Heading Home Part One | Boston to Virginia Beach

Well I’m back on the road! Instead of driving north with Mom, I am driving south with Dad. As I am writing this we are driving on I-95 south, about an hour away from South of the Border (UPDATE: As I am publishing this, we are in our hotel in Charleston).

Yesterday Dad and I made the long journey from Boston, MA to Virginia Beach, VA. It was a twelve-hour day including rest stops and lunch. We left the apartment at 6:30 am and ate at a Starbucks for breakfast (a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich for the both of us).We went on the George Washington Bridge where I took a bunch of photos!

On the New Jersey Turnpike, we stopped at the Walt Whitman Rest Stop where I had a prosciutto caprese sandwich and Dad had a Nathan’s hot dog. Before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, most of the drive was through rural Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Then we got to the Bridge-Tunnel, which was really cool. As the name suggests, some of it is a bridge and some of it is a tunnel. At the rest stop we stopped and took lots of pictures and Dad got a Geocache.  The sun over the water was beautiful and would be lovely to see at sunset.

We finally got to our hotel (the Ramada Oceanfront) at around 6:30 pm. We had to switch rooms because the first room was smoking and we had requested non-smoking. The views from both of the rooms were fantastic!

I quickly freshened up my hair and makeup before Dad and I headed out to find some dinner. I took a few more pictures on the beach before we went to Waterman’s Surfside Grille. We ate inside because the wait was short and we were happy to still be able to see the ocean from our seats. For an appetizer we got hush puppies, which are fried cornmeal balls that shouldn’t be so good. They were served with some butter, but I don’t think that you needed it. As my entrée I got the Parmesan Peppercorn Halibut, which was good but I think it had too much of the cheese sauce on top. Dad got the crab cakes that tasted really yummy!

At a nearby table set for sixteen, there was a wedding party that had just gotten married on the beach. The groom was a sailor in his dress whites and the bride was in a flowy, long, white dress. They were adorable and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Before heading into the room, I took a couple of photos of the sunset from the windows on our floor. Then Dad and I watched Harry Potter: The Making of Diagon Alley (which looks amazing) and American Ninja Warrior (the stuff that they can do is crazy) before going to sleep.

It was long day, but we were up early this morning for the next leg of the journey: Virginia Beach to Charleston, SC. Thanks for reading!

A Day in the Life | Walden Pond

Hello everybody! On Wednesday Dad, Emma and I went to WaldenPond. Back in junior year of high school my English class read Walden. It was by no means my favorite book that we read that year, but I was still excited to see the cabin and the pond. The first thing that we saw was the reconstructed cabin that Thoreau lived in for over two years. It was definitely smaller than I had imagined while reading the book.

I don’t know if I would be able to live there alone in the woods for two years. I also don’t think that Thoreau would enjoy seeing a gift store and beach so close to his sanctuary.

Next we went into the wood to look for a geocache. Geocaching can pretty much be described as looking for Tupperware (a cache) in the woods, on street signs, under rocks, or anywhere. Our family has been geocaching for a few years now and our team name is TeamSchiap (isn’t it creative?). For this one (called Thoreau’s Perpendicular Bisector), we had to go into the wood and follow one of the trails. I won’t give away where we found the cache, but it took a bit of looking!

One day, I would like to hike around the wood for real (and with useful shoes, I was wearing sandals) or read book on the beach. The lake itself is beautiful and I wish that we could have spent more time there.

After geocaching we went to downtown Concord for lunch at Comella’s. It was actually very good. I got grilled chicken parmesan which hit the spot! Once finished eating, we headed to a Lenscrafters for an eye exam. I decided to get contacts and I have been using them for three days. I find it really hard to take them in and out, anyone got any tips?

Thanks for reading!