Presenting: The One Hundred Pound Bag and the Traveling Circus!

First off, I would like to apologize.  I haven't posted in nearly a week and a half and I would like to explain because it's been killing me that I haven't posted anything in such a long time.  I've just been super busy (as you will see as you read) and what time I have had when I've been able to access WiFi, I've been expected to do my online Geometry instead of blogging to you guys, which I totally get because I have to average about two lessons a day to be on track.  Yuck.  Hence the fact that I haven't posted in such a long time and I am right now trying to face the inevitable fact that you all will probably have to take two or three days to read this post because it's going to be so long.  Just pick a spot where it's at a nice ending and read on tomorrow so you don't bore yourself with my pictures and long journey.  

For your sake, I'll try to be interesting :)  Y'all (haha, hey y'all) will have a great time reading about Hershey, because it sucked.  The worst things that happen tend to make the best stories.

But I digress.  I am relieved, happy, and hopefully proud to introduce to you my story so far, appropriately named . . .

The One Hundred Pound Bag and the Traveling Circus

If you're wondering what this has anything to do with anything, just wait.

I'll explain.

Day Three - Yellowstone, WY

Why day three?  Because I've already posted about days one and two.  Feel free to scroll down if you missed them :)


After two days in Grant's Village, we drove north to stay in a different hotel right next to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  It's home to the famous waterfall that you see in a lot of pictures.  On the way there, we stopped in at Mammoth Hot Springs.  This is about the coolest pictures we got of there.  My mom took this one.

There were 106 stairs leading up to the top platform that my dad and I decided to sprint up.  People up in front of us were told to move over by a random lady that yelled out, "Move over!  Overachievers on the left!"

Best. Comment. Ever.

Hiking down from that, there was a buffalo that crossed over the path right in front of us, and later on an elk walked right up to the side of our car.  I also spotted a black bear.

There was also another one stuck up in a tree.

After arriving at the hotel, we hiked over to the Upper Falls (the least famous of the two) and got some photos before heading down to the brink of the Lower Falls.

The Upper Falls

The brink of the Lower Falls.

Day Four - Yellowstone, WY to Cody, WY

Time in car: 3 hrs

I'm doing my best to make these as short as I can :P

We spent a little more time at the falls before heading out of the park to crash at Cody for the night.  We hiked down Uncle Tom's Point, which is basically right at the bottom of the Lower Falls.

The sign before the hike

A picture of what the stairs were like - there were 10x more than what the
picture shows!

It was gorgeous.  My dad and I ran the stairs back up to the top.  I tried to count, but I lost track after 300 :P

And then we drove for a while to get out of the park.  On the way, we passed a herd of buffalo.

Look at all the babies!

When we got to Cody, we did Buffalo Bill's Wild West Museum.  It was super duper neat.

Oh Jeremy!

Alex with Jeremy on a saddle
Pretty Swag-Tastic. 

Jeremy with a taxidermy bear.

There was a gun museum with over 2500 guns.  Each of the racks slid out
and had about 10 guns inside

More guns.  We even saw Thomas Jefferson's rifle.

We had dinner and crashed there for the night.  It was nice to have WiFi and be back in civilization :)

Day Five - Cody, WY to Rapid City, SD

Time in Car: 7 hrs

Note: If you are wondering about Alex's STPOD, it's the picture of him in the saddle with Jeremy :)

We woke up early and hit the road early, but because of the average time in the car (7 hours is pretty normal for us), we weren't too worried.  

What most of South Dakota looks like - it's really pretty!

It was cool, I just thought it would be bigger.

Jeremy in front of Mt. Rushmore.

It was another 45 mins to Rapid City.  We ate dinner at a TGI Friday's and slept there.  It was a good day.

Day Six - Rapid City, SD to Chicago, IL

Time in Car - 18 hrs

Note: As for Jeremy, he will be randomly intermixed instead of having his own section.

18hrs is a freaking long time.  We were on the road at 7 in the morning and arrived at 11 at night in Illinois.  This is including a one hour time change and stopping for meals and gas.  I know it probably doesn't totally add up, but it's way too long any way you put it.   However, I did have a really nice text conversation with Ashley.  That was really nice and it was great to hear from her :)

We had to drive across all of Minnesota . . .

. . . and all of Wisconsin.

The Mississippi River

Jeremy in front of the house we were staying in.

Day Seven - Chicago, IL to Cleveland, OH

Time in Car - 6 hrs

After waking up and eating breakfast at the house we were staying at, we were up and off to Cleveland, where my grandpa lives.  This day we just relaxed.  I did two lessons for school and just hung out.  It was nice having nothing to do.  We went to the mall after going to Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner and my dad picked out some Cleveland Indians baseball gear as part of his birthday gift.  That was it.  It was nice just to lay low.

Day Eight - Cleveland, OH

Today was the day for Rock and Roll!  

Hall of Fame, that is.  The place is huge - six stories in a pyramid completely dedicated to the history of Rock 'n Roll.  It was pretty cool, especially when little,  non-musical me recognized someone I knew and got to see an outfit they wore or a guitar they played.

Jeremy in front of Michael Jackson's sparkly suit.
They had his glove there, too!

The top two floors were dedicated entirely to the Rolling Stones.

On the fourth floor, there was a theater where you could sit and watch short videos of all the inductees into the Hall of Fame.  That was my favorite part.  As you walked out of the theater there were the signature of all the inductees on the wall.

Some family of ours stopped for dinner: Aunt Annamarie and her son, Luke.  Luke is a super cute kid who's like  four and totally obsessed with Star Wars and Superman.  He's cool.

Alex and I learned how to play pool that night.  We both suck.

Day Nine - Cleveland, OH

Happy Fourth of July!

We did nothing on the fourth.  We got up and my grandpa drove me and Alex down to his auto body shop where he's been working for like forty-some years.  It's small, but really kind of neat :)

After that, we drove home and hung out until Annamarie came back over with Luke for dinner.  We had burgers and it was yummy :)  We didn't do fireworks or anything, we just watched the Macey's show in NYC.  It was pretty cool - I don't think I've ever seen it before.  Then Alex and I went downstairs and played one more game of pool before heading to bed.

We're getting better.

Day Ten - Cleveland, OH to Hershey, PA

Time in car - 7 hrs

Hanging in there?  This is the crappy part of our trip, but it makes for a good story. :)

I take that back.  Crappy doesn't start until tomorrow.  This day was fine. 

We left Grandpa's house in the morning, heading toward Hershey.  By now, we've passed both time zones and are in the one we'll be in in Vero Beach.  It's really nice if you ease it to the change one hour at a time like I did.  

I'm also sorry for the lack of pictures.  There will be more the next day. . . but for your amusement, here is a photo of a plastic elephant taking up a parking spot that I saw along the way.

The house we were staying at was beautiful!  There was a full gym on the lowest level of the house where I grabbed a foam soccer ball and spent about an hour blasting it against the padded side of the gym.  It was great to do a little bit of soccer there :)

Dinner was steak.  Yum.  And that was it for that day!

Day Eleven - Hershey, PA

Here comes disappointment :P

Our original plan for today was to go and do the Hershey Gardens in the morning, eat lunch, do the museum, chocolate tasting, and make your own candy bar, eat dinner, go to Hershey World (which has a small factory tour and another make your own candy bar) and do the amusement park in the evening.

Let me explain how that went wrong.

Hershey Gardens and lunch was great.

Butterfly bench!

Alex with the two kids we were staying with, Bella and Will
putting their hands on Hershey Kiss fountains.  It was hot!

There was a butterfly garden there, too!  None of them landed on us, but there were over 300 butterflies in the little tent we were in.

Apparently they like citrus fruits

This orange one here is called the Julia!

All of the chrysalises were in a giant cabinet.

We had lunch at a cute place in the garden too.  It served delicious wraps and salads.

Here is a chipmunk that stared right at me.

The place where we ate lunch

Then we went to the museum.  This went off without a hitch, too.  We did the chocolate tasting first.  It wasn't solid chocolate like you'd expect, but rather warm liquid chocolate from around the world.

My favorite was a chocolate from Venezuela that was 70% cocoa.

Making our own chocolate bars was fun, too!

There was a mural when we walked in of Milton Hershey talking to a bunch of kids.  We decided to join in, too.

Bella, Alex, me and Will

Alex and I

We ate dinner at a super good Italian restaurant that puts the cheese on and then the sauce when you order your pizza.  It's yummy!

Then our family parted from Will and Bella's and we headed off to the park.

Little did we know there was a One Direction concert in the park that night.

The parking lot from our standstill position on the street. 

Note the One Direction on the back of the SUV

Directioners

When we finally parked an hour and a half later, we decided to hit up Hershey World first because we thought that after the concert started activity in the park would go down.

The line for the bathroom was an hour long.  The line to make a candy bar was two hours wait time.  We couldn't even get close to the park itself.  Feeling dejected, we all left without doing either the park or the Hershey World.

As most people in America do these days, we decided to eat our feelings with Sweet Frog Make Your Own Frozen Yogurt.  I got chocolate with M&Ms, chocolate chips, and cookie dough bites.  There were ten different flavor choices and at least twenty different toppings.  It was incredible.

And when we got home, there were FIREFLIES!  Mom caught two.  

Day Twelve - Hershey, PA to Charlotte, NC

Time in car - 9 1/2 hrs

Had there been no traffic, we would have been there in eight.  However, we were probably in a standstill for an hour and a half at one point.  It was annoying.  When we arrived, Alex and I played some more pool (still improving) and ate some great chicken.  Then Alex did a magic show while I chatted with Grammie, my neighbor Beth, and Molly.  It was great to talk to all of them.  I miss them all soooo much! <3

In comes the hundred pound bag.  This would be my tote bag / carry on bag that I have with me in the back seat while we're driving.  I never realized how much crap I managed to pack into that bag until I took it all out last night.

I have compiled a list of all the things I've managed to fit in there :)  I'm like Hermione or something with my bloody beaded bag.  Except mine isn't beaded, nor bloody.

1. Two wallets (I don't really know why I have two. . . )

2. Watch (that's slow by twenty minutes and growing slower)

3. Cell phone

4. Pencil Bag

5. Recyclable 'green' grocery bag

6. iTouch

7. Index / flash card case 

8. John's Island baseball cap

9. Agenda

10. Four books (Lord of the Flies, Inkspell, Pandemonium, and Partials)

11. AP English binder

12. Geometry binder

13. Laptop

14. Pad of tracing paper

15. Mints

OH MY GOD THAT'S A LOT OF THINGS.

Day Thirteen - Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Time in car - 3 1/2 hours and counting

That's right, I've typed this all to you while I've been in the CAR!  Boo-yah.  I am about half an hour away from being in the Atlanta Aquarium, where I will be spending the remainder of the day.  I hear they have three whale sharks.

I hope you enjoyed getting caught up, no matter how long it took you to read :)  Life has definitely NOT been boring around here!  And tomorrow is Mom's birthday.  Since I probably won't be posting tomorrow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Miss you all!