Travel Tip: Always bring an umbrella.

Hilltop Hostel

Really, I think the rain is following us.

We got to D.C. around 1 pm and it was pretty sunny and warm outside. A few hours later, it's raining on me as I go to park the car. This didn't really deter me. I was a woman on a mission. Unfortunately, I was a woman on a mission without an umbrella.

While we were waiting to check in to Hilltop Hostel, I walked down the street looking for some lunch options. There's a great looking Caribbean/American restaurant, but it only takes cash. I passed it up and went for Souper Girl. It blew my mind.

Dinner at Souper Girl

It's a soup cafe, which doesn't sound like much, but the soups are vegan, kosher, and made with locally sourced ingredients. I had the Quinoa and Greens soup with a whole wheat roll. It was about $6, and well, well worth it. Delicious, nutritious, fast, convenient and cheap, Souper Girl is a win. 

After I ate, we got settled in. Then, I went online and looked for vintage clothing shops nearby. I lucked out and found one just a few blocks away! It's called Polly Sue's and the website advertises vintage clothes at competitive prices. I don't know about you, but in my experience, those two things rarely coincide. Polly Sue's lives up to its advertising! I happened upon the shop right before closing time, so I didn't have time to try on the fantastic selection of dresses, but I did buy two pair of earrings (reasonably priced at $6.50 a pair). And I plan to go back soon!

I grabbed a gyro to go from Olive Lounge, which I enjoyed. I felt like it was a bit overpriced, but I'm probably just operating on my small town budget.

The highlight of dinner was Key Lime Pie gelato from the Dolei Gelati Cafe. It had just the right amount of sour to kick like lime and bits of graham cracker to really evoke a sense of pie. Good gelato is good gelato and most places have similar prices. Dolei did have some unique flavors and a location that I just can't beat.

MLK Jr Memorial

After all of that adventuring, it was almost 8 pm. All of the museums were closed and most shops and attractions were closed for the night as well. I hadn't planned on spending much time at the National Mall, but since it was late and nothing else was open, I went ahead. The Mall was beautiful at night. The MLK Jr. Memorial is new since my last trip, so I spent some extra time there. It's a beautiful memorial that makes great use of quotes from MLK Jr. throughout, which adds a personal touch.

Washington Monument

Staying in a hostel has been an interesting experience. The neighborhood is very safe, with a large helping of holistic values (think yoga classes on every corner), but it's always something to get used to when you're sharing a room with three strangers. Kristina and I have met some interesting people, though, so that's been a nice side of it! There is a great atmosphere of respect for privacy and property in the hostel, as much as there can be. Unfortunately, Hilltop doesn't have a/c. And it's DC in July. It gets a bit warm to say the least.

Travel Tip: Watch for bears.

At Shenandoah National Park, there are pictures of bears and warnings about bears and information about how to keep your food away from bears. These bits of information are everywhere.

Somehow, I still didn’t expect to actually see a black bear. Kristina and I were on the Ancient Volcano Ranger led hike (which I highly recommend!), when right near the trail is a juvenile black bear! Everyone on the hike stopped and watched the bear.

Not my picture, but this one was cuter.

The bear was just chilling and doing bear stuff when he decided we were too close to his territory and started to charge us! Luckily Superhero/Park Ranger Bob was there. He did the professional, park ranger thing, and stepped forward, clapped really loudly, and yelled at the bear.

The bear turned around and walked away. He did not run away, or even go very far. This bear had some attitude. He just turned around and moved to a distance he deemed safe. And stared at us until we left.

All of the deer got this close

Shenandoah is absolutely beautiful though. The hiking trails were great! There were several to choose from—short hikes, long hikes, ranger led, or self-directed. And the campgrounds were really nice. There were hot showers and washing machines (quarter operated) at the front of the park and bathrooms and water faucets spread throughout the campgrounds.

We managed to camp next to the coolest people, too. A family from Berlin was camping right across from us. They needed a bottle opener. Kristina happened to have one on her pocket knife. They were incredibly thankful, so they invited us over to roast marshmallows! We had the greatest time. They had never visited Arkansas, so they were curious about our culture. We had never been to Germany, so we were curious about theirs.

We also met a hiker named Muddy Paws! She saw my bumper stickers (if you don’t know, they’re pretty liberal) and thought we seemed like we’d be cool. She works for the Department of Energy. She likes to hike 15+ miles a day because it’s less stressful than her job. There’s a whole hiker subculture built on trust-they’ll share campsites with people they just met and only know by their trail names. It was interesting for sure.

Shameless hiking selfies.

I guess that’s something cool about camping. You can meet bears and cool people in the same day.

Travel Tip: Always bring aluminum foil.

We thought we were sooo smart and prepared, bringing my granpa’s old camping stove.

We would’ve been smarter and more prepared if we had stopped to figure out if it worked, first.

As is, we were in the woods, trying to get this stove to start around lunch time. We were hungry and got tired of fooling with it, so we just went up to the Big Meadows Wayside to get lunch. I ordered a veggie burger and a side salad. It was excellent! Much better than fighting with a stove or trying to start a fire.

Unfortunately, dinner time rolled around and we still didn’t have a working stove. Kristina started building a fire and I started thinking of back up plans.

I struggled to remember the various non-stove recipes I’d seen on Pinterest (there was no cell service, so there was no quick Google-ing). I finally recalled a tutorial on cooking in foil packets that I’d seen (it was this one). 

Luckily, right before we left, I had thrown aluminum foil in the car. I grabbed that and then went through the cooler and found salsa, black beans, and smoked sausage. We cut up a bit of onion and threw it in foil, then tossed it on the fire. When we (carefully) pulled it off the fire, we sprinkled some cheese on top. Honestly? It wasn’t bad.  It was definitely better than going hungry or buying more expensive food from the wayside.

Thank God for Pinterest.

Travel Tips: Leave early, pack healthy snacks, and bring allllll of the audio books.

I’m not sure I have the proper temperament for road trips. I have a tendency to be impatient and a bit anxious. Particularly when faced with unpredictable traffic. The first leg of our trip took us from Conway, AR to Nashville, TN. According to my lovely navigation device, this is a 5 ½ hour drive. I planned accordingly. We left Conway around 4, which was perfect.

But of course, road trip law dictates that nothing can be perfect. Around middle-of-nowhere between Little Rock and Memphis, we ran into some absolutely hellacious roadwork. The parked on the road for an hour and a half variety. I finally wised up and took the next exit onto Highway 70. Thank the lord for the highways.

I don’t know about you, but on trips with annoyingly long delays, I kind of just want to eat junk food the entire time. Luckily, thanks to some foresight and well stocked healthy snacks, like bananas and granola bars, clean eating is still going as planned. Friday night, we stayed with my cousin Mike, who sent us on our way with lunch for the road and snackage on Saturday.

Audiobooks made that extra-long day of driving bearable though. I’m nowhere near talkative enough to fill 7+ hours of driving. We listened to A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman and Louis C.K.’s routines, Hilarious and Chewed Up. For the Saturday trip, I turned on Princess of Mars. I love music, and have a road trip playlist all prepped, but the stories absolutely helped pass the time.

Even with all of the traffic and delays though, it’s been a really nice drive. Arkansas and Tennessee are beautiful states. Once we crossed into Tennessee, there were rest stops located about every 60 miles along the interstate. It’s also been nice and sunny! Unfortunately, the weather predicts rain for the next couple of days. Guess we’ll see how that goes!!

Travel Writing

I haven't used this blog since I was about 16 (I've been blogging over at Help Ever, Hurt Never), but I plan to use it for my travel writing experiment this summer.

I'm a professional writing major. UCA has offered a travel writing seminar in the past, but hasn't listed it for the upcoming year. I've taken matters into my own hands and applied for a Travel Abroad Grant from the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College. Kristina and I will be traveling for about three weeks, stopping in five different places. We'll be camping some times and staying in hostels others. 

Two young women traveling the East coast alone for a month out of the summer? I imagine we'll have some stories. Even better, I'm a bit prissy about my sleeping arrangements and haven't been camping since I was about 10 and in Girl Scouts. And did I mention I'm really in to clean eating?

While researching our destinations for the trip, I realized it's kind of hard to find relatively easy, clean eating recipes that can be done over a campfire. Even harder? Planning yoga that I can do in a hostel.

My goal for this blog is that I'll show other students that great trips can be pulled off for relatively low cost if you put a little work into it! The hostels? They're about $30 a night, per person, if you hunt out the low cost establishment. How clean/comfortable are they? I'll let you know!

Shape Sorter

So, through 80's music, I have discovered that my soul is a shape sorter.

Picture this. On the way to Conway, from Little Rock, my mom and I are in the gold Oldsmobile Silhouette, with Before X playing. Before X is an amazing compilation of 80's alternative music. :D As we are having a casual conversation, "Rough Night In Jericho" comes on.

We've kept the music turned down so we could talk, but I randomly stop talking in order to sing the intro to one of the verses, "There were four little girls with foreign names!". Mom looked at me and laughed. Naturally, I apologized for my spazzy interruption of our conversation. My apology was somewhat like "I'm sorry, sometimes part of a song reaches out and steals my soul, and I have to sing part of it. I can't help it!"

After that, "Missionary Man" by the Eurythmics comes on. As the opening beats play, I make a spazz noise, and go "This just fills a happy hole in my heart!!" Mom was surprised to know I have a happy hole. :P

My explanation is a comparison of my soul to a shape sorter. You remember the red and blue balls that had yellow shapes that you put in the similarly shaped spots? Well with emotions, happy things fill the happy hole, sad things fill the sad hole. Everything to its proper place. Randomly, at some time later, I was wondering which part of the shape sorter each of my emotions would be. Squares have corners, but circles never end. So does happiness never end? Or is sadness neverending? Which shape do I like more?? How can I ascribe geometric meaning to emotions? What does each shape symbolize? My silly metaphors can be astonishingly complicated!

Dawn of the Dreadfuls

The new Quirk Classics publication Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith is marketed as a "prequel" to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which, I will admit, concerned me at first (I am a die-hard Austen fan).

-As a side note, I purchased Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith this past summer and really enjoyed reading it. I thought it transitioned particularly well between the original text and the zombie plot.-

Dawn of the Dreadfuls was a pleasant surprise. It was a witty take on Meryton and Longburn as well as the entire Bennet family. It places the original story as well as the recent adaptation in clever context and I felt like it added to the experience and gave the characters even more depth.



Aside from it's Austenian plot origins, its just a good book. In my opinion, its suitable for either gender due to it's clever balance of "zombie mayhem" and romantic intrigue. Its well written and engaging and definitely unpredictable! (I'm not even a "zombie fan". My books are just as good without brains, except in this cases!) I would say that much of the humor runs more to the... unladylike. ;) but I hang with guys, so its not as bad as what I hear at the lunch table. All in all, good stuff and a fun read.

To learn more about Dawn of the Dreadfuls, go to http://quirkclassics.com/index.php?q=dawnofthedreadfuls

I should also mention that there is a contest for readers going on. All you have to do is go to http://quirkclassics.com/index.php?q=QuirkClassicsContest_DOD_Reviews and leave a comment about this review and you'll be entered to win one of 50 prize packs including a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Journal, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Postcards, Audio Books of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, An advance copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, a password redeemable online for sample audio chapters of Dawn of the Dreadfuls, and a Dawn of the Dreadfuls Poster.

An upcoming Quirk Classic to be watching for is Android Karenina. I'll hopefully be posting a review for that soon as well! At this time, I do, however, have the cover art!