Final push home

Well today should complete my drive home from Maine. I am so thankful. I am very ready to be out of the car. 

I will post pictures in the coming days. It takes everything I have in me to get out of the car and into the hotel at night. Nothing like completely physically exhausting yourself and then driving home for three days. Sounds like a brilliant Roddy idea.

Two days ago, I stopped in Freeport, ME at the LL Bean headquarters. Wow, was that amazing! Imagine the LLBean magazine in one store. I wanted to buy pretty much everything, but I refrained. I looked around for a while taking a break from the car and then jumped back in to unfortunately leave the beautiful state of Maine. If Maine is not on your bucket list, it should be. It is beautiful up there.

So yesterday's adventure for a break in the monotony was a stop in New York to see the Statue of Liberty. I opted to see her from the Jersey side as I was urged to do for less of a headache. So once I got to Hartford, CT, I plugged Liberty State Park into my GPS on my phone. It certainly took me the most direct route, far from the fastest though. So typical Shannon, I am driving along the water admiring all the shiny buildings and then my good friend Rachel calls me to see where Waldo is. My words were, "I believe I am just beside the heart of downtown New York traffic." Yes that was true until my GPS told me to turn left on Canal St. to get me to the Holland Tunnel to get me to the Jersey side. Holy New York traffic. I have never heard so many horns honking in my life. I texted Blake and said that I believe New Yorkers honk their horns more than they breathe. I have a video I will post soon, but wow. It was just like the movies. Everyone is honking, people were yelling, pedestrians and bicycles were darting in between the six lanes of traffic that were trying to squeeze into the two marked lanes. It was quite the experience and now I shall mark that off my bucket list and hopefully never drive there again. 

After my hour and ten minutes driving 3 miles through downtown Manhattan, I reached Liberty State Park on the Jersey side to view the Statue of Liberty and get a pic of downtown New York. I pretty much had the park to myself since it was 104 degrees there. Holy Heat Wave! I saw two bicyclists, but other than that it was a ghost town. I drove to the end to get a pic of the city and then parked in a lot about halfway through the park to view the Statue of Liberty. I pulled into a parking lot where a couple of cars were parked. After parking my car and deciding I would ride my bike up to the water to view the statue, a young man walked over to me and asked me to please move my car out of the shade where I parked and into the middle of the lot because he was teaching someone to drive. "Absolutely young man, thank you for letting me know." As I am taking my bike off my bike rack there is a gentleman encouraging his wife a couple spaces over to place the vehicle in reverse as she was parked perpendicular to the parking spaces. I said to him, "Oh is she learning to drive as well?" He said "No, she drives, she just can't park worth a darn." I literally laughed out loud at her attempt to park in the spot that she was parked perpendicular in. I apologized of course, but Cripes this lady is driving around as well. If she can't park in an empty parking lot, what are her other driving skills like?

I am looking into the issue that some of you are unable to post comments. I believe it may be that you have to have a gmail account to make comments which seems lame, but I am going to check with my good friend Heather Kelsey. So Heather if you are reading this please let me know if this is true.

I got a call from my recruiter yesterday and we are full speed ahead for Hopkins in one week! I am so excited. I need to study up for some testing that I must do on arrival, but I am ready to get my learn on at a state of the art institution. 

Time to become one with Willie Nelson and sing "On the Road Again."