Blogs from North America - page 9428

It's down to less than 3 weeks 'til we leave, and I'm beginning to get anxious. Not nervous, just excited and ready to go. Everything seems to be falling in line: I have my passport, visa, certificate of eligibility, insurance info, and flight confirmed. The latter I did today and tried to get Zach and I seats together. No problem on the Baltimore-Detroit flight, but Detroit-Osaka was difficult. We may have to try again when we get to the airport. Ah well. My mom bought me a DigiCam, and my Grandma bought me this cool travel satchel thing that will hold my important documents and stuff. And it's bright pink, which makes me happy. I need to start packing, though. I wonder how much I need to take... do I need bedding? Hmm. Well, I'm going ... read more

What a glorious place! Despite the fact that we arrived with the rain, this is one amazing place. We hiked to Queen's Garden in nearly pouring rain but still were impressed by the beauty! This park is filled with hoodoos, which are unique formations of the rock from years of water and wind. The Paoute indians refused to stay here because they thought the Hoodoos were bad people who had been frozen in stone. Sadly, due to clouds, no stars... The next morning the Schanz gang and Ryan took a horseback ride to the bottom of the canyon and back. Bud, Linda's horse, loved walking ON the edge of the trail and Jenae, Ryan's horse, loved to try to reach the plants that were over the edge to eat. Dave's horse, Jesse, should have been called ... read more

Greetings, I have just under two weeks till I depart for Ayacucho, Peru. I am going down to Volunteer with Cross Cultural Solutions, a not for profit organization that has approximatly fifteen locations throughout the world. I will be volunteering in a medical clinic in the town of Ayacucho and traveling to the outlining villages. I am very much looking forward to this experience. It will be life-changing. After my three weeks in Ayacucho I will be traveling to Cusco and doing a trek through the Salkantay (the second largest mountain in the Peruvian Andes) that will end at Machu Piccu. (Gariann is going to love this one!) I am gathering school supplies to take to the children of Cusco. So if you have the chance to drop me off any donations that would be wonderful. ... read more

Los Angeles and we had some work to do, we’d decided not to travel further North to Seattle, Vancouver or Anchorage and began our search for a vehicle in the city of dreams. Our dream seemed to be an endless tour around hundreds of used car lots until, after nearly two weeks and nearly throwing the towel in, we found what we wanted (if it doesn't last the distance we'll claim it was bought in frustration!). Inglewood was our home for the first week, the area around LAX is not the nicest but the people were friendly enough, saying things like "JESUS!! TOURISTS?! HERE?!", "Yeah man, come to Inglewood, come see the crime scene." and "Oh God...watch out for your wallet." A few trips on the local buses, which were pretty reliable and not as dangerous ... read more

Begging, Crying, Pleading.... I have children I need to get home to Yes it is true... No plane out for 9 days!! Ok ... well maybe it was our fault...... but due to a typing error we missed our plane at Salt Lake City. We tried to rush through with only 10 mins to get to our plane.......However if you are a person trying to board a plane at the last minute *this apparently triggers alarm bells in this day and age of increase security* as you could be trying to avoid the long process of checking what you are carrying, so instead of trying to rush through we were STOPPED..... After boarding about 12 planes we get our first frisk search in the small Salt Lake City Airport and they open our luggage and go ... read more