Mountains, Cedars and Arak

Last weekend was awesome not only for all the time spent hanging out in cafes and playing backgammon, but for a great overnight trip Laine and I took with Josh and Zeina up to the mountains in Northern Lebanon.

We ended up staying in a guesthouse overlooking a small mountain village tucked among the hills.  We enjoyed an awesome breakfast, with homemade yogurt, olives, preserves and fresh vegetables from the owner's garden.  We also got to try his Arak, the traditional liquor.  Pretty good, despite trying it at 10am...  

Afterwards we went up and checked out the famous Lebanese cedars, then drove back down to the coast and had an awesome dinner at a cool little seafood restaurant overlooking the sea.  Not a bad weekend trip... 

 

Welcome to Lebanon: Land of cafes, mezze and nargile

Not a bad life

Well, Laine and I totally failed to keep up the blog while in Turkey, and now she's back home in Seattle and getting ready to make her big move back to the East Coast.  But, we had a great week in Beirut before she left, due in no small part to Josh and Zeina, our unofficial tour guides while we were here.

Best tour guides ever

They not only took us out to a bunch of amazing lunches, walked us around the city on numerous occasions and broke down a lot of the incredibly complex historical and political challenges the country continues to face, but they ALSO got us into the groove of hanging out in cafes, smoking hookah (called nargile here) and playing backgammon for hours.

Hanging out on the Corniche

We had a great week exploring the city, checking out the American University of Beirut campus (totally gorgeous) and even took an overnight trip up to the mountains, which I'll post about later.  I also managed to start my Arabic language program and learn most of the 28 letter alphabet (though some of the "H" sounds continue to mystify me).

I'll write more later about my living situation (which is by turns awesome and totally frustrating, like many things in this city), our trip to see the cedars, and what the heck we've been up to over the past few weeks.  Stay tuned!

Hi From Turkey!

We're back, after two months of inactivity!  The last time we blogged Laine and I were wrapping up our road trip across the USA and I was on my way to Southeast Asia.  Since then I've spent a month backpacking around Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos; a month working for NBC at the London Olympics; and two weeks back in the States in Washington State and Washington DC.  Laine was back in Seattle for most of that time, with a couple of trips down the coast to Oregon and California.

Laine and I are back on the road now, this time traveling around Turkey and Lebanon for a few weeks before I settle into my language program in Beirut.  So far we've done a little more than a week in Turkey and have seen a TON, including a few days in Istanbul, a couple of days in Cappadoccia and visits to Konya (home of the Whirling Dervishes) and Pamukkale, an old Roman spa town.

We're currently in Selcuk, a cute little town just outside of the old Roman ruins of Ephesus.  We've got one more full day here before we head back to Istanbul for a day and then fly to Beirut.

That's all for now, but I'll post a few more times in the next few days to try to catch up on all the things we've missed!

Catching up...

Ok,it's been a while, but I'd still like to tell you all a few more road trip stories. After hanging out with some of our incredible HKS friends in Moab, Jaime and I took off on our own Southwest adventure. We thought we had seen some rural areas in Kansas and Colorado, but nothing compared to the emptiness we saw in Utah, northern Arizona and Nevada. Long stretches of land without people, but marked by deep canyons, crazy rock formations, and the occasional sprawling military base.

The communities that live on the Colorado Plateau are pretty interesting. Jaime and I really enjoyed driving through the Navajo Nation, and were totally fascinated by our brief glimpse into the world of fundamentalist Mormons. I wish we had taken a photo of a small FLDS church we saw in southern Utah. The church building, which couldn't have supported a congregation larger than 40 or 50 people, was completely locked down. Gates, padlocks, the whole bit. We left town pretty quickly.

In other news, I am proud to report that Jaime and I managed to visit three national parks, complete a couple of beautiful hikes, and stay out all night on the Las Vegas Strip within 48 hours. Here's how you do it.

Step 1: Wake up at the Grand Canyon. Ooh and aah for a bit before heading the road. Gawk at the tourists, if you'd like.

Step 2: Drive north into Utah in time for a sunset hike at Bryce.

 Step 3: Drive to Zion after dark to camp. Wake up early to hike Angel's Landing. It's preferable to do this before coffee so you don't think too hard about how high how up you are, how certain death might be if you fall, etc. 

Step 4: Drive to Vegas. Stay up all night and watch the sun rise. Take a blurry photo. Fall asleep happy (and in a real bed).

We made it!!

Unfortunately Laine and I are still a little backed up on blog posts, but we've finished up what turned out to be an epic road trip and are now back in Seattle!

In the end we ended up driving just under 6000 miles between the two of us, or roughly the distance from Boston to Seattle and back.  Over the last 21 days we've visited 14 states, 6 National Parks, a handful of diners in the middle of nowhere and at least five toy stores (the best two of which were in Chicago).

Now I'm off on the next phase of my trip, a month of backpacking through Southeast Asia before heading to London for the 2012 Olympics.  I've added Laine as an administrator so she can jump in and do more posts from the road trip in the meantime.

Until then, thanks for reading and we'll post more updates soon!

-Jaime

UTAAAHHH

After a week straight on the road we finally got a chance to rest, recuperate and relax in Southern Utah with a bunch of our HKS friends.  Thanks to David Dodge, we all got to hang out at David's family house outside of Moab and we spent about five days hiking around Arches National Park, driving ATVs, rafting on the Colorado river and mountain biking around Dead Horse Valley (featured in the final scene of Thelma and Louise, in case you were wondering).  

There was way too much activity to recount here, but the week was a total blast and it was hard to say goodbye to everyone at the end.  Here are some pics, there are tons more where they came from. 

Mountains, Canyons and Mesas...

So we only got to spend one night in RMNP, Colorado, and Laine came down with altitude sickness so pretty much had to just lay low in the tent, but the views were spectacular and the drive down from the Rockies into Southern Utah was absolutely gorgeous as we followed the Colorado River.  Here are some pics from the drive!

Ah, Abilene...

We went.  It was just kinda eh.

Kansas = ____________

Here's Laine and Alex getting ready to eat tons of ribs

After staying in Kansas City for a night with Laine's friend Alex we got back on the road for our longest drive of the trip, a 695-mile haul across Kansas and Colorado, ending in Rocky Mountain National Park outside of Boulder, CO.

The drive itself was pretty much what we expected, very flat and pretty boring.  Highlights included lunch at a cute diner in Hays, Kansas, being close to the geographic center of the USA, and seeing a bunch of tumbleweeds towards the end of the drive, when we were both getting pretty delirious.

Kansas, pretty much what you would expect

None of that really compared to seeing actual mountains once we finally crossed over into Colorado.  Such a nice change!

The Rockies!  Finally!

From Ashes to Immortality… And the Cutest Dog on Earth

[Note: By now we're actually on the last phase of our trip in Sun Valley, Idaho, but since we're so backed up on blog posts we're going to do a quick recap of our trip to date first.  Enjoy!] 

So before landing in Kansas City we decided to take a quick detour and spend the afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas, after hearing about it from two of our Kansas-an (Kansai?) friends.  

It turns out that Lawrence is awesome!  It has a surprisingly bloody history, having been sacked by pro-slavery settlers in 1846, setting off what would be known as “Bleeding Kansas” which would lead to the Civil War.  It’s the reason their motto is From Ashes To Immortality. 

Anyway, Laine and I stopped there on our way to Kansas City (we had to backtrack a bit), stopped in at a cute antique store (where Laine had to restrain herself from buying several tiny cast-iron skillets, and had mediocre sushi for lunch. 

Then we ran into Waffles, the cutest dog on earth.  Here are two pictures.  They don’t do Waffles justice.

Not much else happened, though I did find a cool Zelda storefront.

PS. Sorry for the spam!

Also, I tried setting up an out-of-office reply, but Apple's Mail program interpreted that to mean responding to every email I've ever received.  Sorry if you've gotten tons of emails from me in the past half hour!  I turned the auto-response off and closed Mail, so hopefully that's over now, but let me know if you keep getting them! 

-Jaime

We are NOT in Kansas anymore...

Grand Canyon

Well, it's been more than a week since we've had an actual internet connection, so Laine and I are totally backed up on blog posts!  But we're no longer in the Midwest, and haven't been for a while.  We spent a lovely few days with friends in Southern Utah, then drove down to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks the last couple of days.  Finally yesterday we made it to Las Vegas, where we did it up on the Strip for a night.  

Now we're off to Yosemite.  Hopefully we'll be able to upload some more blog posts and actual photos soon!  Stay tuned!

Vegas

Goodbye Kansas...

Well we made it through Kansas after about seven hours of driving and are about an hour from Boulder, CO and camping in the Rocky Mountain National Park! I'm not sure how often we'll be online in the next few days so I'm writing this update from the car, but here are a few pics I've taken of the weird advertising at various rest stops through Missouri, Kansas and Colorado. Clearly a different target demographic than we're used to.

Next post: More about Chicago, Missouri, Kansas City and Lawrence, including the cutest dog in the world, Waffles.

A Giant Silver Bean! And Laine's Awesome Aunt and Uncle

Navy Pier!

24 hours in Chicago! Jaime requested that Uncle Andy and Aunt Nancy show us the best of the windy city in five hours or so. They performed admirably.

We explored the expanding Old Town School of Folk Music (and got a free five-minute guitar lesson), ate a delicious meal in (the real) Chinatown, took lots of pictures of the giant bean in Millenium Park, got sprayed by Buckingham Fountain, checked out Navy Pier, and made it to the top of the John Hancock tower in just one evening. Clearly we deserved a slice of coconut cream pie before bed.

Jaime and I woke up the next morning intending to head out for Saint Louis, but Chicago just wouldn't let us go. We ran a bunch of errands Thursday morning, testing and confirming our theory that folks in the Midwest are just plain nicer than they are in other parts of the country (ahem, Boston). The good people at Showtime Audio fixed our broken stereo right away for a grand total of $20, then some equally fine folks at Rotofugi and Uncle Fun sold us some toys to spice up our dash. This may not seem particularly exciting to most of you, but a functioning stereo and a couple of zombie friends can do a lot to enhance a 10-hour drive.