The very overdue update

We have been burning up highway like it's becoming classified as Schedule 1, and let me be the first to say that my head spins when I try to sum it all up.

Let me also be the first to sincerely and deeply apologize for the lack of updates. Here's a funny thing I didn't realize about blogging: one requires an internet connection in order to do this. Since a 3G wireless connection costs a ridiculous amount of moolah (in our situation, anyway) we turned ours off and have been at the mercy of the businesses that offer WiFi for free - and in the middle of, say, Indiana, that can be very hard to come by.

So I'll try to sum up for you exactly what we've seen since our last update, in chronological order.

• The Dakotas
• North is a little better than South as far as "flat and desolate" is concerned. I have many friends in Fargo and very much enjoyed reconnecting with them (and showing off Rich, of course!). Their hospitality remains greatly appreciated, big shout-outs to Krissy and Mitch (we were the first visitors at their 3-week-old new apartment!), Topher (ghosts and religion and bad 80's video game movies, oh my!), and Kari and Beth (thanks for the tunes and the muffins!). Fargo is very nice in the summer, and a nice place to visit if you happen to know people there - be wary if you happen to be traveling in to the city from the south around rush hour, as you will transition from Middle Of Nowhere to Busy Rush Hour Freeway in the span of approximately 500 feet. Stay very, very far away during the winter-time. Unless living at Ice Station Zebra is your idea of a dream home, that is. 
• Minnesota
• Much more densely populated, and more trees. Minneapolis is a lovely city, eclectic and energetic, with a huge arts community and excellent public transit. We did not linger in the city, despite the people that I happen to know there - instead we visited the City Inside The City, otherwise known as the Mall Of America. I like to think of it as being a little bit like the TARDIS, in that it looks a bit large from the outside but is massive beyond belief on the inside. A full-sized amusement park complete with 3 roller coasters lives in the very heart of it, there's an aquarium complete with sharks and jellyfish and plexiglass tunnels to walk through on the lower levels, there's a hotel inside the walls, a wedding chapel, and every single store you could possibly want - sometimes twice, depending on its popularity and revenue. We rode two rollercoasters (for the price of one! Toddler Tuesdays for the win, and we didn't even have a toddler with us!) and walked approximately 5 miles while never leaving the mall or having to double-back on our path. It was wonderful, towering monument to American consumerism. The parking garage alone could have its own zip code. 
• Wisconsin
• I really wanted to like Wisconsin. Lots of leafy trees and quiet country farms, and the people all were very nice to us - a person riding a four wheeler through his remote forest farm waved happily at us as we drove past him. We camped for the night in a state park that was run by the Army Corps of Engineers and was nice and private, surrounded by woods. It was inexpensive, well maintained (flushing toilets! hot showers!) The problem is that we were very near a small manmade lake which bred mosquitos - which would have been fine, there is spray for that sort of thing, except that the place was overrun by large 8-legged creatures that happen to eat mosquitos and to which I have a pretty serious emotional reaction. The 3"-diameter Daddy Long Legs which I found crawling over my thigh pretty much ruined the experience for me. (Rich, thinking that perhaps my problem was based on them crawling up my person from the ground, tried to make me feel better by insisting that it had fallen out of a tree. While I appreciated his effort, the thought that spiders fall out of trees did not, actually, ease my anxiety attack.) Due to my averse reaction to enormous spiders, I have written off Wisconsin all together. 
• Illinois
• I don't recall much of Illinois, as I was much too excited about Chicago. From what I saw of it, it's a wonderful, bustling place - probably not very green in the heart of it, but was quite treed and grassed where we ended up, right by the Lake in Hyde Park. We ordered (and were defeated by) a pizza that was like a dwarf star, very small but incredibly dense; It was like eating a be-crusted wheel of cheese with a small amount of tomato sauce on top. We managed to score a hotel room right by the water that cost a very reasonable $130 with our AAA discount- although the TV speakers were blown out, which was disappointing - and the next day paid a seemingly reasonable $20 for a few hours of parking at the Museum of Science and Industry. And what a museum! I can't say enough about the MSI. It was, without a doubt, the absolute coolest and most fun museum I have ever been in. They had many exhibits to touch and play with, a special MythBusters exhibit that both showed off some of the creations from the show and allowed you to participate in some myth busting of your own (running vs walking in the rain, how often toast really lands butter side down, how possible it is to yank a tablecloth out from underneath a set of dishes without dropping any, and a blind driving simulator just to name a few!), and several very fun and lovely exhibits that could not be touched but were just as engaging. I do recommend bringing your own food, as the food court is roughly as expensive and is the same quality as eating in an airport - but if you must eat there, grab two cups of coffee and a huge cookie from the cafe for the same price as a premade, prewrapped sandwich from the cafeteria. 
• All in all, I liked it. 
• Indiana
• We drove straight through here, didn't really stop anywhere or camp anywhere by my recollection. It exists. It is not as boring or desolate as South Dakota or Kansas. 
• Ohio
• We stopped in Toledo and, instead of scrounging up a camp site, we settled for a Budget Inn off the highway. This hotel will be the barometer by which we measure all other hotels from now on, because it was very scary. A couple of crack heads stared at us through the window as we shuffled passed. Two sets of elderly persons in adjoining rooms watched TV with their doors wide open. People picked up cans in the parking lot. There were doorknob-shaped holes in the walls behind each door. At least we could hear the TV, versus what we had dealt with in Chicago, but we definitely stripped the beds and checked for bedbugs. (We did not find any.) The local cable played a rotating selection of religious programming, assisted living community advertisements, and commercials that offered you money in exchange for your car title. We will not be back to Ohio. 
• Pennsylvania
• We clipped the upper corner of this state, and were only inside it for about 45 minutes. I don't feel qualified to speak on it. 
• New York
• Lovely New York! We drove across the widest part of the state, the highways (or should I say, toll roads) were flanked on either side by leafy trees and the occasional rocky outcropping. I can't say much for the drivers, who were terrifying to say the least - I like to refer to it as "trying to win at Traffic", in that they always have to be in front and going faster than you, regardless of the infinite number of other drivers and how fast you are actually going in relation to the speed limit. We drove straight through to Niagara Falls and I, personally, was delighted to be so close to Canada. The Falls are breathtaking, really much more spectacular than you can imagine from pictures and videos - while the town of Niagara Falls is anything but spectacular or exciting (one would think it would be pretty bustling, considering the proximity to such a major tourist attraction, but that is decidedly not the case.) However, we made the sizeable error of judgement to arrive on Labor Day Weekend.  We were lucky to get a very nice campsite not too far away, and I could have been quite happy there on any other weekend - lovely soft grass, no big trees for spiders to fall out of, well maintained and groomed, not too buggy. But seeing as how it was Labor Day weekend, we were surrounded by a huge crowd of noisy New Yorkers who were not regular campers and did not seem to understand the rules of campsite etiquette. The man on our right had been drinking beer since 7am and continued his loud, belligerent slurring until 1am, and only stopped when Rich turned him in to the campsite police who came and told him to quiet down, but then resumed drinking at 7am the very next morning. The people on our immediate left were quiet and respectful, but on the other side of them, a large family with small children rolled in around 11:30pm and insisted on hammering their tent stakes into the spongy lawn while their girls ran around and screamed. We left in a hurry. 
• Conneticut
• Once again, we drove straight through without stopping. It's very much in keeping with the trend of New England, in that there are lots of trees and all of the structures are quite old and colonial. Charming, really.
• Massachusetts
• I could really get into Massachusetts, if it weren't for all of the people who actually live in Massachusetts. (Or maybe I'm just being unfairly biased - perhaps everyone who does not drive on the MassPike is very nice.) We got a bit lost on our way to a campsite we'd seen on the map and ended up on a lovely drive of the rural, wooded town of Lee - very cute indeed, but a bit more spread out than we had anticipated. If we had not been told that the entire loop we drove on was one town, we probably would not have known. All the structures here are separated by woods and winding rural roads, versus the clear-cut crammed-togetherness that I am used to with Western and Midwestern towns. We found a grocery store and picked up some supplies (Ring Dings, off-brand Pop-Tarts, bread and peanut butter - you know, the essentials) and while in line, a couple about our age (the first such persons we had encountered on the east coast) informed us that the camp sites were very nice, but were buggy and were prone to bear attacks. We decided NOT to chance it and instead drove back down the road where we reserved a room at a deserted America's Best Inn. The friendly Indian woman there wanted $180/night with a discount, but when we headed for the door she hurriedly told us that $100 was the best she could do - we probably could have haggled her down a little bit further, but we were tired and unpracticed in the art of haggling regardless. We took the room. Which was tiny, not very well maintained (the water in the bathroom tap came out brown, and the free pamphlets by the TV were not for her hotel and were wrinkled and water damaged) and strangely built. But after the night we'd endured in Niagara Falls, we were happy to have it. 
• Rhode Island
• Rhode Island may as well just be called Providence, because there is little else in the state besides that city. But what a city it is! Hundred-year old brown brick buildings and tree-lined winding, narrow streets. Home to Brown University and it's stunning campus, as well as Rich's sister Robin - whose hospitality was greatly welcomed and appreciated. We had great fun attempting to navigate the labyrinthine streets, which, we learned, turn into rivers complete with white-water rapids when it downpours. The place has excellent eateries of all kinds, and a huge population of college students of all kinds - we mostly hobnobbed with the culinary variety, but we had come right after the start of the school year, so the place was absolutely overrun with young people who were trying very hard to not look intimidated. We did get the privilege of seeing the Providence Athenaeum, one of the oldest subscription libraries in the country - standing for over 200 years, and has some books dating back at least 100 or more that are still in circulation and available to be checked out. The card catalog still contains entries from the original librarians in her original handwriting (interestingly enough, her name was Grace.) We were given a very special private tour by one of the librarians, who took us down to the rare book room where they house their oldest treasure - a book from the 1300s. (This book is not in circulation.) Unfortunately we were not able to see this book, as the regular tour person was not on duty that day, but to make up for it she took us up to the Art Room, which was the very room in which Edgar Allen Poe wooed Sarah. I could have spent days in that wonderful place. 

And that brings us to our current location: Andover, Mass. Rich's grandparents, uncle, and cousin live here in a very lovely home, and Nanna (as she prefers to be called) has been very happy to have us. Yesterday, she took us on a whirlwind tour of Boston, on which we saw everything - literally, almost everything. Harvard Square and MIT campuses, cramped and tightly quartered but amazingly beautiful; She knows the exact place where Facebook was born, and she took us there. We saw the USS Constitution, Old Iron Sides, and got to walk on the deck and touch the ship for our selves. We got a tour of the Maparium at the Christian Science Monitor facility, which is a globe of the earth constructed of stained glass panels in the 1930's, and which is so big it has a bridge through the middle and you can walk right through it. We were treated to fresh seafood right on the water. We got to walk through the Boston Garden, which is easily the most beautiful park I have ever seen - I am only a little embarrassed to admit that I can easily envision a marriage proposal in such a setting. We even climbed all 294 steps at the Bunker Hill monument, to get a bird's-eye view of the city. 

All in all, quite a lot has happened. My brain spins trying to recall it all! It's hard to believe we've seen so much in such a short time. 

Next up on the agenda is another visit to Long Island, New York - where he and I both have family. Perhaps we will even get to see the city for ourselves. After that, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington DC are all on the agenda - and I am quite excited to see DC and all of its (FREE) museums. We will be doing a bit more planning so that we can finally do some CouchSurfing (and cut down on our housing costs quite a bit), and I am excited to get to meet more new people and see more historical sites. 

Hopefully the next entry will be more forthcoming, and as such will be a bit more detailed. I will do my best to not let you down. Thanks for bearing with us during the long break, friends! 

More - so much, much more - coming soon. Stay tuned!

-Grace