Riya's Riyaaz

In these cold winter months, I am starting to reminisce about the summer. Past summer, when I and Savan took a mini vacation in the Rocky's of Montana. We visited three national parks - Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier.  We landed at the Bozeman airport and unlike any other major airport that is intimidating, this one was welcoming - a simple wooden structure, where we rented a car and made our way to Yellowstone National Park. We stayed inside the park in a lodge by the lake. Early next morning we witnessed the most beautiful sunrise and a couple bison's roaming in the heavily grown grass between the lake and the lodge. Our food for the entire trip was mainly oatmeal for breakfast and burgers for dinner.  Our first destination was the Old Faithful where we discovered that Yellowstone sits on a super volcano. The last time it exploded was 640,000 years ago. There is no rough estimate of when this can happen again. But when it does, it will wipe out three-quarters of N...

 Life has been full of clutter lately, actually since the beginning of this year. There has been something or the other that has kept me extensively busy, not by my own choice. In this chaos, Savan was sweet enough to plan our first long weekend, on the second holiday of the year; the mighty 4th of July. We knew schools are closed for the summer and any popular place we decide to go will be busier than usual. Having said that, it was a good to take a break. We planned to leave early on Friday, I whipped up some blueberry Jam from scratch and packed PB&J sandwiches with fruits for snacking on the road. We started driving up north as the plan was to stop at Ithaca to grab lunch. This time I shared the load of driving long distances so that he can equally enjoy the break, plus it saved me from getting carsick. We had some time to spare, so decided to drive around the large Cornell campus, eventually ending up at Beebe lake. We parked near the Botanic garden parking lot and walked ...

GRACE FARMS GLASS HOUSE

As summer ends the American excitement of going to the beach reduces resulting in lesser crowds, which made it a perfect excuse to visit Cape May, a popular destination in New Jersey for a day/weekend trip. Cape May is famous for its historic Victorian style architecture, the city claimed to be America's first seaside resort. The city sits at the southern tip of New Jersey and is tiny enough to walk around on foot. It was an impromptu plan so I looked up briefly what to do when we get there. We found parking easier than expected and started walking towards Washington Street Mall. Every street was adorned by Victorian style houses, with bright colors, steep roofs, bay windows, the classic porch, small gardens and ornamental wood carvings. Most of the houses served as Bed and Bath, they have attracted people from the East Coast - New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The weather was perfect while the winds made it cooler.  The Washington Street Mall is an open mall with multiple sto...