Green Around the Globe

Summer’s Bounty

Amy — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:30:05 +0000

With the passing of another Labor Day, summer is officially over. And as the nights get cooler and the leaves begin to show tinges of red and gold, I am already nostalgic for my favorite summer pastime, picking fruit. A typical summer in Philadelphia is not complete unless I have coerced Keith and various friends and family into a July morning spent picking blueberries under a blazing sun at Linvilla Orchards. While a good portion of our work ends up eaten at the Orchard, we usually reap 10 or more pounds for the freezer, enough to last the rest of the summer (with some serious rationing).

This summer we found ourselves at Flathead Lake, Montana, at the height of cherry picking season. I love cherries.

I have been known to eat an entire bag in one sitting, making myself sick from their sweet and sour deliciousness. And at $6 per pound, I have even proposed that Keith and I create a separate line item in our budget solely dedicated to supplying my summertime habit.

So when the chance to pick our own cherries for $1 per pound appeared on the side of the road, we jumped on it.

13.6 pounds later (not included what we ate while picking) we filled our coolers and hit the road north for Glacier National Park with our very own taste of summer.

In the Middle

Amy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:00:13 +0000

America is a big country. Really big. And in the middle, the rolling green hills of the east give way to the seemingly endless plains, crops and occasional tractor until you hit the jagged edges of the Rockies a thousand miles later. But just as the landscape falls flat and your eyelids start to droop from staring at miles of straight, black asphalt, little gems of Americana make their appearance. Like mirages of a watery oasis, these “only in America” sights beckon you off the interstate and into a parallel travel universe.

The SPAM Museum, Austin, Minnesota
I did not grow up eating SPAM. I have no nostalgic memories of mom serving meat product from a can. In fact, I never even tasted SPAM until we veered off Interstate 90 and into the SPAM Museum. Here we were, lured in by the free admission and the opportunity to stretch our legs, tasting samples after viewing a movie on the glorious history of SPAM. Mostly, for those of you curious non-SPAM eaters out there, it tasted like salt. A lot of salt, with perhaps an undercurrent of ham.

The museum itself is actually very well done. There are many exhibits ranging from the evolution of the SPAM can’s packaging to a chronicle of SPAM’s advertising campaigns from the 1940s through the 1990s. There is even an interactive exhibit where you can test how fast you’d be on the SPAM assembly line, inserting a pink felt block into a SPAM can and then ensuring the proper label adheres. (Due to our poor performance, I don’t think either of us would be justified in pursuing this alternative career path.) The museum’s website claims that the “SPAM knowledge that you will gain is priceless.” Need I say more?

The World’s Only Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota

We first heard about the Corn Palace from Keith’s mom, who showed us pictures of this ode to corn that is redecorated each year in a different theme. Seriously. This was something we absolutely had to see for ourselves. Just as the sun was sinking in the western sky, we arrived at what is essentially an indoor arena covered in murals made entirely of corn. In the middle of the arena, is, of course, the ubiquitous gift shop.

This year’s theme, “Through the Ages,” depicts different modes of transportation through time. From sailboats to segways, stagecoaches to snow mobiles, the exterior of the Palace is covered in murals handcrafted out of naturally colored corn, grains and grasses. Approximately 500,000 visitors each year come to this “agricultural show-place of the world.” And I bet you didn’t even know it existed.

Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota
Yet another gift shop cleverly disguised as a must-see tourist destination, Wall Drug is impossible to pass by without at least a look. For hundreds of miles, the interstate is littered with Wall Drug billboards, enticing the weary traveler to stop at “America’s Favorite Roadside Attraction.” Promises of free ice water and 5-cent coffee dot the landscape until it becomes inevitable that you will stop. And you will stop, along with thousands of other tourists.

And when you do, you will find yourself inside a massive structure filled with everything from candy and fudge to western belt buckles, spurs and hats. Galleries of western art and steer heads line the wood paneled walls. Stained glass, pottery, bobble heads and fool’s gold compete for your tourist dollars. You can easily get lost in this swirl of souvenir chaos.

We never did find the free ice water or the bargain coffee, but we did manage to brave the crowd for a few scoops of homemade ice cream before hitting the road again. Wall Drugs is not for the timid. But on a hot summer day with miles to put under your wheels, it is a spectacle of Americana most worthy of a stop.

What other great slices of American are out there for us to uncover? Please share in the comments below.

Being a Tourist in Your Hometown

Keith — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:00:19 +0000

Riverboat cruises, baseball games and day hikes were just a few of the fun activities we squeezed in during our week in Cincinnati before heading west on our grand road trip.

Usually, when we come back to Cincinnati it revolves around one holiday or another. With both of my parents and much of the rest of my family still living in Greater Cincinnati area we usually make one or two trips out a year. One of the best things about this trip has been the opportunity to spend more time with family without the frantic rushing around that comes with the holidays. I would highly recommend anyone considering a career break or extended travel to use the time you have at the beginning or end of the trip to visit with family. Well, that is if you enjoy your family’s company.

One of the first things we did once we were in town was to spend a beautiful evening on the Ohio River aboard a B&B riverboat for a charity dinner cruise. Starting the evening with a buffet dinner we quickly moved out to the outside decks to take in the city views and eventually the beautiful sunset sinking below the western horizon.

One of the great views we had while on the Ohio River was the new Cincinnati Reds Ballpark. While I was in town when the old Riverfront Stadium was imploded in 2002, I had yet to make it to a game in the new stadium. By a happy coincidence, while we were home the Reds were running a promotion offering half price tickets to teachers. A good friend of the family, Craig Smith, is a teacher in Northern Kentucky and is also a huge baseball fan. He offered to buy tickets for all of us and was able to secure great seats 15 rows back from home plate. And despite a brief rain delay in the 5^th inning we saw an amazing game by the Reds with a 7 to 2 win over the Washington Nationals.

One of our final adventures in the Cincinnati area was a day hike in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Yellow Springs is about an hour north of Cincinnati and its claim to fame is that the during the Christmas season the Clifton Mill, just south of town, is decked out in millions of lights. While it is not quite as postcard picturesque in the summer as it is in the winter, the hike along the Little Miami River was wonderful. The 5-mile path winds along the river and showcases southern Ohio geology, including erosion of the layered sedimentary cliffs and the fossils contained in them.

This trip to Cincinnati reaffirmed something that most people seem to agree with when we have asked them about it: the unique phenomenon of local residents never making the time to see the sights located in their own hometown. New Yorkers that have never been to the Statue of Liberty, Australians that have not made the trip to Ayers rock and Philadelphians that have never laid eyes on the crack in the Liberty Bell.

What attractions in your hometown have you not made it to that an out of town tourist armed with a guidebook would hit in the first 24 hours? Let us know in the comments below.

For more pictures from Cincinnati be sure o check out the Road Trip Pictures page here.

Meet The Beast

Keith — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:00:03 +0000

Meet the Beast. That is the affectionate nickname we gave to the Eddie Bauer Edition 1998 Ford Expedition my dad graciously offered to loan us for our 4-week U.S. and Canadian road trip. One question that may immediately come to mind when seeing our choice for vehicle is, “Hey I thought this blog was GREEN Around the Globe? What’s with the massive gas-guzzling SUV? Shouldn’t you guys be driving a Prius?” While Amy and I do have a passion for the environment and for businesses that have environmental sustainability as a core strategy, we are also firm believers that economic incentives play a huge role in the choices that we make as consumers. As such, I wanted to detail the evaluation process we went through and why the Beast was the best option.

Need for Flexibility
When we returned from Australia and made the decision to continue traveling closer to home, we needed transport that offered flexibility. After briefly considering the few public transport options, trains, buses, airplanes, etc. we came to the quick realization we were back in the car-centric US. If we wanted to get across the country at a reasonable cost while being able to stop and see places along the way we needed to drive. This was reinforced when flipping through the Lonely Planet USA in a bookstore. In the things to remember section it said, “Driver license, even if you don’t plan on driving, once you see how big America is you may change your mind. “ So we needed a vehicle. We also had to plan for the possibility that we might have to return to the East Coast on short notice and would prefer not to have to drive three days straight to do that. With this as our primary evaluation criteria for transport we had two options: rent a car from a national company or borrow the Beast from my dad. With the rental car, if we needed to we could go to the nearest airport and return the car, probably pay a penalty, and get on a plane. With the Beast, we could go to the nearest airport, lock it up and get on a plane. We’d then have to return when we could to get it back to Cincinnati. However, my dad was not very concerned about when it was returned, increasing the flexibility of this option. With that settled, next we needed to evaluate costs, which called for a spreadsheet.

Cost Comparison
Surprisingly, the Beast was the cheaper option, 30% cheaper in fact. Let me explain how I got to that estimate. For overall trip assumptions we estimated that the 32-day road trip would be about 7,500 miles and that gas would cost on average $3 per gallon. Also built into the detailed assumptions was the cost to offset any incremental CO₂ that would be created by choosing the less fuel efficient Beast over a smaller rental car. (Detailed assumptions are outlined below). In the end, with the relatively cheap cost of fuel in the U.S., and the high per day rental cost, the Beast still had the cost advantage. This savings amounted to nearly $9/day. Not to mention the added flexibility borrowing a car from family offered vs. the prospect of dealing with a rental car company in the event our plans changed. Somehow I suspect that Avis would be less understanding than KEA was with our camper van rental in Australia.

Detailed Cost Assumptions

What do you think? Would you have taken the Beast, or rented a smaller, more fuel efficient car? Let us know in the comments below.

Six Weeks in Six Minutes

Amy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:00:19 +0000

Here it is, folks, our latest video on our six weeks in Bhutan and China this past spring. We had an incredible experience in both countries. Enjoy!

Back on the Travel Horse

Amy — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:00:37 +0000

It is not the decision to come home early when a family member gets sick that is hard. It’s the decision about what to do once you are there, months before you expected. Months that your condo is occupied by a tenant, months when that car your sold right before you left would’ve come in handy, months when the prospect of finding employment again looms large.

It took a few weeks of visiting friends and family, sorting the piles of mail that awaited us and fielding the endless questions of what we were going to do with ourselves before we made the conscience decision to treat these months as merely the next part of our year around the world adventure. Same trip, different itinerary. Instead of southern Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, we’d continue to travel in the US and Canada. And we’d start immediately, two miles south of the home I grew up in, at the George Washington Bridge.

It might sound strange, but in the 30 years that my mother has lived in that same house, I had never once walked across this iconic bridge. Sure, I’d driven across it a million times, admiring the views of the Manhattan skyline and the Palisades cliffs while sitting in traffic. I’d watched joggers out on their morning runs, commuters walking briskly to the other side, bicyclists rolling along the narrow pedestrian walkway, and think to myself that one day, when the weather is fine, I should do that. That day arrived on a relatively cool, clear June evening.

We waited until the sun started its western descent and hit the road, arriving at the bridge to catch the end of rush hour. We parked, grabbed the camera and wandered down to the pedestrian entrance on the Fort Lee side of the bridge. In between snapping pictures and convincing security who were less than thrilled with our picture taking that we were just tourists out for a stroll, we laid out the tentative plans that would become the route of our US and Canadian road trip.

Amidst the scent of car fumes and the grit of debris that lined the walkway, we allowed ourselves to fall back into travel mode. Destinations that at the same time seemed close to home but that we hadn’t yet made it to swirled in our heads. Mt. Rushmore. Glacier National Park. Banff. Victoria. Anywhere not as hot as summer on the east coast!

It’s not the adventure we had originally planned, but if we’ve learned anything during our 9 months abroad, it’s that nothing ever goes as originally planned. And yet everything seems to work out for the best. That’s the beauty of travel, and so the adventure continues.

U.S. Road Trip Pictures

Keith — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:00:03 +0000

Now that we have finally caught the blog up to us arriving back in the United States be sure to check out the picture albums from the first part of our 4-week road trip across the U.S. here. In there you will find impressive landscapes,

great tourist attractions,

and majestic wildlife.

Around the World Wrap Up

Keith — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:27:43 +0000

So all RTW blogs do some incarnation of this post when they get back: the wrap up. One of the best I have seen is on GlobeDecker. The amount of data they had is amazing and I give credit to Katie for sending me their wonderful budget file. We shamelessly plagiarized it as a starting point for our own detailed budget file. Their detailed wrap up statistics also provided the inspiration for us to think about what lists we wanted to keep along the way. Keeping track of the relevant information as we went made this post possible. I would highly recommend that anyone considering long term travel think about what information they want to gather and record as they travel. Along with setting clear strategic goals for your trip before you leave, it is one most important things you can do and will help immensely as you return and look to summarize the trip to family, friends and even potential employers.

While we are still traveling in the U.S. and Canada, we thought it was worthwhile to quickly sum up some of the most frequent and thought provoking questions we have had since we have been home. So here it goes. To be clear the statistics below apply only to the non-North American portion of the trip. If we missed something you want to know, leave a comment below and we will do our best.

Travel Statistics:

Countries Visited: 17; see our detailed route here.
Days on the Road Internationally: 255; October 6, 2009 – June 22, 2010.
Favorite Country: For Keith, it was Bhutan. The scenery was stunning and the culture unique. For Amy, it was Japan. She was won over by the delicious food, adorably polite people and the sparkling clean public restrooms.
Least Favorite Country: Egypt for both of us (excludes our 11 days in the Sinai, which was amazing).
Flight Segments: 14 international, 6 internal. And yes, Amy still hates to fly.
Modes of Transport: airplane, ocean ferry, bus, train, car, tuk-tuk, boat, motorbike, bicycle, horse, and last but not least (but definitely slowest) donkey cart.

Finances:

Total average cost per day while traveling: $188. This includes all expenses for lodging, food, transport, etc., but excludes pre-trip expenses like our clothes and immunizations.
Most expensive country per day: Bhutan ($490).
Least expensive country per day: Laos ($82).
Most expensive day: $720 on April 11, 2010 in Bhutan. This was our last day in Bhutan, so our expenses included tips to our driver and guide for the entire trip.
Least expensive day: $9 on January 31, 2010 in Vietnam. This is the beauty of an overnight train.
Most over-budget country: Australia (+42%). We like to believe that we overshot our budget so completely because we were cramming 7 weeks of activities into 3 weeks of traveling. It could also be that Australia is just a lot more expensive than either of us anticipated.
Most under-budget country: Singapore (-26%). How, you might ask, did we achieve being so far below budget in one of the most expensive places in Asia? It’s called having a very kind and generous friend who happens to be back home on holiday. Thanks again, Anand!

Other Frequent Questions

What was your worst experience on public transportation? For Keith, it was the overnight train in China in hard sleeper class while afflicted with a stomach bug, not pleasant for anyone. For Amy, it was the four-hour bus ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Pehn on a bus with no air conditioning. She sweats just thinking about it!
Do you two still speak to each other after so much time together? We do, in fact in many places there was no one else who spoke more than rudimentarily English, so if we didn’t talk to each other it would have been very lonely.
How often were you in touch with people back home? Through skype, email, facebook and of course this blog, we were able to keep up with nearly everyone on a regular basis.
Did you restrict what you ate? No, we decided early on that we could not go that long without fresh vegetables so we carefully choose places to eat them.
So did you get sick? We both had minor to moderate stomach bugs a couple times. The worst was Amy’s 24-hour bug that hit on an overnight train in Egypt. But it was never anything the antibiotics we were carrying couldn’t handle.
Did you experience any negativity as an American traveling abroad? Not ever at a personal level. However, we did get lots of questions about the healthcare debate going on at home and why American’s did not want to provide access to healthcare to everyone. That got tough to explain sometimes in less than an hour.