beaniezotzim's VirtualTourist Home Page

I got the travel bug young. When I was little, my family took a road trip to somewhere in North America at least once a year. When I moved out on my own, I decided to continue the tradition even if my family couldn't go, I would always find someone who was in for a road trip adventure. In 1997, my best friend (Lori) and I decided to go on a road trip to Kansas of all places, no reason, just wanted to get into the middle of the "tornado belt" being from California, theres just something about tornados that is just sooo cool. (silly, I know). We didn't get to see any tornados, but we had a great time exploring different things on our way to the "belt". Some of the things we got to experience were: driving up the coast of California, San Jose, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Reno, Moab Utah, Manitou Springs Colorado, Wichita Ka, Kanab Utah, *Best Friends Animal Sanctuary* in Kanab, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas. We headed home and started to plan our next summer trip right away. We decided we wanted to go swimming in the ATLANTIC Ocean....

For more pics, please see my "Travelin' in the USA" album

there were a couple of motivating factors on how we decided to take this trip:
1. We wanted to check out
Savannah, Georgia because of a
movie that we saw that took
place here... midnight in the garden of good and evil..
2. We really wanted to swim in the
Atlantic Ocean
3. The New Orleans experience!

So we headed for Savannah, Ga. and decided that we needed a few stops along the way:
El paso, San Antonio, and New Orleans to name a few. We had a great time in New Orleans (picture.. by the way sorry for the quality of these pics, this was back in the day before digital cameras were everywhere, they are scanned from photos) ... from New Orleans we drove through part of Mississippi and Alabama......... (fond memory of this trip is Blasting the song "Sweet home Alabama" on the radio as we were driving through said state... fun) .........when we finally got to our destination, we swam in the warm Atlantic waters then headed home. On the way home we hit a few other famous cities including: Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis. In Memphis we stopped to check out Graceland...we didn't pay to get in, we just went up the the rock fence and looked in like a couple of poor kids....
As we were driving home through Arkansas, we saw a little black speck on the side of the road that turned out to be a small dog that was infested with fleas, ticks, mange, scabies etc. She had very little hair on her, maybe only about 30 percent of what she would normally have. We took her to an emergency veteranary clinic where they told us that we had to claim her as our own for them to do any work on her. needless to say, we claimed ownership of her. After the whopping vet bill, we didn't really have any money left, so we headed home completely broke, but in tow was a pup with a new lease on life. We named her Arkansaw (fittingly) and she is having a Happy, Healthy life in Long Beach, Ca.

For a picture of her please check out my "travelin' in the "USA" album

my 1997 vacation was very short :( but the good thing about it was that we experienced sooo much cool stuff in the 8 days that we were gone, that it feels like it was a two week trip. Jon (my then boyfrriend, Now husband) and I headed out of California to Sedona, Az. our goal with this trip was to get as much Nature parks, etc tourist attractions as we could in the short time we had. we saw Red Rock Slide in Sedona Az, Grand Canyon, *best friends animal sanctuary* again (can't miss this place when you are so close.. its awesome), Zion National Park, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park, Modesto Ca, San Francisco Ca, Santa Cruz Ca, Monterey Ca. and the rest of the california coast. We had a blast. A couple of Highlights of this trip for me were Zion and Sequoia.

for more pics, please see my "travelin in the USA " album

In 2001 we went to Alaska because Lori got a summer job there, so I decided to accompany her for the long drive to Fairbanks. It was really beautiful country, especially driving through Canada. The pictures that I have of this vacation aren't very good though. (the quality just didn't do any of the scenery justice. Oh well.) We drove up the coast of California and made a couple of stops along the way. Those stops include: Lake Shasta, Astoria Oregon, Billington Washington, Vancouver BC, Quesnel BC, Iskut BC, and Haines Junction Yukon. Once we got to Fairbanks, we decided to do a little exploring since we had a few days to spare before my flight back to California left. We found Chena Hot Springs about 1 hours drive away. I had a broken arm at the time, so I didn't really get to enjoy the Hot Springs to the fullest potential. I did get to experience some of the best cream of potato soup that I have ever tasted on the way back from the hot springs ( I learned later that the little restaurant that we got the soup at burned down that summer??. Very sad news). We also decided to drive down to Denali National Park, even though it wasn't completely open. We got to drive in to the park about 29 miles until they made you turn around and go back out. We saw some really neat stuff in the 29 miles though including the twin peaks of Denali, and a cute little bird in the middle of the road that gave us both a little chuckle, (it walked funny! we tried to get a picture of it, but of course it just didn't turn out right) Then it was back home to California with dreams of my next adventure.

For more pics of Alaska trip please see my "Travelin' on" album

I have a good friend that lives in New York and I kept telling myself that I should go visit her there.... and I always would put it off. Then September 11 Happened and I had no idea where she worked or if she was okay etc... I was really worried, trying to get ahold of her to see if she was okay. I finally called her mother in Idaho to see if they had heard from her, turns out she was okay. All that happened to her was that she had to walk home from where she worked in central manhattan....it took her 9 hours. wow.
In November I decided to go visit her. She took me all around New York and I fell completely head over heels in Love with the city. I went there thinking that I would hate it because I hate LA... wrong. we went to Rockafellar Center, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park, St. Patricks Cathedral, all the little villages, etc. Jon came out on a different flight a day after me and we all went to check out the WTC area. It was such an eye opener.... How someone can kill all those people in the name of God is beyond me. I won't comment more on this because I can't make an argument over something I know very little about.
You always hear that New Yorkers are rude etc. I didn't experience that at all... in fact, they are much more social and friendly than LA people.... it seems like in LA everyone minds their own business, even if you are asking for help, it's hard to find someone willing to take focus off of themselves for a minute to help someone else out, but in New York, you don't even have to ask... they see you looking at a map and ask "where are you lookin' ta go?" and that's that... they help you find it. they are really great people and I am ALWAYS looking forward to my next visit to the BIG APPLE...

to see more NYC 2001 pics please see my "travelin' on" album