What I love on Roadtrips + Pillow Pet Giveaway!

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My family and I went on a two month trip this winter to California! However, the drive from Minnesota to California is crazy long, it took us around a week of 7-8 hour days, to get there because of the bad snow storm that came through. Semi Trucks were jack-knifing and tipping over and sliding off the road all over the place! It was terrible!

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With all that driving, you need some weapons. Some road trip weapons. With spending countless hours driving around in the past two months, I've developed a few favorites. Take a look....

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(Podcasts are great to listen to while traveling - on my 'extraordinary' ipod nano - my favorite - "Stuff you Missed in History Class")

And what not to pack....


Sweet Paul

Ham sandwiches. Actually, I think I'm changing the spelling to "Ham Sand'witches'." When you start to eat them everyday for a week, the come to be unappetizing indeed.

Now! Did you notice that one of my favorite things to pack was my pillowpet? Its the perfect size for in the car, and it's so soft. Would you like to win one?

How to enter: Visit the new Pillow Pets website and look around. Let me know what your favorite feature is. Mine is look through their shop - it's fun to look with my cousins, they are ecstatic over some of the pillowpets!

Extra (please leave a separate comment for each!):

+1: Subscribe to this blog via email

This giveaway is only open to the US!

Giveaway ends 4/9/2011

San Francisco

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After spending the day in Yosemite (gorgeous, you must visit it!) and heading out before the huge snow storm hits, we are off to San Francisco. I am so excited! I've heard nothing but good things about it! Lovely.


Arthur Elgort

I really would have loved to go see the San Francisco ballet, however, I think that the dates are off and we will be missing it! (sigh.)

What are your favorite places in San Francisco? Where should I go? Any upcoming artsy events I should know? Anything dearies, I would love to know about!

Also, congratulations to Lauri for winning the Votre Vu giveaway! Hope you enjoy your product!

"I shouldn't be Alive" - My Story

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Have you ever watched the show "I shouldn't be Alive?" My little brother loves everything outdoors, hiking, fishing, geocashing - so even though I've never watched a full episode, I've seen parts of it and have heard from Adam the terrors that people have faced.

Setting out exploring, rather than watching the superbowl, we decided to go to Joshua Tree Park. Remember how I blogged earlier about how I was in the mood for another ghost town? My Dad and brother also seemed to have the same thoughts. My Dads friend told him about a ghost town up in the mountains a few miles out of Joshua Park.

The Portrait

Having a big 4Wheel drive truck, my Dads friend, who had been up there many times, told us that he thought we could make it fine. Well, after driving miles through extremely bumpy, rocky, and jagged road, with the cliff on one side about not barely a foot away from our tire and rock on the other side, we came to a curve. However, with our truck, we couldn't fit! So, we backed out and headed along our way. (Don't ask how we backed out!)

Road that we couldn't fit through...and sign before we left the park!

Dad having a book on ghost towns in California, found that there was one listed not far from where we were, so we decided to try that one. The road leading up to it was a bit ragged, but it was fine, though rocky, still easy enough to get through. Once we reached the ghost town and walked a ways, we found out that the town itself wasn't much of anything, other than a few wood tracks left over. So we were off, with daylight dwindling because of the walk that we had to take.

The Wheat Field

Everything was going good, we were almost out of the BLM land before darkness hit in the mountains. However, somewhere along the way, we happened to take a wrong turn on the unmarked roads. A few minutes down, we knew that it wasn't the same road that we had taken before. With huge rocks everywhere, we knew we couldn't go much further. However, the road was so skinny that it was impossible to turn around in. Finally we reached the end and there was a sort of turn around there, however, the wheels started spinning and we were stuck in a matter of seconds. Dad after feeling the tires spinning, immediately stopped and grabbed a shovel with Adam. It was starting to get darker and we were in the middle of no mans land, with rocky boulders everywhere and on top of that, stuck in the patch of soft sand.

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Well, lucky enough, Dad and Adam managed to finally get the truck unstuck by digging it out and maneuvering our way around the huge rocks all around. Like Adam said, if it had been in the Summer with the atrocious dessert heat - in the middle of no where without anyone around - we could have faced an entirely different outcome. When you find yourself in a situation like this, you begin to look at things in a new perspective.

Please remember...to count your blessings! And here's to more adventures to come!