Over the hills and through the woods

Occasionally, I like to post travel pics, to prove to you that I don’t just sit in my apartment thinking about crafts all the time.

I only do that 50% of the time.

The other 50% of the time I’m thinking about puppies.

Earlier in August, I went to New Hampshire for family reunion. Two flights and a four hour drive. Yay. But I woke up to this view every morning, so I suppose it was worth it.

 

My sister and I were sleeping in a screened-in, second floor porch. There were no window panes or curtains. So essentially…we were camping. But the view was worth it. Also, I like camping. She doesn’t.

The state motto of New Hampshire is “Live Free or Die.” It’s never been changed since they became a state and they take it seriously. They guard their property very intensely, with dogs and guns and “No Trespassing” signs and barbed wire. It should probably be mentioned at this point that we were staying in a small town in the middle of nowhere. As we were driving up and down gravel roads, trying to find the house we were renting, we kept seeing these signs.

 

This prompted a lot of jokes about what “bear dogs” might look like and why you can’t trespass with them. Later my sister and I looked at the signs up close and in the small print it says “Black Bear Conservation Society.” I googled bear dogs when we got home. They are a real breed that hunts bears. I think they’re super cute, but they sound pretty mean to be honest.

I got that image off google, we didn’t actually see any bear dogs while we were there. And it wasn’t winter, ha. We did see a black bear, though!

 

Bear photo taken from the screened in porch around 6 am. Black bear in the backyard, no big deal.

And I’ll leave you with one last scenic shot.

 

Down the Rabbit Hole

This past weekend, I was out in Colorado visiting my bestie for her birthday weekend. This makes me sound like an awesome friend, but really she bought my plane ticket, so she is the awesome friend.

I won’t divulge all our shenanigans, but I wanted to share a little bit about the food tour we went on in downtown Colorado Springs. We visited six different local “food destinations.” One was a spice shop, so you can’t really call them all restaurants. The most interesting/unusual thing we ate, in my opinion, was at a restaurant called The Rabbit Hole.

The entrance to the restaurant looked like an old subway entrance and was perfectly fitting for a place called The Rabbit Hole. You walked down into dimly lit, exposed brick, awesome-ness.

At each restaurant, the manager/chef selected the dish they felt best represented their eatery or was what they were really known for.

Rabbit meatloaf wrapped in bacon, garnished with a carrot. That’s right, I said rabbit. We ate Thumper.

And you know what? It was pretty good.

They also offer, although we didn’t try it, fried “bunny bites” with mixed berry honey mustard. I’m guessing they’re like chicken nuggets? But rabbit?

If you’re planning a trip to Colorado anytime soon, here’s the food tour website.

What do you guys think? Would you eat rabbit?

spontaneous road trips

In this last month of school, we’ve started trying to cram everything in that we always said we’d do during college.  I’m pretty sure we’ll never achieve everything, but we’re sure gonna try to make the most of the time we have left.  So last weekend, we took a spontaneous road trip to Colorado.  (Not entirely spontaneous, the planning started on a Sunday and we left Friday afternoon.  So, we did put SOME thought into this).

I’m not going to regurgitate the trip itinerary, but I want to mention a couple things.  Erin and I had done a road trip to Colorado once this summer, but two of my roommates came along this time, too.  It was really great to have a chance to spend the whole weekend with them, because I feel like I’m hardly ever in our apartment and we’re all so busy that we don’t get enough time to hang out.

We put an emphasis on “doing CO on the cheap” on this trip, which I think forced us to really explore the area and check out the things that make Colorado unique, instead of just shopping or doing something we could have done in Omaha.  Downtown Boulder was an adorable area to mosey around, the scenic drive was gorgeous (even though it made me car sick), and the self-guided tour of the Coors Brewery was really fun.  Downtown Denver is always fabulous, albeit the most expensive part of our day!

Even though we spent 16 hours driving to and from, and really only one day in Colorado, it was a great trip.  I love traveling and hopefully will continue to have many more blog posts about road trips 🙂

wanderlust

Every time someone else from the Ireland group uploads their photo albums, I become completely absorbed in reminiscing about Ireland, and wishing I were back there.  It reminds me how much I really do love traveling, and makes me think of all the places I still want to go.  Then I wonder how I’ll fit everything I want to do into my life.  My friend told me last night how ready she is to settle down and get married and start having kids…and my strong negative reaction to that reminded me how not ready to settle down I am!  There’s so much I want to do, so much I want to see, and I’m not ready to tie myself to one person or place.

I want to go back to Europe, visit Paris again (fall in love under the Eiffel Tower, maybe?), go back to Ireland, and see other parts of Europe.  I want to go to London, go to Slovenia (marry Zlatan Ljubijankic–j/k j/k!).  I want to see the Great Wall of China, scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef, zipline through Costa Rica (marry that guy from Amazing Log Cabins who has a log cabin w/zipline in Costa Rica–j/k j/k!).  There are places closer to home that I want to see, too.  There’s just so much!