As an American, I am often embarrassed about a lot regarding this country — how little Americans know about and travel the rest of the world, our disastrous and disgustingly expensive (and ineffective) healthcare system, our lack of gun control and restrictions, our general prioritization of business and profit over actual lives, our high infant mortality rates and low competency levels for K-12 schools. As strange as it sounds, I think one of the things that makes me proudest of this country is all the beautiful and varied land we have here, particularly our national park system, which is so well maintained and full of diverse growth, rock formations, and bodies of water.

During this trip to Utah, we’re primarily here to visit Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, two very different parks in southern Utah that I didn’t even learn about until about four years ago when reading about the national park system and Utah specifically. Odd “hoodoo” rock formations shaped like pillars are all over Bryce Canyon, and because they are all grouped together over a large panoramic view in a canyon, in some ways, they almost make even more famous parks like the Grand Canyon seem plain. Zion kind of sounds like its name, some biblical paradise that has gorgeous red, yellow, pink, and purple rock formations with a sea of green plants and trees everywhere. Both parks have hikes of varying intensity, and we’re planning to do as much as possible to enjoy our condensed time here.

When I visit places like Zion or Rocky Mountain National Park, which we visited in November 2012, I feel sad for people who think there’s not much to see in the U.S. other than the cities and states along our east and west coasts. So much exists in this country that makes it unique and beautiful that we should be proud of and appreciate. These places are so stunning that all I can really think when I see them is… wow. The photos never give a full portrayal of the vastness of these places. Being there in person is what is so awe-inspiring. It’s just little us in these big, big parks and even larger world.

There are 58 national parks in the U.S. I wonder how many of them we will be able to see in our lifetime, if not all of them.

This morning, Chris and I visited the Cabrillo National Monument, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and has a really spectacular cliff walk. The cliffs have these beautiful edgings from all the erosion that has occurred over the years. The actual Cabrillo statue at the site was pretty underwhelming; we mostly came for the cliff walk/hike and the ocean scenery, which did not disappoint one bit.

As we walked around the cliffs and along the edges, I thought about how comforting it would be to live in California again, to be this close to the Pacific Ocean and see views like this every day or every weekend whenever I wanted. The smell of the ocean and the sound of waves crashing — we don’t and can’t get that in the urban jungle that is New York City. And then the idea deflated immediately when I thought about being closer to home. Being closer to home is not a comforting feeling.

And that was when I started getting vertigo and couldn’t walk along the very edge of the cliffs anymore. All I could hear was my mother in my head, yelling at me for coming to a place like this where you could easily fall over and die.

When I was researching San Diego to see what we’d do here, I was getting bored of looking at TripAdvisor and looked to some travel blogs for some semi off-the-beaten path ideas. One of these ideas was what was labeled “the seven bridges walk,” which was supposed to be an interesting walk around the city or what the travel blogger called “an urban hike.” There are few changes in elevation, and the walk takes you to seven (actually eight if you count *all* of them) pedestrian bridges through the city. I thought it sounded like it could be different, so I put it on our list. And then as we went on it, I realized how annoying it was.

Not only was it a seemingly meaningless “hike” with little interesting to see, but it even backtracked and made us walk across a bridge… to then walk right back across it again to where we came from. What kind of “hike” is that?! If you ever try looking for “different” things to do in San Diego, by all means avoid this “walk” completely!

We would have been better off sticking with wandering around Balboa Park.

We’re spending a long weekend here since Chris was here for work this week, and the main thing on my list was to eat, eat, and eat. Of course, the ocean and sunsets also excited me, but San Diego screams Mexican food to me, and I barely remembered any of the food I ate the last time I was in San Diego, which was almost 18 years ago. Chances are that it wasn’t that good and was mostly touristy, too.

Last night when I came in, Chris took me to the Marriott Marquis hotel restaurant, where I hesitantly ordered the California wet burrito on the menu because I was craving burritos. I wasn’t sure what to expect of it until it arrived, but when it did and I took my first bite, I was thoroughly satisfied: the steak was grilled and cooked perfectly, and it was stuffed with guacamole, sour cream, and even French fries that managed to retain their crisp. This was a darn good burrito for a hotel restaurant.

Today for lunch, after waiting about half an hour, we went to a no-frills hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a more run down area of San Diego. We walked through tents and tents of homeless people to get there. The restaurant reminded me so much of the places I’d eaten at in Mexico — the plain tables, the minimal signage for the food, the cheap white plastic chairs. We had crispy chicken tacos, flautas, a tamale, and a “small” (it was quite large) helping of rice and beans with house-made flour tortillas. I usually don’t want flour tortillas, but these were the best and softest I’d ever had with just a slight char. This place couldn’t have been any better: they made all their own tortillas, made all the tacos to order, gave you ample cotija cheese, cilantro, limes, and onions, and even soaked chunks of pork fat into their hot sauce. And our massive lunch cost $15 total. It was like we robbed the place.

I wish we had Mexican food this delicious in Manhattan. I will be salivating about these meals for a long time.

I was headed toward my gate for my San Diego-bound flight this afternoon at JFK airport when I noticed two girls who couldn’t have been older than 13 checking their boarding passes and loudly speaking to each other. “They just announced they are boarding executive platinum and platinum fliers,” one of the girls said. “We’re platinum, so we should board now, too.” There wasn’t even a semblance of a line, just a big crowd in front of the “priority” and “main” aisles to board the flight, so I rushed ahead of them into the priority line, scanned my electronic ticket, and got on the plane.

As I sat on the plane, I thought about how crazy it was that these two girls who were barely teenagers had platinum status on American Airlines; that’s at least 50,000 miles flown each year, assuming economy class tickets and that we’re going by mileage only. I just started getting this level of status in the two years, and that was when I was 28. When I was 13, I had only boarded one dinky flight, and that was from San Francisco to Las Vegas. I wondered if they argued about their upgrades and tracked their frequent flier status all the time, too. It’s certainly a life I never had when I was that young. I also wonder if they try to talk about platinum status and frequent flier privileges with their peers, who have no idea what the big deal is and what all these terms even mean. Maybe one day I will have children who are like that, all because of the privileges that their mommy and daddy gave them.

After becoming acquainted late in life (I believe it was in late high school) to Korean food, I’m finally going to Korea this summer. I’m sure some people will label it our honeymoon, but Chris and I are just labeling it a trip to Korea. When we’re traveling internationally, we usually rely on Google Maps to get us around by foot and were confused when we tried to map several places at once in Seoul and kept getting our requests rejected. In addition, only driving directions were given; we couldn’t change the transport method to walking, which was odd. After further investigation, we found out that South Korea doesn’t allow full use of Google Maps, and when mapping, it will only give two points on the map and show driving directions… so no walking directions. This really didn’t make sense. So we did some more searches and found that Koreans in Korea use Naver to map directions, and it supposedly has Korean and English. Well, I downloaded Naver onto my phone to fruitlessly find that English was nowhere on it.. I even Google translated how to say English in Korean, and I still couldn’t find those characters.

In the end, Chris discovered that Bing Maps works quite well for Korea, and it’s pretty fast, too. I don’t think I’d ever been more excited about Bing in my life. Who would have thought that Bing would have saved the day (or our Korea trip)?

When I worked at Reprise Media years ago, I always heard my colleagues who worked on the American Airlines account grumble every time they visited Dallas for a business meeting. They’d complaint that the client was based in a city as boring as Dallas, as there was nothing good to do, eat, or see there. I always felt confused, since being food-minded, all I could think was that there had to be good Texan barbecue in Dallas. It’s Dallas in Texas after all, and Dallas is a major metropolitan area. How could there possibly not be good food there?!

Yesterday for lunch, we visited Pecan Lodge, which is arguably the best barbecue in Dallas, and it did not disappoint. Despite having a line that went out the door, it moved quite quickly, and it had the second tastiest brisket we’d ever eaten, with the first being at Franklin in Austin. It was extremely moist, well-seasoned, and didn’t need a knife to be pulled apart. The pork ribs were some of my favorite, and while eating them, I thought about how much Ed would have enjoyed these. We named a wedding reception table “Pork Ribs” after some of his favorite food. The meat didn’t need any sauces, but the sauces at the table were a little salty and tangy at the same time with a hint of sweetness. They were good for dipping the pulled pork.

Whoever said there wasn’t good food in Dallas is deluded.

Visiting Dallas has been like a history lesson going all the way back to the 1960s when Kennedy was president, up to George W. Bush’s dismal presidency that ended just years ago. We visited the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum this morning and then the Sixth Floor Museum, the museum dedicated to the life, assassination, and legacy of John F. Kennedy. The museum is actually built on the same site and on the same floor where the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy multiple times as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.

The whole exhibit was put together so well, with lots of details of the Kennedys’ lives and an almost minute by minute account of what happened on the day of the assassination. I’ve developed an increased sensitivity to hearing about deaths, especially premature and tragic ones, and my eyes overflowed with tears when I read the description of Jackie Kennedy’s reaction to leaving Dallas after her husband’s death was pronounced. The new President Johnson and the Secret Service advised her to go back to D.C. immediately, but she refused, saying she would not leave Dallas without her husband’s body. Johnson consented and had Jackie and the president’s body in a coffin aboard Air Force One. The entire flight, Jackie sat in the back of the plane with the coffin next to her.

Stories like this always get me, hearing people’s experiences of great tragedy and loss and how they coped in a life without the ones they loved. It would certainly be worse to experience loss with the public eye staring down at you every single day and evaluating your life and every facial expression.

It’s been exactly two weeks from the wedding day, and I’m still so exhausted. Every sleep I have has been such a deep sleep, and when my alarm goes off at 6:20am for the gym, I feel cranky and just want to keep hitting snooze. I resisted the urge to sleep in three times this week, so I think I’m doing fairly well.

We haven’t had a proper weekend to just rest and do nothing since Chris’s parents have been in town since our first weekend back, and this weekend, we are Dallas-bound since Chris wanted to avoid the cold of the east coast. Getting on a plane seems so exhausting now, but I will be happy when we are eating Texas barbeque soon enough. I really just want to rest, vegetate, and do nothing for just a couple of days.