Our Progress Coast to Coast!

Day 40 - Higginsville, MO to Emporia, KS to Lucas, KS to Silverthorne, CO

The Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas

Hanging out with Megan in Emporia, Kansas

We started out early so that we could get to the carnival where Pete's friend Megan is working in Emporia, Kansas. She gave us a behind the scenes tour, we had lunch at a typical roadside diner, and then walked to a snow-cone stand. It's pretty amazing that she's working with this traveling carnival, but she seems happy for the time being, and it must be one hell of an experience!

We started off on the road again in the afternoon, and then just drove and drove and drove across the entire state of Kansas, and they were right, there were sunflowers. We might a slight detour to see the artist town of Lucas, where a crazy man made all these concrete statues about the Garden of Eden in his front yard, but on the way back we were pretty deterred afterward by the most powerful thunderstorm either of us have ever seen. We couldn't see the road the rain was so thick!

We finally made it to Pete's aunt's house in Silverthorne, Colorado around 2am, only to try the door of the wrong house first! What exhaustion..we collapsed and went to bed immediately in Pam Bent's cabin-y home.

Day 39 - Nashville, TN to Higginsville, MO

Drive drive drive! We listened to "The Help," on audio book, which was a great replacement for not having spent too much time in the South. We stopped in Higginsville only because it had a Walmart and we couldn't drive any further.

Day 38 - Knoxville, TN to Nashville, TN

Views of our hotel in Nashville..
The former dining hall for the college where we were staying in Nashville



Oh waking up in a Walmart never stops feeling trashy... :) But it's so free! Well we finished the drive to Nashville that morning, and found the best place to stay in town over the phone - an old religious college (religous aka gave masters degrees in "gospel") built in the style of Cambridge gothic that is now a renovated conference center. A super cheap room with beautiful surroundings, and we were staying the old dorms! I'm already reminiscent about college, and this made me want to go back to school definitely within the next couple of years.

Before we arrived at the hotel, we stopped at a place called "Prince's Hot Chicken," to get the regional specialty (although we found out later not many people in Nashville actually eat hot chicken...) which consists of fried chicken covered in crazy hot spices. The woman kinda threw us a questioning look when we ordered Medium Hot, which was explained later when we could hardly finish eating it all for being so hot!

We took advantage of doing laundry, getting my hair cut (best $20 haircut I've ever had!), and otherwise cleaned up after having sweat in our car for the past couple of days. We grabbed dinner at a "New York Diner," where Pete had a sandwich entirely fried (as in, the entire sandwich was dipped in the frying oil). We decided the entire middle of the country looks the way it does because there are no vegetables on the menus! Then we walked downtown, which also had the same bright lights as Dollywood, but instead was mostly bars and boot shops. We too were tempted to buy boots, but they were several hundred dollars and way fancier than anything we would wear. Every bar had live music coming from it, and according to my barber, not all of it was country although it sure sounded like it. Not really feeling the need to hang around in a smokey loud bar, we took a cab home and went to bed early.

Day 37 - Asheville, NC to Cherokee, NC to Knoxville, TN

The Titanic building in Dollywood
The upside-down building called "Wonderworks"
The castle place called "MagiQuest"
Me atop the "bald" that we hiked at Great Smokey Mountains
View of the Great Smokey Mountains
The both of us at the Great Smokey Mountains

After waking up in a Walmart parking lot that was excruciatingly hot and humid, we made our way into Asheville, which we only knew to be "really beautiful and liberal." What we found were a bunch of closed shops, and some cool bookstores, as we were there far too early for the normal gift shopper. After putzing around and going to the Visitor Center, we decided to head down the road to the Cherokee Indian Reservation, since it sounded more interesting.

Cherokee, the city, is filled with tons of shops peddling "Indian wares." We took this opportunity to ask one of the local shop owners where we could buy some wholesale leather, to make a version of this really expensive leather-bound journal that Pete saw in New York and which was too expensive to buy. She directed us to the holy land of Indian ware supply stores, and we lavished ourselves by getting two large pieces of excellent leather for $15 (mine is for a potential purse I'm going to design) and some pieces of turquoise for $4! The shop had all the turquoise, cut and uncut, that you can imagine, as well as beads, feathers, fabrics, and everything else that you need to make your very own authentic Indian wares...what a deal for us!

We finally went looking for a restaurant (of which there are only, like, two in the entire city of Cherokee) which took foreveeeer and everything was fried. There was a sign disclaiming their slow service, saying, "We are not a fast food establishment. Everything is made to order, and takes a long time."

Next was the Museum of the Cherokee, which Pete remembers having gone to when he was a boy scout. It is a maze of dioramas depicting early Cherokee life, and though educational, seemed to drop off significantly when it came to describing the current situation that most Cherokee live in. We wondered, but enjoyed the history lesson nonetheless.

On the way to our next destination, Nashville, we stopped the Great Smoky Mountains for a hike (and our weekly exercise!) before coming down on the wonder that is Dollywood, or in other terms, Las Vegas without gambling or prostitution. It's a line of crazy stucco buildings depicting the Titanic, a castle, an upside down Caesar's Palace, and a bunch of other entertainments apparently owned by Dolly Parton. It's the manifestation of her popularity, taken form in bright lights, cheap prizes, and really really tacky buildings = tons of money for Dolly. Crazy!

Another Walmart parking lot for the night in Knoxville...somewhat less hot since we bought a battery powered fan at...you guessed it....Walmart :)

Day 36 - Fredericksburg, VA to Asheville, NC

Today was pretty much a driving day. We woke up, repacked the car and got off at noon. We made dinner in a park outside of Asheville after dusk and slept in a Walmart parking lot in Asheville. We've been listening to the Steve Larson books on tape and have finally made it through The Girl Who Played With Fire, and have decided to listen to The Help before we listen to the last one.
-Pete

Day 34-35 - Fredericksburg, VA to Washington DC and back again

Smithsonian Museum of the Native American

Awesome Air and Space Museum!

The capital

So many stairs!

Washington Monument

Elena looking like a dork

The tandem! (I let Elena sit in the front just for this picture... )

The White House!

Our trip to DC was a lot of fun! We ended up taking the train in from Fredericksburg to Union Station. We then walked to our hostel which was a bit grungy but ended up being a fine place to stay with interesting people to meet (in particular a french couple traveling down from Canada). I then grabbed lunch with Alex who came into the city with us, while Elena had a meeting with a friend of a friend of her grandmother's about what it was like to work in the advocacy sector of international development.
Once Elena was done, it was time for Alex to leave to meet up with his cousin and Elena and I sat in Dupont Circle to decide what we wanted to do in DC for the next two days. We ended up walking by the White House (snipers on the roof!) and the Washington Memorial before we went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I love Natural History Museums! We saw the hope diamond as well as a bunch of really awesome stuff. We then rented a tandem bike, which was an awesome idea, in order to bike around the Mall and see all the monuments within two hours. We saw the Vietnam Memorial, The Lincoln Monument, the reflecting pool, the Jefferson monument, as some of the highlights, and made a full lap of the Mall. While on the capital end of the Mall we saw an outdoor screen and projector with the lawn in front of it full of people. We returned there after returning the bike and watched 12 Angry Men which is an amazing black and white movie. I really enjoyed it. Shortly after we called it a night and enjoyed meeting and talking with the french couple back at the hostel.
The next day we made a b-line to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which was probably my favorite museum that we saw there. One of the most interesting things we saw there was the air/space craft used for the first commercial flights to space! The space ship was made out of a cloth with glue to make it stiff and in order to slow it down with out burning up on the way back down it folds in half, mid-flight, which creates enough drag that it slows fast enough to avoid burning up in the atmosphere! After that we were early enough to get tickets for the tour of the Department of Printing and Engraving (the money factory)! We then went to the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American for lunch as we were told it was one of the best places to eat in that area. We were not disappointed! We unfortunately then had to run back to the Department of Printing and Engraving before we could look around in the museum in order to make our tour there. The tour was super interesting. We learned that every president has an engraving done of them when they enter the office in order to be able to put them on currency in the future. The engraving of Obama was pretty neat to see. We then returned to check out of our hostel and then headed back to Fredericksburg.
In Fredericksburg we grabbed dinner at 5 guys which is the east coast equivalent of In and Out. I have to say that I'm still a bigger fan of In and Out.. The rest of the night we pretty much just hung out in Jeremy's Apartment and relaxed.
-Pete