Thanksgiving Weekend

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! John and I roasted up a tofurkey and potatoes and cracked open a can of cranberries.

After we had recovered from our Thanksgiving feast we went to Washington, D.C. to visit the American History Museum that has been closed for three years for renovations. I did not see the old museum, but I was not impressed with the new one. Perhaps it was the massive amounts of people that were there and the disappointment of the First Lady exhibit not being open yet, but I did not really like the museum.

It was a very nice day out and we walked from the Capitol Building down to the Lincoln Memorial and back. That's about a 3 mile walk! It was very interesting because they were already getting ready for the Inaguration and building the stage and bleachers.

You can kind of see the stage on the very bottom of this picture.

We've been to D.C. many times, but we still haven't been to all of the monuments and places to see. This time we walked up to the Washington Monument and got a good look at that. The marble was pretty cool - I saw some pyrite in it.

Great Falls, Va and Md

On November 23, John and I went to Great Falls, Va and Md to have a memeorial to John's sister Tami. It was such a beautiful day. In the picture above, we are standing on the Virginia side of the Potomac. There were a bunch of kayakers going over the falls.

This is the flood levels of past years. As you can see in the background the river is very far off and low. I can't imagine the floods getting up to these points! As recently as 1996 the levels got quite high.

On the Maryland side, we crossed the falls over a bridge and tossed in the flowers. The bridge railings were a little wobbly, so it was quite exciting to lean over and watch the water rush by.

Close to Home

Last weekend, John and I decided to stay close to home and walk down to the Inner Harbor and stroll along the new promenade that opened up. That means that you can walk all the way around the Inner Harbor now, before you couldn't walk all the way around it because the promenade hadn't been built yet and then it was closed because of construction.

There was a Norweigian sailing ship that was in the harbor for a visit. Every autumn their navy takes the ship to various ports for training. We did not go on the ship, but they were offering free tours if you wanted to tour it.

So, we didn't end up doing too much, but got some nice pictures out of our weekend.

Vegas, baby!

Last week John went to Phoenix for a work conference. For the last two years, I went with him but this year since I have classes, I didn't get to go for the full week. On Wednesday evening I flew out to Las Vegas to meet John. We stayed in the Tropicana.

On the first night we wandered around and played a few slots. It has been a few years since we had been to Vegas and there have been a lot of changes. Right on the strip they are building a new complex of buildings that replaced the old Boardwalk Casino. It is an immense project.

On Thursday night we got all dressed up and went to AquaKnox for supper. It was a fancy seafood place in the Venetian. It was a lot of fun.

After supper we went downtown. I love downtown - we went to the Golden Nugget which has changed quite a bit. They made a shark tank in the pool area and a waterslide goes through the middle of it. They also made a bar that has a balcony that looks out over Freemont Street.

We went and played slot machines up and down Freemont Street. In Binion's I won $113.00 on a penny machine. It was on a Wizard of Oz machine, that was really fun!

On Friday we walked around the strip some more and covered most of the places we didn't see before. We walked through the Flamingo Casino and saw the flamingo habitat.

Later that night we dressed up: John as Hugh Hefner and Me as a tennis player. There were a lot of crazy costumes.

If you want to see more pictures, go to: http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r53/klub0002/Las%20Vegas/

Happy Anniversary to us!

On Saturday we had our 3rd anniversary and what did we do? We went hiking, of course! There is an old railroad line that runs from Baltimore north to Pennsylvania; we have gone hiking on this trail a few other times. This time we went up to Pennsylvania for our hike. York, PA is about 50 miles from Baltimore and we went hiking just a little south of York. This part of the trail is pretty neat because the rails are still there, further south the rails have been removed.

It wasn't very busy either, which was nice. Mostly bikers were there, there was some "evidence" of horses around, but we didn't see any. We went about 6.5 miles which brings our total miles since May to 97.3 miles. We wanted to make 100 miles over the summer, but that didn't quite work out so we extended the deadline to the end of the year. I think we can make the 2.7 miles by December. :)

A geological sidenote: There was a lot of great schist along this trail, John's head is for scale.

Schist is a metamorphic rock. It is made when shale is heated up deep in the earth and it metamorphises into schist. A lot of the schist along this trail was at an angle like you can see above. It was really very interesting to look at.

Are you going to Scarborough Faire?

This weekend was the Baltimore Marathon, the race went right by our apartment. They started nice and early and Chopper and I were on the porch watching and when the runners went by people would clap and cheer. That made Chopper wonder what the heck was going on. He was growling and barking a little bit. Maybe he was just getting into the spirit of things and cheering everyone on.

In the afternoon we decided to go to the Maryland Renaissance Fair.

It was such a nice day for it. We did not dress up, but the costume rental was very reasonable. Chopper was not allowed to come with, but he did dress up. Doesn't he look great?

The joust was pretty neat, too. The horses were so cool. This one was my favorite:

Weaverton Road to Garvey Shelter

This Saturday we hiked the Appalachian Trail from Weaverton Road to the Garvey Shelter (3 miles), unfortunately we do not have two cars, so it was an in and out hike (total of 6 miles). The guide book that I have for the Maryland section of the AT says that this section of the trail has an elevation change of 576 feet that is comprised of 16 switchbacks. We only counted 15, but we were tired by the time we got back to them. After you have hiked the initial 576 feet you get this view:
This is the Potomac River, Virginia to the left, West Virginia to the right and Maryland in the foreground. The last time we were in this area, the river was much more turbulent, but this time it is really calm and pretty low.

After the side-trail to the view over Weaverton Cliff we continued on to the shelter. There is another 200 feet of elevation, but it is over about 1.5 miles, so it is pretty gradual. About half way, we felt like we had enough of this dang mountain! But like good hikers we took a break and soldiered on.

At three miles we came to the Garvey Shelter. It was an impressively nice place. There is a loft, a fire pit, a water source that is down a steep slope and an outhouse! This place was like the taj mahal of camping shelters. Inside there is a log book that people sign and write stories in. It was pretty interesting to read. Some people had seen bears, others wrote about where they had come from and where they were going.

After a little break we headed back to the car. We ran across a lot more people on the way back. There were quite a few boy scout troups and groups of people enjoying the lovely day. As a reward we drove into Harpers Ferry (3 miles) for frozen custard (I had vanilla and pumpkin twist) and a shake (John had peanut butter cup/vanilla).

We are slowly, but surely attacking the AT. Right now we have gone 3 miles on the southern end of the Maryland section and 3.1 miles on the northern section. One day we'll meet ourselves in the middle!

Wheeeeeee!

This weekend we decided to go to an amusement park - King's Dominion in Richmond, VA. We left on Sunday morning, its about a 2.5 hour drive. We arrived at the hotel, checked in and got our tickets. I found a deal on the internet through our hotel to get tickets there instead of at the park: less time waiting in line.

There are lots of great roller coasters there: Rebel Yell, Hurler, Grizzly, Dominator and Volcano. There are also a few more, we tried to hit as many as we could. We were there from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm and we didn't get a chance to go on all of them. At first, the lines were not very bad - maybe a 10 minute wait, on the Hurler there wasn't even enough people in line to fill up the ride. As the day got sunnier and warmer, the more people came. By the time we got to the Volcano the wait was 1 hour! (I timed it - if the wait had been posted somewhere I doubt I would have wanted to stand in line.) But, the ride was totally worth it. It was so fast and twisty and its one of those roller coasters where your feet hang down. Very fun.After all the roller coasters we went to the waterpark that's attached and sat in the lazy river. We went around twice. Some people who got into the lazy river didn't realize it was a LAZY river and they were quite rowdy. But it was a nice relaxing end to a very fun day.

We went to TIGFriday's next door to our hotel for supper and realized that our necks had been thrown around quite a bit on the rides - Oh man!

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

The last two weekends

I have been slacking a little bit. We have been hiking, gone to a football game and we went camping in Virginia and I haven't posted about it yet!

We went to Oregon Ridge Park and went hiking. This park is not very far from our apartment and its nice to be able to get to hike without having to drive a long way.

We went to the pre-season Ravens game against the Vikings. Unfortunately the Ravens lost the game. It was fun anyway. There were lots of people there, even though it was just a pre-season game. After half-time the place cleared out.

This last weekend we went to Westmoreland State Park in Virginia. Its right along the Potomac River between where George Washington was born and Robert E. Lee was born. The Potomac is very wide there, it almost looks like the Chesapeake Bay. On the beaches along the river you can find sharks teeth and dolphin teeth from the Miocene Era. We didn't have any luck finding any. When we were down by the river, the weather was quite nice because there was a breeze, but when we took our hike through the woods and swamp it was very humid and hot. Eventhough it was hot, it was a very nice time.

You can find more pictures here: http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r53/klub0002/Camping%20and%20Hiking/

South Dakota

August 8 - 13th we went and visited the Klubers in Chamberlain, South Dakota. We flew into Chicago where we met my brother, his wife and their daughter. We all flew to Sioux Falls, rented a car and drove to Chamberlain - that takes about 2 hours.

On the 10th John and I took off for a day and a half in the Badlands, Rapid City and the Black Hills. This is where I grew up and I showed John my old house, school and where I used to hang out. We then drove to Hill City where we were staying for the night. After we checked in we drove to Mt. Rushmore and watched the lighting. It was very patriotic.

The next day we drove the Needles Highway and hiked up to Little Devil's Tower and saw the view. I mistook the trail for going straight up the mountain and crawled up there - I should have looked to the right - that's where the trail really went. The view was tremendous - from the wrong way up the trail and from the right way!

We had a lot of fun visiting with everyone. And yes, we all tried on cowboy hats (they were my dad's and Trav's).

You can find more pictures of our trip at: http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r53/klub0002/

Spelunkers!

Ever since we moved to Baltimore, I have been wanting to go to the Luray Caverns in Luray, Virginia. This weekend we finally went. This cave was huge and had some really neat formations.

The cave temperature was a constant 54 degrees. John bought me a sweatshirt at the gift shop before we went down into the cave so I wouldn't freeze. The tour took about an hour and we went down 168 feet at the deepest point.

In this cave there is also a "stalagcpipe" organ. A guy invented a way to hit the stalagtites to create a specific tone. They had it play a song automatically (like a player piano). It was pretty cool. Sometimes they have weddings down there - 500 so far since the cave opened to the public.

After the cave adventure we went to Luray to have lunch and then hopped over to the Shenandoah National Park and got to see some great views. We went to Shenandoah National Park 3 years ago - they raised the price to get in by $5.00! Outrageous. The views were worth it, though.

Along the park is Skyline Drive that you can drive down the whole park (101 miles) - we entered at the 30 mile mark and drove north to zero. Its such a nice drive. The Appalachian Trail also crosses the road quite a few times. Unfortunately it was raining a little bit so we didn't go for a hike.

Blazin' Hot

Well, the last couple of weeks here have been to hot to do much of anything. So, we have been stuck in the house. And because of the boredom, poor Chopper suffers:

Don't worry, he only had to wear the pink t-shirt for about an hour. When John got home he took it off of Chopper.

I have been busy knitting a birthday gift for our friends' daughter's 2nd birthday. It took me about a week to knit and I think it turned out pretty well:

Hopefully the weather lets up a bit and we can get outside for some more adventures. I know Chopper certainly hopes so!

Babies and Fireworks

For the Fourth of July weekend John and I went to visit his family in Milwaukee, WI. We hadn't seen our niece and nephew (Kayla and Evan) since Christmas and boy have they gotten big! They are even tailgating at baseball games.

On the Fourth of July we went to a parade in Cedarburg - it was quite a parade and had everything from dogs to horses to a polka band on a trailer. The day was beautiful and sunny, probably one of the most pleasant 4th of Julys I have ever had. The fireworks in West Bend were great and there were tons of people ooooh-ing and ahhhh-ing.

On Saturday we went to a pool party at Shaun and Heather's house. The have a beautiful back yard and pool. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun I forgot to get a picture - but trust me it was great. Later that night we went to Adam's to have a barbecue and play Guitar Hero (as a matter of fact just about every night ended in Guitar Hero and I learned that I am woefully inadequate as a player and I need to practice more!)

Kayla's in training already!

On Sunday we went to the Brewer's game - they were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates. They won quite handily and it was a very fun day - a little hot sitting in the sun, but still fun.

I just want to thank Pete, Erica and Evan for being such great hosts and to the whole Anderson clan for showing us a great time!

Hooray!

Ahhhh! I've done it! I completed my summer chemistry course. On Monday afternoon I will find out my grade, but it sure feels good to have finished that class. It was soo intense.
Chopper was inspired by my commitment and has decided to pursue the nobel prize in chemistry...(as you can see above).

Bobblehead

On June 19th we went to the Orioles game. They were giving out Nick Markakis bobbleheads. I put mine on top of the TV and John took his to work. Since he is making a sliding catch, it looks like he is falling over, so I put a tennis ball under his elbow and it doesn't look like he's falling over anymore.
On Sundays, we try to make it to our local farmer's market. Since the weather is getting warmer they have lots and lots of veggies and fruits now. They even sell live crabs there! Its only about 4 blocks from our house, so its very nice to be able to go there and get our veggies - less time spent at the grocery store.
I have also been growing some herbs on our deck. This picture was taken after a massive harvest of basil, so its not impressive as it looked before. Its so nice to have fresh herbs - we have gotten pretty creative with adding herbs to our food.

Back to Hiking!

Last week John and I took the weekend off and didn't go on a hike. We probably should have because I think it was the last nice weekend before the summer weather came. This weekend the heat index is 110 degrees and it is reallly humid out. So what do we decide to do? Go hiking!

We went in the morning before it got extremely hot, but it was very humid and foggy. When the sun finally came out, you certainly could tell. I told John that it felt like walking inside someone's mouth! Ew.

The scenery was really gorgeous, so green and ferns were everywhere. The rododendrons were also blooming and the forest smelled so great. There were some beaver dams in the river and in some spots the trail was pretty narrow - it felt like a green tunnel.

Here are John and Chopper in the greenery. (That black blob that John is holding is Chops)

Once again on this hike we met a snake. The three times that we have seen snakes they have all been different. This one was the most cranky of the three.