6 States for Spring Break

A few weeks ago, we had friends invite us to come to the Outer Banks, North Carolina for Spring Break. I got extremely excited until Mark burst my bubble with the news that he had a conference the entire week of Spring Break in Pittsburgh. So faced with the prospect of going on a trip without Mark or spending my week all alone at home, I decided to join him in Pittsburgh. Despite the fact that Pittsburgh conjures up images of some gritty, industrial city, it truly was a nice place. We both really liked it there. While Mark presented his research with the American Physics Society and suffered through two days of other presentations, I found about every mall within a 25 mile radius of downtown. I particularly liked all of the bridges near the convention center, and fortunately Mark snapped some photos from the roof.

Since we had already traveled 6 hours to the west, we decided to go a little further to see some friends in Indiana and Michigan. We stayed two nights with the Tuellers in South Bend and they took us to Amish Country. It was fun shopping for all kinds of bulk foods which included dehydrated kiwi, multi-colored popcorn, Amish-style peanut butter (it contains marshmallow creme), and cheese fudge. We also ate the most amazing fried chicken I've ever tasted at a huge Amish restaurant. Mark got to visit the National Football Hall of Fame, and Steven and Jillian introduced us to a fun card game called Bohnanza that we ordered online when we got back.

Our next stop was Ann Arbor where we stayed with the Bergmans. It was fun to see their kids who were both born since the last time we saw them. We ate dinner with some of my old friends from high school, Jordan and Paul. We got to meet Jordan's new wife (I thought she was fabulous!) and catch up on Ontario news. We were both pretty worn out by this point, but were so glad we got to see some of our old friends. It's crazy to think about how many places we know people these days with people spreading out all over the country.

We headed home the next day, but made a point of stopping at the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio on the way. It was the last major church history site that we had left to see, and we feel a sense of accomplishment and gratitude that we've been able to see all of these places thanks to our move to New York.

We've decided that we're done with traveling for the rest of the year. And now that sunny days are popping up all over the place, we're totally okay with that. It's so beautiful in Ithaca with fun things to look forward to that we're happy to stay home for awhile.