Author: Amit Schreiber

Today we had an amazing trip to The Rocky Mountain National Park, which is not far from Denver. The park’s scenery is really breathtaking, even if you just drive through it. It was basically a sunny day but as we drove further into the park, the snow was coming down heavy and the roads became harder to drive through. Inside the park lakes are frozen. As you drive through the park you can see why it’s called The Rocky Mountain – the rocks are towering on both sides of the road and looking beautiful.

Tomorrow will probably be the longest drive I did so far – about 750 km to Richfield, Utah, where I will spend the night (no special plans there) and on the next day continue to Bryce Canyon National Park.

A relaxed day in Denver… today we went to the Denver Art museum. One of its most known features is the architecture of the building itself, created by Daniel Libeskind, who also designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Other than that… well, I don’t really know how to appreciate art. It doesn’t create any emotional response in me. Some of the stuff is very beautiful and I can appreciate the work that was put into creating it and the creative thought required to come up with a piece of art, but that’s about it.

Today I also had one of the best meals ever – real, home-made Chinese food. It was unlike any other restaurant-type Chinese cuisine and easily the best meal I had since I started my trip. Later on we went to see the new Underworld movie, which was fun and, in the spirit of the day, relaxed. Tomorrow we will try and go to The Rocky Mountains, which are supposed to be a nice place to visit.

On Thursday morning I will leave Denver to start my trip to Las Vegas. I’ve started planning the trip and I think it will be as follows: One day drive west to Utah. The next day a short drive to visit Bryce National Park. I’ll walk around there a bit (a friend told me it’ll take a few hours) and then drive a little more south-west to Zion National Park, which I will visit the next day. The day after that – a drive to The Grand Canyon. Still not sure how long I will spend there but it will be either a day or two. The day after that – a drive to Las Vegas through Hoover Dam, which a lot of people recommended. So all in all – probably five or six days until I get to Vegas, where I intend to spend three days and then drive to San Fransisco for the rest of my time in the US. I travel to Hong Kong on March 1st.

The drive from Salina to Denver was surprisingly easy. It started with a cold rainy weather in Kansas and ended with a sunny day in Colorado (you can see in the pictures below.) On the way I stopped in a rest area (there’s one every 80 km or so on the freeway) and there I met Carl, the guy who maintains the rest area and participated in the Korea war. He warned me that if I want to take a nap I should probably do it in an open well-lit place with the doors of the car locked. He even offered to keep an eye for me while I sleep.

He also told me about a stabbing and some rapes and robberies that occurred in the resting areas near by. I had no idea it was worth for someone to actually wait for people to arrive to these places and rob them, but I guess it is. Later I told him that I’m from Israel and he said he had some friends from Israel in the past and that he remembers them as “fearless.”

I got to Denver and finally got to meet my friend and her family. It was a very exciting moment for me – meeting her after all these years. Pretty amazing, if you ask me. I’m enjoying my time here a lot so far… I think we’re getting along very well and I hope I’m not weird in any way (you know… cultural differences and stuff like that.) Tomorrow we’ll spend the day together. Still haven’t decided what we’re going to do, but at the least I’m happy it’s not more of that endless driving (I will do that again in a few days on the way to Las Vegas.)

Here are some pictures I took while driving:

(This post is a day late because I didn’t have a connection last night)

Another long drive, more great scenery, no special events. Except maybe that I nearly ran out of gas. The Toyota Yaris is funny that way – the odometer, fuel meter and the rest of the indicators are not in front of the driver. They’re in the middle of the dashboard between the driver and the passenger. So to see how much fuel I have left, I need to look to my right. It’s just not in front of me to see.

I was tired when I got to the motel and I already knew there was nothing exciting I wanted to do around Salina KS. The wireless connection in the motel didn’t work, so I just had a quiet evening.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I met this very nice St. Louis couple in the Jerry Seinfeld show. Cathie and Jim used to go to the Fox Theatre when it was still a movie theater (and they were kids). They were very nice and showed me around the beautiful balcony of the theater. When you travel alone even a simple conversation goes a long way, let alone when someone “adopts” you for an hour or so :)

Tomorrow: finally getting to Denver CO to visit a friend. I met this friend online about 13 years ago (on IRC) but never met her in real life. So it’s going to be exciting just to meet her in person. I plan to stay there for a couple of days and then drive to Las Vegas and see some parks on the way. I still need to plan the route.

I can’t believe this is the 2 weeks mark of the trip. Everything seems to have happened so long ago – New York, Canada (4 different planes total), Washington DC, the drive over here. All this happened in 2 weeks time. It’s a strange feeling. Still 71 more days to go on this trip. Wow :)

Today I went again into St. Louis. I thought since the Jerry Seinfeld show is in a place called Fox Theatre, around it must be some stuff to do in the hours prior to the show. I was wrong – while the architecture is very nice, the place doesn’t offer many attractions during daytime (at least not on a Saturday.) Just a few art galleries (some are open, most are not) and that’s about it.

I was hungry so I went into a place called “The Best Steak House.” I feared this would be a place where I will be forced to order an 80$ steak that I can’t appreciate, but instead was met with a long line of people with trays. I thought it was strange but nothing prepared me for the next thing that happened – the person operating the grill (let’s call him the griller) yelled “NEXT!” and then some people in the line started shouting their order for the griller to hear.

I started to get nervous as I didn’t know yet what I was going to order and didn’t feel comfortable shouting my order for everyone to hear my funny accent. It turned out, though, that it was a first time (and therefore an embarrassing) experience for many of the people in line so eventually I said my order out loud to the griller when it was my turn. The food was very good and later I realized that this is some kind of a local establishment since 1968 or something like that. It’s nice when a good meal is also a cultural experience :)

One good thing about St. Louis is that all restaurants have free Wi-Fi access. This way I could pass the time before the show catching up on my RSS feeds and writing this post.

Fabulous Fox Theatre is a very beautiful theater. Originally a movie theater, it’s preserved from 1929 and has a long history of famous shows which you can see in posters and pictures on the walls. Before Jerry Seinfeld went on stage, Tom Papa came on first. Tom Papa was very funny, but Seinfeld was hilarious. At one time I had tears coming out from laughing so hard. I always imagined that Seinfeld stands in one place on stage and doesn’t raise his voice, but he actually moves a lot on stage (for one joke he lay flat on stage) and would occasionally raise his voice for jokes.

After he was done with the stand-up, he came back to answer questions from the audience. I really liked that. He answered questions like “what’s your favorite Seinfeld episode?” to which the answer was it’s not an episode as much as it’s jokes from episodes like Kramer managing to hit the golf ball into the whale’s blowhole, George killing his fiance with the poisoned envelopes and Jerry stealing the rye bread from the old lady. Another question was what happened to the puffy shirt. It turns out the shirt is in the Smithsonian (where I was a few days ago.) And finally someone asked about future projects. Unfortunately the exact answer was “I’m old, I’m rich and I’m tired… [pause for audience laughs]… This is not a motivated person.”

Tomorrow: driving 692 km to Salina Kansas. I don’t expect to have much to do there, being a small city and all. But it’s half way to Denver CO and that’s where I need to go.

Today I drove the long way from Columbus OH to St. Louis MO. The drive itself was uneventful and the scenery on the way very beautiful. I didn’t have anything planned out for the night so I decided to go to downtown Missouri and see what I can find to do. The metro into St. Louis from the hostel (in Illinois) goes on a bridge over the Mississippi river – an amazing view (for about 10 seconds.)

When in St. Louis I first went into Hooters where my waitress recommended some hang-out places for me to go to. I walked around a little and couldn’t find any place interesting (I guess I needed a guide) and I was tired so I went back to my hostel and I’m calling it a night early (it’s 8:30pm). The lesson is that I should have something planned up ahead for these nights. Therefore, today there are no pictures.

Tomorrow: Jerry Seinfeld. Woohoo! I also need to plan the drive for Sunday and Monday. The problem is that there is no big city half way between St. Louis MO and Denver CO (Kansas city is the only big city on the way, but it’s too far east to be a good stopping place.) I’ll plan tomorrow.

Today I drove 630 km from Rockville MD to Columbus OH. The drive took pretty much all day (9am to 4pm). I stopped many times on the way to refresh and one stop to take pictures. What happened was that I saw this ridge between mountains and thought how beautiful it was. Then I realized I’m going to pass right through it. And when I got there, there was a rest point at the side of the road. I stopped and took most of the pictures you see below.

I checked into my motel and called up The Funny Bone, a stand-up comedy club 15 km from my motel. They said the show was sold out but they’ll probably manage to squeeze one person in. And so I got a seat in second row and saw Billy Gardell, a very funny man, and two others that gave short appearances. But I suck at remembering names although they were really good as well.

I have come to realize that my Garmin nuvi 265W GPS device is the most important thing I own in this trip. Without it I wouldn’t have been able to navigate my way 600+ km to Columbus OH or 15 km to the comedy club. The GPS is so valuable to me, I am actually thinking about buying a backup one. Without it I would have to navigate with maps alone. I consider the thing black voodoo magic. It’s simply amazing.

Tomorrow I drive 682 km to Caseyvill IL, which is close enough to St. Louis MO, where I really need to be. I will stay there 2 nights (Friday and Saturday) because on Saturday I’m going to watch Jerry Seinfeld appear live in Fabulous Fox theater with a very good VIP seat ticket. When I went to check out tickets, the reservation website said “The show is sold out” but there was still a “buy now” link. I tried it and got the ticket for only 93 USD. This is much cheaper than other ticket sites tried to sell me before (300 USD minimum.) So I’ll consider myself lucky :)

I stood by my word and went to the National Museum of Natural History. This museum also has a huge collection of items, which you can’t possibly cover in one day. I was there for 2 hours (one hour tour and one hour on my own) and I don’t think I saw 3% of the place.

The museum shows the evolution of life on Earth and features exhibits like “Mammals”, “Oceans” and many more. I especially liked the dinosaur skeletons, which I have never seen before. Other interesting items include endangered and extinct stuffed animals (we were assured that the museum doesn’t accept hunted animals anymore, as it used to in the past) and the famous Hope Diamond.

For lunch I went to the National Museum of the American Indian. My friend tipped me that I’ll find interesting food there and indeed it was Indian food (as in native American, not Chicken Tike) and was very good. Thanks, Ariel. Then I went to Georgetown, a nice place to hang out in Washington DC – full of interesting shops and places to eat. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures there because I didn’t think I will do the place justice – it’s more the atmosphere than the way it looks.

Tomorrow I’m starting the long (2800km) drive to Denver, Colorado. I will do that over a period of a few days. The first part will be about 640km from here (Rockville, MD) to Columbus, OH.

And finally, here are today’s pictures:

Washington DC is a very nice city. The day started with snow showers, which means it was snowing lightly. Later on it stopped snowing and it became a very beautiful day. I went first to the National Air and Space Museum. The museum is pretty amazing – Although it has only 20% of the Smithsonian collection of aircrafts and spacecrafts (most of the rest is somewhere in Dallas), the collection it does have contains artifacts like the first controlled airplane (the one by the Wright brothers), many original planes from the world wars hanging from the ceiling and the real pods from Apollo missions to space. And many many other things.

If you ever get there, I strongly recommend taking a guided tour. Just looking at the huge collection of aircrafts doesn’t tell the story behind them, and that’s the added value of the (free) tour. After I left the museum I didn’t feel like going into another one (there are about 10 different Smithsonian museums) so I went to the Washington Monument and the White House and the other things around it. You can see those in the pictures.

Tomorrow I plan to go to the National Museum of Natural History and maybe walk around the city a bit later (tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day.)

As promised, today I traveled all day – from Toronto airport to JFK airport and then by car to Rockville, MD, which is pretty close to Washington DC. The scenery on the way to Rockville was amazing – I drove on three bridges, the view from each breathtaking. I wanted to take pictures but didn’t feel confident enough to stop at the side of roads. I’m still new at driving in the US.

My friend and her wonderful family are hosting me for a few days. Tomorrow I’ll go see some museums in Washington DC and maybe walk around a bit if it’s not too cold. As for today’s pictures – I only have the one with the mileage reading of my rental Toyota Yaris (the reading is 18719.) We’ll compare that against the reading at the end of my trip.