Good Old Midwest Vacation.

The land of cheese and bratwurst.  People rag on Wisconsinites for eating too much of these, but the stereotype is true.  Just ask my insides.

Anyways...

The trip began as we drove to Minnesota for my Aunt and Uncle's 25th wedding anniversary, which they held on a boat cruising Lake Minnetonka...beautiful!

 
Then we headed to the Dells. We went to the deer park again (I have video from last year's visit which I will put up in a subsequent post) Boyfriend's favorite dells thing from childhood.

They had Guinea hens!  I think I will have some one day, as they keep garden pests at bay and would provide some entertainment for Jack.  Here is a website if you would like to learn how you too, can be an owner of Guinea hens. 

Well, I got off on a little tangent here looking at Guinea fowl websites...and found this website where I can order Guinea hens, PEACOCKS, and LLAMAS!

Anyways...

We walked around downtown and over by the riverwalk, and got old timey photographs taken...picture to follow. We also went into little shop on the main drag that sold these lovely leggings:

That's all.

Tennessee Part 1

While in Tennessee, we went white water rafting... yes we did.  It was definitely not as scary as I thought it would be, but it was most definitely fun.  Google maps took us on this very curvy, pretty dangerous route on a one lane, two way road, twisting around corners past Baptist churches and homes with gravestones in their backyards...to this little town called Hartford, which had one post office, one restaurant, and twelve white water rafting companies. 

Boyfriend and I kinda lucked out, in a sense, and ended up being the only two on our raft...

So yeah, we did that!

During the trip some exciting things happened.  On our first category four rapids the front two men on the raft ahead of us fell out into the water - I thought for sure it would happen to us!  Later, one of the guides in the group stopped us all at a rock formation and tipped a raft upside down to make a water slide, and we all took turns jumping and sliding down into the water.  There also was a stretch of the river that was deep and calm, and our guide let me get out of the water and float down stream with the boat.  I really enjoyed this because with the life vest on, you could just completely relax and let the water carry you down the river.  Boyfriend had to pull me back into the raft, which was pretty funny.  While you're stuffed into a life vest and the water is moving at such a quick clip, there is no way of getting into the boat on your own, so someone has to pull your body out of the water like you're some sort of a dead whale. Needless to say, I giggled a lot.

Even talking to our guide was neat, because he actually grew up in the tiny town and had the most beautiful accent.  He gave us directions to a local swimming hole (yes swimming hole, how authentic), which was appreciated because I think it's neat to do and see things that aren't so touristy all the time.  The swimming hole, although near the rafting adventure, was far from our cabin, so we decided to save it for the next trip.

That's pretty much the gist of it!  Here is a link to the rafting company's website.  I highly recommend them!

You think you're so cool, with your motorcycle, bro.

My brother has a blog about his vintage motorcycle.   My dad has an old bike too, and they are both really into the whole vintage cycle thing. 

When I move to Korea, I want to get a scooter!

They are gonna give me so much s***.

The Great American Train Trip?

To tell you the truth, I am not that enthusiastic about finding summer employment - for a whole slew of reasons.  I'd much rather travel - and was seriously thinking about it (for about an hour) before I got offered an interview for a seemingly nice job.

I still want to travel though, and - even if I get the job - will still have time to do it.

I was playing around on Amtrak's website, just for kicks, and made up a trip with several stops (D.C., Providence R.I., Boston, and back).  My search returned results for 4 different tickets totaling 388 bucks. Not bad.  But - I played around with departure times a little and managed to get that price down to only 248 bucks!

We'll have to see what I end up doing, but knowing I can go so many places so cheaply is exciting.

And freeing.