Cumberland Mountain State Park

About a month ago I went to Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville with my family. It is one of our favorite spots and it was great to go there for a weekend.  I’m so thrilled that I am going back in January or February with a group of friends! Here are a few pictures from our trip.

This is the deck on the back of our cabin.

 

There used to be a bridge here connecting to a trail on the other side.

This is my dad and I pretending to step out on to the bridge.  I’m not sure what happened to my leg.  It appears to have gone missing in this photo.

I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is this week!  This semester has absolutely flown by.  I had Friendsgiving last night and ate way too much.  We had about 15 people and everyone had tons of fun. I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving with my family.  We always host Thanksgiving at my house. It ends up being about 25 people and we have such a good time!  My family is pretty awesome.

After Thanksgiving break we have just about 3 weeks until the end of this hellacious semester.  I plan to immediately go in to finals mode after break since my labs and clinicals are over as of today. That means my coffee pot will always be brewing strong coffee and my hair will remain tied on top of my head and out of my way so that I don’t chop it all off in my frustrated state.  At the end of those three weeks I will celebrate and then celebrate some more. I don’t know how yet. Probably by sleeping and going to work. Exciting, right?

I cannot wait!

New York City (part one)

Over fall break, I visited New York City for the first time.  I must say, it is not quite what I expected.  I have heard about it for so long, but I think that it is one of those places that you just have to experience for yourself.  I wanted to share a few pictures today.

The above picture was taken from the rooftop deck at our hotel.

We stayed at the Pod 51 hotel in Manhattan.  This place was recommended to me by my aunt and we loved it!  It is a more reasonably priced hotel because there are shared bathrooms.  There is a sink in the room, but the showers and toilets are down the hall. This set up worked great for us.  The rooms are tiny, but we didn’t need a lot of space and were hardly there.

We hit a lot of the tourists spots when we first got to the city.  It was great to finally see all of these places in person.  We did an NBC studio tour while we were there and it was really fun.  We saw the studios for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and SNL.

The Standard Hotel was recommended to us as a good spot for after dinner fun, so we checked that out on our first night.  We sat outside on their patio and it was wonderful.

I’ll share more pictures later from our exploration of Brooklyn and Central Park.

Lollapalooza in Chicago

At the beginning of August I went up to Chicago with a friend to attend Lollapalooza, a music festival.  We had an awesome time. We stayed for three extra days after the festival was over to explore the city a little bit more. I wanted to share some pictures with you of our trip. Some are from my phone and some are from my camera.

We took the Megabus from Nashville to Chicago. This was the first time that either of us had taken the Megabus before. Overall, it was a great experience. It costs us $13 to get there and $7 to get back. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal!

Here in the bottom left picture you can see one of the stages in the distance. The festival is held in Grant Park, so you are able to see the Chicago skyline from all stages. The Black Angels are in the bottom right.

This was taken while looking back just before The Shins started playing. We were about five rows back for this show. Looking back and seeing so many people was amazing! I was so excited for this show and it lived up to my expectations.

The Black Keys played after The Shins and we were able to move up to row two. This was such an incredible show. When I saw them at Bonnaroo last year we were far from the stage surrounded by lots of people talking loudly. I wanted to make sure that did not happen this time around. I had such a wonderful experience at this show.

The next day they evacuated everyone from the festival due to weather. Lollapalooza has more regulations to follow since it is in the middle of the city. I took this as we were walking back in when the storm ended. One band that I really wanted to see (Alabama Shakes) did not get to play, but luckily they are playing a free show in Nashville soon.

This was while we were walking to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers. What a view!

Another perk of this festival was that we were able to go out in the city after a day at the festival. One night we went a had an amazing duck dinner with Katie’s friend that we were staying with.

The days after the festival we did a lot in the city.This was taken at one of our favorite breakfast places in Southport/Lakeview.

We took a boat tour with the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

We also went to The Art Institute of Chicago.

And Millennium Park.

We made it to The Signature Room before we left for dessert. I just love the view from here. I wrote about it in my previous Chicago post also.

We had such an amazing time on this trip. It was great break before school started back. Now that I have discovered the Megabus I hope to take more trips to Chicago. I love that city!

I hope that you all are doing well. I can’t believe that I have been absent from this blog for a month!  Hopefully that won’t happen again now that school has started back and I have a regular schedule. This blog served as a way to escape my school work at times last semester and I am sure that I will need it this semester as well. I am in for a crazy few months!