This past week: Maine all the way back to Jersey and more

Alright folks, so I left off last blog over a week ago. I know it has been awhile and a lot has happened but I promise not to leave much out.  This past week has been busy in a few different ways, with plans being changed and taking care of other things.

Like I said, I left off on our way back from Maine on last Saturday morning.  Our plan was to drive to Boston, make it there in the early afternoon, grab a hotel and go to the Boston Center for the Arts among other cool sites and whatever we felt like for the next day or two.  Well we got into Boston, sat in traffic fro about 3 hours, finally made it to the south part of town and started looking for a hotel.  We maybe should have know better since it was a Saturday in June, but we tried 8 different hotels within (I don't know??) 10-20 miles and they were all full.  Except for an executive suite for like $289... which we turned down.  By this time we were incredibly hungry and smelly after 3 days without showers and said SCREW Boston.  We headed south got turned down by two more hotels and finally stopped in Smithfield, Rhode Island and called it a night.

Next day flew down to northern Jersey, stopped in at Denny's Uncle Mike's to visit Mom, Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of the family.  Spent the afternoon there with good company and food, then headed back to Erik and Marissa's to take it easy after two days of traveling.  Monday we got up and ran some errands and met up with Denny's sister Kaitlin and her friends later that evening.  We started making some plans for the week including New York City.

Tuesday rolled around and instead of NYC, the girls, Denny and I opted for Six Flags and Safari Adventure which was conveniently only half hour/45 minutes or so away in Jersey! Spent the day having a blast on a wild Safari  :) and riding coasters.  Then went back to Manasquan, where Denny's cousin Jess and Walter live and hung out on the shore and ocean all night.  I learned that Bruce Springsteen has a beach house, oh I don't know like 3 houses down the road and after that: it was Bruce hunting all night.  Unfortunately, he didn't show up and I never actually got to meet him.  I also heard it was rude to knock on his door, but I am from Minnesota.  I'm not familiar with New Jersey Bruce hunting etiquette... right??

Wednesday, to be personally honest we didn't really accomplish much because NYC got pushed back again to Thursday.  So we took it easy, did some laundry and planned out our day trip to NYC.

Thursday morning we got up at 5:30am and made it back up to Manasquan to pick up Kaitilin and catch  the 7:07 train (2 hour ride) to NY Penn Station off of West 34th Street in New York City!  Of course, we picked the hottest day to go with a high of 93 degrees.  Between the three of us we had a a goal of about 5 things:
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Crumbs Bakery
Canal Street
Central Park

We accomplished three of them.  The MoMA, Met, and Canal Street.  I would love to say that our day in New York was smooth sailing but that would be mostly false. HOWEVER, it was a ton of fun and we experienced all kinds of crazy things among our hectic attempt to pretend the three of us knew how to get around NYC.  After we got off at Penn Station we walked to the MoMA. (about 20 blocks?? I think?)  The MoMA is seven floors of mostly contemporary art and other special exhibitions.  It would be in comparison to the Walker Art Center in MN but much much larger and I think, bigger names.  I am going to apologize now because amongst my planning I forgot to charge my camera battery and it only lasted about halfway through the MoMA.  Denny's phone was dead and Kaitlin did take a few pictures for me later though.  So unfortunately most of my NYC trip is not documented through pictures.  The few I did get are pretty neat though!

I will finish the trip details and put the pics of the museum at the end.  After MoMA we were starving and had lunch. Afterwards, we attempted the Subway but had no idea how to really go about transferring and finding our way, so next option: cab ride.  I am pretty sure none of us really knew what we were getting into but a black lincoln town car, 50 bucks, a few new Indian swear words and the quote of the day later... we arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 3:30 with 2 hours to experience the art.  We kind of rushed through the building but we hit all the "eras" we wanted to see and checked those out pretty well.  After that we decided we were pretty tired, so the last stop was going to be Canal Street so Kaitlin could shop.  We braved the Subway this time with much success and made it to Canal Street.  Found some pretty impressive deals but in the process got caught in a crazy thunderstorm.  We ended up ducking into some random shop, asking some random worker how to get to the Subway and back to Penn Station and followed him running through the rain down the streets of South Manhattan.  It was pretty exciting.  After that, don't ask me how, but we managed to catch the 8pm train back to Jersey arriving at Erik's again around 11pm.  Quite the day in NYC. If you want some of the juicier details of NYC just ask and the stories get better.

Friday, we woke up and spent the day getting ready for and attending Denny's father's burial.  The service was very nice and the whole family was there to see him off.  The rest of the night was spent honoring  and celebrating with family, while getting ready for the next day: Denny's graduation party.  Not a whole lot to say about Saturday except the whole family got together and partied hard to celebrate Denny's accomplishments.  There was tons of food, fun and everything else that goes with a good party. Sunday of course followed with mostly recovery, cleanup, a few errands, and planning for tomorrow.

The plan for tomorrow consists of an oil change, then heading south to Baltimore for the day where we will hit up a few things and stay with Denny's cousin Michael.  Next day we plan on heading into Washington DC and after that south to Virginia and the Shenandoah National Park.  Got a few good ideas for that area and Tennesse and who knows after that.

So there is my always late, but hopefully fulfilling update on the past week.  I have been having a wonderful time in New Jersey, but it is time to get going.  Special Thanks to Erik and Marissa for being absolutely wonderful and letting us stay over the last 2 weeks.  I appreciated it so much.

Love you and miss you all!