Under-appreciated National Treasures: Balanced Rock

Today it is time to give a little shout out to Castleford, Idaho, home of the Balanced Rock.  I'm sick of all this blah blah blahing about the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal as if they are so great.  Anyone can go there and take the same picture as everyone else (Sam and I haven't yet, and maybe that is where this bitter attitude is coming from).  If you really want to be unique, you don't have to rediscover Vietnam, go to Castleford and see this...

Yes, I am not kidding you, that rock is really balancing there.  I know it looks a little small in this photo, but (warning: obvious statement ahead) the closer you get to it, the bigger it is.  This bad boy is (I quote the indisputable Visit Idaho website) "over 48 feet tall and 40 tons, the wind-carved rock balances precariously on a pedestal only 3 feet by 17 inches."  So yeah, you're going to want to see it.

Sam, slightly concerned at the largeness of the rock as he gets closer

As if its natural wonder-ness wasn't enough, you can really get a good workout climbing up there to check it out.  Sam and I were huffing and puffing and mumbling under our breath by the time we made it close enough to touch the rock itself.

A smile hides the pain of too many Christmas cookies + exercise

One thing I love about life is that as you get up into the ancient thirties, you really start to appreciate all the things that are right in your own backyard.  If the budget doesn't have room for a trip to Castleford today, there is probably something within 10 miles of you that other people would travel to see.  Have fun out there!

New York

Sam and I recently went for a weekend in New York City as a Christmas present to ourselves.  As always when you travel, you learn a few things.  Along with this picture of the Hershey store in Times Square, here's what I got out of it.

1.  The Flavored Americano
This may be the most important thing I learned, and I believe it is absolutely crucial to impart it to you.  How many of us (and by us, I mean coffee addicts), when we go to Starbucks (if we drink corporate coffee), really want the Pumpkin Spice Latte, but feel like we are getting a punch in the wallet every time we cave in and order it instead of something more responsible?  When I was in line at the airport, the man in front of me ordered a Gingerbread Americano with room for cream.  Call me shallow, but my world exploded.  How could I not have thought of this before?  It saves you over a dollar a cup, and it tastes really good.  I don't know if I can make a case for it being significantly less calories, but in my heart I tell myself there are less.  Seriously, try it.


2.  Tourists are crazy...

This is a picture of me being superior to tourists

...and we are tourists.

Sam pointing out the Statue of Liberty

Me with the Statue of Liberty in my mouth

3.  Guidebooks are back
I have always liked guidebooks, but in my twenties I tried to hide it.  All the cool kids were going places flying by the seat of their pants, just experiencing life.  Lately I have come to accept about myself that it scares me half to death to fly by the seat of my pants, and that I'd rather just have the guidebook.  For me, just getting there is the adventurous part, and at last I'm okay with it.

Thanks to our NYC guidebook we found this little gem--the Hotel 17.  Not only did Woody Allen make a horror movie there (which is something I always look for in a hotel), but it is really cheap for New York--under $200.  It was clean, we didn't get bed bugs, and we even had a flat screen t.v. with 15 channels.

As an extra bonus, it was the narrowest hotel room I ever stayed in.

4.  Go with your gut
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and thought to yourself, this just isn't a good idea.  Sam and I experienced that sensation on our honeymoon when we went into a restaurant we just didn't have a great feeling about.  Things were moving VERY slowly, and yet we plowed on.  Three hours later, we had finally received our overpriced dinner.  It wasn't some European leisure thing with it taking three hours for us to eat, it was more that no one cared whether or not we starved or died of boredom.  Since that experience, we now just leave if things aren't going well.  So in the big city, when we had sat at our table for twenty minutes in an almost empty restaurant and no one had taken our order, we left for greener pastures.  It is such a good feeling!

Anyway, there is really too much good food and not enough time in New York City.  For instance, there are places like the Mac Bar, which serves twelve different kinds of macaroni and cheese and is shaped like a macaroni noodle to boot.

Lobster Macaroni and Chipotle Macaroni

Here we are trying to blend as world weary New Yorkers

5.  Stay street smart
Since I lived adjacent to Boston for a couple of years and I live in Atlanta now, I like to think that I am an aware person who approaches the big city with a good balance of caution and hipness.  This image of myself was a little battered, however, when I went out one morning while Sam was still sleeping to get us some coffee by myself.  My wallet was in my coat pocket, which really didn't seem like a safety first option for me, so I decided that I was probably going to get mugged.  I made it successfully to the coffee shop and because of a slight debacle with making our drinks I left carrying two cups of a coffee and an open cup of cream.  A man who looked a little sketchy began to approach and immediately I shifted into being hyper alert, like the city girl I am.  He suddenly stepped a little too far into my personal bubble and I jumped, completely covering myself in cream.  Because I'm always cool under pressure, I left my cup on the sidewalk (please don't tell, I usually never littler!) and ran away.  What I learned from this was that doing harm to yourself may startle your would be bubble burster, but it doesn't really seem like a good form of self defense.  In the event of a real emergency, I would try to throw the cream at him.

Briefly achieving my hip and cautious stance

Sam and Sarah's Ultimate Staycation, Day 1

Last Saturday morning found our hero and heroine with a glorious three day weekend spread out before them like a the scenic expanse of a very empty canyon.  The heroine (having spent a good deal of time and money in a counseling program to learn that she is ever so slightly depressive and needs structure in her life) suggested that if she did not stop sitting on the couch like a lump the faint halo of grumpiness around her could degenerate quickly to boredom, hypochondria, or crying for no real--how do you say it--reason (echoes of earlier blogs, are we catching a theme here?).  Sam, being the excellent husband and supporter (even proponent) of hair brained schemes that he is, agreed that this called for an old fashioned stay-cation.  We made a list of all the things we wanted to do and began the merriment.

But.

As so often happens in the Chalkboard House, the sweetness of life is mixed with the bitter.  And the bitter, bitter pill of this stay-cation is that due to a technical failure that was no one but Kodak's fault all the photographs we took of it were lost with nothing but a "memory card failure error" message to explain why.

Obviously, we were upset.  What could I do?  Not blog?  Never!  Only on days when I don't feel like it could this be an acceptable excuse.  No, there was only one solution:  I was forced to find random pictures from the internet to try and recreate the events of our stay-cation.  

Day 1

Our theme for this day was Atlanta (this may seem like an obvious theme for someone on a stay-cation in Atlanta, but roll with me, I like having theme days).

The first stop to represent Atlanta of course had to be Target.  We live large, what can I day?  Why Target?  Because I

(here played by Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, because I love her and always will) needed a bike for further adventures

(my bike is played by Wonder Woman's invisible plane, because unfortunately for her she never had an invisible bike).

I hate to break things into rankings, but my favorite part of Day 1 may actually have been riding my new bike around the Target parking lot and the thrill of getting it into the Honda Civic when we thought there was no possible way

(Just pretend the snuggie/lamp/ducky/frame is my bike).  After accomplishing mission GSaB, we went home, recuperated, ate leftovers, and went, to....

The Cyclorama!  This depiction of the Battle of Atlanta is the largest painting and diorama in the world!  It was a lot of fun.  At the gift shop, they had a hat and beard you could put on to look like Abraham Lincoln.  I took a hilarious picture with this on:

(shown here as Wonder Woman and Abraham Lincoln morphed together).  Of course, since we were in the area we had to stop at Atlanta's gourmet ice cream shop, Morelli's, were they make incredible ice cream in crazy flavors like maple bacon brittle, and coconut jalapeno.  Sam kept it traditional with butter pecan

He looked much better than this picture of Vince Vaughn with vanilla ice cream.  And I had Elvis Lives

which is banana, peanut butter, and chocolate.  That would have been enough for one day, but I didn't get my super hero status just by randomly downloading pictures of others.  No!  We kept the party going with a bike ride along the Chattahootchee and a movie night.

Day one was a major success!

City of the Dead

Menacing title, huh?  Well, I don't use it lightly.  After having done extensive research using the infallible resources of the internet and the American Institute of Paranormal Psychology, I can confirm it is 100ish% true. Savannah, Georgia, known primarily for being incredibly beautiful

is also (dum, dum, DUUUMMM!!!) the city of the dead.

You have to hum the Twilight Zone theme song to view this picture.

Now I know there are going to be skeptics out there who don't believe that Blue Orb Ghost Tours are really all that scientific.  Can you deny HISTORY, skeptics!?!  Can you deny that the Yellow Fever, ancient Native American Burial grounds (desecrated and now cursed) and various other disasters led to 25,000 unmarked graves in Savannah that the city was then built over?  Can you deny that any normal citizen just walking along practically trips over bones if they dig only a few feet below the surface at any point in the city?   Can you really look at me and say that you don't believe Voo Doo Witch Doctors even now constantly go to Savannah's squares to dig up bones for their dark arts?

I know that even with these compelling facts you may doubt me.  And I can have compassion for that.  After all, who am I but a humble blogger and tourist?  You can doubt the information I have presented to you from semi-credible sources.  But will you not be moved by my own story?  Here is what I know from personal experience:

Fact #1
Within hours of arriving in the city of Savannah, my brother and sister who I have known their whole lives started acting like crazy people:

Even Sam and I struggled under the influence of this powerful force:

Fact #2
Our hotel was obviously haunted.  How else can you explain the following phenomena?
*  All the ice machines in the hotel "mysteriously" didn't work
*  There was white powder and bits of toilet paper on the floor of the bathroom before we got there
*  The carpet had a strange smell, exactly like the smell Blue Orb Ghost Expert Alabama Tobias described as being the smell of death
*  Minutes after we got in the pool a storm with thunder, lightening, and rain began and we barely made it out of the pool alive
*  When we got up in the morning for the complimentary breakfast the hotel provided it wasn't there


Fact #3

We actually photographed the ghosts our own selves on the Blue Orb Tour.  In these pictures you will obviously see the face of a little girl killed by her father in the windows of this house.  If you look carefully you can also see Toto and the Witch of the West, but that may be a different phenomena:

And is it just a coincidence that Manda and Danny have a strange orange glow while viewing the haunted photos in the haunted hotel?

Of all of us, I think Sam was most affected (probably because he is most in touch with the paranormal).  Days later, he still wore a haunted expression, long after we had left...The City of the Dead.

Ready, set, CAMP!!

Last Saturday our heroine was sitting on the couch in a funk. Her lovely Sam tried all the usual fixes--the coffee house and the library were visited with no success. She would not be comforted. A grumpy morning turned into a grumpy afternoon, and the grump was spreading!! It is probably hard for you all to imagine that I can be moody (even I can't keep a straight face as I type that one) but occasionally, this sunny disposition just crumbles into something quite brooding and mysterious (not in a good way). Well, last Saturday when I looked at my Sam and saw that my cranky bad behavior was starting to be infectious, I knew we had to do something. Thinking about what would just completely shock and delight him, I suggested it was time that we go...

To Bavarian Euro-Disney? What?

German mini golfing, you say? No, crazy kids, despite what these pictures might indicate we went camping!!

Deep in the heart of Northeastern Georgia lies a Bavarian Village that time forgot, only a few thousand tourists a day visit it. And right outside Helen, GA (which I totally love, I freely admit it) is the Unicoi State Park where Sam and I reserved a place to tent camp at 2:00 on the day of our adventure. Seriously, we were THAT spontaneous! We didn't even own a tent when we concocted this scheme. We still think we are pretty charming and awesome for accomplishing this daring plot. Well, after we got in the truck, we got stuck in a Bavarian traffic jam and the fun really began!

I bet you can guess who thought to stick a finger in the general area of my nose as if it were mine:

The slow moving cars gave us plenty of time to chillax and think about how cool our new tent looked in the back of the truck. One of the first things we did after locating our campsite was to take a little walk around the lake loop. It was gorgeous!

Now in the back of your mind, you are probably thinking (weather channel addict that you are!) wasn't it like 105 degrees with 95% humidity last weekend in Georgia? You are right, it was. But you know, honestly, it didn't bother me a bit!

How could I be bothered by a little humidity when I was having an adventure? The night was gorgeous, despite what it did to tweak my lazy eye and flashlight holding capabilities.

And truly, we were having the time of our lives. :)

Believe it or not friends, I have been accepted as a volunteer and can't be late. There are more adventures to come, so stay tuned tomorrow when we see some incredible photographic artistry...