what i wore

i haven't done a what i wore post in a while and i've been bad at remembering to take photos recently. also the last 3 weeks i had limited clothing as i've been traveling! so here are a few i've managed to capture!

skirt: target 2012
shirt: h&m tshirt 2012
shoes: rainbows

hiking edition -
shorts: old navy 2010
sports bra: ems 2010 (best sports bra!)
tank top: old navy 2009
i need to get more wicking summer clothes!

  

skirt: bananna republic 2010
shirt: h&m tshirt 2012
cardigan: old navy 2011
shoes: target 2011

dress: ann taylor 2011
cami: old navy 2012
cardigan: macy's 2010
shoes: bandalino 2011

dress: old navy 2011
cardigan: target 2010
shoes: bandalino 2011

dress: ann taylor outlet 2010
shoes: bandalino 2011

i'm sure i'm like most of you where you have a closet full of clothes but you wear the same things. i'm trying to be better about varying my wardrobe and wearing different things. 

more new jersey

   it was a busy busy last few days in nj! saturday was twin's wedding shower. it was a wonderful shower and it was great to see her whole family and meet most of her cousins and everyone. it all went smoothly and it was so relaxed. her mom & sister were wonderful as always and i can't wait until her wedding on august 18th! it is going to be so much fun! 

twin & i at her shower

visitors center

and since i've gotten my national park passport back in april ive been trying to get as many stamps as possible. i've had a goal to go to all 390 sites administered by the national park service and this is just making it more fun. so there are a few national park sites close to where i grew up and a few i've been to multiple times while others have been missed. so a few years ago i went to morristown and the washington headquarters national historic site - gw spent a winter during the revolutionary war here. and the continental army stayed at jockey hollow a few miles away so saturday after twin's shower i went to jockey hollow and got some stamps and learned about the harsh winter of 1779-1780 for the army. there is a ton of revolutionary war history by where i grew up and i have a goal to go see more of it!

replica cabins at jockey hollow

but my big fun this weekend was on sunday! twin and i made plans last week to go hiking on sunday with andy. we decided to go to my favorite area - the delaware water gap. which is also a national recreation area! (so more stamps!!) and i love to hike here and the area is just so pretty. and the hike we did goes to my favorite place in nj - the top of mt. tammany! we decided to do a combined hike and do mt. tammany and then go up to sunfish pond so in total we hiked 11.5 miles. and yes it was the most physical thing i've done since november 14th when i broke myself. but hey it made me feel a little more confident that i can run a half this fall because hiking 11.5 miles is similar to running 13.1 right? but it was a wonderful day out in the mountains with my best friend and her fiance and my favorite place! and my knee felt good - especially with wearing my brace for 11.5 miles and i wore the sleeve for the first time to see if it would reduce rubbing and it did which was nice. but taking it off when we got to the car was magical! but an absolutely wonderful day hiking!

with my national park passport excited about my delaware water gap stamp and the appalachian trail stamp as it runs through the area too! really i was ecstatic about the appalachian trail stamp!

view from the summit of mt. tammany- hello delaware river and pennsylvania on the other side!

heather & andy - he proposed on mt. tammany!

twin & i -  and my super sexy knee brace! 

sunfish pond - a glacial pond along the appalachian trail - it is a historic landmark!

so i'm now in the philly airport waiting for my flight back to charleston! yay! i'm going back! but only for 40 hours. i get in monday at noon and i'm flying out wednesday morning at 6am for my next conference which is in philly. i know - i just need to go home for a few hours, sleep twice in my own bed, switch clothes and everything. i am so excited! plus my camping gear needs to stop traveling around the country. but it is going to be a crazy week - my second  interview last week went well for school 1 so keep your fingers crossed! i should know in a few days about it. but i have an interview at school 2 on thursday morning. so i'm getting to philly wednesday morning - going to training because it is a new conference for me, driving home wednesday night (good thing i'm closeish to philly), interview thursday am, and then directly to philly for the conference where i'll be working 8am-11pm thursday to sunday. then flying back to charleston sunday night!

 hope you have a good week!

flying fun and new jersey

so when we last left off i was trying to post my last post in the houston airport and board a flight sunday afternoon to dulles and then after a short layover the plan was to fly to the westchester airport where my dad was picking my up late on sunday night. well actually that was plan b. plan a was flying back to charleston monday evening after exploring houston on monday, enjoying charleston for a few days, then flying to nj on thursday for twin's shower this weekend. but we moved to plan b while i was in colorado when i got some good news which required me to be in nj on monday. so lots of flight changing while i was in colorado but we figured it out.

awesome coworkers - man i look short!

had a good conference weekend in houston. a great group of students and really saw a student who was so homesick on friday start to come out of his shell on saturday and by sunday was speaking in front of our group and his mom came up to us to say how much fun he had and thank you. it is reasons like this student why i love these conferences. and it was great to see some coworkers i haven't seen in a loooong time and to meet so many new ones. it was pretty much a reunion conference - staff from the past 5 years all worked. pretty crazy!

woooo! finally home-ish! yup - where they make peeps!

so back to my travel adventures. so i get to IAH sunday afternoon for my flight and the incoming plane is delayed about 15 minutes - but they tell us no problem we should be landing only 10 minutes late. (i only had a 45 minute layover) so i'm ok. so i look at the tv screen during the flight and see it is about 8:45 so we should be getting ready to land soon. in a few minutes they make an announcement "we are about 200 miles southeast of dulles and should be landing in 45 minutes" ummmmmm WHAT! 45 minutes. that gets us in at 9:45 not 9:15 like we were told. so it seems like half of the plane hits the call button and the flight attendants were also kinda surprised with the announcement. so i end up totally missing my flight - like got an alert that the flight took off while still sitting on the first plane (thanks united app) and this is where the fun in dulles began. so about 1/3 of my flight also missed their connections so we were all told to go to the service desk right by our gate. well i was about 20 people back and there was only one person at the desk. sooo after about 20 minutes and they helped 2 people i called and was put on a flight to lehigh valley airport (yesss much closer to home) getting in at 10am on monday morning. so by this stage i'm kinda stressing i was flying home because i had an interview on monday and just wanted to make sure things were going to be ok for that as well i reallllllllllllllllllly want this job. so my next step was to find my luggage - so i go to baggage claim and get on line for that where about 45 minutes later (no joke) i am reunited with my luggage since i switched airports. so next step talk to a customer service rep to get me a hotel voucher as i reallllly didn't want to sleep in the airport. so another 30 minutes later i have my voucher and i'm off to a hotel. so i didn't get to the hotel until just after midnight and was catching the 6:30 shuttle to the airport the next morning. luckily my flight home to allentown was easy and my mom picked me up and we were home around 11:15. 

fluffy kitty - a perk of being home! hi clyde!

so why i was freaking so much? as often as i fly this was the FIRST time i missed a connection. i almost always have connections due to flying out of smaller airports and if it had happened any other flight i wouldn't have cared as much. but with an interview the next morning, traveling for 2 weeks at this stage, plans being changed, working 60 hours in the last 4 days all i wanted was to be at my parents house and being able to get ready the next morning for my interview. but the interview went well. keep your fingers crossed for me! i found out on wednesday i made it to the next round so still thinking lots of positive thoughts and how i can knock the socks off the superintendent!

hi black bear! saw him driving up sunrise mountain road

so since i'm in jersey a bit longer than i thought (isn't that a common thought) i've managed to have some fun. tuesday i was super lazy, but on wednesday i went to one of my favorite spots in nj and did a little hiking. i went to sunrise mountain which is about 30 minutes from my house and along the appalachian trail. i was the only person at sunrise mountain so it was wonderful to sit and each lunch and just be with nature. especially after being in the rockies last week it was interesting to see my mountains which are so small compared to where i was, but to me to appalachians are home. they are where i fell in love with hiking when i was 11 and still to this day i love nothing than to hike near my home. i did a little bit of hiking but with it being about 95 i didn't do too much! 

favorite view from top of sunrise mountain

little hiking action! woooo AT!

wednesday night i went to dinner with erin and we caught up on life and everything, today i sat out in the yard reading and went to the driving range with my dad (in my attempts to learn how to play golf) , tomorrow i plan to run some errands & pick up twin's bridesmaid dress, then saturday is twin's shower and then sunday i'm hiking with twin at my favorite place in nj! so lots of nature time!

just something about the appalachian trail i love...

rocky mountain national park

earlier this week i went camping for 3 days in rocky mountain national park in nothern colorado! i had just finished working a conference in denver and after my last trip to denver in april i was so excited to be coming back to colorado because i immediately knew i wanted to go camping in the mountains! so my first task was to see if my tent & sleeping bag along with other camping gear would fit in my large suitcase. and the day of happiness was when they did so i knew i could start looking into campgrounds and start making this trip a reality!

eating buffalo & elk

so i worked denver last thursday to sunday and then sunday night went to an amazing steakhouse in denver for some elk! now i'm kinda a picky eater - i used to be ridiculously picky. like wouldn't even try something new. but in the last few years i've become more open to trying food - especially as i travel. so when one of my coworkers heard about this place that served elk from one of our students and we asked the hotel about the restaurant we knew we had to try it! so catherine, kristen & i went to try it out. so we get there and there are taxidermy animals everywhere we knew it was going to be awesome. so we were told about the special of 4oz of both elk & buffalo steak and i knew that was what i was going to try. i was kinda nervous but i figured why not. and everything was amazing and our server was awesome! i really liked the elk! it had a blackberry sauce with it and it had an amazing flavor! the buffalo was good but i think i would have liked it if it was done a little more - it was medium but a little too pink for me. but still good! so i was super proud of myself for trying the new food!

at buckhorn exchange!

so monday morning i headed to the airport to get my rental car and i was off to the mountains! soooooooo exciting to be driving closer & closer to the rockies! i arrived in estes park (the town outside the national park) around 1 and went to get some groceries when i received a phone call that totally made my day! buuut i did have to spend a few extra hours around estes park making other phone calls and spent an hour on the phone with united changing my flights and getting everything sorted. so i finally get to the park around 3pm and went to the campground where i was staying in the park and set up my campsite and then went off to explore!

woooooooooooooooooo! i <3 national parks!

pretty views around sheep lake - monday afternoon

i didn't have too much time on monday afternoon as the devils hockey playoff game 6 was on at 6pm. so i wanted to be back in town to watch  it! but i did drive on the main park road and saw some beautiful sites to get my soooooo excited for tuesday! i also stopped at the visitors center to get some ideas of good hikes to do on tuesday and the must sees! game 6 was kinda disappointing as the devils lost but they had a great season and the kings had one incredible playoffs!

so i went camping by myself! which was a first for me - but i am so glad i did it. i love to travel alone and it was nice to just be me with nature!

tundra!

highest visitors center

 tuesday i was up early and started off along the trail ridge road (which goes allll through the park and up up the mountains) and was just loving the views i was seeing from every angle. i had a great time except driving was kinda freaking me out once we started getting up on the windy mountain road through the park. there were rarely any walls or barriers for the edge of the roads and just drops down hundreds of feet. freaking out here! but the views were just amazing! loved it! i got out at every view point and took pictures and where i could took a small walk or walked around the trails. and i kept adding clothes because up so high it was sooo cold - in the low 50s and windy! especially above 11,400 feet - which is considered the arctic tundra. aka like alaska or siberia. so it was pretty awesome. i also went to the highest visitors center in the national park system and of course stamped my national park passport 3x while i was in rocky mountain np.

along canyon ridge! 

ELK & elks! my initials are elk and i love that it spells a word!

2 miles above sea level

continental divide

so after going over the continental divide! and i decided to do a small hike near the colorado river (which starts up in the np and then goes down through the grand canyon - so that was kinda cool!) and as i'm along the path i look up and see 2 huge elk eating about 25 feet away. since there was no one there i didn't want to get too close but it was still pretty awesome. and i've wanted to see a moose since i went to acadia in 2010 and when i was told by rangers that the likelyhood of seeing a moose was in the western side of the park. so i made it my mission to see a moose! so i was driving and i see a few cars pulled over on the side of the road and i look and BAM a little moose! just eating along the side of the road and i was sooooooooo excited! i did my i saw a moose dance! and i took a ton of pictures of him. and then i decided to head back towards the east side of the park - so i had to go on the tiny windy mountain roads again. ahhhhh!

MOOSE!!!!!!

but i made it to the bear lake road at a few minutes after 4, which was perfect as they close the road to cars during the day and open it to cars at 4 so i could hike around bear like which was were i was told to hike by the rangers. so i walked around bear lake and then hiked up to nymph lake & emerald lake which was just breathtaking. the mountains and glaciers in the background and it was def one of the prettiest areas of the park. it was also so nice to just be hiking again - around the bear lake area i hiked about 4 miles. and as i turned a corner the people i who were walking down saw me and told me to look the other way and there were 2 elk right there just eating. and giving us dirty looks - and i joked we were ruining his view. so i was in my element during the afternoon and hiking. i finished hiking around 8pm and then headed back to my campsite and pretty much just went to sleep because i decided to go to wyoming on wednesday before heading to the airport to fly to houston.

the elk right along the path!

view along emerald lake!

view i ruined for the elk!

but i am so glad i decided to be slightly crazy according to some people and go camping for a few days between cities and go camping alone. which is an experience i'm glad i did. i needed some erin and nature time. and rocky mountain national park is just absolutely amazing. i love the mountains!

now i'm in the houston airport waiting for my flight to jersey (sunday)- just kidding. it wouldn't post in the houston airport. and i've had one hell of a travel day and i'm now in dulles boarding my flight now  (monday morning). look for that fun post tomorrow!

wyoming

state 34! woooo wyoming!

So before I write about my absolutely amazing time camping in Rocky Mountain National Park I’m going to talk about Wyoming. Yes, Wyoming. So I knew I was going kinda North in Colorado to go the National Park but it wasn’t until I saw a local map that I realized how close I was to the Colorado-Wyoming border that it was totally possible. So Tuesday night I looked up how long it would take to get to Cheyenne from the NP and then back to the airport  to return my car and catch my flight and decided my Wednesday adventure was going to Wyoming instead of Mt. Evans. 

got this sign too! wooo!

I was up at 6:30 to pack my tent and try to wrangle everything into my bags (I need to take a picture of all my camping & conference things in their 2 bags) and on the road by 7:30. I stopped once I was in town where I got a phone signal to just check the roads (I was going close to where the really bad fires are in CO and connect for a few minutes with the outside world) and then I was off! Driving on the twisty roads out of the Estes Park area and I was shocked at how smoky the skies were from the fires. I was pretty close driving on 34 by Loveland and the smell of fire was in the air. I’ve never seen anything like it. The destruction from the fires is just massive and the fire is still going strong. Driving through Northern Colorado on I25 was so interesting – the mountains to one side and just flat prairie with cattle. I was in love just with such a new landscape passing through Fort Collins and then I was so close and luckily they have a little pulloff so people like me can easily stop and take photos of the welcome to signs!

wyoming capital! it is so small!

Wyoming is my 34^th state! Now I had a few hours to explore Wyoming before I had to head back to Denver to catch my flight to Houston. So I went to the visitors center and wanted to try to head to Fort Laramie but it was too far away, boo! So I headed to Cheyenne which is less than 10 miles over the border and is also the state capital – so I got another capital in! I walked around the capital which was soooo small and adorable! And then walked around downtown Cheyenne just enjoying my time in Wyoming! I can’t wait until I can get back to Wyoming and explore more – especially the National Parks!

downtown cheyenne - adorable

depot square and the union pacific depot - cheyenne was the headquarters for the union pacific railroad and it played a major part of the city's growth and importance in wyoming

And now I’m in Houston working a conference. (I know - my travel schedule is crazy) Then Sunday night I’m heading back to NJ (slight change of plans) and there for a week. I was supposed to go back to Charleston Monday and be there until Thursday when I was flying home for Twin’s shower next weekend, but I have something I need to be in NJ for on Monday so hopefully it will all be worth it. Keep your fingers crossed for me!  The only downsides is I’m traveling all over with 2 bags and my clothing selection is interesting and I won’t be in Charleston for almost 3 weeks. Grrr. But hopefully I'll have some good news after all this crazy!

So here are a few shots of Rocky Mountain National Park from my phone to go with Wyoming until I get some time to choose my favorite photos of the mountains from the 450 I took while on my adventure!

my love of national park signs!

MOOSE!!!!!!!! 

elk - lots of elk around the park

two miles above sea level looking down on the valley

some gorgeous glacial mountains near bear lake

why i love charleston

this is why i am in love with charleston. 

 so tuesday night i headed to waterfront park in mt. p for their party in the park. it is their annual summer country concert in the park on tuesday nights in the charleston area. and the sunset was just absolutely amazing. i have fallen completely in love with the low-country.


so this week's party in the park was dustin lynch (cowboys & angels) and phil vassar. dustin lynch is up & coming and he is just adorable! and i love phil vassar (just another day in paradise, my next thirty years, six pack summer) so it was a great night to sit and enjoy some great country music and have a gorgeous view of the river.

dustin lynch

phil vassar

      

i was about 50 feet back from the stage - and the bridge overhead is the ravenel over the cooper river

   Since Wednesday I've been in Denver working a conference. I had a super long travel day on Wednesday with a 3 hour layover in O'Hare. Which I haven't been used to as my layovers recently have been like an hour tops (or running to catch a plane) so that kinda killed me. And then landing in Denver was crazy because there were thunderstorms alllll over the Denver area on Wednesday night. Like 7 small tornadoes were confirmed, golf ball sized hail, 5 inches of rain, and it honestly thundered & lightening from 5pm to 2am. Seriously. It was pretty crazy, one of the longest and most intense storms I've ever seen and I only had about 2 inches of rain where I was and the crazy lightening. 

And now I'm conferencing and also at our hotel is a high school cheerleading camp annnd a little miss colorado pageant. yup. so it is totally bring it on vs. toddlers and tiaras. and i kinda love it. so working until sunday and then i'm off to the mountains on monday morning and soooooooooooooooooo excited to camp and just soak up the rocky mountains and spend some time in nature. 

happy friday!!