Jessica and Drew's Impromptu Adventures

We started out day off on Thursday by sleeping in just a little and heading out to an early lunch at Stephanie’s on Newbury. It’s usually a great spot to watch people walk up and down the street, but when we went outside, the winter rain had continued through the night and it was pretty wet outside.

We ate our lunch, including Jessica’s now infamous attack on their goat cheese platter, and jumped in the car.

As the rain was pretty heavy and there was no chance on walking around, we opted for our own car tour of the area. We drove out to Fenway and gave Jess a chance to see the Green Monster (from behind), we saw a band’s tour bus catch on fire (Rebelution?), drove around Cambridge, past Harvard and MIT, then decided to get out of the weather. So, we drove to Rhode Island. :)

We headed down to Pawtucket, because it had the word “paw” in it, and Jess was sure we would find animals. However, after reading about it in her travel guide, we decided to skip past it and go straight to Providence. Jessica even had me convinced for a couple of seconds that the world’s largest Boston Terrier rescue farm, housing 11,000 Boston Terriers was located in Providence. I know, it sounds even more ridiculous when I write it out.

So we get to Providence, check out the state house, then drive around and see what the city has to offer.

Jess read about Federal Hill in our trusty travel guide, and then we stumbled across it! I’m convinced that Providence is what the U.S. would look like if Italy took it over. It’s awesome. We came across Constantino’s Venda Ravioli and immediately fell in love with the place. If we had one of these, I would shop there all the time. Unfortunately no pictures are allowed inside. However, we did bring back some Coffemilk mix from there and a magnet with an address of their website where the clerk told us “we could download the entire store.” Count me in.

We strolled up and down the main drag (not sure what it was called), picked up some magnets, and enjoyed the afternoon.

Before leaving the city we stopped at a little pastry shop called Pastiche. We ordered an Apple Tart Crisp, some coffee and hot chocolate, and warmed up before leaving Providence.

We jumped in the car and headed back to Boston. At the hotel, we tried to figure out where we were going for dinner. We found a jewel of a restaurant called Trattoria Toscana. I cannot explain how amazing the food was, but it was some of the best Italian I have ever had. Most definitely the best Gnocchi ever.

We left dinner and headed to Boston Common / public garden to walk off our meal. It may have been 34 degrees out, but we strolled through the park and enjoyed our last night in Beantown.

We started out the day by trying to get an early jump on the morning. Coffee and OJ was delivered to our door, and after getting ready, we headed out!

The first stop of the morning was at Mike’s Pastries in the North End of Boston. We drove around the North End checking out the tiny streets, looking at some of the historical stuff (1 if by land, 2 if by sea!), and trying to find parking. Once we got a spot on the street, we walked up to Mike’s to get our breakfast on!

Jessica ordered an Eclair and a hot chocolate, I grabbed a chocolate chip canolli and a coffee, and we sat down to enjoy our “breakfast”.

When we were done we took a quick stroll through the North End and then jumped in the car to get our little road trip started!

We headed Northwest out of Boston towards New Hampshire. With a Fodor’s travel guide, a map from AAA Trip-Tik and 2 big smiles, we were on our way! We stopped at Robert Frost’s Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, to learn a little about the poet, read a couple of poems, and then pushed on.

The next stop on the list was Manchester, NH. Jess read me the history of the city, how it was built, why it was built, etc. etc. and then she came across the gem of the city: The World’s Largest Lego Installation. How could we not go?

Over 3,000,000 legos!!! They re-built the entire city, which has a fantastic but tragic story. For some reason I am now fascinated with Manchester, NH.

As we got closer to the New Hampshire, Vermont border, we decided to pull over and check out the State booze store. Apparently in New Hampshire, you can only get hooch at state run stores, but there is no tax. There are around 75 of em in the state, but you can’t get beer at the state stores. Beer can be bought in most convenience and grocery stores. Now you know!

We made it to Quechee, Vermont to sample some cheese at the local Cabot outlet and grab some lunch. There’s a little market called we stopped at that was full of all kinds of great stuff, including a huge table of Vermont cheese ready to taste. It was AMAZING.

We left and went to go get a scenic look of the “Grand Canyon of Vermont”, the Quechess Gorge. It was pretty cool looking:

After driving around a little bit, we made it to the spot (just in time!) for lunch: Simon Pearce restaurant. With it’s spot on the Travel+Leisure “Most Romantic Restaurants in America”, it was the perfect stop for lunch on our anniversary!

I had a roasted red-pepper quiche and Jessica ordered the sesame chicken. The food was spectacular, but this place is really all about a perfect Vermont view!

With our schedule nipping at our heels, we headed North through Vermont to our next destination! Jess got behind the wheel for a bit and drove us to Montpelier to check out the state house.

Our next stop, and one of the main reasons we came to New England, was Ben and Jerry’s in Waterbury, VT.

We made it just in time for the last tour of the day (we ran in at 4:56 and the last tour was at 5) and with our check-in on FourSquare, we got to save $16 and get a free tour!! The place was awesome and after getting some knowledge about how Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is made, we got to sample some of the freshest Cherry Garcia on the planet!

A quick run through the gift shop, and we were on our way to the tasting area to get our fill of this awesome stuff! We opted for the mini-Vermonster .. how can you not, I mean, look at the poster!

Our four flavors were: Cookies and Cream, Late Night Snack, Schweddy Balls, and Jessica’s favorite: Chunky Monkey.

Fortunately, or unfortunately you could say, we had ice cream for dinner, causing us to skip out on our dinner plans at Solstice in Stowe .. ah, there’s always next time!

We headed back to Boston for the evening. We figured we could grab a late dinner after the drive, and we did. We visited the semi-new Harborside Legal Seafood and finally got our hands on some clam chowder!

For dinner I had some baked New England Scrod and Jessica finally got a Lobster Roll!

With dinner in our belly, we headed to the hotel to get some rest after a great day and our first full official year of being husband and wife!! :)

Well, it’s been a year!! We are so super excited. Things have definitely been wonderful, and change is in the air! As this little website can attest, we have had some awesome times, and as we peek into the future there are so many more exciting things coming down the line, especially with the little baby that has spent so much of it’s little life traveling across the states!

For our anniversary, I (Drew) wanted to do something that reminded me of when I asked Jess to marry me, and spend some time together, just the two of us, before baby Valerie comes. It’s not secret that things have been tough for almost everyone in the states, and so scavenging every frequent flyer mile, hotel reward, rental car point, and promotional offer (and www.biddingtraveler.com), I put together a trip to a place that we have never been together, but always talked about: New England.

Using Boston as our hub (because I am the most familiar with it out of all the areas, and Jess has never had Mike’s canolli’s) we are going to explore New England in like 2 days. One of the main attractions being Ben and Jerry’s - Jessica’s favorite ice cream!

I held on to the secret for about 3 days and tortured Jessica by letting everyone except her know what we were doing, where we were going, etc. etc. Up until we walked up to the gate at DFW, she had no idea what was going on, except that it was going to be really cold.

It was super fun to surprise someone with a trip, especially to somewhere they have never been and have always wanted to go!

The hotel we are staying at in Boston, the Omni Parker House, is pretty cool. It’s supposedly the longest running hotel in the US, JFK proposed to Jackie here (and had his bachelor party here), and Charles Dickens lived here for 2 or so year and recited “The Night Before Christmas” here for the first time! It’s also the home of the Boston Creme Pie and supposedly the 10th floor (which we are staying on) is haunted by the original owner Harvey Parker!

Jess studying up on the area .. thinking of our road trip buddies Gaby and El Matador!!

Anyhow, enough of this, we are tardy and have to get on the road. Pics etc. to come later.

I love you Jessica! Thank you again for being so absolutely amazing and wonderful. Every day you surprise me with your splendor. I look forward to waking up with you every morning, and seeing your smile every day. You mean the World to me and I promise to never stop loving you and showing you how much I appreciate you. Happy anniversary honey :)

http://vimeo.com/20173447

A quick lunch before the adventure begins!

So we have a trip coming up this week. It’s our 1 year anniversary and I want Jess to have a great time. So part of my plan is in planning everything, down to activities and lunch reservations, without her knowing a single thing about the trip, except we’re going somewhere cold. We leave Tuesday :)

Not a road trip, but an epic adventure nonetheless. :)

Valerie Nola Lentz .. look for her around the end of February 2012.

With our Saturday open and no plans to do much, we decided to jump in the car and just cruise around a bit. We headed North up I-5 and took an exit towards a Pioneer Museum. We never found the museum, but we found a bunch of other great stuff, starting with Brownsville, OR. What’s cool about Brownsville other than it is a cool looking little town? They filmed Stand By Me there! We drove past the area where they shot the Pie Eating Contest, across one of the bridges from the opening scene, and finally up a hill to where the tree house was.  

We continued on our adventure and got to see some of the old covered bridges that are pretty popular in this area:

The name of the trail that we followed was pretty cool:

Along the way we found Cascadia State Park and stopped to hike around and take a trail down to the Soda Spring Falls.

Continuing on US-20, we twisted around through the Cascades and then down OR126 back through the Willamette Forest until we met up with the route we had taken a couple of weeks ago to Bend. We stumbled on a lake called Fish Lake that is only filled after the Winter months because of the ice run off. So of course, I ran around in a lake .. even if there was no water in it :)

We looped back around to Eugene for the night and tried to figure out what to do on Sunday!

Lori was able to join us in Oregon for a couple of days and I was more than ecstatic to have some company while Drew was hard at work. Monday morning, Lori and adventured around the great city of Eugene Oregon. I failed to bring the camera but our day consisted of Fish N Chips, Vintage shopping, and great Coffee. That evening, we scooped up Drew from work and made the trek to King Estate Winery for a wonderful dinner.

I had high hopes to make it before sunset but we didn’t quiet make it. Still incredible nonetheless.

Oregon tends to get a little chilly in the evening but the patio dinning has incredible views, even at night. The staff was great and brought us cozy blankets to keep us warm.

The next morning the Sun was shining so Lori and I took a very windy road to the coast. Florence was just the spot for a great lunch, and shopping along the harbor.

We then headed out to see the great Sea Lions of the Pacific Northwest!

The views were spectacular and I was more than happy to let Lori drive home. That windy road got the best of me! That night we headed to Steelhead Brewery for some great grub and called it a night. Lori was off out of Portland in the AM so we needed our rest. Loved having my beautiful cousin with me for a couple of days! Wish we had more girl time :)

We woke up bright and early to grab my wonderful cousin Lori from the Portland Airport. Lori was coming in straight from work and was exhausted, but we weren’t going to let that put a hault on our fun day of adventure! First stop was along the Columbia Gorge.

Drew was more than excited to stop at the Bonneville Dam, and give us a lesson on hydro electric power and some other stuff that makes the fish think they are swimming up stream. I was more concerned with a bird that seemed trapped in there somewhere trying to catch the unsuspecting fish.

Dam school was over and we were off to Hood River for Beer School. I cant do ANY drinking these days but I was a total sport and learned all about the craft of brew making ;)

Our friend Scott was able to join us for lunch, unfortunately his better half Tricia wasn’t able to meet up with us. Lunch was great, as you can see below.

School let out and we were on our way to see the dormant volcano Mount Hood!

BUT before we made it, I spotted a farm that allowed me to pet the animals. The farm was stocked with all sorts of fresh fruit, veggies, pigs, goats, honey and LAMBS!

After the farm excitement we finally made it to Mount Hood!

We woke up on Saturday ready for a trip to Portland. Lori was coming in from Vegas on Sunday, so we wanted to go up and check out the city that Jessica has been wanting to go to for quite some time. We headed up I-5 with our first stop pinned at the Oregon Zoo. Seeing as how it is the only zoo in Oregon, we had some pretty high expectations. After getting our tickets and wading through the crowd that was there to see the Huey Lewis & The News concert (bummer, it was sold out) we started to walk around to go find some bears. Success came quickly and we even got to measure up against these guys:

The zookeepers froze the toys for the polar bears in blocks of ice, so we got to sit there and watch them try to dig for their precious brushes, bottles, and other goofy items. The little guy couldn’t get his stuff out, so mama bear rushed over and started to lend a hand .. err paw.

The next animal on our adventure was the Caracal cat. With the heat of the day in full swing, he was less than enthusiastic to great his Texan visitors.

We wandered around the zoo checking out everything we could, which wasn’t much because they were all either asleep indoors or on vacation - LAME, total zoo fail. But alas we found what Jessica was looking for, on the Great Northwest Trail: Black Bears!!!

After checking out the wildlife and strutting about the zoo for a couple of hours, we were off to meet up with some friends. One of Jessica’s best buddies, Leah Turner, and her man Chris! happened to be passing through the area from a family trip to Idaho. We jumped at the chance to say hello over some awesome Northwest seafood at Jake’s Famous Crawfish in Portland!

We wrapped up the day by strolling around the Pearl District, poking our heads by the Portland Festa Italiana, and stopping by Whole Foods to get some snacks. After that pretty busy day, we were ready to sleep and wake up in the morning to go get Lori!

Video chatting with the dogs over Xbox Kinect! Thanks Phillip!!

And most definitely a NOT so homemade dessert!

Thanks to the local Trader Joes, I accomplished a SEMI homemade meal!