Day 32, 18th September 2011. New York - Maryland/Washington DC

Was so tired this morning, could have done with a few more hours sleep, but we hadto be up early to meet the new tour group! It was annoying for us that we had to be there so early, because all the new people had to fill in forms which we didn't need to do, so we were just waiting around!

We met our new leader, Mark, he seemed ok. It was his first year on the job and he was quite young so it was a big difference compared to Art. One by one members of the new group started to show up. Our group was smaller this time, there were only 10 of us, which meant more room in the van! The new people in our group were Matt (the only boy), Steph, Lisa, Amelia, and Sua. We also had Leah from the other tour group join in our group because she wanted a change from the group she was in, which me, Gary and Kirsty were really happy about because we really liked her.

Mark didn't really seem like as much of a leader as Art, and was definitley way less organised. On the first day of Art's trip he gave us printed itineraries with where we would be each day and how long the drives would take which I really loved as we could see what we would be doing and when. Mark hadn't even finished planning the itinerary when we met him on the first day, and even when he had we never got a copy.

Once we had all met eachother and they had filled in all their forms we went to get in the van. Gary had requested not to be the van loader because he had hurt his back being van loader on the first part of the trip, but as he was one of the only boys he got made to do it which was really horrible. I felt really bad for him but no one else volunteered to do it, and I couldn't really help him seeing as I am the weakest person in the world.

We started our drive out of New York towards Washington DC. It was about a 5 hour drive and me and Gary of course sat with Kirsty. We could hear the person that didn't like us talking abot how much she hated the old group to the new group the whole time and it was making Gary really angry. It was actually the first time in the 7 years I've known Gary that I've actually seen him angry at someone.

We did a Walmart stop on the way. When we did Walmart stops with Art, the people who were cooking would go around and get their stuff while the others just did what they wanted. Mark gave us all a list of stuff to get so that everyone would have to do the groups shopping. I really hated this as it seemed to take ages and wasted everyones time. This is when we realised what a great tour leader Art was and how much he had done for us. We ate lunch in the parking lot and continued driving.

We got to camp at about 4.30pm and we had to set up the tents really slowly to show the new people how to do it. Yet another thing that I didn't like was the tents were not numbered or anything so how were we supposed to know who's tent was who's when we were getting them out. No one else seemed to care about this but I did, so I purposely chose a tent with a really long strap on the bag that I could tie in a knot so I could identify it when we got it out of the trailer. It was a challege every single day to get that tent before anyone else took it!

As we were setting up I found an inflatable matress on the floor rolled up, and the label of it said 'Suck my dick Eddie'. I don't think I wrote about this before but in Art's van, all the boys used to listen to this Eddie Murphy show on his ipod and that was one of the quotes from it that used to make them all laugh. So I thought, 'How weird' what Mark would have an inflatable matress that said that, and took it to show Gary. It was only then I realised that it had a 'To Gary' label on it, and there were others for me and Kirsty too! Art had got them for us, how nice was that!! We all had funny stuff or something written on them, mine had the left and right sides marked because they had all laughed at me once when I didn't know my left from my right!

We were so surprised and happy, it was such a nice thing to do, we text him to say thank you and he text back saying 'see you tonight' and then 'maybe in a few minutes' and of course we thought he was joking. About 10 minutes later we saw another Trek America van pull up and of course we knew it was him, so we ran over with lots of hugs and excitement, telling him how much we missed him already. One of the tours that was starting that morning didn't have a tour leader so Art had to be their leader for a day before they got another one so that is why he was there.

The campsite we were staying at was in Maryland, which is just outside DC, and it was really nice and had a pool and they gave us some coupons for a free ice cream. We went to get that and sat and ate it before having showers and going back to camp for dinner. The other group were there getting ice cream too so we talked to them for a bit and they were asking us how it felt to lost half our group, which of course felt really sad for us. Mark had made taco's for dinner which were SO GROSS! He was gluten free and made us also eat gluten free (which is another subject altogether, if one person was a vegetarian, the rest of the group wouldn't be forbidden to eat meat would they). Anyway, the taco's were so dry and the meat was grey. Totally unedible.

Finally, after dinner we had some fun, we drove into Washington DC to do some sightseeing.

First stop was the Capitol Building

                            

Then the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

The coolest place to see was the Abe Lincoln Memorial

Washington Monument

The Abraham Lincoln memorial was my favourite place, and I will admit that it's because of Night at the Museum 2.

Korean War Veterans Memorial

Then we went to the brand new Martin Luther King Jr Memorial



It was a really nice evening seeing all the sights of DC. When we got back to camp I got quite upset because I was missing my old group so much and hated that things were so different. I really missed the people that had gone and I wanted them to be there with us more than anything. Had a really bad nights sleep because I felt sick and at one point I had to get up because I needed to pee so bad. The restrooms were so far away and it was so scary walking to them, I actually thought I was going to get murdered!

Thoughts so far..

Ok, so I have just finished writing my trip report/diary for the first half of our Trek America trip and need to regroup my thoughts and explain a few things before I go on with the second half.

I say second half, but it's really only the beginning because I have only done 4 weeks so far, and the second half of Trek America was 5 weeks, then a week in Disneyland, then 3 weeks in New Zealand. I still have a lot to write and I am going to try and do 1 a day or something like that to get this done sooner.

So, as I think I metioned in my first Trek America post, me and Gary, and our lovely best friend Kirsty were doing the 'Trailblazer' which was a 9 week trip, whereas the others that we had to say goodbye to were only doing the 'Coast to coast north' trip. We were getting a bunch of new people who were doing the 'Coast to coast south' trip as well as a new tour leader. The other group that were travelling parallel to us were all doing the Trailblazer, so all they had was a new tour leader.

It was really, REALLY sad saying goodbye to the people that were leaving us. I can honestly say now, months later, that they are the nicest most fun people we have ever met and spent time with, and we will genuinely be friends with them forever. I am quite an over emotional person so I cried a lot at their departure. I doubt they will be reading this but if you are, I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!
Seriously, they made the first part of the trip a totally unforgettable experience and I will forever love them for that.

The second part of the trip we had a few issues. I don't really want to write in too much detail about what went on here because, even though only a few of my friends are the only people that are reading this (thanks girls, you know who you are), I realise that I am broadcasting this on the internet for anyone in the world to read. However, I also need to write it all down here because the reason I am doing this is for a memory for myself and I want to be honest and include things that made a huge impact on my trip.
To put it as nicely as I can, there was a person in the first group who was also carrying on the trip with me, Gary and Kirsty and this person had not really got along with the entire first group, who of course we all really loved. When the new group joined, this person decided to say a lot of bad things about us, so we did not have the same group feeling that we did with the first group. To be honest, it didn't really upset me, it was just an inconvenience in getting to know our new group. I am not really the kind of person who is desperate to be popular so I was just as happy with Gary and Kirsty as I would have been with a big group of friends. Regardless of this, the new group eventually realised what was going on and we ended up having some really good fun with them, it was just a very different situation.
The first 2 weeks with the new group were a really hard adjustment for me because of this and a few other things, and because I was really missing the others that had left us.

Of course some good things did come out of this. We became a lot better friends with the people in the other tour group that we hadn't really got to know so well before, we made really good friends with some of them so I am really grateful for that, because we wouldn't have got to know them if we had been so close with our own group.

There were a few other factors that took some of the enjoyment out of the second half of Trek America too. One small thing was that I was really sick for the first week or so. It wasn't the end of the world and I eventually got better, but I totally know the reason why I got sick was because of too much alcohol in the first half, which I do not regret one bit.
The other thing that made the second part less enjoyable was our new tour leader. He was a lot less experienced as Art because it was his first year on the job, and he made quite a lot of mistakes which you will hear about as I go along. I feel really let down by this because I feel like even though the trip was amazing, it would have been even better if we would have had a better leader.

So thats it for now, onto the second part of the trip!!

Day 31, 17th September 2011. New York City

Alarm went off at 7am because we were leaving for our only day in NYC at 7.30am, we wanted to make the most of it and see as much as possible. It was also our last day with our most favourite people in the world :(
When we all met up in the hotel lobby to leave for the day, Abby said she wasn't coming because her flight left in the middle of the day and she was worried about getting back in time. We all said our goodbyes to her and we went to get the super expensive train into the city again. Aaron and Daniel also decided not to come out for the day but we would be seeing them tonight so we didn't have to say goodbye to them yet.

When we arrived at Penn Station, we had to have a little walk around to find a place for Loz and Volker to store their bags for the day, as they were flying home this evening from JFK so would not be going back to the hotel. It took us quite a while to find the place which was a little annoying because we were wasting time, but we were soon on our way.

First stop was the Empire State Building

We were there for quite a while because there were lots of lines to get in, it was nothing like Sleepless in Seattle where they just run in and get the elevator up to the top (maybe they cut the waiting around scenes out of the movie LOL). We took loads of pictures of all the pretty views, although it was not as high as the Willis Tower in Chicago, the views were better.

Me and Loz wearing Statue of Liberty hats in the gift shop

Afterwards, we got a taxi to the Ground Zero site. We honestly wasted a lot of money getting taxi's in NYC rather than using the subway, but we were in such a rush all day the cost was justified. We didn't want to be messing around trying to figure out which subway to get where, it was so muich easier to just jump in a taxi.

There was a 9/11 memorial there but you couldn't get tickets unless you booked them way in advance. So we just looked at the new towers being built and looked at some of the other memorial things that were there. It was really unusual to be there just after the 10th anniversary, just thinking what it must have been like there 10 years ago, only 6 days after it had happened.

We had planned to get the boat over to the Statue of Liberty but it was SO busy! I have actually never seen a line so long, even in Disney. I was so gutted about this, because it was the one thing I was most excited about seeing in New York. Oh well, we took some photos from across the water, and its an excuse to go back one day. I'm honestly not that bothered about returning to New York because there were so many other places in the USA that I preferred, but we will 100% be going back one day because I was not satisfied with not going inside the Statue of Liberty.

We wandered about for a bit taking photos and stuff and bought I <3 NY shirts from a stand on the side of the road.

An American squirrel, so much more exciting than an English squirrel, haha.

Got a taxi to Times Square, where me and Gary got hot dogs from a cart on the street for lunch, it was a New York thing that I really wanted to do. Gary of course was still hungry so everyone else got McDonalds.

Gary and Volker enjoying their McDonalds

It was then time to start shopping!! I didn't get as much as I had hoped to. We looked around in a few silly shops like the M and M store and did some real shopping too. I got some things from Forever 21, and was really excited to go to Victoria's Secre, but it was way too busy to shop properly, so I only got a few things. The thing I was most excited to finally get was a Statue of Liberty Minnie Mouse that they only sell in the NYC Disney Store, she was definitely my favourite purchase of the day.

At about 4.30pm we went to TGI Fridays for some dinner so that Loz and Volker could eat before they had to go to the airport. Food was really good as usual and at the end of the meal it was time for them to say goodbye. Loz cried and so did I :( It was really starting to make me sad that we wouldn't be doing the 2nd half of the trip with these people, they really do mean the world to me.

When we finally had left TGI's and Loz and Volker were on their way to the airport, we had another little shop and I bought a dress in H&M and also tried to get some medicine from a pharmacy because I was feeling sick.

We started to make our way back to the hotel, and finally got there at about 9pm. We called the boys downstairs to have one last drink.

The final photo ..... :( just looking at this makes me feel sad

So we took our last photo and chatted for half an hour and then it was time to say goodbye. This was the saddest moment of all for me, which I will write more in detail about in my next post. I cried way too much when we said goodbye to these amazing people, I'd been dreading the goodbye all day.

Once me and Gary got in our room we showered and packed and got ready to start the second half of the trip the next day. I had an awful nights sleep because I felt so sick.