Bear Bums and Dino Bones Road Trip Day 1 & 2 - First Manchester then New York!

[kirstenjet]

Simplified Holiday Itinarary
New York
Denver
Laramie Wyoming
Jackson/Grand Tetons National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Buffalo Wyoming
Belle Fourche South Dakota
Denver
New York
Home

Travellers - Zoe (me!) and Rachel. Friends since school days.

This was almost the holiday that wasn't - first it had seemed like Thomas Cook who our New York flights were with, might collapse, then Rachel hurt her back so bad she couldn't walk further than the front door 2 weeks beforehand. Right up to the day we left I still doubted she'd be well enough. I never told her but I had already started sorting out what to do with cancelling the holiday and replanning it for September. With the help of an osteopath it all turned out ok!


So this was pretty much a once in a life time dream holiday and something we both wanted to do for years but never expected to actually happen. This was mainly because I have a fairly extreme fear of heights so going to mountains didn't seem like a clever thing to do.

Somehow I got it in to my head about Xmas time that I wanted to go on holiday and gave Rachel the option of a holiday based around Yellowstone National Park and a dinosaur dig or Seattle/Vancouver Island or Boston, Niagra Falls and Montreal. Think its pretty obvious which she chose. That's pretty much as far as her interest in the planning goes, I do all the indepth research and endless rewriting of the daily plan, which suits me fine!

Turned out it was pretty late to be booking Yellowstone by the time we decided to go in March and it took checking for cancellations 4 or 5 times a day to get the rooms I wanted but 4 weeks before leaving I had exactly the cabins I wanted, we'd gone from one bed and shared bathroom to 2 beds with a bathroom! Saved all the arguements about who slept on the floor and being too scared to use the loo in the night

Also to note, we ended up with some strange flight choices as originally the holiday would end in New York so we could go to the Warped tour 25th anniversary festival in Atlantic City but a few weeks after I booked the flights we decided to drop the gig to spend more time in Yellowstone.


Day One - Who's stupid idea was it to go by train?!?

That would be me, trying to be cheap. The moment I stepped into the station dragging the heavy suitcase I regretted it. Next time I drive to the airport! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express near Manchester airport getting there about 9.30pm. I was pretty much too excited to sleep or watch tv so sat playing on my phone for half the night mostly reading Yellowstone trip reports on Trip Advisor.

Day Two - Off to New York

Up at 5.30am to have breakfast at hotel as it was included. I was fine as I always eat the museli but Rachel was not impressed as hot food wasn't until 6.30am when we had to leave for airport.
I had booked priorty the night before as we were worried she wouldn't be able to cope standing up for too long if the queues were bad so we checked in at the Thomas Cook premium desk and fast tracked security and were all done in about 30 mins even with my bags having to be physically checked as my binoculars flagged up as suspicious.

We weren't taking off for a few hours (I like to be early!) so relaxed in Starbucks until it was time to board. I'd paid £65 each for the 2 XL seats at the front of economy and it was worth every penny - no one near us and so much leg room!

Ok admittedly I'm short but I think most could stretch out here!

I didn't bother with their crappy tv, just read and listened to some podcasts. It was possibly the smoothest flight I've ever been on and was over before I knew it.

I wish I could say the same about getting out of JFK but it took 3 painful hours. We got our bags straight away due to the priorty upgrade but then it was disorganised queues with very grumpy staff yelling at everyone. Eventually we were out and 5 mins later stuck in New York traffic in our Lyft cab to the hotel.

I'd booked to stay in Wyndham Garden Inn Rego Park in Queens as we had an early flight to Denver the next morning. Also this was our 3rd time to New York so we weren't worried about visiting Manhatten. Hotel room was cramped but very clean. Had a relax then it was off to Queens Night Market by subway. Interesting journey as most of it was on the 7 line which is elevated above the streets so gives a great view. Well, I say it gave a great view, if you asked Rachel you'd get a different answer. The areas it goes through gives a different view of New York than sanitised Manhatten. Lets just say gentrification hasn't hit some of it yet.

Queens Night Market is in the park next to the Museum of Science. It was set up to showcase street food and to help support those who cant afford the huge street food licence fees that are charged by the city. All the food is about $5 an item, to encourage you to try lots of items from different stalls. It's a great idea and we had fun each picking stuff then sharing it. We had Argentinian empanadas, Colombian stuffed potato balls, deep fried ice cream, pandan coconut toast and a burger thats cooked in spices then wrapped in an omelette from The Malaysian Project (hands down most popular stall there, took 40 mins to get the burger but very entertaining to watch them cook!), Korean beef bao, trio of Indonesian cakes from Moonman and various meat onna stick (well we did spend all of our long drives listen to Discworld audio books )

Eventually stuffed and tired we got a Lyft back to the hotel and relaxed watching Chopped and Law & Order reruns which is a holiday tradition! Tomorrow is silly alarm time as it's another flight, getting us one stop closer to standing inside a super volcano...

For the foodies here's some badly taken food pics, I promise it was more delicious than it looked!

Deep fried green tea ice cream

Beef Bao

Mr. BoJangles, known as Bo to his mates, with a trio of cakes I took back to hotel

Day 3 - Hello (and goodbye) Denver!

[sotagals]

Wow, really looking forward to this one.

I'm in the early stages of planning something similar so taking lots of notes.

[Loopylooloo]

Sounds like an amazing trip! I would love to do Yellowstone one day, looking forward to seeing all your photos.

[Mortimer Mouse]

I've just found your trippie. Looks very intresting.