Lund Rover

Wednesday we went down to the southern tip of Manhattan Island to take the ferry (free!) to see the Statue of liberty. It was awesome. The statue is just so freaking majestic. Oh man. Loved it. Ferry boat rides are always fun also. Do I wish we could have actually stopped at the Statue? Of course. Unfortunately tickets for that sell out way in advance (am talking 1-2 months) and we didn't think to purchase them soon enough. sad because he has no money Afterwords we walked through the financial district, checked out the New York Stock exchange, had some more good Vietnamese sandwiches, and then headed back up to Broadway for our show. Les Mis was DEFINITELY the highlight of the trip for me. It. Was. Amazing. I can’t even tell you how good it was. It brought tears to my eyes. I absolutely loved it. After the show we made our way back down to the southern tip of Manhattan to check out the Jewish Heritage Museum, which turned out to be pretty awesome as well. The first ...

Tuesday we got up early to go to Brooklyn again to try to get discount broadway tickets. The booth was open this time but unfortunately the line was outrageous! So we just bit the bullet and bought the cheapest full-price tickets we could find to see Les Mis the following afternoon at 2. This time on our way back to Manhattan we walked across the Manhattan Bridge, giving us an awesome view of the city and the Brooklyn Bridge. We kind of stumbled upon China town, which is just crazy. It feels like you turn a corner and are transported into the orient. Hah! We found some pretty good street performers near a subway station and so hung around for a bit watching them. For lunch we tried out our first New York Pizza. It was awesome. Love that thin crispy crust. That afternoon was our trip to go to The Top of Rockefeller Center. Unfortunately the day was extremely overcast. We literally couldn’t see a thing. If you looked straight down off of the overview landing you could see a couple...

Monday we got up and went to find the restaurant/diner used in the Seinfeld television series. John’s a big fan, so it was fun finding it.  When we were walking back to the subway after snapping a picture of Tom's Restaurant we stumbled upon the biggest cathedral either of us had ever seen. It was seriously MASSIVE and not nearly as crowded as St. Patrick's on 5th Ave. We spent a good while walking around inside and seeing all the ornate decorations. It was awesome and may have even been the highlight of our trip. From here on out we made it a point to stop and go into (if allowed) every church we stumbled on. They're all so different and beautiful; plus it gave us a chance to get out of the cold and sit for a bit. The next stop was the Natural History Museum. John really wanted to go to the planetarium, which we did. I don’t think it was quite as good as either of us expected or wanted it to be though. It was kind of a tourist trap, but oh well. (tip: most all museu...

Sunday we went to the 911 Memorial first thing in the morning. I’m glad we went early; the lines weren’t too long and the place wasn’t nearly as packed as it was when we finished. (Side-note, you can buy tickets online and not have to wait as long, but we opted to buy them on sight so we could get the military discount) I think we were there from about 9-12:30. It was awesome and sad, but very well done. We could’ve spent all day there if we hadn’t gotten hungry. Lunch was a yummy vietnamese sandwich at a foodcourt nearby. And then we were off to Brooklyn to try to get some discounted broadway tickets at the TKTS booth. We heard that it was better to go to the booth in Brooklyn because it didn't have quite as long of a line. Unfortunately the booth is closed on Sunday :(. Stupid of me not to check first. We did have a good time walking back over the Brooklyn bridge though. Along with every other tourist in NYC haha. I kid, I kid. By the time we got back to the Manhat...

Early Saturday morning we flew into the Newark, NJ airport (cheapest flights) and managed to get Amtrak tickets to Penn Station without any incidents. Figuring out the public transportation system can be a bit intimidating at first, but the city does a good job of making it as simple as possible. Plus there are plenty of signs everywhere to help you find the stations and ticket booths, as well as attendants on duty to answer any questions. From Penn Station it was a quick 5-10 min walk to our hotel , located at the base of the Empire State Building, where we were able to drop off our bags (for free!) since it was too early to check in. Once that was taken care of went for breakfast run at this awesome hole in the wall bagel place just down the street. A quick word about NY bagels. They are the best. It doesn't matter where you purchase them from. Any hole in the wall will do. You will not be disappointed. In fact, my friend from NY (the one who gave me m...

Packing for trips can be a bit tricky, especially when you're trying to save money and not check a bag. Here's a rundown of what I brought. Pants. 3 pairs. Could have gone with just two Shirts. 4 of them. All long sleeve. A set of workout clothes. I always bring at least one set. There have definitely been times where I don't end up using them, but this trip we used the hotel fitness center. So, I was glad I brought these along. Outdoor Gear. Hat, Scarf, touchscreen friendly gloves, down vest, and soft-shell jacket. Our trip was from Dec 26-31st. Typically it's pretty cold and can be snowy around that time. Lucky for us NYC had a warm spell during our stay. It was a bit drizzly on a few occasions, but never dropped below 45* F. With all the walking you do in the city, there was never a time I wished I'd had warmer clothes. I'd recommend checking the forecast a few times to see what is needed. Had the weather been colder and snowy I would have ex...

Deciding to take a trip to New Your City was both super exciting and extremely overwhelming. I mean, it's the Big Apple, The City that Never Sleeps, The Capital of the World. So much to see, so much to do, so little time to do it all. Obviously the first step when planning a trip like this is figuring out how and when you're going to get there. For us we decided to go December 26th - 31st. Right in between the two major holidays. I'm sure for a lot of people these dates may seem weird. Why not spend the holidays in the big city? But it turned out to be the perfect situation for us; plus it allowed us to get good prices on flights. Win win. Once the flights were booked we then moved on to finding a place to stay. Easier said than done. The area is just huge, and there are sooooo many different options. We decided to go through Airbnb and, after scanning through all the many MANY available listings, we got one narrowed down, contacted the owner and boo...

The next morning we woke up to a good breakfast of Mountain House freeze dried blueberry granola and dried fruit. (Which was really good in my opinion) Afterwords we packed up and headed out. The trek out was about 4.7 miles to a large waterfall, and then after that 2.5 miles to the car. We noticed immediately that this day's hike was a much steeper and rougher terrain than the day before. Steep hill after hill after hill. Both of us were a bit tired from the previous day too, so it was a bit of a struggle. About 2 hours into the hike it started raining. Not hard, and the trees we walked through did a good job of sheltering us; it was just enough to cool us down actually, and felt pretty good. We reached the falls at around 11 am right when the rain started to pick up. We spent some time there snacking and taking pictures, but because it was raining it wasn’t really fun to stay in one place. So, after about 20 minutes, we took off on our fi...

On Wednesday mornings Cades Cove does a cool thing where they close the loop to all vehicles until 10 am, allowing people to bike/walk/run the loop without having to worry about cars. We decided to check it out since we couldn’t go anywhere anyways. So, we got up, made a pancake breakfast and cleaned up what we could before taking off on our bikes to ride the loop. The loop has two roads that cut across allowing you to make it shorter if you want; we had a big hike planned for later that day, so we only biked the first bit until hitting that first shortcut path. I think the ride was probably only 2-3 miles total. Still fun though. Not as pretty as the night before, we totally lucked out on that one. After getting back to camp we started to get ready for our backpacking trip. We got all our food and gear situated and packed up then headed out to the trailhead. The parking lot for the trail head was on the far end of the Cades Cove loop (so we had to drive half of it again) and ma...

The next morning we got up, made some dutch oven Mountain Man Breakfast Casserole  and packed up camp while it was cooking. We dried stuff out as well as we could but it was still pretty damp so there really wasn’t much we could do. Once breakfast was eaten and cleaned up (so good!) we hit the road taking the New Found Gap Road. It was a really pretty drive on a 2 lane highway. Gorgeous trees line most of it, but as you climb higher you start catching glimpses of some pretty spectacular views. We stopped and pulled out at the many overlooks to take it in and snap some pictures. Our first stop was Clingman’s Dome. I wasn’t originally planning on going because it's a bit of a detour, but it wasn’t too far off our path so we figured, "why not?" The Dome is a manmade observatory that gives you great views of the park. As we were driving the 7 miles to the parking lot all the clouds started rolling in and it began to get SUPER foggy. It looked really cool, but ...