Lost Debit Card = Not Good!

As I explained in the last post, I lost my debit card in DC.  It was nowhere to be found.  Normally in that situation, one would just cancel the card and order a new one.  Well, it was wasn't that easy in this situation. I called the card company and they said a new one could be made and sent to me in 17 days.  The problem was, we were leaving in a week so that wasn't an option.  I love Zion's Bank, but there aren't any outside of Utah (and maybe Idaho), and especially none in Virginia, so I didn't have the option of just going to the bank and withdrawing money.  I had to have my money though, because we had to pay for hotels, gas, and food on the way home.  It was quite the predicament.  So after a long series of phone calls to Visa, Zions Bank, and Western Union, it was arranged for me to have money from my own account wired to me in Virginia and I could pick it up at a Western Union.  It kinda sucked to have to be carrying around that much cash and not being able to use a card, but I was grateful that I was able to get it taken care of and wasn't money-less.


I experienced a small miracle in this situation though.  At the end of the season we went out to dinner with all our friends at Loft Mountain and with the managers over the whole park.  Throughout the season we were able to earn "bucks" by doing certain things, like excellent customer service and promoting park events.  At the end of the season they put everyone's "bucks" into a drawing for a $50, $75 and $100 gift card to Wal-Mart.  I usually don't win stuff like this, so I wasn't expecting anything.  They drew out the $50 and it wasn't me.  Then they drew out the $75 and it wasn't me, so I knew that I had no chance.  If I was going to get anything it probably would have been one of those, so I didn't get my hopes up.  But guess what!?  When they drew out the $100.... It wasn't me.  No, just kidding!  Of course it was me, or why else would I be telling this story? haha.  It was a great blessing to have that extra money on the way home.  Every meal pretty much consisted of Wal-Mart food, whether it was from the deli or something we could just eat cold, but I wasn't complaining!  I was glad to have that.  I even had a little extra when we got back to Utah and I think I bought myself some shoes. haha. 




These are all of our comrades from Loft Mountain.  We were quite the random group, but we had so much fun!

Left:  Wayne-He was the manager at Loft.  He's a local Virginian.

Middle and Right:  Rick and Tut- Not to be confused with Rut and Tuk, the moose from Brother Bear. haha.  He is retired army and school teacher and she is a retired librarian.  They are from Southern Alabama. 

Andrew and Wayne.

Andrew was also a local.  He was a little creepy sometimes.

Me, Britt, and Leah.

Leah was my roommate until Brittany got there.  She is seriously so cool!  She's from Buffalo, New York.  We had a good time with her :)

The guy on the left is John.  He is originally from Canada, but works every year at Shenandoah and spends his winters in Florida.  He was great.  Quite a character.

Left: Karen-From Boston.  She was the assistant manager.  Oh, the stories I could tell about her.  Let's just say that she wasn't the most well like person.  There were days that I really did enjoy her, but one day she told me my hair looked like his and I never fully recovered. haha.

Right: Louise-Sweetest lady ever.  She is from Missouri and we just loved her.  She turned 75 during our season but she is still so fiery and awesome!  I want to be like her when I'm 75.

As you can see, it was a pretty diverse group of people, but that's what made it so fun.  Through our traveling and interactions with these guys, we were exposed to some new cultures from all across the country.  I would love to go back and do it again.... maybe next summer  :)

3rd trip to DC

The end of our season at Shenandoah was drawing near and there was one last place we HAD to go before we headed back home.  I had already been there twice, but I could probably spend years in DC and never get sick of it.  I really love that city, and we couldn't leave without Brittany seeing it!  This was a budget trip because we knew that we were going to have to pay for gas and hotels to get home and we wanted to spend as little as possible.  It's easy to do in DC though, because almost everything is free  :)


Instead of getting a hotel, which are pretty expensive in DC, we decided to just get a camping spot at a state park in Maryland and sleep in the car.  It was only $15 a night (we stayed for 2 nights) and it was only a few blocks away from a Metro station, so we just rode that into the city.  Even though it definitely wasn't as comfortable or warm as a hotel room, I think it was a pretty good idea.  Saved us lots of $$.


The picture is blurry, but this was our hotel room for a couple nights.  * Side note--You see that quilt?  That king-size denim quilt that I spent hours cutting up old jeans and sewing?  Well, it's now missing!  I can see loosing an earring or a $20 bill, but how do you lose a quilt?  It's a mystery.  I'm so sad :(  I'm almost positive that it made it back to Utah, but when I went to go use it again it was gone.  Weird, I know!

We spent time in a lot of the museums.  We planned to go on the weekend that we did because there was an Elvis exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery and I really wanted to see it.  I love Elvis!  So I got to see some of the museums that I had already been in, but we also went to ones that I hadn't.  Brittany is an artist, so we spent a few hours walking through all the art museums.  I like looking at pretty paintings and sculptures, but some of the "art", I just don't get.  haha.  It was still great to see though.  


We tried to get tickets to go up the elevator in the Washington Monument but it was out of service or something.  Every time I have been there was something wrong and I wasn't able to do that :(  Some other things that I saw this trip that I hadn't seen before were the Korean War monument and Ford's theater where President Lincoln was shot.

We went to Arlington Cemetery.  It was absolutely perfect with the fall leaves and amazing weather.

We were in DC the first week of November and it was a perfect time to go.  There were not as many people and we weren't ready to die from the heat.  We both just had little jackets and it was perfect.  If you ever go there, I would suggest going in October or November.  Next time I go, I would love to be there in the springtime with all the cherry blossoms blooming.  Ahh!  That would be so incredible.

While we were eating at a cute little cafe, Brittany and I were saying that we should go to a movie.  We didn't want to be out late but we weren't ready to go back to the car yet.  It's not like we could watch TV or something.  The cook overheard us mention going to a movie and he said, "The theater down the street is only 20 bucks."  We were in shock!!  He was saying that $20 was a cheap movie ticket!  I sure do love Utah movie prices.  Needless to say, we did NOT go to that theater.  We found one out in Maryland near the campground that was only $9.  We were the only people in the whole theater until right before the movie started.  Then these 2 ladies walked in.  And out of ALL the seats in the theater, they sat RIGHT NEXT TO US!!  Oh my gosh.... I was so annoyed.  We went out to get a drink and came back in and sat in different seats.  Seriously.... who does that?!

Overall the trip was so great, but we had one little dilemma.  And when I say little, I mean giant!  I remember using my debit card at the movie theater and then I never saw it again.  We looked all around the campground, all around the car, and went back to the theater to see if it was there.  It hadn't been used so I didn't think it was stolen, so we decided to just go back to Virginia and clean out the car.  We were sure that we would find it when we got everything out, but no such luck.  More on that in the next post.

We got a good shot of the temple on our way back.  The drive home was a little sad because we knew it would be our last adventure before we started our drive back to Utah.  But everything we did and everywhere we got to go was so amazing!  

Almost Done!

I have just a few more posts left to finish up my time back East..... bear with me :)  Can't wait to get it all done and be able to remember it all forever!


Next up:  last trip to Washington D.C.

Harper's Ferry & Gettysburg

The great thing about being in Virginia, or anywhere back East for that matter, is that there is history wherever you go.  The whole state of Virginia is just covered with Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.  There were 8 presidents born in Virginia, and even the houses and churches and cemeteries are all historical. Brittany and I loved visiting all these places.  We were able to go on a day trip to Harper's Ferry and then to Gettysburg.

If you look at a map you can see a spot where Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia meet.  That's where the town of Harper's Ferry is at.  I had heard of it before and knew a little about it, but not a lot.  So here's a bit of history.  Harper's Ferry is the site of John Brown's raid on slavery.  John Brown was an abolitionist and picked Harper's Ferry as his place to start raids and protests against slavery.  He and 20 men invaded the town and captured their arsenal.  But after most of those men were killed or wounded, John Brown was captured, convicted of treason and hanged.  The raid made the country pay more attention to how awful slavery was, which eventually started the civil war.

Because of the location of Harper's Ferry, it was caught right in the middle of the Civil War.  The town is right where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, and also had key rail lines running through it.  Throughout the course of the war, Harper's Ferry went back and forth 8 times being controlled by Union and then Confederate troops.

So now that we've had a history lesson.... here's some pictures.

There's lots of cute shops along the streets in the old buildings.

The leaves were amazing!

After Harper's Ferry we headed on up to Gettysburg.  We saw a cute little apple stand and just had to stop. We bought some delicious apples and asked the guy where the battlefield was.  He said, "You're standing on it."  Holy moly, did I get the chills!  Gettysburg was definitely one of the places I was most excited to go.  I really like Civil War history and this was one of the biggest/most important battles.  We got a map and drove around for a little while.  When I think of a battlefield, I usually think of a literal field.  Like one of the fields at my grandpa's farm.  Some battlefields are small like that, but Gettysburg is so big!  The fighting was really spread out.  I also imagine the battles in an open area which wasn't really the case at Gettysburg either.  There's so many trees and only a few open areas.  We found a lookout tower, so we climbs the steps-it was probably about 10 stories high-and just looked out over the whole area.  I felt a mixture of emotions.... It was so peaceful to look out over the scenery, but imagining what happened there was a little unsettling.  I couldn't even imagine being a soldier in those hot uniforms in July.  8,000 soldiers were killed, 50,000 were wounded, and about 5,000 were missing (in case you were wondering).  The battle was in the middle of a town.  People lived there and this was happening in their back yards.  It's pretty crazy to think about.  We saw the Gettysburg cemetery and the site where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address.

President Lincoln was awesome :)

Views from the lookout tower

Memorial for the units that fought at Gettysburg

Little Round Top

Houses like these were used as hospitals

The site of the Gettysburg Address

The Cemetery

Sunset at Gettysburg.... so amazing!

Dollywood

Every year my grandparents take a couple trips.  This year they just happened to be going to Tennessee and North Carolina.  My grandma called me and asked if it would be possible for us to drive out and meet them and it just so happened that our days off would be the days that they would be in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  If the name sounds a little redneck, that's because it is.  haha.  But it was one of the funnest places I've ever been.  


With them being so close to us, how could we not go see them?  So we drove about 5 1/2 hours from Loft Mountain and down the western panhandle of Virginia into Eastern Tennessee and met my grandparents at their hotel in Pigeon Forge.  It was so great to see familiar faces after not being around my family for a few months.  We got to go to a great show at the Country Tonite Theater.  I love fun shows like that, and this one was especially great because it was all country music  :)


The next day my grandparents tour group was scheduled to go to Dollywood.  Instead of following them in my car, the tour guide told me and Brittany that we could just ride there with the group, we would just have to tell a joke before we got on the bus.  Those old people love them jokes. haha.  They especially loved mine....


"Did you hear about the guy that got his whole left side cut off? .... He's all right"  


It's silly, I know.  But they laughed real hard.


So we got to Dollywood and it wasn't really what I was expecting.  I just thought it would be a fun place where you could eat food and buy crafts and listen to performers.  It did have all those things, but it also had some of the funnest roller coasters I've even been on!  There were a bunch of crazy rides.  It seemed like every single other person in Dollywood that day was over the age of 60, so me and Brittany were in amusement park heaven!  We were basically the only people in the whole place that were riding the rides.  We would just get on a roller coaster and ride it 3 times in a row and then move onto the next one.  My grandpa was awesome and would ride the rides with us.  He's so cool.  He loves rides, and I think he was glad that we were there to go with him because my grandma doesn't really go for that kind of stuff.  We did convince her to get on one roller coaster, and I was a little afraid that she might have a heart attack.  You know the pictures that they take on the rides?  Oh my goodness.... her face in that picture was priceless.  Unfortunately I don't have ANY pictures of that day because I forgot my camera :(  And my grandma doesn't believe in owning any type of camera besides the disposable ones, so we didn't get pictures from her camera either.  In one of the pictures taken on a ride, Brittany's hair was coming out of her ponytail and we were going so fast that it was a little wind-blown.  The guy at the photo booth showed us our picture and said "It looks like you have wings!"  Except in his awesome southern drawl it was more like, "Looks like you got wangs!"  haha.  We still laugh about that.


After spending the day in Dollywood, we had ridden every ride probably 6 or 7 times.  I've never had so much fun in an amusement park!  Someday when I have little kiddies of my own, we are definitely taking a trip to Pigeon Forge.

Autumn in Shenanadoah

In late October the leaves were fully changed and Shenandoah got really busy.  The main attraction at Shenandoah is the fall leaves and we had people from all over the world visiting the park.  I met people from Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, and lots of Canadians!  It was so fun to interact with people from other countries and hear what they had to say about America.  I probably met at least 1 person from every state while I was there as well and it was pretty funny to hear people's reactions when I would tell them I'm from Utah.  "Are you Mormon?"  "Are you a Jazz fan?"  The funniest comments were from people from Florida and coastal regions where the elevation is pretty much zero.  They would get in the Appalachian Mountains and freak out because the elevation was so high. haha.  I would just laugh at them.  The elevation in that area is around 2,500 to 3,000 feet, so coming from Utah I would mostly describe the Appalachians as rolling hills.  So when I would tell people that my house sits at almost 6,000 feet, they were a little shocked.  They would ask how I stand it.... Call me crazy, but I love the dry air that doesn't turn my hair into a frizzy mess.  *My hair is so naturally straight that the humidity doesn't make it go curly, it just makes it super frizzy.  However, my skin was always really soft with all the moisture in the air*

Fall is my favorite season.  I love the crisp morning air and the leaves and everything that autumn time brings: soup, sweaters, hot chocolate, Halloween, etc.  Being back east during the fall season was amazing!  Autumn in Utah is great, but it is so short and there is not an over-abundance of trees.  But autumn in Virginia.... whole 'nother story.  Every day I would just walk out into the forest and stare at the trees.  According to my manager, who is a local to the area, that year wasn't even a good year as far as the leaves go.  He said it had been a dry year and the colors were duller than they usually are.  Even with the 'dull' leaves, I loved experiencing the autumn time in Shenandoah.

This picture is in Northern Virginia, pretty close to the Maryland border.  This was pretty much what it looked like everywhere.  Even though it's not a great picture and not very close up, you can still see how many trees there are and all the different colors.

  

This is Skyline Drive.  We drove this road pretty much every day. [I did not take this picture though.  Found it on google :) ] The first time we saw a tree that had started to change colors, Brittany and I freaked out a little.  We were so excited to see the full effect of all the trees with colorful leaves.  

It seems like such a silly thing to get all worked up about, but there are not a lot of things in this world that make me happier than fall leaves.  If I could choose how the seasons go, I would probably make it be fall for like 6 months out of the year.  I love it!

Day 2 of New York

Day 2 in New York was pretty great.  We got to see so much!  Before we came on this trip, we knew we were only going to have about 24 hours in New York, so we picked out the few things that we wanted to see the most.  But when we got into the city we found lots of people selling tickets for the double decker tour buses.  We paid $45 for an all day ticket that takes you all around the city and had several stops that you can get off and on anytime.  Probably the best $45 I've ever spent!  The bus took us to all the main tourist attractions.  There's so much to see! 

New York University campus. 

 It was very interesting.  When I think of college/university campuses, I imagine a nice, sprawled out, grassy area with trees and buildings.  There's no such thing as sprawled out in New York though, so the campus is a whole bunch of skyscrapers.

Washington Square Arch.  

We got a little lost trying to find this because we got off on the wrong bus stop.  But we had another opportunity to find out just how nice most New Yorkers are.  Quite a few people saw us looking at our map and looking a bit confused, but everyone was so nice and willing to help us out and give us directions.

Ground Zero.  

It was under construction at this point and we didn't get a very good view, but it was still very sad to see.

Brooklyn Bridge

Chinatown.

We spent a little time here.  It was very interesting to see all of the signs in Chinese.  We actually ran into a couple missionaries on the street.  As we passed them we waved and yelled, "We're Mormon!" haha.  They just laughed at us and kept walking.

Chrysler Building

United Nations Building.  

I would really love to go inside the building someday.

Rockefeller Center.

You can kinda see people down there ice skating :)  That's also something 

I would love to go back and do one day.

Radio City Music Hall

The Plaza Hotel. 

It was so pretty.  I can see why people love to have weddings there :)

Central Park

And some random woman that walked into the picture.  It's really hard to get a picture in New York without someone walking past, so we just didn't even try.  I never realized how big Central Park really was.  We wanted to go to the zoo and see the penguins, but entrance to the zoo was $20 and this was obviously a budget trip, so we just decided to walk around the park.  We were there for about an hour and we only saw one small corner!  We did get some good souvenirs here though.

Carnegie Hall

On top of the tour bus in Times Square.  We had to get a picture of the Wicked poster.

Empire State Building. 

Just so you know.... it costs like $20 or $30 to ride the elevator to the top.  So we just decided that an outside shot would have to do. 

Macy's

I love the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, so I was really excited to see this

This is what the subway looks like at 5 in the afternoon.  Everyone is getting off work, and you can't even move!  I had a hard time just putting my arms up to take the picture.

After a very exciting day of seeing all the sites and eating some authentic New York Pizza and New York Cheesecake, we went back to our car and started the drive back down to Virginia.  It was quite the whirlwind trip, but I'm so glad we were able to make it up there.  Coming from a small town, I'm pretty sure I would not be able to live in New York permanently but it was fun to visit.  I would love to go back and spend some more time there.