Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota

Well our trip has gotten off to a great start! Yesterday we left Kentucky and drove to Chicago to spend the evening there.` We didn't really stop anywhere while driving through Indiana, but as we drove further north, we did stop briefly to look at all of the windmills at this HUGE wind farm. Seriously, it looked like the windmills never ended! Some people don't like windmills, but I think they're really cool. And they're a great way of harvesting energy!

We stayed in a hotel close to the O'Hare airport because it was much cheaper than staying downtown. Our hotel had a free shuttle to the "L" train, so we had no problem making our way there. While Melanie was getting her ticket, this woman came up to Harrison and me and offered us her 7-day rail passes that still had a couple of days left on them. We gladly accepted. By the way, Chicago is AWESOME. Everyone there was really friendly, and we had a great time exploring. We started off at the Millenium park to check out the "Bean," the fun mirror-sculpture that reflects the city. We tried to get a famous Chicago hot dog, but none of the hot dog places we found were open (I guess since it was Sunday night). So after we had a non-Chicagoan dinner, we walked the Magnificent Mile up to the John Hancock Observatory. The tickets were a little pricey, but definitely worth it! It had great views of the city, and an audio tour that was really informative and also helped us find some other places we wanted to go. We definitely wanted to check out Buckinham Fountain, which has a big water show on the hour, every hour, and then we went back to Millenium Park to see the fountains that project people's faces and looks like they're spitting out water.


Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals was going on while we were there, too, and the city had done a lot of cool things to show their support. I'm personally not a huge fan of the Blackhawks since they beat the Sharks, but it was still cool, none the less. Several of the office buildings had coordinated turning certain lights on and off. One building projected the Stanley Cup, one said "Let's go Hawks" and one projected the Blackhawks logo. It was pretty impressive.

This morning we got up bright and early to make our way to my friend Taylor's house outside Minneapolis. We drove up through Wisconsin, taking a smaller highway around Madison to check out some fun roadside attractions. We stopped at a place in hopes of seeing the world's tallest scrap metal sculpture, but sadly it was closed. We also visited a chocolate factory that makes "Cow pies" chocolates (round chocolate pieces with caramel and pecans). Before meeting up with Taylor, we visited the Mall of America, and it was quite interesting. It had a theme park, a wedding chapel, and about 400 stores! My favorite was the Lego area, where they had giant Lego displays and anyone could build stuff for fun. I almost got a Legoman keychain. They also had a Wisconsin cheese store complete with free samples that we tested. Melanie and Harrison got some stuff at the Columbia sportswear store forthe trip. It was quite an experience!

Taylor met us at the mall, and we went back to her house for dinner before she gave us a tour of Minneapolis. We walked around a sculpture park - the most famous sculpture there is a giant spoon with a cherry on it, and went to a theater downtown to see great views of the Mississippi River. It's a big city with a small town feel. I really enjoyed it! Next we'll head out in search of the World's largest ball of twine rolled by one person before heading to South Dakota and the Black Hills where we'll be camping for a few days.

Woodford Reserve

In our original plans for today, we were going to visit 2 different bourbon distilleries, but we decided that it was better to just chill at one place and not have to rush so much. We visited the Woodford Reserve distillery in Versailles. It wasn't too far from us and I heard from others that they had a good tour. The tour was pretty cool. We learned about how bourbon was made ("All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon!"), saw the warehouse, and had a tasting! It was a lovely visit.

Another fun part of the trip was going past the castle. That's right. A castle. Melanie and Harrison found it pretty amusing that a castle is just there for no particular reason. The story as I know it is that this couple traveled through Europe and decided that it would be really cool to have their own castle. The husband started secretly building one for them, but then she thought he was doing something else and they ended up getting divorced. The castle sat unfinished for a while until a man bought it and started finishing the construction. At one point it got struck by lightning and caught on fire! It survived, though, and now it's a hotel/fancy place for events. I like the castle.

After the distillery, we went back to Lexington for lunch. I took my friends to Pazzo's, which is a delicious pizza place close to UK's campus. After that we went back to our house to relax and make some more plans. My friend Mariela had us over for dinner, and then we went shopping for some snacks and stuff for the car. We decided not to drive to Louisville tonight, but we'll head out to Chicago bright and early! I'm pretty excited.

Let the Road Tripping Commence!

Melanie and Harrison are officially on their way to my house as I write this post! I am so excited! I spent a great deal of time searching for all of our assorted camping gear in my house. I got the tent out and found our camp stove and mess kits and all sorts of other fun camping things. I haven't been legit camping in a good while, so I'm pretty excited. I've worked at a summer camp for the past 5 years, but we live in cabins and the one time the whole cabin group goes camping in the woods, I don't really have that much to do with setup and cooking. It will definitely be an adventure!

Anyway, once my travel buddies arrive, we'll be chilling at my house for the night and making sure that we have everything that we need. I still need to pack up all of my clothes. I feel like there's a lot of different clothes that I'll need because we're going such a variety of places, and the weather is kind of all over the place. We're planning on going to Yellowstone, and the temperatures can drop down to the low 30's at night! In the summer!

So far we have definite stops planned for the next few days of our trip. Tomorrow we'll stay in Kentucky and travel a bit along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. I've been wanting to go on the Bourbon Trail since I turned 21. My friend Scott and I were gonna do it for our 21st birthdays (our birthdays are 2 days apart), but sadly we never found the time, since we were at school different places. The trail consists of 6 of Kentucky's finest distilleries, all of which are more or less between Lexington and Louisville. You can go to any of them and tour the distillery, and they have tastings, too! A fun thing they started doing a few years ago is the passport. Once you've visited every distillery on the trail, you get a free t-shirt! I'm pretty excited about the trail, even though we probably won't make it to all of them this time around.

Tomorrow night, we'll stay with a friend in Louisville before heading up to Chicago. I discovered it was much cheaper to stay in a hotel by the O'Hare airport than to attempt to find a place downtown. I got a pretty good deal with my AAA discount, and the hotel has a free shuttle to the nearby train station. Well, I better get back to packing up my things. See you later!

I figured out how to map on the blog where we're going. Enjoy!

It's Official!

The road trip officially begins on Friday when my roommate and her high school friend make their way to my house in Kentucky! My roommate found this website called Roadtrip USA that was a great source for finding roadtrip routes across the country. Our plans won't take us directly on a specific route but we thought it would be a good idea to try to follow them in general. From Kentucky, we'll make our way up through Chicago to Minnesota, then roughly follow the "Oregon Trail" route listed on the website (best route name by far!). Hitting various spots along the way, we'll start heading down through California, then over to Vegas, and back towards Kentucky on what the website calls the "Loneliest Road." I'm not sure how about I feel about being on a route called the loneliest, but perhaps there will be some interesting roadside attractions! It should be a fun trip! Since we're all recent college graduates and are poor, we're trying to keep costs down by camping as often as possible and staying with friends who happen to be along the way.

As for the possibility of going to South Africa this summer, it no longer exists. After a very unnecessarily long application reviewing/interviewing process, I was informed that all of the positions in South Africa had been filled. It's just as well, I guess. I can't imagine what the crowds would be like there with the World Cup going on. It would be insane! I do wish that they had let me know sooner, though, instead of dragging this process out for almost a month longer than they originally said it would take. Whatever, I get to go across America and see a lot of places I've never seen.

On the blog, again...

Wow, a lot has happened since my last post back in 2008. Everything turned out okay with my ISP and all that jazz. I finished up the rest of my college days back in America and just graduated last weekend! It was hard to get back into a more structured routine, and I don't know that I ever fully recovered from learning to expect the unexpected. However, I am thankful for my entire college experience and the challenges I have face in the last year and a half since writing have made me a stronger person.

Anyway, enough about me and the past. I've decided to get back to blogging again for two reasons. First, my college roommate and I, along with a few of her high school friends, have decided to go on a cross-country roadtrip! And I figured, what better way to document my travels than to share it on the internet?! We have a bit of a plan together, but we're not entirely sure how it will all pan out. They're planning on driving from Virginia to my home in Kentucky, where we'll start off with some Bourbon Trailing and then move farther north from there. We'll see how it goes.

The second reason is that I might be returning to South Africa this summer! The organization that did my study abroad program also does summer programs for high school students called "Experiment in International Living," and they hire recent grads and such to be group leaders. I have my interview tomorrow, so I'll know for sure then. It's a little nerve-wracking for me not having a summer job lined up (this is the first summer that I haven't already had a job in place by this time of year). But I figure if I don't get the job, it just gives me more time to travel around the states, and when will I really get the chance to do this again?

I'm Done!

I'm finally finished with my ISP! Hooray!! All I have to do is print it out, bind it, and turn it in tomorrow morning. Yesterday I took a bit of a break from all the writing and went to a mosque in downtown Durban. It was really pretty, and I learned a lot Islam that I didn't know before, so it was very interesting. We also went to a used bookstore, and then a very small group of people went to a Korean restaurant right next to the Gateway mall. We also had our last braai at the backpackers, which was a little sad. I don't think that it's really hit me yet that I'm leaving in a week! Today after I print everything out, I'm gonna go back to Cato Manor for a little to give my family some pictures that I took while I stayed there, and tell them goodbye. I wish I could visit my other families, but I think Cookie is still off traveling somewhere, and I don't really have time to go all the way back to the rural areas. My friend who I lived with in the rural areas is staying a little after the program ends, though, so I gave her some pictures to take them as well. Tonight a few of us are having a celebratory dinner at the Roma revolving restaurant. I think it will be a lot of fun and a good way to finish the ISP period.

Things I will miss about South Africa:

• All of my homestay families
• The Hostel and the people there
• The people in my program
  
• The Botanic Gardens
• The beach
  
• All of the different Markets
• The laid back amosphere
• Florida road
• The rural areas
• The mini-buses with their ridiculous names and designs
• Braais every Tuesday, Thursday, AND Sunday
• Rugby!
  
• Random adventures and not knowing what's going to happen next
• The game drive and the hike at the South Coast
  
• Zulu
• Beads!
• Everything is pretty inexpensive because of the exchange rate (yesterday $1 was worth 10.32 rands!)
  

I think this probably will be my last entry because we have presentations of our projects tomorrow, then leave for the Drakensburg mountains on Sunday. Then I'll be going to Cape Town for a few days, and then I will be coming home! I still can't believe it! Thanks for reading blog, I hope you enjoyed it. Sala Kahle!

ISP has taken over my life

It's crunch time. I've spent pretty much my entire weekend working on my ISP, aside from a Sunday break trip to Ushaka Marine World. It's an aquarium/water park, but we only went to the aquarium because it was cloudy and a little cold. It was a lot of fun! We saw a stringray feeding, penguin feeding, shark feeding, and a dolphin show! It was a nice break. I also booked tickets for my 2-day excursion to Cape Town the last two days of the program. We're planning on going to Robben Island, Table Mountain (weather permitting), and doing a tour of the Cape Peninsula before catching a flight back to Durban and heading home. Anyway, this is only a quick update because I really should get back to editing my paper. Sala kahle!