05/20/2006

It makes sense that this one would be one of the top voted since it's the most ambiguous. This will probably seem a little anticlimactic.

DAY ONE: 05/11/2006
Matt and I were on our wonderful trip back east! I'd never been this far from home. When we got off the plane in Buffalo, I honestly couldn't believe I was in New York. I saw all the I "heart" NY t-shirts in the windows and it sunk in more. WOW! I had only ever seen those on TV, on someone else, or at D.I. We picked up our rental car and we were on our way!

Tourist stops: Niagara Falls
Picture: Niagara Falls from the U.S. side


DAY TWO: 05/12/2006
Driving through up-state New York's country was wonderful the next morning. Everything was green and sunny. It was truly peaceful. One of my favorite parts was watching the fog come in over Lake Ontario that evening. Very mysterious. Also in Fayette we ran into the author of our tourist book, who kindly signed it. He was serving a research mission there. Very cool, knowledgable man!

Tourist stops: House Brigham Young built, Hill Cumorah, Sacred Grove, Erie Canal, Fayette, Lake Ontario
Picture: Hill Cumorah


DAY THREE: 05/13/2006
Today was sunny again and I was grateful. It was very relaxing and we stopped at a few more church history sites. Then we started our cross-country trek up through the Adirondacks and down to Lake George. It sprinkled a lot. The Adirondacks were cold, although no longer snowy.

Tourist stops: Grandin Building, Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah, Adirondacks, Lake George
Picture: Sacred Grove


DAY FOUR: 05/14/2006
We continued our trek leaving New York, driving through Vermont, New Hampshire and stopping in Maine. This was our longest drive day. It was raining and flooding! Lucky us - we were caught in one of the biggest floods the area had seen in a long time. The closer we got to the coast the more flooded everything became. We sat in our hotel that night watching the news, wondering if we would be able to drive into Boston the next morning.

Tourist stops: Norman Rockwell Museum, Joseph Smith Birthplace, Nubble Lighthouse
Picture: Joseph Smith Birthplace


DAY FIVE: 05/15/2006
We got up that morning and decided to try our luck getting into Boston. We called our hotel in the heart of downtown Boston, and they said they weren't experiencing any troubles with the flood. We took a quick detour to Amesbury, MA where I got to see one of my however-many-greats grandparent house from 1654. Pretty dang cool! On our way back onto the freeway, we saw the National Guard had closed the exit. We had barely made it there to see it. We didn't make it to Salem, MA. The road was closed. We did some touristy visiting along the coast in Rockport. Many of the cute shops had been flooded out and were closed. We did some hiking in the rain/fog. And we drove into Boston, an experience Matt will never repeat again.

Tourist stops: Amesbury, Rockport, Boston
Picture: My relative's house in Amesbury, MA.


DAY SIX: 05/16/2006
We had a very uppity breakfast at the Omni, hiked the Freedom Trail in the rain, but it was WONDERFUL! We ended up at Bunker Hill and took a taxi back to the Boston Commons. Our taxi driver asked us if we would take Mitt Romney back to Utah with us. We got our car and got out of town ... well, at least out of the center of town.

Tourist stops: Too many to mention! I loved touring Paul Revere's house, and the cemeteries.
Picture: Granary Burying Ground (three signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried here)


DAY SEVEN: 05/17/2006
We woke up early and went to a session at the Boston Temple. Beautiful temple! Then we really got out of town ... driving to Hyannis on Cape Cod.

Tourist stops: Boston Temple, Harvard Campus, Cape Cod
Picture: Boston Temple


DAY EIGHT: 05/18/2006
This was our first full day on Cape Cod. The weather was beautiful. Blue sky and no rain.

Tourist stops: Cape Cod! I love it!
Picture: Sunset in Hyannis


DAY NINE: 05/19/2006
Second full day on cape cod. I was so excited to see the sun rise on the ocean, but it was cloudy that morning. :(

Tourist stops: Cape cod! I want to go back!
Picture: Beach in Provincetown


DAY TEN: 05/20/2006
Our flight home left around 2pm. We left Provincetown early and got to the Boston airport at a comfortable time to catch our flight. We were dropping off our rental car when we had a HUGE vacation SURPRISE. The bad kind.

Our rental car had been scheduled for pick-up and drop-off in Buffalo; a 7-hour drive from our current location. The cost for dropping it off in Boston instead of Buffalo? $1300.00 .... nearly $1000.00 more than the price of the rental. Nearly the cost of our entire 10-day vacation …thanks to some perks from my job at the time.

LESSON LEARNED: Always double-check your paperwork. This is something I will do maniacally for the rest of my life. I know it will never happen again. It will be some other stupid oversight that will blight the last day of some future blissful vacation.

The rental people made a few calls, but nothing could be solved right then. I think the person that could help was at lunch, so we were sent on our merry way with a phone number. I was panicked. In my experience it's always much easier for people to take your money than to give it back. Not only that, but we were now running late for our flight.

We rushed to catch our flight. Then we had 2-hours to review the situation in which we realized that if we had taken the rental car, driven 7-hours to Buffalo, paid the rental late fee, and paid the airline change fee, we would still have come out hundreds of dollars ahead. Probably at least $700.00. But, instead we walked away with a phone number, a 4-advil headache, and a stressful flight from Boston to Chicago.

Upon arrival in Chicago, Matt called the rental company and did his best groveling. He explained that the person who set up the reservation misunderstood our needs, that person being a friend of mine at work with tons more experience renting cars than I had; she worked in “travel” after all. They had mercy on us and reduced the charge to $500.00.

The flight from Chicago to SLC was better.

Pictures: I had completely lost interest in taking photos by this time.