Nothing like waiting until the last minute, but I decided to try my luck at enterring a cool contest over at Discovering Dad that closes today (yes, I said today). The premise of this contest is to talk about your greatest adventure.
In thinking of my life, I don’t know what would be considered a great adventure… would it be the out west trip my parents took me on when I was 10; the birth of either of my two daughters, the day I got married; marching with my school’s marching band in London, England???
I though and thought about this and decided to talk about a trip that my wife (at that point girlfriend) and I took to visit a few schools as I was considering graduate schools. This all started on the spring break of my Junior year/ J-Mom and I decided to take our time off to go and visit 3 graduate programs. First stopping at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, the traveling to the University of Maryland – College Park, then finally visiting the University of Vermont (talk about a whirlwind tour). Along the way we were going to do some sightseeing as J-Mom had never been to the East Coast, and I neither of us had ever been to Vermont.
As our trip began things were going fine, our visit to Bowling Green was productive but uneventful. As we continued our path, we enterred the foothills of Pennsylvania and got a bit slowed down by fog as dense as pea soup. Let me tell you…living on the banks of Lake Michigan we get fog off the lake, but nothing to compare to this. I had never seen anything like this up to then and have not seen anything since that compares.
We survived the fog and made our way to Maryland. Let me tell you, J-Mom and I got a kick out of the town outside of DC named Foggy Bottom, call it imaturity, but what a hillarious name! We made it to College Park and of course in trying to be frugal (as I was a college student), I had booked us a low priced room and J-Mom and I searched for the facility after scoping out where I would be meeting at the Univ. of Maryland. When we pulled in we were a bit skeptical at the motel but we got the key. We went to our room and J-Mom made it clear that we would not be staying in the squaller that we saw in front of us. Luckily there were other options that we were able to access at not too much additional cost.
The next day we explored Washington DC. We decided to take the subway system to save on cost. When we arrived at the College Park Station and were walking up to go inside, a man cam stumbling toward us mumbling “gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee.” The next thing we knew he whipped out his anatomy and started doing his business in front of us. What a welcome for J-Mom’s first experience to the DC area. We quickly kept walking and got on the train. We went downtown and had a great time visiting landmarks. The one most disturbling point was when we were outside of the National History Museau and on the side of it we saw two other men peeing on the side of the building. What is it with public displays of anatomy at our nations’ capitol?
I had my meeting at the University of Maryland the next day and the guy I met with basically did not even give me the time of day. Let’s just say that they did not receive my application!
We got on the road to head north to Vermont. I will trll you that driving on the NJ Turnpike at that point in time was a pain in the rump as you had to stop every 10 feet (or so it seemed) to pay a .10 or .25 cent toll…I have heard that this has changed, but it was a bit annoying at thet time.
We got into Burlington, Vermont, after a great drive North through some beautiful country. Our hotle was wonderful as compared to what we had in Maryland. We decided to explore a bit and we ended up finding the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Let me tell you the factory is a fun place, and it is defininitely the original Build a Bear concept. The quality though of the bears that they make is remarkable and I would recommend that people visit their site to check out the unique bears that they offer.
Burlingont was a neat town and we enjoyed exploring it. I liked the college feel of the town and I ended up having a great experience with the interview. Unfortunately I graduated early and wanted to continue my education right away in January of the next year and they made it clear that you could only start in the Fall of every year.
The interesting part of Vermont is that it has only one interstate. When we arrived in Burlington we were amazed that there was no snow on the ground (being that it was March), but we were happy with that. Well…the morning after my interview when we were supposed to be heading to the Niagra Falls area to visit some of my family, we woke up to about a foot of snow that had appeared over night. Also, to our chagrin we were informed by the local news that all state routes had been closed due to black ice and that the interstate would probably be closed in the near future. We talked with the hotel staff and they recommended that we call the ferry company north of Burlington which ran the only year round running car ferry that went across Lake Champlain to New York. We called and found that indeed they still were running but that they may shut down as well, but if we could get there within the next hour we would be able to catch the next ferry. So needless to say we got on the road to a interstate that was only partially cleared with one lane, and sluggishly made our way north to the ferry landing. Though we did slip and slide a bit, we made it over to an iced wonderland in New York. I mean that it looked like a crystal palace becuase of freezing rain which had covered all of the trees and everything that one could see.
The rest of our trip was uneventful, except for freezing our rumps off while making a quick visit to Niagra falls as J-Mom had never witnessed it before.
The funny thing with this trip was that I eneded up not applying to any of these schools due to when I was looking to start. but we definitely have memories that will last us a lifetime from the trip.
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