Oh Shenandoah

I'm so lucky in that I live only 30 minutes from one of the entrances of Shenandoah National Park. One of my favorite things to do outside is hiking. This summer I have a goal to spend as much time as I can hiking in Shenandoah. And since I work at the temple every other Saturday, that means I only have every other Saturday right now.

In the last month I've been able to go twice. There are so many trails in the park, it's hard to know where to start. So I decided to start off by narrowing it down, and I am hiking as many of the waterfall trails as I can. First I went to the Dark Hollows Fall trail. This trail is only about 1.4 miles round trip, but it's steep at parts. But it's a relatively quick hike, so it was a fun one to start with. Here are some pictures.

Dark Hollow Falls:

Looking down stream:

A deer at the top of the trail head as I was finishing. (Park literature talks a lot about bears, and I'm hoping I'll get to see one at some point!) (From a distance, of course.)



And then today I hiked the Rose River Trail. They have it so you can hike a four mile circuit that takes you parallel to a stream for awhile, with many cascades and mini-falls. So much fun! And it's fun to see the trees starting to get their leaves again. I can't wait for summer! It will be even more beautiful! Here are some pictures from Rose River Falls hike.

View from the parking lot, just off the Skyline Drive.

Heading down the trail, it comes you pick up the stream just coming off Dark Hollow Falls.

More mini-waterfalls along the way.


First view of Rose River Falls.

My and the falls. This is where I ate lunch.

Rose River Falls.

Hiking back out. Soon it will be a complete canopy as the leaves fill out on the trees again!

Smarter Phone

So I recently got a smarter phone. It's a Samsung Fascinate. I chose it because it seemed decent enough and I could get it for free by renewing my current contract. So why not? I've been putting off getting a smart phone because I probably spend too much time online as it is. Though typically when I travel, I curse the world that I don't have one. I'm traveling next week (first San Diego, then the Great Utah National Park Tour of 2011*), and not bringing my laptop (shocker I know), and decided it was high time.

Besides the fact that I've just been needing** one for some time, I thought it would fun to be able to update my blog (and Facebook) with pictures from the road, since I won't have my laptop and will be away from civilization.*** And good to have access to email on the road. And, I'm sure, comforting for you all to know that I'm not stuck in Blue John Canyon preparing to cut off my own arm.****



* I'm still searching for a killer title for a trip that will be most epic.
** i.e., wanting
*** They have cell phone reception away from civilization, right? j/k
*** Although Aron Ralston recently became one of my new heroes, I definitely don't plan on reenacting his fateful hike. (Unlike other morons in the world.)

NYC 1, Assateague, NYC 2, and Boston

I've had a couple really fun weekends in the past month or so. Each probably deserves it's own post, but here you go anyway.

First, I went up to NYC for my friend Larissa's art show. (She's getting a masters up there.) It was a lot of fun, and I was so proud of her!

We decided to do a very Hitchockian pose in another student's exhibit of paper cranes. Ha!

We went and saw a musical, Wonderland. Neither of us knew anything about it, but it was on sale at TKTS, so we went. We weren't disappointed, the show was absolutely hilarious!

Larissa and me in Times Square.

Then we ate mac and cheese at this amazing place called S'MAC. (Go there if you're ever in NYC!) It's so yummy!! I was as excited as I look.


The next weekend was camping and bike riding on Assateague Island with Lauren and Emily. Assateague is a National Seashore off the southeast coast of Maryland. There are wild horses! (But don't pet them....signs say they kick and bite and you will be fined!)


We camped on the beach, made tinfoil dinners, and ate a ridiculous number of some of the best/messiest s'mores ever. (And I discovered how awesome headlamps are for camping.)

We ate pancakes for breakfast; and because we forgot something to grease the griddle with, our neighbor campers fortunately were nice enough to give us their bacon grease.

We spent the next day riding our bikes around the island (sooo fun!).


Because I had bought the year-long National Park pass (in preparation for my wild and crazy trip to the Utah parks next month with Michelle!), we decided to venture to Chincoteague. (That park is on the other half of the island that is in Virginia, and only accessible by going around on the mainland) While there we went to the beach (sorry, no pictures) and rode our bikes some more.



And more wild horses.

We saw this baby horse, so cute!

Back on the mainland as we headed out, we found a most excellent ice cream shop. Mmm....

And we decided that if a real bike enthusiast walked past Lauren's car loaded with our bikes, they'd have no idea where we were going to bike. Among the three of us we had a road bike, a hybrid bike, and a mountain bike.


The fun continues. The following weekend I headed up to NYC again. There was a groupon for 50% off bus tickets, so I went up with my friends Kate and Meredith and their friend Niki. It turns out Niki and I are second cousins! We didn't even know it, what a small world! We stayed with Larissa in Brooklyn.

After arriving, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. It makes me feel like I'm in an MC Escher painting.


Larissa and I on the bridge.

We also went to see the Harry Potter exhibit at the Discovery Museum. They had lots of props and costumes from all the movies. It was really cool! (But alas, no pictures allowed inside.)

We saw Wonderland again. It was still just as funny! We didn't know it at the time we booked our trip but we got lucky because the show closed the next night!

The next day we went to church in the building that is shared with the temple (no picture, sorry), and then wandered around Central Park for awhile. It was a foggy, off-and-on drizzly day, so everything was super green.




I would say that things slowed down after that, but it's not true. This past weekend I went to Boston for a teaching workshop (the CAE workshop for those astronomers out there). It was my first time attending that workshop and it was great. I learned a lot! I also got to see/stay with a college roommate (Becca) and her husband, which was fun. I met up with my friend Emily who had been backpacking up the east coast that whole week. We took an overnight train back Sunday night/Monday morning. Turns out sleeping on an overnight train is harder than sleeping on an overnight flight.

"Wait Wait...!" Taping

In the last few years I've become a bit of an NPR junkie. One of my favorite shows is "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!" a news quiz/comedy show that airs Saturday morning. (And I'm subscribed to the podcast in case I'm not able to catch it.)

The show normally airs from Chicago, but occasionally they take it on the road. This week the "Wait Wait..." cast was in Baltimore, so we were lucky enough to have the chance to attend a taping of the show. Of course, I was so there! I bought my tickets the day they went on sale, like two and a half months ago. Woooo!! So excited.

The taping was at the Meyerhoff, where the Baltimore Symphony usually performs. My friend Kate (also a big fan) went with me. We had really awesome seats. Box seats with super comfy chairs! (Individual chairs, really plush, could spin all the way around and rock.) The people behind us took this picture for us. (Seriously, how awesome are those chairs?!)

The taping was SO much fun!! It was really cool to see the people I've only heard on the radio, and to see them interact with each other.

Each week they have a special guest, usually someone famous. When they are visiting a city, they try and get a "local" celebrity. I was hoping they would have Marin Alsop, but they didn't. The guest was Baltimore native, John Waters, best known for making cult films that are a bit out there. (He was also behind the original Hairspray movie.) That might have actually been a better choice because hearing him talk about Baltimore was sooooo funny.

During the show....interview with John Waters.

Close up.

After the show they selected an audience member to come down and answer one question (complete a news-related limerick). Because he got it right, everyone in the audience won a prize! That's right....we all got a free NPR/"Wait Wait..." tote bag. Ha!

The show airs this weekend! (Check local listings for times. :) Saturday 11am on 88.1 here in Baltimore!)

Weekend Fun

What a great weekend! I feel like this weekend was a little bit of a reward for all the conferences I've been to over the years where I had to sit in meetings all day instead of going out and having fun.*

This weekend one of my B'more friends had a conference to attend in DC. The hotel room was paid for by school and her roommate bailed, so she invited me to stay in the (already paid for) extra spot. So I got to have fun in DC all weekend, while she had to sit in meetings all day. (Sorry Lauren!)

We arrived Friday night, and I spent the evening with a former B'more roommate, Amanda. We had dinner with some of her friends and got cupcakes at Crumbs Bakery afterward. (I'm not really into this whole cupcake craze, but these are tasty! And all the flavors!)

The next day I went down to the National Mall and went running. I haven't gone running for awhile, and ran for over an hour, which felt simultaneously great and exhausting. And running on the Mall is so fun. I made my way over the the Tidal Basin/Jefferson Memorial so I could see the cherry blossoms. So pretty! Here are some pictures I took.

The Jefferson Memorial is my favorite!


(Why yes....I did go running right before I taking this picture.)

While at the blossoms, I was able to meet up with my friend Larissa who was down from NYC to visit a friend and go to the blossoms festival. So fun to see her, even though it was brief!

From there I went to my friend Tiffany's house (old roommate from Austin). We watched both sessions of General Conference there. Afterward we got custard with some girls from her ward and then watched both Final Four basketball games while eating Italian take out. (We were rooting for VCU and Kentucky....and were disappointed by the outcomes of both games, but they were both exciting games!)

Lauren's conference ended Sunday at noon, and we went over to a church building in Alexandria to watch the Sunday morning session of General Conference, but were foiled when it turned out they were not showing it. Nooo! We decided then to just go straight back to Baltimore. We hit horrible traffic leaving DC, and tried finding a detour. After a few wrong turns we finally got on our way (and the route was prettier than the original one anyway, and no traffic!). Finally we got to Baltimore. I'll catch the morning session online later, and watched the afternoon session on my laptop.

Fun weekend! And it's starting to warm up today. Yay spring!



* But don't feel too sorry for me. I'm usually able to find time to have fun when I go to conferences.