Driving Across the Country and Back | Part 3: The Middle

What lies between Devils Tower, Wyoming and the Great Lakes is mostly corn. And some cows.

While planning our trip, we learned that three-quarters of the way through South Dakota, there exists the world's only Corn Palace. You can imagine our excitement upon realizing it was only a short detour off of I-90.

Celebrating South Dakota's "healthy agricultural climate," the current building was constructed in 1921.

The website discussing its history states, "We currently use 13 different colors or shades of corn to decorate the Corn Palace: red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and now we have green corn!"

I know how thrilling this sounds. And it was.

If you happen to find yourself in Mitchell South Dakota, you might as well swing by this little gem!

While in SD, we also stopped to get gas by this dinosaur. I'm not sure why more gas stations aren't strategically placed near such landmarks, but we definitely chose this particular place to fill up because of its proximity to the 80-foot Apatosaurus.

On our way out of the Midwest, entering NY, we stopped in Barcelona.

You may not know it, but Barcelona is a little town on Lake Erie in Chautauqua County, NY.

At just after 10 in the morning, we grabbed our cameras and our sour patch kids, and bought ourselves some ice cream cones.

I've yet to travel to Spain, but I'm pretty sure one could easily confuse these beaches of Barcelona with those beaches of Barcelona. No?

Driving Across the Country and Back | Part 2: Devils Tower

It turns out there isn't a whole lot to see between Seattle and Albany. I've done the drive before (here), so we tried to make things a little more interesting by stopping at a few notable landmarks - even though it took us a bit out of the way.

Before arriving at our first major landmark, we experienced fog, rainbows, sun, and snow.

Classic America in early May.

Our first major stop was Devils Tower in Wyoming. It was the first National Monument, established in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt.

What a random, giant piece of rock in the middle of nowhere. Seriously amazing, though.

I highly recommend taking the little detour through scenic Wyoming to check out this monument for yourself!

Driving Across the Country and Back | Part 1: Sour Patch Kids

Less than 48 hours after our sister was married, Lisa (the youngest) and I embarked on one epic roadtrip across the country to get me back to Albany and her to Boston.

We both love photography, and wanted to make the journey a little interesting, so we brought along our sour patch kids for serial photo-ops for those following along on Instagram.

#sourpatchkidsinthewild

They (and we) had a blast! As you can see, it can be hard to focus on the little guys with just an iphone, but we did what we could.

Stay tuned for some DSLR photos (when I eventually get around to editing them)...

The Trip that Kicked Off Summer 2014

This post is long overdue, but working 80 hour weeks really interferes with blogging. Fortunately, I'm loving pediatric residency here in Colorado. My coworkers are amazing, the attending physicians are brilliant, the nurses, PAs, NPs, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, etc are top-notch, and everyone is so down-to-earth. I think the 300 sunny days a year combined with endless opportunities to get outside do a person good.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some photos from the Seattle trip we took back  in April/May for my sister's wedding.

On an unseasonably warm evening at the end of April, my youngest sister Lisa, my sister-in-law Betsy, and I headed to the water to watch the sunset and enjoy some dessert.

 

What a magnificent evening with two beautiful women and one handsome pooch!