Washington DC in July...

As most of you know, my best friend Angie lives in a middle of nowhere town called Blanding in southeastern Utah. Instead of making the ten hour drive to see each other, we've gotten in the habit of planning girls trips to somewhere that neither of us has been before. (It's much more fun, trust me!) So, for our summer girls trip, we decided to go someplace on the East Coast. Boston and DC were our top choices, but when Angie found out that her friend Camille would be spending the summer outside DC with family, and we could stay with them for FREE, we decided to plan a trip to the nation's capital. Our only problem? We would have to visit in mid-July, which is typically the worst possible time to visit DC due to heat and unbearable humidity. But, we decided to go for it. After scouting out a cheap ticket, I arrived at Dulles to be met by Camille, Andrea and Christina, two other friends from Blanding. We travelled to Lynchburg, VA, for dinner before driving to Brunswick, MD, to our 'bed and breakfast'...aka Camille's dad's house.

I had done some planning ahead of time, and arranged tours of the Library of Congress, US Capitol, Supreme Court and the White House through Senator Crapo's office. So, for our first day in DC, we took the Metro into the city to check out the Library of Congress. It is unbelievably gorgeous! (Fair warning though, we did have some "National Treasure 2" flashbacks while viewing the main reading room.) We tried to get library cards, but apparently there are some pretty harsh regulations to get a card there...never mind that it's a public library!

We were also able to visit some of the Smithsonian museums that day: the American History, Natural History and Air & Space Museums. Talk about some incredible stuff, especially for a history buff like myself! Here are some of the MANY pics that I took:

The next day, we ventured to Baltimore to check out the waterfront area. We bought tickets for the Water Taxi and rode around for a while, and shopped in the touristy shops there.

Blogspot is taking forever to post the pics...I'll have to finish the story later!

Orem in June...

Well, I'm a couple months behind on updating the blog. I started out the summer working a four-tens schedule at work, which gave me two three day weekends a month and a four day weekend a month. I decided to venture to Orem, UT in June for my first four day weekend to hang out with my Utah family and to go to the Kelly Clarkson concert. I was supposed to fly out on a Wednesday night, but after sitting at the airport for a few hours, my flight was cancelled. (I did manage to get 5000 Skymiles and a $50 voucher though!) I was able to make it out on the earliest flight on Thursday morning, and the gate agent even upgraded me to First Class, which is definitely the way to fly...if only I could afford to fly that way all the time! I was met at the airport by Aunt Cheryl, and we ran a few errands that day before meeting up with Kelsey and Murray that night. I camped in Kels and Murr's guest room by the aquarium, and enjoyed playing Xbox with Murr, even though he totally killed me in every single game. We went to the Kelly Clarkson concert in Orem at the Utah Valley University baseball field, and had pretty good seats, even if we did get rained on!

Aunt Cheryl, Emily and I ventured to Sandy to the Nordstrom Rack store, which proved to be a very dangerous place...at least to my debit card. Dyl, Em, Aunt Cheryl and I went to Chik-Fil-A for dinner on Saturday night before watching "New in Town" at their apartment...Dyl, the Minnesotan Spanish was fantastic! By the time Sunday rolled around, I wanted to stay longer...but I'm sure I'll be back to visit again soon!