TGIF!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

I know I said the blogs would be minimal, but my cousin Connor is just too cute not to photograph and record video! See below for some examples!

But first...today was another mellow day. I know it seems like I've been on vacation for 3 weeks, but the trip wasn't really a vacation for me. It was tons of fun, but it was hard work too. So now I finally get to sleep in and veg on the couch if I want to, thanks to my very generous hosts, Billy and Tiahna! And don't worry, I'm not alone all day when I'm vegging, I've got lots of friends: KC, Sunny, and Sammy (their 3 cats), and my new pal Dylan! He's not much of a conversationalist, but he's a great listener!

Today, I actually got off the couch to go have lunch with Tiahna at good ole Cracker Barrel and have some girl time, which was nice.

Then I went to see the new X-Files movie, which I was somewhat disappointed with to be honest. I like the UFO, supernatural, unexplained aspects of the X-Files mythology and this movie was much more about explainable science and what was more like a strange, but plausible FBI case as opposed to the usual, crazy, pretty out there X-Files cases from the series and first movie. There were some fairly decent moments between Mulder and Scully which was nice to see since I really liked their on-screen chemistry, but other than that, I was bummed and disappointed. Oh well, I had to see it for myself and now I have.

After the movie, I headed over to Dick and Terrie's, my adopted McDowell relatives, for some refreshing Coca Cola and good conversation. They always have the best stories! I hope I meet as many interesting people in my life as they've known. They should really write a book about it all, I'd buy it!

And finally, I went home to have some Connor time! We played and giggled and had lots of fun! We're clearly BFFs!

When it was time to settle down for the night, Billy and Connor had some quality father/son time vegging on the couch and watching some TV.

Then it was nite nite time!

Connor!

Ok, I know I just said yesterday that you wouldn't hear from me right away, but I couldn't resist posting a few new pics.

First, here is a pic of the present my mom sent with my dad for me to open while I was alone on the road again.

It's a Wall-E puzzle! My mom and I went and saw the movie together just before I left and loved it! I have even been carrying around a Wall-E card in my wallet, like a little piece of her is always with me. Awww! Love you mom!

Today, I went to my cousin Connor's day school where he goes and plays with his friends while his mom and dad are at boring old work. He's definitely got the better end of the deal! We had lots of fun playing with toys and crawling all over the place! He's teething so he's often busy chewing on something!

We even had a nice game of catch - check out the video (sorry it's sideways, I didn't think about it at the time and don't have the right program to correct it)!

I may be a little partial, but isn't he so cute!!!

Day Twenty Four, Blogging Break

So I'm finally here in Raleigh/Wake Forest, North Carolina, spending some time w/ my cousins Billy, Tiahna, and little Connor as well as my other "relatives," Dick and Terrie!

Now that I've finally landed for a bit, I'll be taking a well-deserved break from traveling and, therefore, will be taking a break from blogging as well. I know that makes some of you sad, but don't worry, if something exciting happens, you'll here about, I promise!

Tah tah for now!

Day Twenty-Three, Carolina-bound!

I got up really early this morning, well early for me being 8am, so that I could leave when Ashley left for work this morning. Today was just a driving day and I didn't really have a set plan in terms of where I was going to end up tonight. I just figured I'd drive on the 85N until I got tired of driving and was ready to relax for the remainder of the day.

I didn't have any destinations for the day in terms of fun things to do or see. As fun as it's been seeing all these random things along the way, I think I'm a little tired of driving and stopping and spending all day on the road. I think I'm more in the mode now of just getting to the next town or city and doing a little something while I'm there. However, I do like to make a few pit stops along the way still to get out of the car for a few minutes. Luckily, I was driving through some new states today and stopping at all each visitor center along the highway to take photos in front of the welcome to a new state signs provided the perfect momentary driving breaks along the way.

And that was pretty much the extent of my excitement for the day. I stopped for lunch at Fuddruckers in South Carolina so I could say I spent time there and didn't just drive through. And because I'd gotten up so early this morning, I ended up taking a nap after I checked into the Microtel in Concord, North Carolina, which is about 2 and a half hours away from Wake Forest.

I'm so excited to finally be in North Carolina! Now I have pretty much fulfilled all the goals of my road trip, with the exception of visiting the coastal town of Wilmington, NC, which I hope to take an overnight trip to later this week. For now, I just want to go hang out at my cousins' and play with Connor and just take a little rest for a few days. I think I'm much more exhausted from this 3-week, 24 day roller coaster ride I've been on! I've had a blast and it's been an amazing ride, but I think it's time to get off and take a break for a bit, get some rest and replenish my energy and figure out what my next step should be. I had this idea that I might want to stay on the east coast in North Carolina for a few months and try living in a new place for a while, but now that I'm finally here, I feel more uncertain than ever, which is why I'm grateful that I have family close in North Carolina to stay with for an indefinite amount of time while I figure things out! Thank you! See you tomorrow!

Day Twenty Two, Strolling Around Atlanta

Ah, I another wonderful morning of sleeping in and not worrying about hotel checkout! I liked staying in all of those hotels and it was fun being nomadic for a while, but it is so nice to stay at Ashley's apartment which seems somewhat normal, or at least the most normal on this trip so far. I am definitely looking forward to spending the next week or so at my cousins' in Wake Forest, North Carolina because it means a long break from hotels and, of course, that I get to spend some quality time with my 8-month-old buddy Connor!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today we went to another great local spot Ashley likes for lunch, the 5th Earl, not to be confused w/ the Earl. This was a unique place, small sandwich shop by day/wine bar by night and it was in a great old space with exposed brick, which I love! Red brick was definitely one of my favorite architectural features on the majority of the buildings and houses in Atlanta. There were so many great old brick houses as well as craftsman style houses with cute porches. One of my favorite houses we saw was actually the house of Ashley's friend who had the birthday party we attended on Friday. Not only did it have a great porch, but it had a front row view of the weekly Friday night fireworks at Turner Field, being that she's only a few blocks away from the stadium. It was so cool! I'd love to live in a place like that, such a great space and spot!

Anyway, back to 5th Earl. The sandwiches all sounded amazing, but I ended up getting the Windsor because it had sliced squash and zucchini on it! I love both and had never seen a sandwich with them before so I couldn't resist getting it and it was so good, totally worth it!

After lunch, we met up with more of Ashley's friends. She's a very popular lady! And what's even better is that all of her friends were very nice and welcoming to me as I tagged along on each of their adventures. Our initial plan was to try the olive oil and seasalt ice cream which Ashley had actually read about in the US Airways magazine on a plane once, but had yet to try. We were very excited, but found out that morning that the place isn't open on Sundays! We were bummed, but still determined to get ice cream, so we drove to another place called Paolo's, but they only took cash and we didn't have any, so we tried another place around the corner called What's the Scoop, which as it turns out no longer exists. Fortunately, though, in it's place is Yoforia, a yogurt place very similar to Pinkberry, for those LA natives who know and love it! It was actually a little different because it had a few other flavors of yogurt, including pomegranate, which I got and it was so yummy! I guess I'll just have to come back to Atlanta soon to try some of that famous olive oil and seasalt ice cream!

With our ice cream craving momentarily satisfied, we headed to a nearby park to wander around and people watch. Unfortunately, it was so hot and humid out that there weren't many people hanging out at the park and for the same reason, we kept our walk pretty short. However, we still had a good time and the park was really beautiful and worth braving the heat to see. Being from overbuilt and brush-filled California, a huge, bright green, shady park in the middle of a big city is always awe-inspiring to me. But by the end of our loop, we decided that we had clearly done the ice cream/park sequence backwards! Luckily, Ashley's huge apartment complex has a pool so we were able to cool off a bit.

The final event of the day was a late night showing of the new film, "Mamma Mia." Ashley is my movie guru and it's only fitting that I'd see 2 movies in 3 days with her when Wall-E was the first movie I had seen in theaters in months. I do miss her influence on me! "Mamma Mia" was very entertaining and good, obviously in a different way than "The Dark Knight" but I enjoyed it almost as much. However, I don't know if I want to see it again just yet whereas I really want to see "The Dark Knight" again soon! Maybe I'll do a double feature on Friday w/ the new "The X-Files" movie, which I am super excited about! I can't wait! It is clearly movie week for Jessa!

Well, that is the end of this installment of the Ashley/Jessa saga for now, but I am sure that a sequel will be coming very soon! After all, sequels are so popular these days and us movie aficianadas wouldn't want to be left out of the mix!

Day Twenty One, The Coke Side of Life!

It was so nice to sleep in this morning and not have to worry about checking out by 11am! It was such a nice change of pace!

After sleeping in late and missing breakfast, Ashley and I ventured out to find some lunch. We went to another one of her favorite spots, the Brick Store Pub. I had some yummy pasta and Ashley had a really good Chicken Salad Melt, which if I'm ever back in town, I will definitely be getting because I had a bite of hers and loved it! I also prepared myself for today's festivities by drinking two glasses of Coca Cola so I'd have that wonderful liquid flowing through my veins while walking through the World of Coca Cola museum.

We were in a cute spot in town, so we walked off our lunch a bit and took some fun pictures in front of the courthouse across the street from the restaurant. I shot a cannon and even stopped to help Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. It was fun being silly with Ashley, or at least being silly while Ashley grinned, put up with me, and still was willing to take pictures of me for my blog!

Finally, we drove downtown to the World of Coca Cola, which in my opinion, might just have been better than the Disneyland! However, we almost didn't go in because I was discouraged by the extremely long line we found when we arrived! I had no idea that so many people would travel from all over the world to go to Coke musuem. I mean, I know I traveled pretty far to visit this magical place, but I just didn't know that other people were as interested and/or obsessed with Coca Cola as I was. It was a surprise to say the least. While contemplating what to do, we took a moment to pay tribute to one of my heroes, the inventor of Coke, John Pemberton!

Luckily, Ashley was there to give me the nudge and boost of confidence I needed to still go to the museum and not bail just because of a very long, discouraging line. She knew how much and for how long I have wanted to go to the Coke museum and, told me that even though the line was long, it would move fast and we'd be in before we knew it and that it would be worth the wait. And she was right! Sure, we waited in the heat and humidity for a good 45 minutes to an hour before we got in, but we got in, and that's all that matters! And it was totally worth it!

After we were finally inside the air conditioned World of Coca Cola, I kept telling Ashley that I wanted my house to look just like all the rooms we passed through with wall to wall Coke memorabilia. Then I finally decided that rather than do all the work and waste all that time to find all those cool artifacts and wall decorations, I should just live at the Coke museum, which already has everything Coke I could ever want or need, plus plenty of Coke to drink as well. Problem solved! I'll let you know when I move in!

I was truly in awe of it all and felt like an excited little kid on Christmas morning, but hoping that the Coca Cola Polar Bear had arrived bearing Coke-themed gifts instead of Santa Claus!

Sometimes I felt like I was really annoying Ashley with my crazy behavior, which I probably was, but she thankfully continued to put up with and humor me anyway. I have the photos she took to prove it! She's such a great friend!

I think she might have even liked and had a good time as well as she is a fellow Coca Cola lover - no Pepsi for us! We even got to sample Coca Cola brand sodas from all over the world, my favorite being ginger ale flavor of the African brand Kinley. To be honest, the majority of the different sodas we tried weren't that good and I am glad that we have an unlimited supply of regular Coke here in the US so that I don't have to worry about all those other brands and flavors. While in the tasting area, we received a souveneir bottle of Coke that was bottled today in the bottling section of the museum we had previousy toured and has today's date stamped on it, so it will be a great momento of my time inside the World of Coca Cola!I, of course, bought several other souveniers, including a cool red t-shirt, a can-shaped glass, a shot glass in the shape of a classic Coke glass, and another bottle of Coke with a specialized wrapping image for the World of Coca Cola in Atlanta.

I was sad to leave such a magical place, but I know I'll be back someday very soon!

Across the street from the Coke museum is Centennial Olympic Park, which features a number of memorials from the 1996 Olympic Games that took place in Atlanta. Since it was right there, I decided to quickly walk through and take a look around at part of another Olympic site. It's pretty cool that in the span of just 3 weeks, I've been to two previous sites of the Olympics. I suppose the next goal would be to attend an actual Olympic games someday. I don't think that's going to happen this summer in China, but maybe I'll make it a goal to attend somehow if Chicago wins the bid for the 2016 Olympics. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!

After our exciting time at the World of Coca Cola, we went to a World Farmer's Market and wandered around there for a bit before dinner. I bought some oatmeal cinnamon chocolate chip cookies and yummy organic peach juice we had sampled while there. Then we went with another of Ashley's many friends to dinner at Taqueria del Sol near her apartment. She likes it because it's sort of a combination of mexican food and southern food in a way because their chicken tacos are fairly normal with the exception that they used little fried chicken strips instead of grilled chicken. I was a little uncertain how that would work, but it was actually very good. I was pleasantly suprised, yet again. Then we walked around town a bit more to talk and hang out since it had finally cooled down to 80 degrees or so, if you can call that cool!

That about does it for another great day with Ashley in Atlanta. There are more adventures ahead tomorrow, including ice cream with olive oil and seasalt! Stay tuned!

Day Twenty, Hot-lanta!

I don't think I mentioned this yet, but yesterday I reached 5,000 miles on my road trip! Crazy! I couldn't believe I'd traveled that far and was only in Nashville, Tennessee. And I still have many miles to go before I reach my final destination for the trip of Wilmington and/or Raleigh, North Carolina. Almost there...

Today, I had a short 120 mile drive from Chattanooga, TN to Atlanta, GA to spend the weekend with my friend from USC, Ashley! She's interning there at Paste, a music magazine, where she gets to meet up and coming musicians, film their performances, and upload them as podcasts to the magazine's website. She's pretty much a rock star!

Ashley and her co-workers were taking the afternoon off to see "The Dark Knight" which makes her job sound even cooler than it already did, and I arrived in town just in time to tag along. I had somewhat mixed feelings about seeing the new Batman movie because first of all, as you all know, I'm a huge Superman fan and less of a Batman fan, second, I wasn't that impressed with "Batman Begins," as I guess if I'm going to watch a Batman movie, I want to see Batman and was sort of bored with the first half of the movie with the ninja guys, and third, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about watching Heath Ledger on the big screen for the first time since he died. However, I was extremely impressed with the new movie. In fact, I loved it! I totally recommend that everyone go see it in theaters, don't wait for DVD! Heath was incredible, he embodied the Joker character so much I kept forgetting it was him. I want to say more, but I can't for fear that I'll give something away. Just go see it! Trust me!

After the movie, we headed into Ashley's town of Decatur just outside of downtown Atlanta. By now, it was dinnertime so we grabbed some amazingly good burgers at The EARL, which stands for East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge. Ashley ran through a list of 6 or 7 great local places she knows of for me to choose from for dinner and burgers just sounded good and they were! It was definitely a good choice! I was so impressed with her long list because I don't know if I could name that many places I like and often went to in LA even after living there for 5 years and she's only lived in Atlanta for 5 months between this summer and last. I clearly need to get out more so maybe this road trip is me taking the first step toward that! Let's hope so anyway!

Normally on this trip, dinner is the last event of the day, but Ashley is a fairly popular woman who had previously been invited to a friend's birthday soiree and I once again was fortunate enough to be able to tag along. Everyone there was very nice, there's just something about people in the south being so kind and friendly even to a total stranger like I was last night. I didn't know how things would go since I didn't know anyone or what it would be like, but I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming everyone was and I had a great time. We even went out to a bar called the Dark Horse and had a drink there with the birthday group. I had half a glass of beer from a mini keg that a friend had gotten for the birthday girl, which was fun and different, and then had my favorite drink, a Midori sour, at the bar. It was extremely noisy in the bar, a combination of loud music and shouting conversations over the music, but I still had fun and was glad that I had been able to experience both the good people, the good conversations, and the good time!

I'm very excited about tomorrow because we will be going to a place that I've dreamed about going to for a really long time....the World of Coca Cola! Yay!

Day Nineteen, Music City

Since it's already 2am here in Atlanta, I'm going to keep this blog short, well short for me anyway, so that I can get some rest for another fun filled day with my friend Ashley, but once again, I didn't want to fall too far behind.

Yesterday, I spent time in Nashville. It's so hard to pick just one or two things to do in such a big city with so much history, but I can't road trip forever and therefore have to keep things to somewhat of a minimum in each place. Therefore, I chose 2 attractions that I think embody two very different aspects of Nashville's history: The Parthenon and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The Parthenon was my first stop. It's located in Centennial Park near Vanderbilt University. I was very impressed with the architecture and history of the structure. I never wanted to be an architect, well maybe for a few minutes in elementary school when I liked using a ruler to draw buildings cityscapes, but I love studying architecture and seeing uniquely designed buildings or at least ones with some history attached to them. The Parthenon definitely fit the bill since its history dates back to Ancient Greece! This Parthenon is the only full-zize replica in the world and it's in tact, which might actually make it a little cooler than the ruins that stand on the Acropolis in Greece today. It allowed me to see the structure how the Ancient Greeks would have seen it, which is pretty amazing. I would love to see the real thing in Greece someday, but for now this works just fine!

I got some great artistic shots of the building as well as myself and must admit I'm getting extremely skilled with the tripod. Maybe I should finally invest in a more expensive camera and take up photography as a new hobby. Something to contemplate, but perhaps not until I have a source of income again!

I also paid the $5 to go inside the museum housed below the Parthenon, which had some interesting pieces of artwork ranging from numerous sketches of the Acropolis by many different artists to miscellaneous artwork, some of which I was extremely impressed by because they looked more like photographs to me than the oil paintings they actually were (unfortunately I couldn't take pictures in that section to preserve the paintings) to replicas of the ruins of the sculptures on the panoramas at the top of both the front and back of the structure. There was also an enormous bronze/gold statue of Athena. She was located on the upstairs level of the museum, which was actually the large space that made of the inside of the Parthenon. It was very fun to not only see such an amazing piece of architecture, but to be able to go inside it as well!

By now, I was getting pretty hungry, so I headed to the little shopping plaza across the street from the park and checked out a sandwich place there. It was very crowded, so I wandered into the Borders next door and stumbled upon a Nashville book in which the author suggested several local restaurants for visitors, including one called the Pancake Pantry. I was in the mood for breakfast food so I decided to check it out. The streets in Nashville can be tough to navigate as there are lots of one way streets and it's not quite set up like a grid system like I'm used to in LA, so it took some time, but I didn't give up and settle for another Panera Bread meal and finally found the Pancake Pantry! Usually, I'm more of a bacon and eggs kind of girl, but since this place is known for their pancakes, I thought it only right to give their pancakes a try and it was totally worth it! They were so good, especially with the warm, sweet maple syrup poured on top, mmm, mmm, good! I recommend it if you're ever in Nashville!

After brunch, I headed downtown to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Since I had just been to Graceland, I found it hard not to compare the two music museums and I actually liked hte Country Music one a little better. I prefer self-guided tours of museums where I can look at the things I want to look at and spend as much or as little time doing so as I want to, which was the experience I was given at the Country Music Hall of Fame, whereas Graceland felt much more structured, almost as if I was walking thru the White House at times, which I didn't expect and didn't enjoy as much. Don't get me wrong, Graceland is definitely still worth a visit as I was able to see some rare and interesting historic artifacts, but I also felt like I can identify more with current country music legends such as Garth Brooks, Reba McIntyre, Faith Hill, etc. than I can with Elvis who was quite a bit before my time. On another note, no pun intended, the museum building itself was quite unique in that the window pattern on the front of the building was designed in such a way as to look like a keyboard, which I thought was pretty clever!

Here are a few other things I thought were interesting inside the museum (a lot of the images are blurry from a combination of once again not being able to use flash to preserve the artifacts and having to take photos thru the reflective glass which distorts the images as well):
Johnny Cash's suit and Willie Nelson's sneakers

Elvis' Gold Piano

Webb Pierce's "Silver Dollar" Convertible (complete with pistols as door handles, a saddle in the front seat, and silver dollars glued to the dashboard and saddle)

One of my favorite people because I love to order Roy Rogers to drink at restaurants, good old fashioned grenadine and coke, mmm, mmm, good! Thanks Roy!

All in all I think I got a decent taste of Nashville, but would love to spend more time someday both there and in Memphis. I feel like I sort of breezed through both cities very quickly and while I saw and experienced quite a bit in a short amount of time, I don't think I can fairly judge whether I liked each city or not because I feel like I didn't spend enough time there to know. Alas, someday...