Jenna and Julia

I'm regressing comfortably into adolescent laziness here at home.  After the last couple weeks, it feels good to be in someone else's care.  Jenna and I both got sick almost immediately.  Maybe it's the sudden release of stress.  Our bodies now sense they're safe to come undone.  It's fine: we have ample time to recuperate.

Jenna and I woke up feeling tough on Sunday, I guess, because we decided to drive home all in one go, on highways, no less.   It took something like 14 hours, all told.  I think we were just eager to be finished with the anticipation of some new, costly catastrophe.  We were irrationally grateful that the van made it home, patting the engine bay like a good dog.

I only saw my mom a little before she left for Montana.  When she injured her knee there a few months ago, she couldn't drive back.  She flew back tonight to retrieve her car.  She'll be back in about a week, I guess.

Our last day in Burlington was awesome.  Julia took us to the Potholes, which is the swimming hole I mentioned in the last post.  It was incredibly picturesque: a series of waterfalls falling between deep, circular pools carved out of caramel-swirl igneous rock.  The water was clear and cool.  Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the coolest part.  Julia led us upstream, between canyon walls of rock, to another pool, covered by a partial dome of rock, with vegetation hanging over the edge.  We had to swim and climb rock to get there, so I couldn't bring my camera.  We met a local guy on the rocks who traipsed up to the dome with us.  He talked about Eastern philosophy and tattoos, and tried to convince me I need to start doing drugs, although he was a nicer guy than that description implies.

I couldn't take a picture of the falls without getting my feet in the corner, because I would have had to lean way far out over the ledge and I'm chicken.  In contrast, the guy we walked up to the rock dome with kept jumping from this point into the tiny pool at the bottom of this waterfall.  It looked insane.  Apparently, some kid died in that pool last year.

We bought our tickets to Europe.  We got, I think, a really good deal.  The round-trip total for both of us is under $1700.  We're leaving July 31st from Boston.  We'll be in western Pennsylvania for a couple weeks before going to Jenna's house in Massachusetts.

There was another really exciting development this week: Elysia got bumped from an Iceland Express flight a while ago, and they offered her a free round-trip ticket, which she can't use.  She offered it to us, although I haven't determined if we can transfer it to one of us.  If it works out, we'll split the cost of one more round-trip ticket and spend a week in Iceland.  Iceland, y'all.

We can spend up to 90 days in Europe without a visa.  We're staying about a week shy of that.  That means if we run out of money, we have to live under a bridge or something until late October.