City of Black and White

Hello again!  We have now started to make our way to the South for the holidays.  We’re really excited!  So far, we’ve been through three states in one week: we left New Jersey, took a day trip through NYC, and stopped in Delaware. Soon we’ll be making our way to Washington D.C. for my dad’s 39th birthday.  We do have a couple things to mention though, so hang tight!

On Saturday, we got to see our aunt, uncle, and cousin one last time, and celebrated Hannah’s 2nd birthday with her!  We enjoyed being with her on her special day!

The Sunday before we left NJ we decided to take a trip into New York City (not a small feat with a Ram 3500, but more on that later). It was really cool to see a COMPLETELY different lifestyle than what I’m used to, but I think I just might get tired of all the honking:) Ann decided to take her pictures a little differently this time, but hopefully looking at them you can see why we chose this title: City of Black and White.

ANN:

Alright, so any of you who share my love for photography; this is for you guys. I decided to take a different approach to my photography because I really wanted to try something new. I wanted to do a lot more leading lines than usual, and also underexposed them a bit for shadows with the black and white editing. Metro and Architectural photography is not the usual approach I take with my pictures, but I decided to give it a try! If you would like to see the pictures in original color, leave a comment and I’ll make sure to add them in the next post.

 

Okay, we’ve talked about NJ and NYC so let’s start talking about our wonderful experience in Delaware.  First things first, ya’ll know we’re from NC, and if you didn’t, there you go.  In the south, Chick-fil-a is something you absolutely need in order to live.  If you don’t agree with me, you can just skip this part, as you won’t be able to share my enthusiasm for this place.  Ever since we became a full time family, we’ve mostly been exploring the New England states.  Which, don’t get me wrong, is not a bad thing and it’s been really fun, but… there are no Chick-fil-a’s in the North (at least none that we saw, except the 2 in NYC and you’ll understand why we didn’t stop and eat at one in a few moments)!  Somehow we survived, and was rewarded with finding a Chick-fil-a ten minutes away from our campground!  Turns out, we enjoyed staying in Delaware a lot more than we thought we would:)

 

Traveling Tip:

We had a blast DRIVING around New York City!  “Why were you just driving, why couldn’t you just get out and walk?” you may ask.  Because two parking lots denied us for our size!  If you’ve ever been to NYC, you know how extremely crowded it is.  You may also be able to figure out how a 3500 dually was probably not the best choice for driving around that particular city.  Nonetheless, we managed to do it, thanks to Dad’s expert driving skills (we did have a taxi scrape our rock tamers though, totally not our fault).  But we did learn from the experience, and we would like to share some of our knowledge with ya’ll.

• First, it’s not the best idea to bring a truck with two extra tires.  We went over the George Washington Bridge and had a toll fee of $42.00!  Don’t believe me?  See for yourself.

•  Be prepared, if you do want to risk paying the toll, to have many people either getting very frustrated at your size, or gawking at your size.  We had both.  One guy on a bike even asked us, and I quote, “Hey! Is your neck red?” and rode away laughing.
• Be cautious of low clearances, like bridges and such, while driving into the city.  Let’s just say we had some close calls.:)
•  Lastly, you probably won’t find any parking, a similar problem to ours.  Although in our case, the lot shooed us away for the size of our truck, or wanted $80+ dollars for us just to park there.

The bottom line is: if you’re going into a large city and your vehicle is quite large, our family would recommend either renting a smaller car, or just take a train/subway.  It would save a lot of time on your part, and make it easier to explore whatever city you’re visiting.  Who knows, it may even keep yellow paint off of your rock tamers!:)