Posts Tagged “dc”

This is our friend Kenton.

Kenton is a zookeeper at the National Zoo here in D.C. Normally he works at the small mammal house, but one day last week he was working at the kids’ farm at the end of the zoo, and he invited us to come by to feed the animals. Yay!

Did you know that when you hand-feed a donkey, this happens?

NEITHER DID I, but it was pretty awesome. And by the way, our VIP status made all the other zoo visitors jealous, especially when we were feeding the animals. Sorry, children!

Also, one of the donkeys totally pulled a Yellowstone bison-style dirt roll!

I love farm animals.

Also, the farm has this:

It’s actually a very educational giant pizza because it’s part of the Pizza Garden where there’s an exhibit on how various pizza components are grown. Good job, National Zoo. (Also, it turns out you’re supposed to be A CHILD to climb on the giant pizza, but I didn’t see the sign until after the damage was done. Whoops!)

In conclusion, the farm was awesome.

We also visited Mr. Beazley:

He used to live on the national mall in front of the natural history museum, and my dad used to take me there all the time when I was a little girl and I would climb all over Mr. Beazley (Brian did this too when he was a child). I’m glad we got one last visit!

Okay, so then, the next day, Kenton was back at small mammals, so we came back for another behind-the-scenes tour. Yay! We thought we better get used to some of the animals we might see in Texas, so we spent a lot of time with Baby the armadillo:

Isn’t she cute?!

We visited some of the other small mammals and concluded with Wicket the red panda:

Thanks, Kenton! We had an amazing time!!!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in updating the blog. Hope none of you thought we were still stuck in Vicksburg! We’ve been home just over a week, and of course I have a backlog of photos to post from the journey.

First of all, we went through Louisiana, and I owe you this:

Also, remember how I mentioned that it was snowing in Vicksburg? Well, here you can see some snow falling on the Super 8 pool (which was open, of course, since the day before had been 80 degrees or something!):

We did eventually get to Jackson and had to continue recovering from being sick. I had a little relapse, etc. I won’t bore you (or gross you out) with the details… but it did, unfortunately, prevent us from attending most of the events we had come to Jackson to enjoy. Alas! We still had a really nice visit with my aunt and uncle, and they took us to a very cool art event hosted by the Mississippi Museum of Art’s New Collector’s Club. It was a talk and studio tour at NunoErin studio in Jackson. They make very cool swamp-inspired, interactive artwork with thermoactive materials — basically, furniture, pillows, and wall panels that change color when warmed by body heat. Here is one of the artists demonstrating how to use a hair dryer to get the color change effect on some wall panels:

It was fascinating and really fun. Thanks, NunoErin!

Eventually we got back on the road to DC… and I have a few more state signs for you, including the elusive Virginia sign!

(By the way, we went through a little corner of Georgia, but they don’t bother to put up a welcome sign there. What gives, Georgia??)

In Virginia, we stopped at the Natural Bridge Exxon and saw this tiger:

It’s a far cry from the Itasca Wampus Cat, eh?

This tiger was made by Mark Cline, a fiberglass artist whose work we always see everywhere. In fact, we have several stories about Professor Cline… but they’re stories for another time.

Anyway, we’re moving to Austin. Wait, what? No, seriously. We are. I got a job. We got an apartment. Movers are coming a week from Tuesday. Soooo things are pretty busy and crazy. But we’ll keep you all posted as much as we can. Keep checking back!!

Hey guys. Guess what? We’re taking another trip! And I tell you what, I may not be all that diligent about blogging about day-to-day life, but I can flat blog on a road trip, so here we go. Brian and I are headed to Austin, Texas, via Kentucky and Oklahoma, two of the mere seven states we have yet to visit (the others are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota). So, let’s do this!

Now, this may come as a surprise to you (as it did to me), but Kentucky is actually kind of hard to reach from Washington, D.C. There just aren’t enough roads in the right places. We had to head north and west for a bit, and now we’re near Columbus, Ohio. The cool part about this, though, is that we got to visit FIVE states today! We headed NW from DC (1) into Maryland (2), then up slightly to Pennsylvania (3), then west through that tiny part of West Virginia (4), then continued into Ohio (5). That’s a pretty good total, even for us.

Our route through Maryland took us right through Sideling Hill. We actually passed through there before, but we didn’t have the time or inclination at that point to stop… but today was a whole different story. The visitor’s center was still open, so we decided to check it out. And guess what? IT WAS AWESOME!!!

In case you forgot:

The Sideling Hill road cut is a 340-foot deep road cut where Interstate 68 cuts through Sideling Hill, about 6 miles west of Hancock in Washington County, Maryland. It is notable as an impressive man-made mountain pass, visible from miles away and is considered one of the best rock exposures in Maryland and the entire northeastern United States. Almost 810 feet of strata in a tightly folded syncline are exposed in this road cut. Although other exposures may surpass Sideling Hill in either thickness of exposed strata or in quality of geologic structure, few can equal its combination of both.

Thanks again, Wikipedia!

If you go into the visitor’s center, you can walk across this little pedestrian bridge over the highway to look at Sideling Hill. The bridge has a tall chain link fence around it (I guess to prevent people from jumping off and landing on the highway below), but the fence has “camera ports” in it so you and your camera can both get a nice view of the mountain pass:

Then there’s a little walkway on the side so you can get a closer look:

You can see some white stripes running down the sides of the cut. We thought they were just part of the rocks at first, but they turned out to be ice! Today was one of those weird temperature days that’s very chilly in the shade but quite warm in the sun, so the shaded sides of Sideling Hill had frozen “seep.” Want a closer look? So did we!

Thanks, Sideling Hill!

We also saw some interesting/weird little rainbow patches in an otherwise very clear sky in Pennsylvania this afternoon:

So, that’s it for today. We’re tucked in for the night at the Days Inn in Grove City, Ohio (which is clean but, I have to admit, pretty busted. The last person who stayed here apparently had a fight with the bathroom wall!). Check back tomorrow for another update!

It’s currently posted in the Metro and/or “around town” here in D.C. If you live/work here or are coming in this weekend for the inauguration, could you please keep an eye out? If you see it, please try to get a photo of it in person; the guy in the photo is a former housemate of mine from New York and he would (obviously) enjoy seeing the ad out in the world.

Let me know if you see it! Thanks!

Happy inaugural weekend!

Brian is having back issues and has been bedridden for four days and counting! So obviously, he can’t sit at his computer, which means he can’t resize images for the blog, which means no photo comparisons for you guys. Sorry!

We’re both hoping (for many reasons!) that he is up and about sometime in the next few days… then we can resuscitate this thing!

Sorry, everyone. We have been very busy bees since 2009 began, and we took a trip up to Hagerstown for Christmas, Round 2. We’re back home now but have been trying to blow through lots of work and organizing projects, plus I had a strange and mysterious illness for a couple of days. But! I’m better now and we’re starting to get a handle on all the stuff we have going on. I have a bunch of photo comparisons I want to post, and I’ll get on that as soon as we get the pictures resized for the blog.

Being at home working all day every day doesn’t beget as many blog-worthy stories and adventures as traveling across the country does, but please rest assured that we’re quite happily enmeshed in our various projects.

Photo comparisons (and who knows what else) to come! Keep checking back…

We were without any internet since my last update. Sorry! But we are back in D.C. now and will have new posts sometime in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Hi everyone! We got kind of a late start today, but we still made it to tonight’s Super 8 in Crossville, Tenn. Alas, I have NO state signs for you guys. For some reason, the Virginia sign keeps eluding me. We go to Virginia all the time, but we don’t usually have the camera; today we took I-66 out of D.C. and didn’t see the sign! Then, when we crossed into Tennessee this evening, it was already too dark to get a good photo. Hopefully we can get both of those state signs on our way back home.

Oh. Did I not mention we are on another road trip? The main event this time is Christmas in Jackson, Mississippi, with my extended family (hi, y’all!). Brian and I are adding a few extras, depending on how things go. Right now we’re en route to Austin, Texas, and we’re very excited even though apparently it takes 3 days to drive there!

Here’s today’s route log, courtesy of Brian.

View Larger Map

Brian and I were super busy last week completely reorganizing our kitchen. We took everything out, scrubbed the whole place, and put things back in an organized fashion. It all sounds very simple, but of course it wasn’t! Anyway, I’m so thrilled by the results that I want to share them with all of you. Check it out!

Also, the crazy balcony project that started when we were on our trip seems to be almost done. They’re taking down the scaffolding and we have rails out there again. It’s going to be very nice to take the balcony furniture out of our bedroom and move on with our lives, eh?

Nothing interesting to report today; we drove through rain, we sat in traffic, etc. Just wanted to let you all know we got home safe and sound!