards one of the viewing points of the canyon. As we were walking, this random car with a young female driver stopped as it passed us, and the girl says to us, 'there are some elks back there'. We said thanks, and after she passed, we gave each other weird looks and laughed, cuz we couldn't figure out why she would stop and tell us that there were elks since we didn't know her! Then it clicked. Elena said, 'ohmygosh, we just got the answer to our question!' About an hour ago, we saw those elks and could not figure out if they were elks or moose, or if an elk is a male and moose is a female of the same animal?! Then we were like, oh well, I guess we don't know. For some reason, God chose to give us an answer! Haha! I love His sense of humor!

We picked an awesome day to be at the canyon, cuz it was a full moon! So they were having a once a month moonlight tour of the canyon. So we went to Mather Point and sat on the rocks until the sunset and the full moon lit the canyon. The canyon is SO amazingly beautiful - every angle, every rock, every shade of color, is just so detailed that no one except God could have imagined and created it! As I started taking pictures, I realized that the camera really doesn't do it justice. Not only are the colors not captured by the camera, but with each picture, only so much of the canyon can be seen. Our eyes in less than a second, can see the entire vastness of the canyon, its infinite angles, its height, depth, the open sky above it ... I almost feel like I'm ruining the beauty by taking pictures of it.

Surprisingly, there were hundreds of people there for the moonlight tour, and by this time, I think the temperature is like 50ish. I had forgotten how bright the moon is! We really could see a lot without a flashlight! As interesting as Ranger Dave was, as he told us about what certain Indian tribes believed the moon to be (the soul of warriors), it was just getting too cold, so we went back to our campsite to get our dinner started. With the help of fire sticks, it wasn't too difficult to get the fire going. The hot dogs were tasty when paired with the reisling (with no cups, we our empty Poland Spring bottles, haha, real classy huh?), and thanks to Phil and Gina, we also had toasted marshmallows. As our firewood started disappearing, we took out all the clothes we had and put on as many layers as possible. I slept with my head inside the sleeping bag and it was still freezing. It was a bit claustrophobic actually, with the tent only about a foot above my head when I'm lying on the ground. As the sun started to rise (around 6ish) it got warmer and I was finally able to sleep for a few hours. Ah my first real camping experience!

Day 10

When the sun began to shine directly on us, and it was getting too hot to sleep, I finally emerged from within the tent, and in the process, ungracefully stepped all over it and destroyed whatever tent-like shape it had left. We went in search for the shower, which costs $1.75 for 5 minutes. After the 30-some degree weather the night before, it was a great 5 minutes. I literally just stood under the hot water and didn't move. And by this point, we didn't even bother putting on makeup, and we just kept wearing the same sweatshirts. (If you actually look through our pictures, we looked progressively 'worse' as the trip went on.... it's pretty funny.) After eating a huge American breakfast, we went hiking down the Bright Angel Trail into the canyon.

The interesting part about hiking at the canyon is that the easy part comes first, then you have to come back up, so you have to take that into consideration when you decide when to turn around. As we were descending, we thought, 'hey, this isn't bad at all!' We saw older couples breathing heavily as they were passing us, and we said, 'is it really that bad coming up?!' Then a little while later, this athletic looking guy carrying his camping equipment stopped us and asked how much longer until the top. He was exhausted, apparently a lot of people hike down to the bottom and camp for a few nights, then hike back up (he'd been hiking for over 6 hours already!) Note to the single women who plan on visiting the Grand Canyon at some point, get in shape before you go and camp at the bottom of the canyon, that's where the athletic, single men are ;)

The views were SO magnificent!


As you walk down the trail, you get different perspectives and angles of the canyon, and you can see plant life that you can't see from the top. Originally, we were aiming for the 1.5 mile mark and then turning around, but it was an hour and we were still about 20 minutes away from it, so we decided to turn around at that point. Uh... we were more out of shape than some of the old people! Not even 5 minutes into the hike up, we had to stop to rest. But it's a good opportunity to take in the view, cuz when you're walking, it's best not to be looking around (there's no railing, if you misstep, it's down the canyon you go!) I'm proud of us for surviving the 2 hour hike, it's really worth it. The only downside is that you have to keep watching out for donkey poo everywhere. Yeah, I don't understand how people can feel comfortable riding on donkeys on those narrow paths.

After the hike, we went shopping for dinner supplies. Elena decided on making peppers and cheese sandwiches. I wanted chicken wings; I figured our fire was too weak to cook raw chicken, so I bought pre-cooked buffalo wings. This time, we paired our meal with wine cooler-ish drinks. It's not even 2pm at this point, so to keep our food fresh, we bought a huge pack of ice and made our own cooler out of plastic bags. It worked really well! We then took a shuttle tour of the canyon, stopping at various 'points' to see different parts of the canyon. It was so cool to see the Colorado River (we were so far away from it that the water doesn't look like it's even moving!) About an hour before the sunset, we found a good spot on the rocks facing the sun and waited for the sun to disappear behind the canyon. It was really beautiful to see the colors of the canyon change, but it hurt our eyes too much to look directly at the sun.

After the sun set, we still had about 30 minutes of daylight left, so we made our way back to our camp to start the fire and dinner. Mmmm, the chicken wings were SO good! The firewood again quickly disappeared, so we got ready for bed. Thank God it was about 10 degrees warmer than the previous night.

Day 11 (Last Day!)

We woke up at 5am the next morning to go watch the sunrise. It was rough, but this is one of those rare opportunities that must be taken! There were only a few senior couples on the shuttle with us (one couple had hiking equipment with them, we were impressed). Yeah, we didn't see many single people at the Grand Canyon, much less single women. It was very chilly and windy as we waited for the sun to rise. It was ten times more beautiful than the sunset. Behind us, it looked like night time, with the moon shining brightly in the sky. In front of us, the sky had shades of blue, green, orange, pink and red, and the colors changed every few minutes. When the sun actually appeared from behind the canyon, it was too bright to look at, so when watching the sunrise, the most beautiful part is before actually seeing the sun (which I thought was interesting).






Since we were up so early, we were able to take our time cleaning up and preparing for our last drive of the roadtrip. I was feeling a bit sad that the trip was coming to an end, but it made it easier that the canyon was the last stop, so we were both desiring a normal room and bed to sleep in at this point, haha. Elena joked as we passed a 'Los Angeles' sign that maybe we should just keep going west! As we got closer to Phoenix, we searched for a car wash, since our car wasn't exactly in the cleanest condition and we didn't want to get charged an 'excessively dirty car fee'. We (even with the help of Wilma) could not find a good car wash, so we gave up on that idea and just went to the airport. My aunt and uncle came to pick me up at the car rental place, and we dropped off Elena at the Southwest terminal.

On to the next adventure! Arizona for me and Kansas City for Elena! Praise God for keeping us safe and blessing us with His presence on this 11 day journey!